Living Life at 11

Congratulations to the Toronto Rush for winning in their first year in the league with a win vs Madison 16-14. The Rush capped a perfect season 18-0 and a large point differential; and therein lies a problem. A problem that I discussed way back at the start of the season and one that remains one of the most critical issue to both Toronto and the AUDL. Let me expand upon this by saying that I have been to almost every home game this season.

We’ll be at U23 all week with as much live broadcasting as we’re allowed to do. Hope you join us at live.iamultimate.com .

After a long weekend and a few days of rest it’s time to look at outcomes from the weekend and fallout for those involved. Teams in bold are heading to CUC or at least planning on doing so. Open Phoenix takes the #1 spot as expected. Two big surprises with Firebird not only going to CUC but taking the #3 spot and Too Bad being knocked out of CUC perhaps for the first time in the history of the team.

Ontario Ultimate Championships shall be held in Kingston this weekend and I shall be there to live stream the event. It’s exciting as there shall be five divisions competing for a limited number of spots to CUC. With the seedings and schedule availableit’s time to look at how tough this weekend shall be in each of the divisions. Let’s start quickly with the Junior divisions. The Junior Women’s division shall have OverDrive (GTA) vs Wicked (Ottawa) with two games on Saturday to decide who is the top seed going into CUC; both should make it.

Moments ago Ultimate Canada released the new bid allocations for Mixed. The primary change was to move an unused allocation from the Prairies and moving Ontario from four to five bids. This change makes four bids available to teams not named Union. In a previous post I seeded Ontario as follows: Union – Toronto Surge – Kingston GLIDE – Ottawa NoBS – Toronto BLeD – Hamilton Whiplash – Kitchener/Waterloo Smoke – Peterborough Bytown Flatball Club – Ottawa Alliance (formerly: YARRR) – Oshawa Quick & Dirty – GTA Legen-Dairy – Port Perry Zen – Toronto BigFish – Ottawa TWO – Kitchener/Waterloo Default – Waterloo (note, BULLDOGS removed as they are not attending Regionals and have merged with other teams)

Ultimate Canada updated the bid allocation a few days ago to include wildcard assignments. There were few surprises and in bids fell where we thought they would. The new bid system also highlights how important it is for regions to get teams registered early and have fourteen players rostered before the initial deadline. BC lost a Masters bid by registering three teams but not rostering one of the teams fully; they will now need a Regionals to eliminate a team.

In previous posts I’ve spent a bit of time focused on Ontario Mixed Ultimate. With Regionals coming up in a few weeks it’s a good time to start looking at other divisions starting with Open. Furious George won CUC 2012 in Victoria with a short roster. With CUC in Vancouver they’ve decided to attend again and look to win three years in a row. Their win over GOAT in Ottawa, while close, was not nearly as exciting as their win over General Strike in 2012.

Thanks to BC for pointing out that I missed “Surge” in my last post. Composed primarily of Queens Open and Women’s players the young team has quite a bit of talent and experience at the helm with Andrew Carroll captaining. Carroll, for those unfamiliar, was one of the youngest recruits to GOAT in their history and is a spectacular player. Queens has also enjoyed success in the past few years with the Women’s team winning CUUC 2011.

The past weekend featured one of the busiest tournament weekends of the year. With three major tournaments almost equidistant from here I decided to travel to none of them. Fortunately I was able to keep in touch via scores and have spoken with plenty of folks that were there. Firstly, a big congratulations to the World Games team for winning Poultry Days by the tightest of margins: Universe point win. Quite a turnaround from their earlier showcase game vs the US World Games team which ended 15-7 for the US.

In just over a year I’ll be at WUCC 2014 in Italy (at least I should be there). The year leading up to then is going to be full of many intense qualification matches. The WFDF has provided an initial country quota which assigns the initial bids that each country receives in each division. The importance of the release this document cannot be overlooked as it has not been forthcoming in previous years (good job WFDF).