The weekend of Aug 2/3, Blackfish went down to Boulder, Colorado to play in the Open Division of the Colorado Cup. With only 16 players, we finished 7th of 12 teams, which was a little lower than we were hoping. Previous to that, we had the chance to match up in 3 friendly scrimmages against teams in Vancouver for the World Ultimate and Guts Championship.
Blackfish 10 vs Canadian Junior Open 14 – A wet Sunday morning and we had a small roster of 12 guys, including 2 pickups from Flatline. These guys were a different team than when we saw them at Flowerbowl, and a million times better. We heard they had beat both Grand Trunk and a Tombstone/Goat combo team the previous week in Toronto. I marked up against Mark Lloyd for most of the game and was out of breath trying to keep up. He really is one of the most talented juniors in Canada. Between his cutting and Aaron Liu‘s throws, they kept us working and stayed ahead of us for the entire game. Big congrats to the entire junior team and especially to Graham Landon, a Blackfish rookie who’ll be at Nats with us, for winning their Silver Medal!
Blackfish 14 – New Zealand Open 17 – This was the first of 2 consecutive games against men’s worlds teams, and our first ever on a turf field. We got a number of breaks in the first half and took it 9-6. The Kiwis talked it up at half time and put a different D on us then we were used to and destroyed us in the second half. 17-14 New Zealand final score. This was a great game for both teams and prepared us both for our upcoming tournaments. We play a relatively aggressive game and I think we prepared them for the aggressive play at worlds. Thanks to Eric Gross for setting this up! New Zealand was seeded 14th going into worlds and finished 11th overall. Nice work!
Blackfish 15 – Australia Masters (Taipans) 11 – We have some common friends with guys on the Australian Masters team, so we set this game up months in advance. We officially adopted this team for worlds, and as it turned out, these guys were staying on the same floor at Totem Park where I lived for 2 years back in 1997. Nice coincidence. I think they rested a lot of their big players for this game, but I do remember Chris Burwell getting open all the time. There were quite a few turnovers in this game, but they had just a few more than we did, and we managed to stay ahead of them the entire game. Thanks Brian Petteys for helping organize this game. They finished fourth in the Masters division and from what I could tell at the party Saturday night, were quite disappointed with that result.
We hadn’t thought about it beforehand, but we were a perfect warmup scrimmage for a lot of worlds teams who were in Vancouver early. Unfortunately, we left for Colorado early Friday morning and had games already on Wednesday and Thursday, so didn’t get to take up the Sweden Open team or the South African team on their offers for scrimmages. Sorry guys.
Colorado Cup
This was a fantastic tournament with a great bunch of teams from all over the US. (We were the only Canucks attending in any of the divisions.) The open division included 12 teams seeming to be competing to be the next one to gain “elite” status. Voodoo had just been moved up to the elite division the week before, and Last Call from San Diego stepped in last minute. Madison Club won the open division, despite getting killed 13-3 by Old and In the Way early in the tourney.
It would have been interesting to see how Madison would have matched up against Voodoo. Having played both teams, I personally think Madison was a far better team. I also think Kansas City’s new team, Prairie Fire, could have given Voodoo a good game as well. Anyways, despite some pre-tourney trash-talking between Blackfish and Prairie Fire, we ended up not getting to play them and were in a pool with Madison, San Diego United, Rawhide(Oklahoma), Sweet Roll(New Mexico) and Old and in the Way(Colorado Masters.)
Blackfish 9 vs San Diego United 13- We got off to a really slow start in this game and never came back. San Diego had only 12 players and still made the finals.
Blackfish 5 vs Madison Club 13 - IMO, Madison was by far the most talented team that we played. They were tall, fast and could huck nicely. A lightning delay in the middle of this game slowed the day down in a bit and was a new thing for us west-coasters. We actually played pretty well this game, but were outmatched. 5″2 Vince had the most uncelebrated greatest ever during this game after keeping a disc in that was 10 feet out of bounds.
Blackfish 13 vs Rawhide 8 - Rawhide had a much different mindset than the rest of the teams. They were happy drinking beer on the sidelines as opposed to playing serious ultimate. We were ahead by quite a few when the wind picked up – and it REALLY PICKED UP! Cones were blowing away, tents were flipping down the field, and we had to tie down Vince. At that point, the game was a bit of a farce as when the wind was going, nobody could throw. It was blustery though and kept stopping or switching directions. And funny enough, way more often than not, we were going upwind (I heard the same thing happened to Madison.) We kept it together and pulled off a victory here.
Blackfish 15 vs Sweet Roll 14 – Our first overtime, double-game point since our epic game with Tonka Trucks at Flowerbowl, although this time we came out on top. I was suffering from a headache and dizziness due to the heat during this game, so I don’t remember a thing about it other than winning that last point on a break.
Blackfish 11 vs Old & In The Way 13 – OAITW is a masters team from Colorado – one that’s pretty good. This became a really chippy game at about the mid-point when there was a mis-communication about an injured player. It looked like it was going to be ugly from then on, but everyone changed their attitudes and it was actually quite a clean and fun game. They’ve got some great disc handlers and we had trouble containing their breaks.
Blackfish 4 YR 13 - Not our greatest game against these guys. In our past two meetings at Solstice, games have been quite close, but they schooled us here. Once again it was the break force passes that beat us. YR is a relatively short team, but they do a lot with what they have. Their throwers are strong and they seem to have a good offensive system worked out. They’ll be attending Regionals in Washington in October, and I’m hoping we get to match up against them again, when both of our teams are at full strength. I think it’ll be interesting.
Anyways, big thanks to Degs for organizing the Open Division. We’re hoping to go back next year, provided that it doesn’t conflict with our Nationals (2 weeks before Labor Day.) Boulder was a great town and we enjoyed our hike up above Boulder Falls and the float on inner tubes down the creek.
August 12th, 2008 | General