Tryout Dates:

April 2nd/3rd- Furious/Blackfish Combine Tryouts
This year Blackfish and Furious will be working together with some combined practices and frequent scrimmages.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=145519498844793 for more info.
Tuesday, April 26- Open Tryout
Thursday, April 28- Open Tryout

******UPDATE******** There will be another CLOSED tryout Saturday, April 30th due to University Series interference.
Any University players who have trouble making these dates due to their University teams please contact one of the Captains.
Tuesday, May 3rd- Closed Tryout
Tuesday, May 5th- Closed Tryout
* All tryouts at 6pm and at a location TBD.  Please check back here for location details at a later date.

Team Goals

2011- To reach the semifinals and play strongly against the top teams in Canada. To play at a high level in every pool, and power pool game to have an easier quarterfinal matchup.
2012- To win Canadian Nationals and to compete strongly at Club Regionals.

Team Purpose

To provide Vancouver players a platform to improve from raw talent and inexperience into skilled, athletic, top caliber, Elite Club players who can compete with the best at the Club Open level.

Schedule

Practices are Tuesdays and Thursdays 6 – 9 from tryouts until the end of September.  There will be a few weeks off after Canadian Nationals.  We will be attending the following tournaments/training camps:

May ??/?? – Weekend camp
June 4/5 – Flowerbowl (Vancouver)
June 18/19 – Solstice (Eugene, Oregon)
July ??/?? – BC Provincials
Aug 11-14 – Canadian Nationals (Ottawa)
Sep ??/?? – UPA Sectionals

RSVP:
Anyone interested in attending tryouts who hasn’t attended before should send an email to mensultyvancouver@gmail.com with your name, contact information, and answers to the following questions:

1. What is the highest level you have played at in the past?
2. What would you bring to the team?
3. What role do you want to play? (initiating cutter, d-line handler, etc)
4. What training have you been doing in the off-season?
5. Do you have any conflicts with the tournament or practice dates listed above?

Looking forward to seeing which players come out! UBC? Uvic? Juniors? Vancouver?

Flatline information:
Interested in playing competitive Mens Ultimate this summer?
Flatline is a competitive mens team going into its third season, our goal is to provide players with an opportunity to experience the Open Division and build your skills. Flatline runs committed practices for committed players and attends most of the standard major tournaments.
To get all the updates on practice times and tournaments email:

kurtis.stewart@gmail.com

Open – April 6: 730-10pm
Open – April 8: 830-11pm (This could very likely be subject to change, Keep your eyes up on the website and email)
Closed – April 13: 730-10pm
Closed – April 15: 630-9pm

**The tryouts start a half hour prior until we have rights to the fields. DO NOT start throwing on the field proper when you get there. We will be warming up sans frisbee for the first half hour on the western baseball diamond section.**

Be on time. There is a Canucks home game on April 6th. You may want to consider transit.

Sheets for your info will be circulating.

If you can’t make either of the open nights, we need to know ASAP so we can work out your options.

Flatline Ultimate will be running this year. As the Vancouver Third Team, Flatline runs committed practices for committed players and attends most of the standard major tournaments. Information for Flatline will be provided on the Blackfish Website following the Open tryout.

Dates:
April 6 1010 = Open Scrim
April 8 2010 = Open Tryout
April 13 2010 = Closed Tryout
April 15 2010 = Closed Tryout

Fields: TBA

Time: 6pm lasting 2-2.5 hours. (Be early)

College players: We understand you may not be able to make particular dates, please contact mensultyvancouver@gmail.com so we can work something out.

Bring a light and a dark shirt.

Season Information:

Practices will be twice a week starting at 6pm. Dates of the practices will remain on consistent days of the week (ie. Mondays and Thursdays) but have yet to be determined.

Tournaments and important dates:

Blackfish Weekend Camp –  (May 29-30)
Flowerbowl – Vancouver (Beginning of June)
Soltice – Eugene Oregon (June 19-20?)
Colorado Cup – Boulder CO (Late July)
Canadian Nationals – Sherbrooke Quebec (Aug 12-15)
UPA Sectionals – Burlington WA? (September)
UPA Regionals – ?? (Beginning of October)

Tournament dates will be updated as information becomes available.

Please email mensultyvancouver@gmail.com with any pressing questions, or comment on the post.

Womens – TRAFFIC is seeded 5th, but I think that’s a bit underseeded. They had an unfortunate loss to Underground (Seattle2) at Sectionals and have gone 2-2 with them this season. I’d be very surprised if they don’t come out on fire and beat them in the Round Robin. They will also be playing UPA champions Fury(SanFran1) in the round robin, who they’ve had 3 good games with this season, including a 1 pt loss at Labor Day. They’ll likely meet Zeitgeist(SanFran2) or Riot(Seattle1) in the crossovers, unless of course Schwa(Portland) can really get it together. They’ve beat Zeitgeist in their one matchup this year, and have beat Riot once and lost twice. A win in either of the crossover games will guarantee them a spot, else they might have to grind it out for the final spot…One way or another, I’m sure they’ll grab a spot. The Northwest is hands-down the toughest region, with the 3 women’s team at the Championships last year all making semis. I’m sure the NW could send like 6 teams.

Masters…is back! GAUNTLET is representing Vancouver at UPAs this year. They’re seeded 7th of 7 in a round robin format and will be playing against some more established masters teams from Corvallis, Seattle, Portland and the Bay Area. Sandy Lane has been heading things up for this team but that’s about all I know for sure, so I won’t make any predictions. Best of luck with the new team! Hopefully this will stick around for a few years.

Open – FURIOUS GEORGE and BLACKFISH (my team) are both representing Vancouver (BEEF SHARK wasn’t able to make the trip.) Teams have slowly been dropping out, leaving a wonky schedule of 13 teams with 3 bids to the championships. Both Vancouver teams are in the same pool now, along with Jam (SanFran) and SCUC (Santa Cruz). The pool promises for 2 very exciting matchups – Furious vs Jam in a rematch of last year’s game-to-go – and Blackfish vs SCUC in a matchup for a chance to break into the NW quarterfinals.

FURIOUS has done well with all their new players this season, and Jam has had relatively bad showings at ECC nor Labor Day. Regardless, the pool play game probably doesn’t mean too much here, as both teams will still make quarters (and likely semis). Revolver (SanFran) and Sockeye(Seattle) are well thought of as the 2 lockups for the spots, and it’ll likely be Furious and Jam meeting again in the game-to-go, where it will be anyone’s game. However, upsets are very possible amongst the top 6 teams – Furious could pull out their first win of the season vs Sockeye or Revolver or drop a game to one of the other teams.

BLACKFISH, like Furious, has something to fight for here. It’s the 3rd Regionals we’ve been able to make it to(4th season), and after winning the bottom bracket last year, we are hungry to crack the top 8 for the first time and get some much-needed games against the next-caliber teams before (hopefully) attending Prague next July. However, we are sending only 13 players to Corvallis due to school, injuries, babies, etc, so this won’t be the same team we sent to Nationals Jiff. Strange things happen when a team is short-rostered, and we could really gel here with less than half of our nationals numbers. Look for Colin Clay and Kieran McConnell to be helping with offensive line calling in place of captain Pat Gatien.
Favorite rivals Invictus (Calgary) won’t be there, so we turn our attentions to SCUC, where a pool play win is required to finish 3rd (or higher) and a chance to continue on. A win there would likely pit them against Rhino (Portland) to qualify for quarters. It’s very do-able, seeing that we finished ahead of SCUC last year at Regionals, and lost to Portland’s other team by only 2 last year. I guess it’ll really come to down to how much gas in the tank Blackfish has with such a small roster.

There will also be the always exciting Blackfish – Furious matchup Saturday, which is where the real score predictions should be made. Anyone got an over-under on this one? (m2c has this at 15-6 already.)

Don’t think we’ll be twittering this time (Phil?), but they may be updating scores somewhat regularly at:

http://upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=20&id=6092 (open)
http://upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=12&id=6111 (masters)
http://upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=36&id=6105 (womens)

I set up a twitter feed to this site so that people can stay updated with how the Vancouver teams are doing at Nationals.  I’m using #cuc_van as the hashtag.  Updates will dependent on how much our injured sideline guy (Phil) feels like putting in the effort.  Other Vancouver teams – feel free to tweet with the same hashtag!  Click more for the feed.

Full results: http://www.canadianultimate.com/cuc/2009/en/results/

Division Previews (Courtesy of Steven Trainor): Open Women’s Masters Mixed

If for some reason, this is slow to update, you can check the twitter site itself at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23cuc_van