Tournament Directors (TD's) are the backbone of Ultimate and Beach Ultimate. Without them the players would be lost and end up spending their days behind the TV ;-)

BULA has always supported TD's, helping them with tips, free posters, readily downloadable pictures for magazines, discounts, etc... Now there is another way TD's can get help: James Melzack, an experienced TD from the UK has started a forum for TD's to help each other with experiences and tips.

In less than 2 weeks, 57 people have already registered and the first topics included:

• Ranking players at a hat tournament
• Refunds
• Fees
• Media and Sponsorship

This was long overdue. Thanks James!

TD's at the World Championships Beach Ultimate in Portugal

I have been a long-time Twitter skeptic. Especially when it comes to it being a profitable business (in my professional life I help grow and develop start ups). However that is not to say it is not being used. Its use has surprised many people and last week I noticed the first signs of Twitter in the (Beach) Ultimate community.

The biggest contribution was Piers Truter's tweets at the World Games. They were great to use as additional info while looking at the live and online TV feeds that missed good commentary.The UPA and Jonathan Pottsy (WFDF President) also added good commentary.

Almost at the same time my Filtrbox started sending me alerts that the term "Beach Ultimate" was being tweeted about. Chicago's Sandblast tournament was the start, soon followed by Parlee Beach (Canada) and now Wildwood tweets are coming in.

Useful? Not really!

Interesting? I think so. I wonder how/if Twitter will have any real impact on Beach Ultimate the way Facebook did? It will be fun to follow. Just don't follow me. I stopped tweeting a while ago. It was useless!

The World Games are held every 4 years and are for sports that just don't have 'it' to be in the Olympics, but are still great sports. Korfball, a sport I grew up with, is one of them and so is (grass) Ultimate.

The 2009 World Games started last week in Chinese Taipei and Ultimate saw it first action today. The weather was hot (30 Celsius at 9:30 AM) and the stadium was filled with 8,000 spectators!

The games were exciting. Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) was better than expected but still lost twice in front of the home crowd. Japan and US both went undefeated with the US slapping gold-hopeful Canada around: 13-6. Australia is looking good and the Brits had a great last effort against Japan, but they were behind too far (5-0 and 9-2) to realistically hope for a miracle. They got to 12-10 but then Japan finished it: 13-10.

The scores on day 1:

Canada - Great Britain: 13-10
Japan - Chinese Taipei: 13-7
United States - Australia: 13-11
Japan - Great Britain: 13-10
Australia - Chinese Taipei: 13-9
Canada - United States: 6-13

If you want to follow the action live, check out the following URL's and twitter feeds:

http://results.worldgames2009.tw/en/Comp.mvc/DetailedSchedule/FD/
http://wg09.net/cms/index.php
http://wg09.net/displayGames.php
http://hichannel.hinet.net/2009wg/live.html (seems to air the last day finals etc... Internet Explorer only)
http://www.upa.org/programs/intl/worldgames2009/updates

http://twitter.com/pottsy02
http://twitter.com/pierstruter
http://twitter.com/upaorg

As far as I know, no live TV feeds online. A bit of a dissapointment because after seeing it at the WUGC in Vancouver last summer and I come to expect this, especially from a large event such as the World Games. Perhaps because of (local) commercial interests this is not done? Who knows. All I know is that pressing refresh every 30 seconds is just not optimal ;-)

Last weekend the BULA flag, created for the European Championships in France last year, was proudly displayed during the Taj Ultimate tournament in Japan.

And if you like good promotional Ultimate videos, check out the Taj Ultimate homepage video at: www.tajultimate.com

Ukraine's Gigolo won Paganello's Spirit of the Game award and finished in the top 12 in the Open division. The great combination of high level play and great Spirit is totally obvious is this YouTube promotional video of their upcoming Kiev tournament August 8-9:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDdqpcZ4r9E)

For those of you that never traveled that way, the Ukraine is a great tourists destination for Europeans, who do not need any visa. The tournament is located on the beach almost downtown Kiev, so you can play and enjoy the beautiful landscapes of the city which is situated on the banks of the Dniper river.

It sounds amazing to me... :-)

More info at: www.hat.com.ua/eng/

Many years BULA has been working with Matt Kass, a veteran player from the US who lives and works in Tokyo. We met Matt for the first time in Portugal when he was playing for the US Master's team. His passion and drive for Beach Ultimate was clear and refreshing.

Now, with the arrival of the first Asian Championships Beach Ultimate, Matt has more than ever put his efforts behind helping BULA in Asia, and in Japan in particular. We are very fortunate that Matt has offered to further develop BULA Japan as the Representative Director. There are at least 4 Beach Ultimate tournaments every year and with his help we hope to expand this.

For any questions or inquiries about Beach Ultimate in Japan, Matt can be reached at:

makass@me.com
m: +81-90-9857-7070

Christian, the founder of Ffindr just completed the addition of a new feature to the system: simple online registration and processing!

Players can register online and the TD will get a confirmation e-mail, plus a link to an ever up-to-date Excel file that reflects all submitted bids. TD's and bidders can edit the submitted bids as long as they are logged in.

Once the registration is closed and the TD makes the choice among the bids (TD's can move the bids around between the selected and waiting list by easy drag & drop), everything is ready to send out the invitations.

Sweet!

Read more on the ffindr blog