Five consecutive weekends of ultimate doesn't leave much time for blogging (especially when you have to wait for other people to post photos), so I've decided to have an individual post for Swedish nationals and lump the other three weeks into a massive post.
06-07/09 USM: Uppsala, Sweden (coaching)
14-15/09 SM Dam (Women's nationals): Linköping, Sweden
21-22/09 Burla Beach Cup (picking up with british people I don't really know): Viareggio, Italy
26-29/09 eXtended European Ultimate Championship Finals: Bordeaux, France (watching/volunteering)
04-06/10 Oktoberfest Hat: München, Germany
*all of the photos in this post are stolen from Ultimate Sweden's Instagram*
My team Swedish Fish won silver at the swedish national club championships this weekend! It's not gold, but I am really proud of how we played and considering our two match-ups against the champs were 15-7 and 17-5 in pool play and the finals, respectively, they deserved it. There were only a four teams and it is not uncommon for the tournament to get canceled for a lack of teams (last year there were only 3) and all of the four teams were really combinations of multiple teams. We joined forces with some young superstars from a suburb north of Stockholm.
There were only 2 games each day (3 pool games, then placement matches) We started the tournament down 0-4 to Akka, but went on an 8 point streak to take half! This was really good. I mean Akka is a good team, but our team really needed a positive first game. Emilia, one of my swedish besties recently moved to Lund for school and now plays with Akka. After a little bit of good-natured trash talking, she got to eat some of the pumpkin muffins that I had baked for the Fish.
Then we fell to E6 in our second match of the day. It wasn't really close, but we figured out some ways to elevate out game.
We had sushi for dinner (followed by hamburgers for those of us with appetites) and met up with another team at a pub to hang out for a bit. There are very few ultimate tournaments in Sweden, so it was nice to catch up with players I'd met throughout the year.
We started Sunday with a match against Örebro. They have a lot of girls from the U23 national team and their girls often play open youth tournaments and they also beat Akka and lost to E6, so we didn't really know what to expect. The wind picked up during warm-ups, so we played zone the whole game. We took the match 15-1, with time to spare, so we had extra time to rest before finals.
We lost substantially in the finals, which was not unexpected. E6's attitude towards the whole tournament was really irksome. They essentially felt entitled to the gold (and the one world's bid sweden is guaranteed) and wanted to do as little work for it as possible. They only wanted to play round robin (no semis or finals). We had agreed on a match to 17 for the placement games, but they tried to get the rules changed right before the match to play to less. I mean, it's great that you are awesome, but the rules say you have to score 17 points to so to worlds, so stop complaining and just play!
If you want to brush up on your swedish or see a photo with me in it in the local paper, you can check out this article about how there are no referees in ultimate.
06-07/09 USM: Uppsala, Sweden (coaching)
14-15/09 SM Dam (Women's nationals): Linköping, Sweden
21-22/09 Burla Beach Cup (picking up with british people I don't really know): Viareggio, Italy
26-29/09 eXtended European Ultimate Championship Finals: Bordeaux, France (watching/volunteering)
04-06/10 Oktoberfest Hat: München, Germany
*all of the photos in this post are stolen from Ultimate Sweden's Instagram*
My team Swedish Fish won silver at the swedish national club championships this weekend! It's not gold, but I am really proud of how we played and considering our two match-ups against the champs were 15-7 and 17-5 in pool play and the finals, respectively, they deserved it. There were only a four teams and it is not uncommon for the tournament to get canceled for a lack of teams (last year there were only 3) and all of the four teams were really combinations of multiple teams. We joined forces with some young superstars from a suburb north of Stockholm.
There were only 2 games each day (3 pool games, then placement matches) We started the tournament down 0-4 to Akka, but went on an 8 point streak to take half! This was really good. I mean Akka is a good team, but our team really needed a positive first game. Emilia, one of my swedish besties recently moved to Lund for school and now plays with Akka. After a little bit of good-natured trash talking, she got to eat some of the pumpkin muffins that I had baked for the Fish.
Then we fell to E6 in our second match of the day. It wasn't really close, but we figured out some ways to elevate out game.
We had sushi for dinner (followed by hamburgers for those of us with appetites) and met up with another team at a pub to hang out for a bit. There are very few ultimate tournaments in Sweden, so it was nice to catch up with players I'd met throughout the year.
We started Sunday with a match against Örebro. They have a lot of girls from the U23 national team and their girls often play open youth tournaments and they also beat Akka and lost to E6, so we didn't really know what to expect. The wind picked up during warm-ups, so we played zone the whole game. We took the match 15-1, with time to spare, so we had extra time to rest before finals.
 |
| Looking super serious after winning 15-1. |
If you want to brush up on your swedish or see a photo with me in it in the local paper, you can check out this article about how there are no referees in ultimate.
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