Ultimate Frisbee Nederland Stijl

I'm an avid Ultimate Frisbee player, and since arriving here in the Netherlands have been playing regularly with the TU Delft team, Force Elektro. On Tuesday, the Netherlands radio station FunX came and did a feature on the team and the sport of Ultimate Frisbee. The video is below (in Dutch). Enjoy!

Last Day of Indoor Competition

Yesterday was the last day of the indoor competition season. Since my arm is still in a cast, I adopted the role of team photographer for the day.





You can find the rest of the photos here. The team won all four games and was very pleased to end on such a high note!

Frisbee Update

A few weekends ago we played our first day of indoor competition in Arhem, Netherlands. Instead of playing weekly matches like in intramurals back home, the teams play 4 games on one Sunday a month. This helps save travel costs and time, with teams all over the country coming together to play each month.

The indoor game is definitely different. While Matt is more concerned with field space, blades, and new shoes, it's circle time and shower time that concerns me.

Circle time really isn't my thing. I remember with horror my first fireside at a sisterhood retreat, where I think I lost hours of my life, pulling the hem out of my jeans, while listening to wonders of sisterhood. As a bored graduate student, I remember wondering why I cared what my classmates favorite movies were or wanted to share my most embarrassing moments. So it is no surprise that circle time in Frisbee did not excite me either.

While in Frisbee circle time is generally quick, it is not painless. After the first game, sure let's circle up, alternating team members from both teams, and put our arms around each other to recap the game. The game recap generally consists of :

Losing Captain:"Thank you for this game. It was very spirited. I think it was a good match, you just found a way to win at the end."

Winning Captain: "It was very fun to play you. You played well and with spirit. It was a good match."

By game three I don't want your sweaty arms any where near me, I don't want you touching my sweaty back, and I have already heard the talk twice. After game four, let's just say I'm not breathing through my mouth because of my physical exertion and it's a good thing shower time is coming up.

Oh, right - shower time. Did I mention there are no shower stalls or curtains in the locker room? It's just one big room! When choosing a shower I use the opposite strategy of parking Inge (next to newest, sleekest, shiniest bike so she doesn't look worth the trouble to steal).

Indoor Ultimate

Last weekend Laura and I joined the Force Elektro for the annual "Schreeuw van de Meeuw" (translation: "Scream of the Seagull") tournament in Nijmegen, which marks the start of the indoor ultimate frisbee season. I've always played classic outdoor ultimate frisbee and assumed the indoor variety would be the same except ... well, indoors. Although at first the facilities may seem to be the only difference, the two games are really very different when you're playing. Consider that indoor ultimate...

• ... is played on a basketball court, which is much smaller than a typical 70 yard outdoor field (120 yards if you count the endzones). This means less room to run and more emphasis on speedy cuts and accurate passes. It also means layouts and other difficult catches are done at your own peril.
  
• ... is played 5-on-5.
• ... typically has a stall count of 8 seconds.
• ... features frequent use of hammers, scoobers, push passes, and - worst of all - blades. Learning to throw a blade frequently and on purpose is like going back to school and finding out 2 + 2 is no longer 4.
  
• ... encourages the defense to always "force backhand" because it is much harder to throw a backhand blade than a forehand blade.
  
• ... in this tournament, was played in timed games 20-30 minutes in length, which is incredibly short compared to a typical time slot in an outdoor ultimate tournament (usually 1 hour or more).

I wish I could say that our classic outdoor ultimate skills translated seamlessly to the indoor game, but if I did I would be lying. The tournament was a huge learning experience for us. I think we will continue to get better as the weather gets more and more frigid, since then we won't have any choice but to play indoors. But regardless of my skills in this variety of ultimate, my opinion is that indoor facilities and ultimate frisbee are more a marriage of necessity than anything else. I'm not sure if all northern European players would agree, but I bet a lot of them would.

Our tournament team was an international mix of really nice ultimate lovers representing four European countries and the US. We didn't place so well at the tournament, but we had a lot of fun anyway!

Frisbee

Today I forked over €168 for the privilege of attending Frisbee boot camp twice a week.

This evening after prancing around the field doing high-knee runs, I ran sprints from sideline to sideline. Next up was the box/four corners drill; over and over again until I was about to fall over from exhaustion. Followed-up by a catch, turn, and throw drill that resulted in many errant throws on my part. Finally after over an hour of drills, sprints, and throwing, we played a 15 minutes 5 on 5 game.

At least this week I did not come home with raspberries on my legs from turf burns. And it was a nice cool 60 degrees and dry outside.

Don't worry, I get to do this all over again on Thursday. But hey, I have super cool new red and black cleats!

Watch out Miguel - I'll back next summer :)

Thursday Frisbee

Below is the weather report for Delft at the time that the Ultimate frisbee game started this evening.


Yeah, I was there. And yes, it was raining. Could it be that I like the game a little too much?