What do you think BULA should do in the next 2 years to help develop Beach Ultimate around the globe?

Now is the time to give your input. During the Championships in Brazil we will hold a BULA Congress where we will discuss the next 2 years of the organization. If you like to see anything discussed there, send us your feedback. The deadline is Sunday 25 November:

http://beachultimate.org/bula2008.html

Thanks to Dima in Kiev (the organizer of the Kiev hat and КаZантип tournament) the BULA Spirit of the Game rating system is now available in Russian as well.

Download SOTG rating system in Russian

Thanks Dima!

Matthew Shaer has come to BULA's aid and sent us an adapted a piece of JavaScript that allows visitors to sort all tournaments by date, country, and name. Great addition. Thanks Matt!

http://beachultimate.org/tournaments.html

As of today the BULA rules are now available in Portuguese Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese!

Many thanks to Pedro Vargas, Joana Rodrigues and Raoni for their work in translating the BULA rules into Portuguese and 'Brazilian'.

The rules have not be adjusted to the new 2007 WFDF rules. That is the next step for us and we hope to get this done in 2 months. Until then, these rules should help the players in Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique and Angola. Not to mention the press in Brazil that is getting ready for the World Championships in Brazil. (more news about the WCBU in a week)

Download the Portuguese rules here
Download the 'Brazilian' rules here

Through the efforts of Malela Paredes and Du Faim from Brazil, we now have the BULA Spirit of the Game rating system also available in Brazilian Portuguese.

Thanks!

Download .pdf

Dima and Valeriya Gavrilchenko from the Ukraine translated the BULA Sponsorship guide into Russian. Thanks! The BULA 4-on-4 rules were also translated into Russian, however the author is not yet known to us.

Download Russian Sponsorship Guide here

Link to the Russian 4-on-4 rules

Link to original (English) Sponsorship guide

Today we are publishing the second in a series of translations of the BULA rules.

Many thanks to Nadia Sillano and Luca Giordano for their work in translating the BULA rules into Italian.

Italy, the home of Paganello (which gave birth to BULA) has a strong potential for the sport with lots of beaches and many tournaments and players. We hope that with the help of this translation growth will continue and a national Beach Ultimate league will not be far away.

Download the Italian Rules here

The next translation we'll be releasing with be the long anticipated Portuguese rules. Something that will come in handy for the World Championships in Brazil :-)

Today we are publishing the first in a series of translations of the BULA rules.

Many thanks to Gemma Perez and Arcadio Diaz Diaz for their work in translating the BULA rules into Spanish.

Download the Spanish Rules here

In a few weeks we are expecting to publish the BULA rules in Italian and Portuguese. French is scheduled for later this year.

Today we changed our website. We added a few more links on the navigation to make it even easier for you to find what you are looking for. In addition we added a Google Map where anyone can add information about locale Beach Ultimate. It doesn't matter if you only have 5 players that want to play, or are organizing a league or tournament. With the Google (Beach Ultimate) Map people can find you!

Each year BULA promotes a new tournament somewhere on the globe. These series are called the Beach Ultimate Traveling Tournaments (BUTT). We are still waiting for confirmation of the 2007 location, but the 2008 location has been determined and it will be a great one: New Zealand! Four weekends, four tournaments!

Starting 2 & 3 February 2008, at Otaki Beach (one hour north of Wellington) the "Wellington Wild Wind" mixed hat tournament will make its debut. After 2 days of playing and partying the tournament will move up the North Island. Three more beach tournaments will follow over successive weekends. Costs, maps, links, accommodation and other details to follow.

Below is a first picture showing a view of the beach, and an insert of the grass area with BBQ and seating area adjoining the beach. With a river a few hundred metres away, the weather brings different surfaces to the beach, such as the shells showing in this photo, or lots of driftwood (fires!). But no worries, it is very easy to groom :-)

For any (Beach) Ultimate player, that loves to travel and wants to visit one of the most beautiful countries in the world, this will be an experience that should not to be missed. Sign up for our Beach Ultimate News (left) to get more details when they come out, or subscribe to our Atom/RSS feed (top right)

Here is a list with the tournaments that used the SOTG rating system that we released last February:

• Oceans Beach Hat (New Zealand)


• Bulf à l'eau (France)


• Battle on the Beach (USA)


• Boracay Beach (the Philippines)


• Costa Brava Tournament (Spain)


• Sandblast (USA)


• Bibione Beach Combined (Italy)


• Beach Fest (UK)


• the Portuguese Beach Ultimate league (Portugal)


• the Cork Beach Hat and Layout Championships (Ireland)


• Yes But Nau (France)


• 4th Beach Ultimate tournament (Colombia)


• Wildwood(USA)
• Singapore local tournament (Singapore)

To add the geographic dispersion, Magic Maggia (Switzerland) and Fiesta en Pie de la Cuesta (Mexico) also have committed to trying the system. Nice :-)

Initial feedback has been that it is logistically a bit cumbersome (Wildwood uses 4 volunteers to deal with all the score sheets and getting captains to fill them in). Nevertheless the system has received many positive reviews and several good suggestions for the version we will release next year.

If you have used the system and have any comments: we're going long... so throw the huck!...

Today we launched a new Spirit of the Game scoring system that is much more objective than most systems, yet still has some subjective influences.

It started with the idea to use/adapt the Swedish Fair Play system that was promoted through the WFDF in 2004. However after several discussions within the BULA-Rules workgroup it was decided that this system was too subjective and we wanted to improve the SOTG rating system that originated by Fadi Hobeila and Christine Sura in Montreal (Canada).

Lorne Beckman (Canada), Rue Veitl (Germany), Raoni (Brazil), Tim Finan (USA), José Pires (France), Rahim Resad (Singapore), Filipa Bringel (Portugal), and I spent over a year discussing and improving the system so it could be used to create a worldwide Beach Ultimate Spirit of the Game rating standard.

Are we happy with it? Yes... for a beta version :-)

You will be the ones to tell us if this is a step in the right direction. We sent an email to all Beach Ultimate tournament directors and asked them to test it. In order to further improve the system we want (and need) feedback! Download the .pdf version below and send comments to sotg@beachultimate.org or leave them below.

In case you are wondering what the cap is all about... The symbol is the Chinese symbol for Spirit/Energy and Lookfly, the SOTG sponsors of the WCBU in Portugal in 2004, is so kind to offer this to Beach Ultimate tournament SOTG winners this year. So if you see someone with this cap, you know he/she is good company :-)

And now.... without further ado.... (drum roll).... The BULA Spirit of the Game rating system (version 1.06beta. Last update 26 February 2006)

• Spirit of the Game rating system (English)


• Spirit of the Game rating system (Español)


• Spirit of the Game rating system (Français)


• Spirit of the Game rating system (Italiano)


• Spirit of the Game rating system (Português)


• Spirit of the Game rating system (Brasileiro)


• Spirit of the Game rating system (Russian)

If you need a free PDF reader, you can download it here.

Keep the Spirit. It is what makes this sport the Ultimate!

Happy New Year you Beach Ultimate lovers! May your life be healthy and may you have lots of fun on the beach.

This year should be interesting for anyone that loves Beach Ultimate. As you can see we have launched the BULA Blog which allows us to add and share knowledge and fun easily. Tournament stories, pictures, product reviews, etc...

In addition, we are creating free material for anyone that wants to organize a Beach Ultimate tournament or league. Downloadable (and editable) posters, flyers, CD’s (based on the Lookfly Fresher CD, which they generously made available to us), and videos in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and perhaps other languages.

But it doesn’t stop there: BULA is setting up a committee to produce a sponsorship document that tournament/league organizers can download and use to attract sponsors. I know I would like a copy myself to see how we can get sponsors for the WCBU2007 ;-)

Speaking of the WCBU2007… We are starting to setup for the World Championships Beach Ultimate in Brazil that will be held in December 2007. The Brazilian FDF just finished organizing the Pan-American (grass Ultimate) Championships, and now the World Championships… Many people have already told me they wanted to go so we are hoping for at least the same turn out as in 2004 (40 teams from 22 countries) but it might very well be bigger. Singapore wants to come, I have heard some interest from Holland who was absent in 2004. It should be great…Thanks Marco and the gang for organizing this!.

If you are think of going to Perth this year for the World Ultimate Club Championship you might want to stay around for the weekend after… We are trying to organize there the next BULA BUTT there. More news later this month…

On January 10 we will be launching the beta version of the BULA SOTG system in Los Angeles at the Lei-out tournament. After we get their feedback we will make it public in February.

So as you can see, we want you to have fun playing Ultimate on the beach. This is a great sport and with help from the entire BULA group of volunteers we want to spread the fun worldwide so you can go to fun places, play hard, party hard, and make more friends :-)

I am sure we will increase the use of interesting technology on the BULA website. We already have Google Earth files of many tournaments, now a blog, and we are also looking into launching the Beach Ultimate version of Ultilinks, and who knows what else ;-)

So 2006 should be a beachy year. Keep ‘em flying!

P.S. If you would like to contribute to the BULA Blog…:-)