The Scientist: Canadian Ultimate Championships, 2008

On the weekend, I went to the Canadian Ultimate Championships in Calgary with the Edmonton Women's Team. We were seeded 10th out of 12 teams, and we didn't have huge expectations since our team contained a number of inexperienced women. However, most of the experienced players signed on to help develop the team for future years and to help grow women's ultimate in Edmonton.

(That's the back of my head, there, with the Kokanee hat on).We faced some fierce opposition in several of our games over the course of three days, however there were also some teams that were fairly matched for us.

On Thursday, we started up a little slowly in our first game, losing against a team called "Bushfire", from the Okanagan area in BC. Our slow start was a little expected, however, since that was the first game where we had all played together as a team.

We had two jerseys for the tournament, one in white and one in red, each with our numbers on it.

Here's our logo, up close. I really like it.

Our second game on Thursday was against Lotus from Toronto. It was basically a blowout, since they were contenders for first place. I think the score was 15-2. Whatever you can say about all of our losses, we never got bageled (ie. a score of zero for us).

Check out that big windup I have right there in the above photo! I threw the best forehand huck of my life at this tournament (not on the throw shown above)! It was great! Too bad it wasn't caught down at the end zone.

Our last game of the day was against Scarlett from Ontario. I don't recall the score (maybe 13-6), but they beat us in soft cap.

The next day dawned bright and early with an 8:30am game. Since we had to be cleated up an hour ahead of time for team warmup, Joelle and I showed up at the fields at 7am. Some of you may know I'm not a morning person...but since it was so hot the whole tournament, we couldn't complain too much about morning games. At least it wasn't so hot out at the point in the day.

Our first game was against Salty from Halifax (fitting name, no?) and they were one of the teams that were a close match to us. We probably had our best game that morning against them, with a final score of 14-9 for them (recall we didn't win one game all weekend). I myself had a really good game as well, since I switched from being a cutter to being a handler. I was able to create more opportunities as a handler.

After that game, we had a bye during which we watched the Edmonton Men's team play. Our next game was at noon, just as the temperature was heating up. We played against Fusion from Winnipeg, losing to them as well, but putting up a good fight and making them work really hard for their wins. By this point our team was really starting to gel and we were playing some fierce defense. We could force turnovers, but we just couldn't capitalize on them to score for ourselves.

Our third game that day was right afterwards. The heat was mounting, peaking at 29 degrees around 3pm. I just concentrated on getting shade when I could and wearing lots of sunscreen. Plus, I wore my hat whenever I was off the field. Joelle and I were one of the few girls who brought a little cooler, so our water was slightly colder than most people's, which helped us a lot too. We played against Siren's from Regina, which reminded me of the University of Saskatchewan team we played at University Nationals in October last year (tall girls, big girls, lots of hucking). Again, we made them work hard for their win, but came up short ourselves on the scoring end. It was during this game that I had a great forehand huck!

Our final game on Friday (long day!) was after one more bye and started at 5:15pm. Similar to our match up against Lotus, our game against Luna Tide (from Vancouver) was a blowout with the same score as that against Lotus. By that point, we were pretty hot, tired and tuckered out. It was a relief to finish up and get cleaned up, although I didn't get to shower until after our team pizza dinner.

After all of these round robin games, we were ranked 12th for the day of finals on Saturday. The bottom 4 teams had their own playoffs, so we played 9th place, which happened to be Sirens again. Unfortunately, our team didn't quite show up for that 8:30 am game with the same intensity we'd shown that team the day before. We lost quite badly due to stupid drops and just being unfocussed.

For our last game of the tournament, our team really stepped it up. Again, it was starting to get hot by our noon start time, but we were playing Salty again and knew we had a chance to win. After our meager showing at our morning game, it was great to see the team come alive and pick up the intensity. Myself, I had a great game and was really happy with my performance. I put a huck into the end zone to score, and threw two break force flicks into the end zone for two other points. I was on a roll! But, following the them of the tournament, we were fated to lose and thus ranked 12th out of 12 at the end of the event.