![Photo credit: Louise Dyring Nielsen [www.photoz.dk]](/images/masthead_layout.jpg)
Vince and Hilco from Blockstack TV, and players on the New Zealand Beach Ultimate team, finished their video report on the Asian Championships Beach Ultimate in Boracay (the Philippines) and the subsequent trip to the Asian Championships Grass Ultimate in Manila.
Great stuff! Thanks guys. It was great playing with you!
http://www.blockstack.tv/home/episode/3109381
Yes! BULA is ready to accept bids to host the 2011 World Championships Beach Ultimate.
If you, or your local disc organization is interested in hosting the 2011 BULA World Championships Beach Ultimate, send an email to wcbu2011@beachultimate.org and put "Bid Request" in the subject line.
You will receive a Word document that has to be filled in as complete as possible and send back by March 10. The winning bid will be awarded by March 31 2010.
Submission and questions to wcbu2011@beachultimate.org
Thanks and see you on the beach!
Laying out is probably one of the best feelings in (Beach) Ultimate. I don't do it enough, but when I do I feel great! (even if the layout is not always successful)
On the beach laying out is easier, but it still requires some guts and instinct. London's women's ultimate team Iceni put together a great video on the techniques of laying out and how to practice it. I highly recommend the video to anyone who has not perfected their defensive and offensive layouts:
Edmundo from San Francisco is a passionate player, musician and DJ extraordinaire. This year he is organizing Gazos Gambit again. Gazos Gambit is an amazingly fun tournament set on a remote and pristine beach where camping, party, food, and fields are all in walking distance and where they throw one of the finest parties in ultimate.
This is a great opportunity to explore the beauty of northern California's coast in traditionally the last good weather before the rainy season. And, there is a great surf spot just down the beach.
Check it out: December 5-6, Pescadero, California www.gazosgambit.org
In case you have not heard, we are now accepting bids for the eleventh annual Lei-Out Beach Ultimate Tournament: Santa Monica, California's Coed Beach Ultimate tradition. Go to Le-Out for to register and for all of the juicy tournament information!
Here is some brief info:
Lei-Out is a coed, 3/2 Beach Ultimate Tournament.
We do not have Roster Cap. Make your team as big as you would like it.
Dates: January 16 and 17, 2010
The registration fee is: $300 for 10 players and $30 per additional player.
Sign up by December 15th. We are accepting a very limited number of teams so apply for a bid ASAP.
(If you need a team or are interested in the pick up team, email Registration.)
This year's lei-out will feature some awesome upgrades including...
-An Upgraded Party with VIP lounge hosted at Monsoon Cafe, Sponsored in Par by Sam Adams Beer!!!
-Lots of Free Giveaways at the fields including Function Drinks, Clif Bars, VC Ultimate Apparel, and More
-Lot's of New Field Food
-Sponsorships
-And So much more!
Also, if you want custom jerseys for your team, we negotiated a sweet deal for you with VC Ultimate: Lei-Out Jersey Deal
Registration is completely automated this year! Just go to www.leiout.com and be one of the teams to make it to the biggest Beach Tournament in
the WORLD (...besides that other little beach tournament in Italy!)
Tell a friend or two!
It already has been 2 weeks since BULA's 1st Asian Championships Beach Ultimate saw its finals.The Philippines ruled. They won the Open and Mixed division without any problems. Neither team dropped a game and they showed supremacy on the beach as I have never seen before.
The championship was a lot of fun. It was unfortunate that most Asian countries still prefer to play grass Ultimate and apart from some strays that played under the flag of New Zealand, only Australia made the trip to paradise (and Boracay IS paradise!). However, that did not stop the quality of play and partying. It was really a wild and crazy time.
If you want to see pictures, go to http://danekalbo.blogspot.com or check Facebook for ACBU
Thank you Karen and everyone else for making us feel welcome and putting up a great display of sportsmanship and fun.
I just received an email from Judith Laforest, former team Canada player (Maceio, Brazil) and player for Tondeuses Volantes in Paganello. Judith is trying to bring a positive change in her community of Edmundston, New Brunswick. She submitted an idea to the Aviva Community Fund to create a Beach Ultimate pitch in the city, much like the one we had at the World Championships in Maceio.
It is like a very big sandbox that can be used for Beach Ultimate or other sports.If her idea receives enough votes, it will have a chance at sharing in $500,000 to bring the idea to life.
I voted yes! I had to register with my email and a password, but I unchecked all the 'newsletter' options and I should not receive any spam. If you want to help out Judith, and grow Beach Ultimate I would really appreciate your help in pushing her idea to the finals. Please vote for her idea at http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf2698. The voting closes Sunday Nov 15, so do it now :-)
Thanks in advance
As the Chairman of the WFDF Spirit of the Game Committee I am very pleased to announce the 2010 Spirit of the Game Scoring system. The Committee looked at all the feedback on the 2008 system and worked hard to make the system better and easier to use. I think we succeeded :-)
The reduction of the number of scoring criteria from 8 to 5 is one of the main changes. Each team is now scored on: 1) Rules knowledge and use, 2) Fouls and body contact, 3) Fair-mindedness, 4) Positive attitude and self-control, 5) Themselves (did the team play with worse, same, or better Spirit than the other team?)
The other major change in the 2010 Spirit of the Game scoring system is the rating. Each of the criteria are now rated "Excellent", "Very Good", "Good", "Not so Good", or "Poor", and teams awarded 4, 3, 2, 1, or 0 points respectively, yielding a score range of 0-20 points per team per game. I believe that this correctly reflects the overall Good Spirit seen in the (Beach) Ultimate community and allows us to maintain this level of Spiritedness worldwide. As of November 8, 2009 have translations of the SOTG scoring sheet in 27 languages(!) and we will continue to add new translations. (download translation template and send it to patrick@beachultimate.org by the end of the year)
We also created an official press release. If you have contact with local or national press people, forward the press release at http://beachultimate.org/New_Fair-Play_scoring_system_released_in_25_languages.pdf. Spirit of the Game is what makes our sport special.
Of course, spread the word in you local (Beach) Ultimate communities as well. Show people the new SOTG scoring sheets or send them to www.wfdf.org/index.php?page=rules/spirit.htm or www.beachultimate.org/blog/2009/10/spirit.html
In any case, here are the 27 languages available until now:
- English
- Catalan
- Chinese
- Danish
- Dutch
- Estonian
- Finnish
- French
- German
- Hungarian
- Icelandic
- Italian
- Japanese
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Portuguese - Brazilian
- Portuguese - European
- Russian
- Serbian
- Slovakian
- Slovenian
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
Enjoy!
Many thanks to Chris Schneider (CH), Christian Jennewein (FR), Dan Engstrom (SE), Daniel Bailey (VE), David Raflo (US), Ethan Milberg (CA), Jerry Rosenberg (US), Momme Butenschön (IT), Natalie Visser (CO), Paul Bernier (IT), and Rue Veitl (DE) for their work on making this happen, as well as all the volunteers that translated the document.
I love getting emails from people like Edgardo Martinez. Edgardo is a Beach Ultimate tournament director in Colombia. He wrote:
Hello Patrick, I am from Colombia, South America, and I am organizing a beach ultimate tournament in my city Barranquilla. The tournament is going to be next week (24-25 Oct). I just wanted to say that your web page have really help me a lot, specially the pictures. I would love someday to make an international beach tournamento here in colombia, specially that the sport is growing really fast down here. You can visit the tournament web page www.diskologia.com
Apart from the fact that it is great that our work at BULA is helping him, look at his Colombian website and you a great Google map of the beach but also two pictures from Paganello, one from Portugal, one from Boracay. Different pictures to make a complete feeling of the sport. Nice!
Keep up the great work Edgardo!
P.S. If you are in Colombia next week... first time tournaments are always special!
Claudius Kirsch from Germany just released a small application which brings the WFDF Ultimate Rules to your iPhone. It's just the right thing if you need a quick look at a certain passage between games. And of course a good chance to show your newest gadget to your teammates!
Here's the iTunes link which brings you to the free app: http://tr.im/BS5w (make sure you have iTunes installed on your PC before clicking the link)
The app is pretty easy to use and allows to view the rules in portrait or landscape mode. The text is zoomable and you can switch between translations in the app. Right now this includes English and German. More languages may follow.
This picture completely captures one of those great feelings playing Beach Ultimate. An amazing picture! Thanks Bommie!
(more great pictures at beachultimate.org/pictures.html)
Beach Ultimate in the US has mostly been in the form of annual tournaments. However that is changing. For many years Los Angeles was the only place with a Beach Ultimate league. This fall they are starting their 5th of Beach Ultimate league season with 16 teams (about 200 people) taking over a good chunk of Santa Monica Beach for 7 weeks. They even have an all-star game, where every team sends a male and a female player.(www.labeachultimate.com)
Chicago kicked off a 6-week Beach Ultimate league this year after their annual Sandblast tournament. The experience was very positive for new and experience players. Ultimate Chicago (a local social organization) ran the league and is going to host an even bigger one next summer in two different sessions.
There is even rumor of Beach Ultimate in Boston next year... but that is just a rumor...
Mojo Jojo - Lei-Out Beach League Winners 2008
Beach Ultimate in Asia has been something I have written a lot about lately. China, India, Australia, Singapore, etc... many countries in the region have Beach Ultimate tournaments. The sport is truly growing. However it seems that when given the choice, most Asian players still prefer grass Ultimate.
We have been promoting and organizing the Asian Championships for more than a year now. We offered free accommodation, a Magic Bus trip to Manila Spirits (qualifier for the the world grass championships in Prague next year), and visited several tournaments in the region to get players/teams committed to come.But it seems that only a few countries are really dedicated to Beach Ultimate (Australia and the Philippines). New Zealand is coming with a mixed team and Singapore and China are still trying to get enough players to commit. India said they would come but payment has not yet been received.
This will not stop us from putting a stake in the ground. The championship will happen and we are still reaching out to get more teams. The Philippines will have two teams in each division and if you know of anyone that is interested in playing, let me know. Beach Ultimate in Boracay during Halloween is not something people should miss!
I was approached by the tournament director of the Chennai Heat Beach Ultimate tournament in India. He wanted to know if his tournament could be BULA approved? He likes the Discraft discount and he also values the legitimacy BULA approval brings. It allows him to get more international teams to participate.
He told me that the tournament would adhere to all the BULA criteria except...they play 7-on-7 Beach Ultimate..
As far as I know this is the only 7-on-7 tournament in existence and since time was of the issue (the tournament is 2-4 October) we allowed them to be BULA approved this year. It will help the growth of the sport in India.
However it brings up an interesting question: should BULA accept 7-on-7 Beach Ultimate as another version of the sport?
Asia is waking up to Beach Ultimate. Here is an article from Nina-Noelle Hall in Singapore:
Hurtling through the air, the red plastic disc escapes the desperate grasps of clasping hands and instead plunges, untouched, into the warm sands of Siloso Beach. Mere inches away lie the defeated: two panting players, now face-planted, who both missed the whizzing disc. 'Hey guys, how 'bout catching it?!' jokes a shirtless and sinewy defenceman toward his two sprawled teammates. A middle finger and a smirking face caked with sand is all he gets back. Trash talking is just part of the game in this popular twist on Ultimate Frisbee where, like volleyball, the adrenalin-pumping game has found its way to Sentosa's sands. This is Beach Ultimate. More...
I just returned from Poland where our team (Diz-Cu) played at the SandSlash tournament in Debki. Debki is a tiny village (125 people) north of Gdansk and is a fun place with beautiful surroundings. Poland is also still very cheap compared to most of Europe. For less than 10 euros you can get a complete meal with drinks and desert included.
The tournament was great. Well organized, great parties, and everyone was friendly and fun. A crazy drink-and-layout game on Saturday kept everyone laughing. The wind was strong but not unbearable. It did help that we are used to playing in the wind so we ended up winning the tournament in an exciting final against Uwaga Pies (=Beware of the Dogs). That we won the SOTG award was icing on the cake :-)
Poland is going through a great surge of (Beach) Ultimate. Four years ago there was hardly any Ultimate, now the tournament had 13 Polish teams with 3 teams on the waiting list. With beautiful women and men (according to my wife :-) and tasty vodka it has a place in my heart and I hope to be back soon.
(Picture from http://picasaweb.google.com/uwagapies/Sandlash2009ByEddy)
I love good Beach Ultimate pictures! Images that bring back feelings you had on the field. The catch, the defense, the layout...! Especially the layout is a great beach feeling. No worries about hitting the ground. Let it go and go ho!
There are some very talented Beach Ultimate photographers out there. Rene Westenberg, an old teammate from WAF (Holland), was probably one of the first top Beach Ultimate photographers. Just have a look at the pictures in Hargen he recently took.
Stephen Chiang on the other side of the Atlantic is another great photographer. His pictures of LeiOut last January were amazing!
And then there are photographers like Marco Luz that hardly know the game and just do well. Just look at the picture of David Pimenta that is now used for the BULA Monster BUTT, happening this weekend.
For more great pictures, check out our royalty free pictures page. Lots of great shots that you can download and use for tournaments, posters, articles, etc...
And then there are the mere mortals - people like you and me that just want to take good shots to remember the event. From Mozambique Beach Ultimate, to hurricane recovering Galveston. With our digital camera in hand we snap away. Lots a great times to remember!
The Beach Ultimate tournament in Kiev seems to attract a lot of interesting people. Christian Jennewein, the French/German/Scottish founder of Ffindr, went and he told me Kiev Hat is great. Really good Ultimate and a lot of fun. The spot was beautiful and considering that the tourney is inside a capital it qualifies as one of the best sites ever. Approx. 250 players from mainly Russia (75%), Ukraine (20%), Belarussia (4%) and foreigners (4 in total) made this a really unique experience.
A funky TV station also visited the tournament. I am not sure if the girl was drunk or just really happy but from what I saw it was clearly a BULA tournament: Play hard, party hard:-)
Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories (Canada), is not the most obvious place to find Beach Ultimate. However, in Ultimate loving Canada, local players are not deterred by geographic constraints and the following email was sent to local players:
"Hi everybody,
Denis/Aaron and Jenny/Simon are having a party on the 8th (Saturday). That is awesome, and you should all attend. During the day though, is there interest in having a beach ultimate tourney? We had one last year with 4 teams of 5 or so per team if I recall, and it was a lot of fun.
So, if you will be in town and are interested in playing, reply to this email and I will see what we’ve got in terms of numbers."
I wonder if they managed to get enough players. If so, it would qualify as the most northern Beach Ultimate tournament in the word.
For more information about Yellowknife Ultimate, visit www.ykultimate.com
Most of the beaches in Hawaii are not very conducive to playing disc but a local group have made some strong relationships in Waimanalo over the last several years. A few years ago they had a summer beach league that lasted about 8 Saturdays.
They are also holding the 5th official Tweedle Beetle Beach Battle August 8 & 9 a Waimanalo Bay Beach Park (a.k.a. Sherwoods or Waimanalo Bay State Recreation Area) map
It’s always been pretty low-key and not highly advertised; mostly just local players. One year they did get an entire team of women from Japan and now they want to see if there are more travelers around.
Travelling? Wanna play beach ultimate in Hawaii? Sounds and looks like fun to me :-)
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!
I just realized that we know very little about Korean Beach Ultimate. We found some pictures online and a contact that is working to get a Korean team to the Asian Championship Beach Ultimate :-)
But apart from that, what is going on there...?
In case you know more, leave us comment.
This blog entry is the last thing I am doing before I turn of my computer and head over to 6 days of pure fun on the beach. I will be in Meco (Portugal) where there is a bar and a beach and 144 Beach Ultimate players from 17 countries. No contact with the outside world. The world as I normally know it will no longer exist... In its place is that special spot called Bar do Peixe and with temperatures of 35 C (~94 F) it is going to be a hot one!
See you on the beach!
Disc magazines come and go. UltyLife magazine had a fairly short lifespan, and I know I have seen (and forgotten) others over the last 30 years.
Has finally the time come for one to survive? The Flying Disc Magazine is aimed at all disc sports so there is a larger audience. Multimedia and social networks can boost viewership.It has an online version (www.flyingdiscmagazine.com) as well as a print version.
I bought a copy of the print version (probably only available in the US) and really liked it. I am a 100% Beach Ultimate player, but it was great to read other stories. One story, about some great disc golf holes in Santa Cruz, made me want to huck that disc!
Give it a try. They have an RSS feed too.
