Departure for University Nationals and round robin day one

I have really taken my time writing up my exploits from our trip to England and Rome, so I haven't updated my blog regarding my more current activities. In any case, I have been spending a lot of time practicing ultimate frisbee with the U of A ultimate team since I returned. This is because I am playing with the team at the University Ultimate Nationals in Vancouver this weekend and am representing the University of Alberta.

My flight left Thursday evening and Ian kindly drove Joelle and I to the airport. Joelle and I were staying with Kyle all weekend, so we had intended to travel together, however we bought our flights separately. Thus, she was leaving on an Air Canada flight an hour later than my Westjet flight. So, Kyle met me in Vancouver and we had a beer and visited until Joelle showed up awhile later. We drove all the way out to Kyle's place in New Westminster and basically crashed on the hide-a-bed right away because we were pretty tired by then.

We rose early on Friday, because our game started at 9am and we had to be there an hour early to warm up. Add to that about an hour commute time from Kyle's to UBC and you get an early wake-up call. We were both pretty excited about playing, though, so we woke up fairly easily and packed up to leave. Plus, surprisingly, the weather was beautiful in Vancouver - sunny and warm! (Well, warm to us Edmontonian's, at least).

The skytrain trip went without a hitch, considering we only sort of knew where to get off that first day. Eventually, though, we came to the end of the line and got off to find our transfer bus ready and waiting. After a few stops on the bus, the rest of our team just happened to climb on the same bus as us, coming from their hostel. Good coincidence! We all rode the bus all the way out the UBC and then wandered over to the fields to get ready for our games. We had four games to play that day, the first of which was against Queen's university and would be the first real game our team had played together. As a result, we started off a little slow as we struggled to gel as a team, however we really picked up our pace by half way through the game. Unfortunately, we were too far behind at that point and lost our first game 13-6.

Our second game was against the University of Toronto, who were seeded second out of the nine womens teams at the tournament. However, U of T didn't come out as strong as we expected, whereas we really stepped up our intensity in anticipation of a tough opponent. As a result, we beat them 13-7 and earned ourselves our first victory!

Our third game was against the University of British Columbia team B. We used our momentum from our last game to win over this team in a fairly tight battle, winning in time cap with 11-6.

Our last game was next, but unfortunately our tournament schedule didn't allow us any breaks during the day. In fact, we were probably the only team without a bye in the middle of the day. Since we had to play four straight games, none of us really had a chance to rest or to really eat lunch. We were starting to get worn out, whereas our next opponent, the University of Saskatchewan, was just coming off of a break and had some fresh legs against us. They ended up being a really tough team and had a mean hucking strategy that we had trouble shutting down. They ended up beating us 13-7, I think.

After our games, we did some cool down and stretching before we split up for the evening. Joelle and I bussed back to Kyle's, where we showered and rested and watched the hockey game with Kyle and his room mate. We also picked up some sushi from nearby for dinner and chowed down, since we hadn't much to eat the rest of the day. We thought about bussing out and meeting our team for dinner, but it was too far away and we were too tired. We finished up the evening at the grocery store and bought some food for the next two days of ultimate, since the food at the field was quite disappointing. We ended up getting to bed by 10pm, and slept soundly until our alarm at 7am the next day.