This week, I’m going to be competing in the 2012 Canadian Ultimate Championships with Bunny Thugs, a mixed team from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The tournament runs Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and consists of 3 games per day (2 on the Saturday if you make finals which are held on Sunday). This will be my 4th ultimate tournament this year and the 4th time I’ve picked up with a team that wasn’t mine. I’ve learned a lot from the other 3 and so going into this one, I wanted to approach my play in a more specific, focused way.
My goals are to contribute to the team in a few ways:
- Having someone on the field who has played in big games, who has experience with the disc and can help them score points
- Leading by example – I will let the captains do the talking and just focus on playing. I want to play clean ultimate but I will take calculated risks
- Inspire with big plays – big hucks, big pulls, big D bids, big grabs
In talking with the captains, they have a few specific goals which I’m excited to achieve (and I know we can surpass them):
- Hold our seed (we’re currently ranked 10th)
- Make quarterfinals
- Mentally be in every game no matter the outcome
Everyone is in great spirits. We got to the hotel last night around 9pm and after picking up some fruits and Gatorade, we pretty much just hung out in our room watching games from the Nexgen Tour and a bunch of funny youtube videos. We start at noon today so we’re going to take our time in the morning, get some food in us and head to the fields a few hours before we start to get in a good warmup.
Since we’re called Bunny Thugs, we were discussing what to do for a spirit game for our opponents after each game. It’s traditional to do something fun/interactive at the end of each game. What we’re thinking is that we’ll have a trivia game where we look up random definitions of bunny hugs, thugs or bunnies and quiz the other team.
I will be posting a blog update everyday, a few videos and will be updating my twitter as often as I can. You can also follow Bunny Thugs on Twitter (@bunnythugsulti).
I’d like to thank my sponsor Horizon Heating for making it possible for me to travel to Victoria to compete with Bunny Thugs, this being my 6th time competing at the Canadian Ultimate Championships.