Ontario Mixed Regionals Preview- 2008

Nation,

9 Teams. 6 Spots. It's that simple.

Very exciting tournament in Kitchener,Waterloo this weekend. Mixed Ontario regionals to determine the 6 teams going to nationals.

The website is here, and the seeds heading in are as follows: (in order of seed)

Alex Benedict Photos

1. MONSTER- Toronto
   
2. Liquid- Waterloo
   
3. Big Hammers- Toronto
   
4. Mayhem- Hamilton
   
5. Tundra-Toronto
6. Bytown Flatball Club- Ottawa
   
7. The Company
   
8. Zen- Toronto
   
9. Big Fish- Ottawa
   

Note* I see Glory from Brampton and Druid from London on the CUPA list, but don't see them on the tourney website.

I haven't played coed for a couple of years, but I can give a prediction for who will take those 6 spots.

Liquid- 2 years ago this team peaked at Northern Flights and looked like a serious team with great speed and very solid ladies. Politics and dissent ruined that team and they reeled back hard. As long as they have Andrew Higgins, they have a great chance.

Big Hammers- Features a lot of old wily veterans, including Paul Chambers. The man can still get it done. Expect either great things from this squad or a total discombobulation. They may be adding a highly coveted female who play in the national championship finals at CUC 2007.

Monster- They have been together for years and have built up the quality of their team. Hilary Leung is known for three things in ultimate- Having great straight line speed, being Stephanie HUI's boyfriend, and being the most dedicated Monster out there. They had an amazing regionals last year and will qualify once again

Tundra- Is this the team Greg Lang plays on? I can only hope for their opponents that they don't wake him up. Lang at his best is worlds good. Lang on the other end is more of a .... well... smoking and angry. Colin (Oops, I mean Craig, not his awesome younger brother who plays open) Froats and the rest of the team are also solid, and they'll look to improve on last year's solid results

BFC- Last year's silver medalists at the nationals stage overcame a huge regionals disaster to almost secure the worlds bid. This is not the same team. Last year's secret (talented women) has remained a strength, albiet with different girls. On the guy's end, it's really the chance for Geofford Seaborn to play the way he's thought to be capable of and lead this team to nationals.

Mayhem- All I know about this team is- they get it done.
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The rest

Big Fish- I know. But something tells me if Gavin Thompson is at the helm, something crazy could happen. At the start of the year, this team was a serious threat to make nationals with Glenn Ford, Julie Thompson, Jer Gaudet, and Gavin handling. They even had a deep threat in Jamieson Mackay. Ford will not be with Fish for CUC purposes, and Mackay has moved up to BFC. Nationals is in serious doubt, but Gavin will get naked.

Zen- They get the butt end of so many teams in Toronto. If they continue to develop talent as they have in the past (Eric Lau, Melissa Lundgren), then they are doing their job.

The Company- They sound like they mean business.

Montreal JazzFest 2008- Let the Predictions Begin

Nation,

The Bird will be at Jazzfest this weekend. Whoever is not at the tournament from the Ottawa program (PHX/FB) will be at a very crazy party. I can't say any more.

I was going to post the schedule days ago but it was flawed. It was then rectified almost imeediately (nice work TD) and we have the following schedule and the open teams are as follows:

Origin
Magma	Montreal,Qc
Mephisto	Montreal,Qc
Demon	Montreal,Qc
MIT Geck Mystique	Boston,MA
Biefs	Montreal,Qc
Run Silent Run Deep
Double	Burlington, VT
Ray Net	Trois-Rivières,Qc
Firebird	Ottawa, Ont.
Zebra Muscles	Rochester, NY
Participation Fish	New Jersey
Tabascomen	Montreal,Qc
Providence Packdogs	Rhode Island
Bear Proof	Shippensburg,PA
Opus	New Hampshire
Roy	Sudbury,Ont.
Glum	Ottawa, Ont.
Les Ringards Faméliques	Montreal,Qc
DQ & Friends	Rimouski,
The Swingers	Montreal, Qc
Hit or Miss	Hamilton, ON
Stimulus Package

We're playing Zebra Muscles, Tabascomen and Raynet on Saturday. I haven't seeing the new look Zebra Muscles yet (They lost a lot of their old guard and are headed in a youth movement) and these other two teams are Quebec squads I haven't seen at all.

Teams to watch include Mephisto and Providence Pack Dogs. Mephisto is a standard for solid and consistent results. The Packdogs lit up everyone they faced at Boston last week. Expect Run Silent Run Deep, Glum, MIT to make it to quarters. We'll be there too of course. :)
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Women's division

Here are the teams
Here is the schedule

Here are my thoughts

• Storm has to be the favorite
• Who the hell is Fusion from Winnepeg? I smell a stacked team.
  
• I think PPF who should be coming to my No Borders tourney.. is going to be in the semis
  
• I think the MIT teams in both women's and men's got some sweet seeds. Hard to live up to such rankings
  
• I think Scarlett is underseeded. They are very serious about this tourney
  

Happy Canada Day

Nation,

Happy Canada Day.

Be proud, be safe.

Steven

Boston Invite 2008- Debrief

Nation,

For Canadian teams, the Boston Invite signals the start of the summer homestretch. With Nationals in mid August, the amount of time and number of tournaments left to fine tune is starting to quickly vanish.

Tournament Results

You can find the Open, Elite Women's and Women's divisions on the UPA reporter site.

J.F. Mauger @ CUT 2008 (Greg King Photography)

Run down of the men's Tourney

Canadian Team Results

GOAT-2nd
Mephisto-6th
Phoenix-7th
Tombstone-18th
Red Circus- 21st
Firebird-26th
Grand Trunk-27th
Demon-31st
Magma-31st

Elite

• Boston Ultimate wins the finals over GOAT 15-10. After losing to GOAT in last year's Boston Invite, I think Boston has taken a major step forward this year. Don't be fooled, GOAT will still be a force as well when October and November rolls along.
  
• PoNY and Great Britain finish tied for third, losing by one point in each team's semi. Excellent results for both squads.
• Bodhi and Phoenix continue their excellent results this summer by going undefeated on Saturday and winning their crossovers into the top 8.
• Mephisto gets some revenge from CUT and upends Phoenix on Sunday, after Phoenix gave everything they could to Boston
• Machine and Pike have very tough Saturdays, fall out of the quarters and fail to win tier 1.
  

Open

• A team called the Providence Pack Dogs (apparently a pick up team consisting of stars like Josh Zipperstein) destroy all comers on both days and win the tier 2 crown. A Grand Trunk source describes their match-up as a "slaughter".
• Death or Glory wins the tier 2 title with a final win over Tombstone. Ironically, this will be the match-up at worlds in the Masters division. Wish I could have seen it.
• Red Hook wins a tough one over my very own Firebird to win the tier 3 title

Firebird Experience

I've never lost so many heart breakers in one day. I've never lost 3 games by four points in one day. We had a great chance to win our cross-over against a good team in Philly Love, but lost on universe point.

I wasn't playing as much as I normally do (I'm also an idiot who found out how badly you can get burnt even under clouds), and I had a great view of our performance. The positive is we had an excellent game plan, we were extremely athletic/fast, and we forced many turnovers. The bad news is we didn't follow the plan and we turned it over way more than I though capable. I can only compare it to a dog who catches the ball with the sole intention of handing it back.

We messed up and lost the lead to Colt .45, then got too far behind a jacked up RSRD squad. We then lost a heart-breaker a very athletic Roots of Rhythm (not quite as good as they think they are), losing on universe point once again.

Having said that, the tight games were fantastic experiences, and we saw a lot of good stuff from all the teammates. (This year's team might be as fun to be around as my " 4AM This is a a shitshow" Western crew).

Missing out on a chance to move up and play DoG (I dare you to come to No Borders guys...) we won some close games versus Savage Strike and Nor Easter and moved on to the tier three final versus Brooklyn's red Hook. We lost 12-10 and the consolation hardware. The quality of the teams that low in the tourney is pretty suprising.

Off-Field Stuff

The ride to Devens from Ottawa is long, but always well worth it. The trip down was miserable due to Montreal traffic and construction on the highways, but luckily I had the Praha Princess with me. (She had a great time at the Wrenthem Premium Outlets by the way, and highly recommends it to Canadians next time around). Is it just me or do the accents south of Boston differ greatly from those north of Boston?

We took a different route on the way back and it was much better.

We always stay in Leominster with all the other Canadian teams at the Motel 6. It's not the greatest hotel but the near-bye amenities are vast and within walking distance. I didn't make the trip with the team to the local Italian restaurant El Dente, but I did manage to get a Calzone at Pizza Fort on Sunday before the trip back. Those are two places I strongly recommend.

The only downer was watching some good old fashion child abuse by a mother in the grocery store in Leominster. Yikes.