National Ultimate Champions 2007

Thats what my new hat reads across the front.

Today, I was part of my first National Championship ultimate team, as the Canterbury (Christchurch) team (nicknamed Fox for this tournament) won a thrilling finals game over Aukland's Blue Fish. Winning is always great, but helping an underdog to a National Championship is pretty special.

The New Zealand ultimate season consists of 3 tour events: a placement tourney in Aukland for Men's and Women's teams, a Championship event in Christchruch (this tournament) for Men's and Women's teams and a Championship event in Wellington for Coed teams. We came in seeded number 2, and as I wrote yesterday lost to Aukland (the perennial power in this country) in our pool play game. But, because there were only 6 teams, we had two more pool play games today (we beat the Christchurch B-team and the Aukland B-team by a combined 34-4) and then went into the finals.

The finals featured pretty straight upwind/downwind conditions that made throwing pretty tricky and had me worried about our ability to score going into the wind (Aukland was faster, taller and had more skilled thowers, but they only had 10 guys to our 14, so we had the energy advantage). We started out with 2 upwind goals to take a 5-0 lead and were looking strong, but as ultimate games go, we faltered a bit, taking half 9-6 and giving one of our upwind goals back. Then we fought our way to an 11-9 lead, before giving up two goals to set the score at 11-11 as the cap went off meaning we were playing to 14. We promptly gave up our wind advantage and were suddenly down 11-13 and recieving with the wind. After a couple possessions by each team, including a point where Bluefish had the disc within 5 yards of the endzone to win the game, we finally punched in the goal (I was on the sideline for that point, as I was playing mostly upwind points) to make the game 12-13. We had a lot of work left to do as we were pulling into the wind and were playing without the teams captain and possibly best all around player who had been injured earlier. We came out playing 1-3-3 zone and Bluefish moved the disc down to within 15 yards of victory before Jake got a handblock from the chase position. We marched the disc up the length of the field in pretty heavy winds and Jake threw a goal to tie the game at 13-13. We were all pretty amped and now had the wind in our favor on double-game point. The seven from the previous point stayed on the field, meaning I got to play double-game point for the New Zealand Championship. We came down in 1-3-3 again with Jake marking and me in the wall and after a couple dicey throws on their own endzone, Bluefish floated a swing pass that was caught by one of our players and then thrown short to Jake for the victory!

14-13 Christchurch!

This game meant a TON to all of the players here in Christchurch and I was honored to be a part of their celebration. Though I may never see a lot of those players again, I definitely had a great time getting to know them and taking the field of battle with them.

And now, I can say I am a National Ultimate Champion (-;