ear to the ground

The beat goes on. GLUM returned once more to the Canadian Ultimate Championships after two years of gold medal dominance in 2008 and 2009. Not much changed in Sherbrooke in 2010.

Chowder and I arrived in lovely Lennoxville on Tuesday, two days prior to the start of tournament play, with the goal of reliving some old college glory from his Bishop’s days. I was lucky enough to experience an evening on the town — which consists of one street light and a single bar worth mentioning (the Golden Lion Brew Pub — go there and try their Amber) — with Chowder and two of his old buddies. Many stories ensued. Most very unsafe for work or family. It was a good way to ease into the environment and chill out in anticipation of the hard work to come.

Day One

Thursday morning came fast. Our first game was at 10:30 against Scotch from Halifax. These guys are perennial attendees at CUC, but are rarely ever looking to win. They’re a great group to play, and the post-game shot of their namesake liquor can be seen as a reason to stay under the radar as much as possible when playing against them. GLUM came out hard, but a little unfocused early, as can be expected in the first game of our 2nd tournament of the year. In addition, we were trying to re-incorporate some players who weren’t able to attend No Borders in July, so it was fortunate for us to get one of the weaker teams in the division first. We eventually worked out the kinks and took a 15-6 win into game 2.

Next up was Quantum, a team we were anticipating since hearing about their admirable performances against DoG at the spring Masters Invitational tournament in Boston (two close losses, including 15-11 in the final). All we really knew was that they were based in Quebec City and likely had some old Q players. We expected them to be small, quick, and aggressive, and we weren’t disappointed. However, with our superior size and some difficult wind in the stadium, Quantum never seemed to be able to mount much opposition. Maybe it was nerves, but we came away with a relatively painless and easy 15-3 win.

After a bye, we closed out the day against our hometown rivals, BDU. As at No Borders and countless mens’ league scrimmages, GLUM just had too much firepower for their Ottawa brothers. Final score 15-5.

Day Two

Things seemed to click almost too easily on Day One. The long game was unstoppable, our O line was on fire, and the D line was tearing it up. On Day Two, however, we had a slate of the 3 Fs — Flood, Figjam, and Fuel — expected to be the top 3 contenders for our title. If anything, the day went better than our first.

Flood (Winnipeg) had basically the same team they had last year, with a few elite athletes who were unfortunately thrust into handler roles. This took away any threat they may have posed on the deep end, and we walked away with a 15-3 win.

Figjam. Ah, Figjam. This team seems to have made it’s life mission to beat GLUM (see their 2010 website here) after two unsuccessful attempts in 2008 and 2009. With a Worlds qualifier year coming up in 2011, and an initiation into the UPA Fall Series apparently in the plans for this fall, Figjam is hoping to be Canada’s Masters representative in Brazil in 2012. It’s clear they’ve stocked up on a few younger players from the Open scene, and have re-dedicated themselves to fitness and skills development, but so has GLUM. They sat a few key players in this pool play game, and GLUM took advantage with a 15-6 win.

Fuel is Ontario’s 2nd-ranked Masters team, but is still a few players away from competing with the depth of GLUM. Led by GaLUMni Derek Sigurdson, Fuel represents an improvement on the past few years’ Toronto Masters team, Fossil. They’ve got the makings of a competitive squad, and with the ability to draw on retiring Open players from the GOAT-Grand Trunk system, they should be formidable opponents in coming years if they can keep it together and recruit well. Nonetheless, they aren’t quite there yet, as evidenced by another relatively easy 15-6 win to end our second day of pool play.

Day Three

An 8:30 start. An 8:30 start for MASTERS?!? Cruel and unusual punishment. Our last pool play game of the tournament was against NSOM from Montreal. Neither team seemed to eager to play frisbee. We didn’t need the win in any case, having solidified the #1 seed in semis. The Montreal boys graciously offered many sweeteners of the ‘young French female’ and ‘potent potables’ variety if only we would grant them a 15-6 default win that would catapult them into semis themselves, but the first option would only tire us out and get us in trouble with our wives and girlfriends, and the second, well, we already always have the second well covered on our own… so we played the game instead. And we made it very interesting, with the help of an opponent who had been growing stronger and gelling more as their tournament progressed. We traded points for much of the game before GLUM finally managed to pull away in the second half for a 15-11 win. The most points scored on us in 3 years of Nationals play, and a reminder call that we better wake the hell up before the semis…

Fuel pulled out 4th place after pool play, setting up a rematch. Things went pretty much to plan the second time around. We used our full depth and even managed to save a few key players some time before finals. We opened up our deep game, which had seen some difficulty in the earlier games. We locked down on defense, with manic pressure on the marks and bails that made it very difficult for Fuel to move the disc. A big difference from our morning go-round with NSOM. Final score was 15-6 again.

Which set up a 3rd straight final matchup against Figjam on the turf of Coulter Stadium. They had their shot at GLUM; now what would they do with it? Last year’s final in the muck and rain of Winnipeg had started slowly with both teams trading points in the early going. This year’s final would follow suit. We took half 8-5 in Winnipeg, and we did the same here. Last year, we followed the half with a closeout second half. I think the final score might have been 15-7. This year was different. We didn’t maintain focus out of the half very well at all. It almost seemed like we expected to cruise to the end. As a result, we quickly found ourselves in a tight game. Our O had a few uncharacteristic drops and throwaways that led to easy Figjam scores, and all of a sudden, the score was 12-12. A contested foul called by Owen as he made a bid on a floater from Seton down the line turned the crowd against GLUM (everyone loves the underdog, I guess), but the call was upheld by the observer and GLUM ended up converting the crucial point to go up 13-12. This seemed to be the backbreaker, as we went on to score the next two points and finish the game 15-12, picking up our 3rd straight CUC gold medal.

A special note to Eric Budgell, who collided head-to-head with a Figjam player early in the game and missed the rest of the final while awaiting stitches in the hospital emergency room. Ugly gash, could have been a lot worse for either player; fortunately both escaped with only their good looks damaged. Budge was in the midst of an awesome tournament after busting his ass all year with Taylor in his infamous noon-hour workouts/Bataan death marches, so it’s too bad he had to miss the big game.

It’s tough to say where this year’s team ranks among the last three champions, but I think GLUM gets stronger every year, along with the Masters division as a whole. We may not be pulling away from the pack as much any more, but we are maintaining the gap. An expected strong fall season of recruiting some major ex-Open talent should propel us further ahead going into next year’s crucial CUC season. We don’t normally concentrate on the summer season in Canada, choosing to focus on the more prestigious and more competitive UPA Fall Series, but 2011 will be different. I fully expect a battle royale for roster spots on that team, and I look forward to either playing with or watching the best GLUM squad to ever see the field.

Fall Series reports to come — if I make the team…..

ps– There should be video of our final available at some point, too. It streamed live on iamultimate.com, and Tushar promised to deliver a CD to Hillbert as soon as he’s finished editing it. If I can, I’ll post a link here.

pps– There are photos in various places, too. I’ll try to hunt them all down and do a post with all the links.