Dreams of Another Year

This past year I had the good fortune to share housing with Francis Phuang from Singapore. Among the many cross cultural lessons we shared, I saw this music video/short film for the song "Ordinary" which was an official song of the 2015 Southeast Asian Games.  Ordinary It's a long 12 minutes, but the video is inspiring. It tells the story of Fandi Ahmad, the best footballer in Singaporean history, which was also the inspiration for the song.  The song starts "When I was just a little boy from a little town / I made a wish that someday I could turn this around / I made believe that I was right on top of the world." And even though it is a story of a person whose circumstances have very little in common with mine, I can very much relate to it. There is that primordial draw of sport, those dreams of a powerless child to become a powerful player that drive relentless training and so often are prerequisites of success. There are the pains of defeat and rejection which make the hard work and successes so rewarding. These raw emotions transcend generations and continents, so that a kid from suburban Massachusetts in the 1990s can identify with a kid in the early days of independent Singapore.

I've written in my blog about how I relate to Singapore and Malaysia in a way. Well when I visit, the differences in flora and fauna strike me, and I am hyperaware of the accents and ethnicities and cuisine. But the presence of such a large Chinese diaspora grounded me in the mere fate that placed me in America and someone else in Malaysia, and the vast implications that follow. Sure I could have been placed in a rural town in Uttar Pradesh, or among a tribe in the Amazon rainforest, but those experiences are so hard for me to imagine that it doesn't resonate with me to the same degree.

In addition, I've written in my blog about my experience with ultimate, and the joy I found in college after recreationally pursuing it in high school. I want to take this post to further elaborate. I'd love to wax poetically about how the disc has always floated with me, ever since my brother went to CTY summer camp and came back wanting to toss. I was 12 or 13. Minutes after he taught me the forehand grip, I could flick it. I can still remember the shock at seeing the disc leave my fingers after such an unnatural motion - I felt like Harry must have after he waved his phoenix core wand and sparks flew out.

I did not grow up to defeat the most evil ultimate player of all time, but I did throw a lot more flicks. My own summer camp introduced me to my first organized ultimate experience and I quickly became obsessed. Once summer was over though, I lost all access to ultimate. High school ultimate was very much in developmental stages, and my tiny high school will possibly never have an official team. Our school would organize a sport day in May (creatively called May Day) where we'd play games like Capture the Flag, Dodgeball and yes, ultimate. It's amazing how much I'd look forward to that day every year. I did eventually play organized ultimate in high school, and had some fond memories from that experience, but I also had a ton of frustrating moments trying to form a team, failing to transfer my passion for the sport to fellow students. Even after joining ultimate leagues around Boston, my ultimate experience consisted of playing with makeshift uniforms in random unkempt grassy fields. Spectators were a dream - my parents never even saw me play. Ultimate was a hobby that I would pursue passionately almost in secret. The effort I gave to it was almost embarrassing to me, with a massive imbalance between my personal regard for the sport and society's respect for it.

Flash forward to November 2015. Hong Kong is hosting the Asia Oceanic Ultimate Championships. An infrastructure has sprung up around ultimate. Professional leagues are selling tickets in the US and Canada, websites are formed to cover ultimate news, ESPN is showing layouts in their daily Top 10 Plays, and ultimate is officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee. And there I am on the field of Mong Kok Stadium, which only a few weeks before had been sold out hosting a World Cup Qualifying Match. Yes, that World Cup. I'm under the field lights wearing a finely made jersey that says Hong Kong - I'm representing Hong Kong. I'm shaking hands with some of the best players in Australia, Japan and the Philippines - some of the best players in the world - and they're thanking me. There are professional photographers capturing the moments. There's a banner with our neon design displaying boldly WFDF 2015 Asia Oceanic Ultimate Championships Hong Kong. There are TV cameras setup through the stadium livestreaming the event - and there is my voice on the telecast, commentating on the highest level game ever played in Hong Kong. Throngs of players wearing jerseys of every color are milling about exuding joy. They've come from places like New Zealand, India, United Arab Emirates, just to play this game chasing a circular piece of plastic. This game that I once played only on May Day. If my 17 year old self could see this scene, his mind would be insanely blown.

I made that scene above very personal, but I only had a small role in the event. Many long hours were spent by my friends coordinating with the government, designing memorabilia, and setting up endless logistics. I felt guilty somewhat experiencing so much joy on the backs of their hard work. But I did put in my effort as well - and never have I felt so much reward from my hard work. From coordinating nearly 100 volunteers, to running sprint workouts after months of rehabbing from ankle tendinitis, I took AOUC very seriously. And when I walked onto the field after it was done, I felt like Fandi Ahmad, like I was right on top of the world.

3 Tournaments, 4 Weekends

Turn Up Taipei, Hong Kong Pun Asia and the Wuhan Open all occurred within 4 weeks of each other. I wasn't completely aware of this when I signed up for them, and I'm not sure I'd ever had such a packed tournament stretch before, not even in college. My experience with each tournament was extremely different and I mostly want to talk about Wuhan, but here's a quick recap of all three.

Turn Up Taipei: 

Taipei is the city everyone from Hong Kong professes to love. It's the smells of late night Chinese cooking but with people lining up. It's got the elbow room that has been squeezed out of Hong Kong with the culture that has been priced out of Singapore. It's a high speed rail bubble tea brewing metropolis with museums and Facebook access. It's a repository for traditional characters with a quaint Japanese respectful veil still faintly in the air. As I say this though, I am acutely aware of how much more I like the idea of Taipei than I actually like Taipei. I've spent all of 4 nights there. I know enough about Taipei to know its subway traffic can be unbearable too, that it's a city with rude people, incompetent government and factories trying to peddle gutter oil. 

But I do know that Taiwan Ultimate has some splendor with good players popping up among local university scenes in Taipei and southern Taiwan. Grouped with a core of talented and dedicated expats, Taipei's best club team Whisby Nation has found great success in Asia. They don't travel a ton though, and Taiwan had never hosted a club tournament like this aimed at international teams before (2011 AOUC in Kaohsiung notwithstanding), so there was very much an inaugural feel to the event.

The tournament turned out great for us. First, the combination of me, Blaze & Junk, was able to bring over 550 quick dry towels Katherine Tse, the tournament director, shipped to my apartment because the 200% import tariff was absurd. Distributing it to HK tournament attendees including Julia and Charlotte, who took 300 by themselves, the towels arrived on Saturday morning and we got some good karma from the onset. We knew it would be a competitive tourney with teams coming from Shanghai, Singapore, all over Taiwan, and a rare appearance from Japan. Guam even sent a squad, ironically without the one high level player who lives there.  Add three Abu Dhabi players and this first time event had some serious international draw.

We had a good tournament. Seeded second in our pool, we upset a undermanned Shanghai and held off upstart teams Guangzhou and Taiwan HaoCool and won our crossover. With an undefeated Saturday, we came into Sunday's semifinal matchup with Iku from Japan without having been seriously tested. Japanese ultimate is the best in Asia and my previous experiences against with the entity was a pair of 17-2 blowouts at the 2011 AOUC and the 2012 Worlds tournament. Iku was an expat team, and only the 3rd best mixed club team in Japan, but they finished top 12 or something in Lecco this year. I was really quite anxious about matching up against a lot of players I had only known from their vaunted reputations.  But Junk is a talented club team that trains together too, and with our strict regimented style of play and some big handlers able to put backhands upwind, we were a force to be reckoned with. The wind was extremely fierce that game, and we were strict about punting downwind whenever near the end zone. Iku was less strict and a couple of costly turns near their end zone gave us an upwind break. Down that break, Iku was on offense going upwind - scoring would put the pressure on us to go upwind to hold the break. We set a hard zone and got the turn but lost the disc quickly. In the confusion-laden aftermath of a turn, we scrambled to set up a cup and Iku took advantage. I saw a handler swing and break throw to a girl in the making, and without making a real decision, my body just started going for the disc and before I knew it I was in full extension laying out off the ground. I was never amazing at layout D's, and in the past year they've become increasingly rare, but this was one of my best. I barely got fingertips on my disc, and was so fully extended that I couldn't bring my arm back and landed fully on my shoulder. In incredible pain, I looked back meekly in terror to see a disc that I had only just barely macked. Luckily, the mack was enough to take the disc out of bounds, and the Iku girl was not able to drag it in. I immediately took an injury sub as I was unable to raise my shoulder, and my replacement helped us make the downwind convert. We won the game by 4 points and met Whisby Nation in the final.

Playing in the finals is a lot of fun. It's great having the whole tournament audience watch you, with heckling commentary coming from at least one outspoken member of our community. The pressure is definitely there, and I'm at the stage of my career where this experience is invaluable. Playing without pressure is almost completely unrelated to playing in the finals, where you don't want to throw that one costly turnover that swings the championship. Developing the right mindset where you aren't playing scared of that turnover but rather playing up to your own game is essential, and something I think is almost impossible to train. The pressure didn't really come up to me too much, as I played exclusively downwind that game where we could afford to throw turnover hucks, but it might have affected our teammates as we made several uncharacteristic turnovers at the edge of upwind scores. Whisby was a great team, with lots of fit fast players and an extremely disciplined and skilled handler core. Without the wind, I think we might have been blown out, as we were considerably slower and less in shape. With the wind, we made some upwind conversions and had a great chance to win. A slow turnover filled game ended up hardcapped 13-11 in Whisby Nation's favor, and we were left with the contrasting taste of a proud seed-breaking second place finish, but disappointing heartbreak over a legit chance to win our first major tournament.

Katherine (black shirt, center) having her birthday celebrated

Hong Kong Pun Asia

So I'm Communication Director of the Hong Kong Ultimate Player Association now, and during our board meeting in July, I mentioned that we need a theme for our annual Hong Kong Pan Asia Tournament. Gio, the tournament director, retorted "how about we call it Pun Asia?" because I have the reputation of being obsessed with puns. I don't know how serious he was, but we all had a good laugh, and then went wait, for real? And so Hong Kong Pun Asia was on.

I was predictably ecstatic about having an official venue to showcase my puns. I didn't know so much about organizing a tournament. How much water do we need? Where do you order it? Where do you keep it?

Gio organized the tournament so he did have those answers and a lot of logistics fell into place with only bearable pain. The executive decisions were more activity oriented, such as what were the Seedings to be? Where and when should the party bus pick up? What should the prizes be?

I took charge of the Seedings, player pack (left) and dinner. The Seedings seemed easy, because a lot of the top teams had played each other or previously in last years tournament. It seemed logical to rank the top 4, and even with unknowns in Korea, Philippines and half of the B pool, I didn't slave too much on the rankings. Afterwards however there was tons of second guessing.

For the player pack, well I tried to get as many puns into the tournament as possible. I split the teams into 4 pools and called them Infinity, Reflecting, Gene and Car pools. I had also been making graphical ultimate puns every week, from Darth Vader imploring the viewer to "Hold the Force" to Gio receiving a "backhanded compliment), so those were all recompiled in the pack. 

Dinner was really stressful actually. Tournament dinners are common and very fun in China and I was hoping to replicate the experience with a large, HK-style, affordable restaurant with lots of beer within walking distance of the fields. There aren't many restaurants around Prince Edward like that - space is a premium and I was expecting 80-100 hungry players. I took a tour and talked to owners and found them surprisingly receptive to booking out the place, and eventually agreed to a $10,000 tab at the Macau restaurant we eat at a lot. The owner spent a lot of time selling me on the menu, while I had a harder time being convinced we could fit so many people in the crowded restaurant. I spent a lot of time discussing extra seats. When I rolled in Saturday night a bit late, I had 10 people with me. I felt super embarrassed and stressed at the money I'd have to cover. We ultimately did get to 40+ thanks to some desperate calls, and it was a really fun and delicious meal (those yian-yeungs are amazing), but I wouldn't wish that stress on any event planner.

Prizes were hard. We wanted to think of something creative and interesting, not typical plastic trophies that would lose meaning and get thrown away. I decided to go with an engraved pan, cause that's both pretty and hilarious, for the winners. Other prizes included HK adapter plugs for spirit winners (I'd like to give a plug to a good cause), shoelaces (for the runners up), panda (punda) luggage tags (if you thought you were getting something nice, you were bamboozled). The champions were upset though because they didn't get their own individual prize or medal.

The most stressful part was just being the person people go to all the time, for issues that you have planned for, for issues that you should have planned for and didn't, or for issues that weren't your responsibility to begin with. I was constantly being asked questions and for once, I couldn't point them away to anyone else.

I made an inter-mission impossible at the party

I learned a lot about event planning, dealing with logistics, managing other people, managing complaints and stress and really made a lot of mistakes. The most important lesson learned though: at the end of the day, if you give frisbee players a bunch of fields, a disc and other people to play against, they're going to be happy.

Wuhan Open
I haven't played many China tournaments this year and so I took the opportunity when presented to play with a new group of players mostly based in Shenzhen. This assembly of Pride of Dongguan, as Colin our captain lovingly named the team, consisted of 3 other players from Hong Kong, 3 from Zhuhai, and some pickups from central and northern China in addition to the SZ core. Most of us were to take sleeper trains up Friday night, and then the relatively young high speed rail on the return trip Sunday night. Due to the dropping out of Shenzhen player Sean Keith, I inherited his already purchased tickets. I had never taken a sleeper train before, or many trains in China at all. This one was to depart Shenzhen Luohu station, on the border with Hong Kong, at 5:30pm. I worked longer that week for the opportunity to leave at 4:00pm Friday afternoon, no easy task considering the hangover from Pun Asia, and got to the border at 4:50, happily WeChatting all the way up.  Plenty of time considering you don't really need to show up early for a train, and I was glad I wasn't going through the stress that would unavoidably come if I had chosen to fly from Shenzhen airport. But the border was a borderline nursery, with so many little Chinese children running every which way. It literally took me a few minutes between seeing the foreigners line and getting in it. The foreigner lines were long and infuriatingly slow, and it was 5:15 by the time I got stamped and was free to run amok in China. Now I didn't really know where the train station was, all I had to go on was a photo sent into WeChat of the meeting point, which included a picture of a hotel. I find it on the skyline and run up a level to it. I get to it and don't see anyone there - while I'm matching up the picture to my actual view, I realize I'm not that near a train station and oh crap the train is leaving momentarily. I can still make roaming calls so I run and call Colin, to no avail. I call him 3 times without getting through. Panicked I run into what I think is the train station and through security, but it turns out that there is a separate train waiting room for a direct line to Guangzhou. I think to call another teammate and luckily Alison picks up. 

"Where are you!??!! Where is Colin?! I can't find the station!!!!!" I scream panickedly.
"Hi I'm in the line to pickup my ticket. I'm on a later train. You've missed your train," Alison freakishly calmly.
"WHAT?! No! shit balls crap aiya." 
"It's ok, just get on my train, come to the long distance train ticket booth."
"OK!"

So much for no train stress. I enter the long distance train ticket area in a complete sweat and find Alison in line. A minute later, Colin comes running in, swearing and sweating as well, making very clear that he had missed the train as well in an effort to wait for me. He had started running with 5 minutes left and actually found the gate shut on him while the train was still on the platform. Apparently you do have to show up early for a train. We wait in line together to buy tickets for the 6:15 train, and suddenly it's 5:55 and we are still in line. Our SZ-born teammate Esther helps us beg to cut a few spots in line, and soon it's just one guy ahead of us and I see him buy a ticket to 武汉 Wuhan. I jump in the second he walks out and ask for 2 tickets to Wuhan. After the service lady asks us several questions concerning what type of tickets we want (ANY) she says oh, it's sold out. WHAT? I just saw the guy buy a ticket to Wuhan! Apparently that was the last one.

So there Colin and I were, watching our teammates walk away leaving years of handling experience behind. I started thinking about options - trains to other cities like Changsha, planes, driving, giving up... looking out at the throngs of people around us and the Friday evening traffic, the airport seemed impossibly far away. Colin took the role of a captain and decided on taking a train to Guangzhou "and playing things from there," handed me a beer, and told me "we're going on an excellent adventure." Trains to Guangzhou were very frequent, so Cal and and Colin's Excellent Adventure got rolling and before even getting to GZ, included meeting a small Indian man from Kolkata who spoke Mandarin well but with a brutal accent and offered Colin a job, and a super cute girl who asked me for a tissue and then got off at Dongguan, which fairly or unfairly made her slightly less cute. The whole time, we were communicating via WeChat to teammates who were researching and offering to buy us tickets. I was almost further stressed by their efforts and the number of options available from multiple Guangzhou train stations. We got off the train expecting to hustle and make a difficult trip across town to catch the next train. Fortunately, Guangzhou really is a much bigger hub than Shenzhen and even at the station we landed at, there was a slow sleeper train to Wuhan leaving in 40 minutes. We got those tickets and some Burger King and before we knew it we were sharing fries and beer and checking out our fleas-infested top bunk beds on a Chinese sleeper train.

Now the train was an experience I had need to see for a long time. Besides the high speed rail option which was unavailable at the time, there were 4 types of tickets for the slow speed trains (from most comfortable to the worst): soft sleeper, hard sleeper, seats and standing. Soft sleepers are rooms with two double bunk beds, amounting more or less to a college dorm room in America. Hard sleepers are rooms with two triple bunk beds and enough space in between to stick out one elbow, amounting more or less to a college dorm room in China. Seats are your conventional train seats, which you might think seems preferable now to spending a night with 5 Chinese strangers in 3 cubic meters of volume, until you realize that the people actually do buy standing room tickets, and you might be sitting next to 5 Chinese strangers standing within 3 cubic meters of you. I cannot believe people do choose to stand for 12+ hour train rides, and I'm sure some buy them for 48+ hour plus rides. I read stories of these sorts of travels/travails during Chinese New Year, when the train system is overwhelmed like Brazil was overwhelmed by Germany, and it utterly terrifies me.

Colin and I were in separate full rooms, both with the top bunk. We hung out in the corridor until lights went off at 10pm and tried to get as much sleep as possible. If you're wondering how to get to the top of a triple bunk in the pitch dark, I'll tell you it's not for the unacrobatic. There isn't even a full ladder going up to the top, you kinda have to pull yourself up to some of the steps. Anyway, we were going to make it to the tournament, and if you're counting at home, this is #2 craziest getting to a tournament story, ahead of multiple Kindness Hotels in Kaohsiung, China Air driver in Osaka, but behind stranger Italian Moroccan driver in Lecco/Bergamo.

Our train was to get in around 8:30 and we woke up naturally shortly after 7. Colin's bunk room was friendly and chatty, and we learned they were on their way back to their hometown of Harbin, after a tour group trip of Hong Kong/Macau. Keep in mind this is a sleeper train, and Harbin is further north than North Korea. The elderly tourists we encountered and their 30-something daughter would be on that train for 72 hours. Their tickets only costed around 900 RMB, which I realized certainly puts long distance travel in the range of many Chinese citizens, provided they are tough enough to sleep in a triple bunk for 3 days. I realized that talking with them that much of my knowledge of China derives from conversations like these. It was interesting to hear their perspectives of Hong Kong and Macau. The tourists seemed to unanimously like Macau better, because Hong Kong was too dense and hectic. They were taken around by their tour group the whole time and seemed to have no freedom of their own and next to no interactions with locals (which is exactly why I hate tours). When I asked them what about the skyline in Hong Kong, they replied that Macau had cool tall buildings too. I was floored by this statement. Macau's tall buildings are fake casino structures with neon lights that scream "facetious" to me somehow marvels visitors from Heilongjiang to the same extent as the world class fabled Hong Kong skyline. I never could have predicted the way they saw these cities, but now that I think about it, if you don't have any real interaction with your environment, a place like Macau which is geared towards entertaining tourists will seem much more attractive than a bustling metropolis like Hong Kong where busy people could give a **** about tourists.  

Perhaps my understanding of China should come from books, tv shows, articles and historical 古文 texts but for me I am really shaped by these sorts of experiences. As I slept on that dirty top bunk in that cramped room and sped through Southern China, and realizing that Chinese college students might spend 4 years enduring what I find difficult to endure for 13 hours, I learned something about China. I realized that growing up in this environment, I would think often about how there are too many people and not enough space. I would dream about going into distant pastures and spreading out. With such a mindset, perhaps it's not surprising that China so firmly holds onto Tibet and Xinjiang. Perhaps my understanding of China from anecdotal firsthand experiences does have some ultimate relevance to national-level policies and global security.

 This picture does not capture the disparity of this field

We made it into Wuhan on time and were ready to sprint out of the train. Even on a Saturday morning, the cab stand at the train station was gross, and Colin accurately presumed that the fields were within walking distance. We hustled over in 15 minutes and discovered literally the worst fields I have ever played on. I have played close to 10 years of ultimate on three continents on artificial rugs, near an airport, near a sewage line, and in shin high grass in Anacostia, but these were just the worst. The grass was brown and patchier than an iTunes update, with a huge streak across the field where irrigation pipes had clearly just been laid. The ground was so hard that some of my teammates seriously considered not wearing cleats. The far field was even worse, with a rare green patch full of tall grasses that covered one of the cones, and the sideline just inches away from paved path. Given the pathetic field and the fact that it was public and not rented, we actually compla got some money back from the tournament organizers. 

The frisbee portion of the tournament was really a wash. The game we arrived late for was the most competitive game of Saturday, and we were down 0-3 when I stepped on. Against a Changsha team that had several former Tianjin stars, we still had the more well rounded team and should have won when they turned the disc near their end zone on universe point. Considering we lost that game and our elimination matchup with Big Brother on universe point and blew out weak opponents in every other game, the on field experience in Wuhan Open was not good. But the experience on a whole was way worth it as I bonded with many China players with whom I normally don't get to connect, plus the adventure making the tournament. Even the journey home was an adventure. On Sunday afternoon, we left the finals early to make sure we made our high speed trains back home, because I was not going to miss another one. We gave ourselves an hour and a half. After walking around the campus for 20 minutes and having only discovered dead ends, I started to sweat and panic. Roldy took charge at this point and started asking directions and dropped his bag with a teammate and started running for the main street. When we get to the main street, we're still having rough luck hailing a cab. Suddenly, a van stops in front of us. Doors open and people file out. One, two, four, eight, ten and now we are all engrossed watching this magical clown car van just file out more people. We see the now empty van has had its trunk modified to fit two benches up against the walls of the vehicle, perpendicular to the other seats. Roldy goes to the driver and asks if he can take all of us to the train station for 100 kuai. And voila, that's how I found myself cracking open a beer on a bench in the back of a modified, possibly illegally so, Chinese van with 9 teammates feeling like we were crossing the border.

It doesn't even end there. Remember, Colin had bought tickets for me. Actually he had bought tickets for his teammate Sean Keith, who subsequently dropped out. China train tickets are bought with ID and are name-designated, but according to Colin security never checks. Wuhan station security though is intense, possibly in the wake of the Kunming train stabbings of this past year, and they are most definitely checking tickets. I examine my ticket and learn that Sean Keith is actually Sean Zohar Keith. I take a deep breath, put on a poker face and put the ticket deep in my passport. A security woman then takes my passport, pulls out my ticket and then turns to the ID page of my passport. She clearly puts my passport photo up close to me and cross checks my name with the ticket name. I'm standing there, in too much shock to open up my bladder, and the thought pops up that I might just miss this train. I start formulating arguments in my head. "Oh yeah that's my other name. Oh I must have mixed up the tickets. Oh what does the name matter anyway?" Then inexplicably, the woman hands my passport and ticket back to me and shoos me through. I never look back. Perhaps she's illiterate in English?



So there it is, 3 tournaments in 3 jurisdictions of the Sino world in 4 weekends. When people ask me what the difference is between China and Hong Kong, I can simplify it so.
Question: How often do I have travel adventures in Hong Kong? Answer: Never.
Question: How often do I have travel adventures in Mainland China? Answer: Every damn time.

World's Ultimate and Guts Championships

World's is an ultimate frisbee tournament that takes place every four years. It features teams representing the best that their countries can offer, in five distinct groups (Open, Women's, Mixed, Open's Masters, Women's Masters) and conclusively settles world champions over a week long tournament. It can be thought of as the Olympics of Ultimate, minus the Ancient Greek prehistory, and is considered a significant deal in this burgeoning subcommunity originating in the United States.

This year's World's took place in Osaka, Japan from July 7-14.  I had been vaguely aware of this tournament while I lived in the United States, but never really gave it much thought and certainly didn't think I'd ever play in it. After moving here and within a month playing in a warmup tournament to World's in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, I realized there was a very real possibility of participating at that stage.  Our Hong Kong team was finalized in late March, at which point I became very, very very excited for this special opportunity.

Our team selection process was pretty interesting. A couple of the major players here organized the team and solicited interest from the entire community, including overseas people with Hong Kong ties. After they had an idea of who could come, they decided to make a men's team and a mixed team, and posted "advertisements" in a few ultimate forums to round out the team.  Through this, our captain Tommy Fung actually received what amounted to Ultimate CV's, leading to our mixed team picking up Mathieu Bordeleau, the captain of the Quebec City Onyx and one of the last cuts from Team Canada.  Though "Beau" as we called him has still never been to Hong Kong, he was an awesome addition to our team in every way possible.  In the end, very few people who asked for it were actually denied a spot on the team. The self-selection process was very good though. In my opinion, only one player did not really deserve to be playing at that level.  The teams we put out there were more or less the best teams that Hong Kong could have within the WFDF eligibility rules (with a handful of great players unable to make the trip or playing on other teams).

Anyway my excitement was hard to contain. This would undoubtedly be the highest level tournament I'd ever compete in.  Made possible solely by my move to Hong Kong, this unique opportunity felt very unreal to me, with various disappointments of my American ultimate experience in my not-so-distant memory.  How insanely good would the competition be? How good would we be? Could we win a game? What would be the impression of foreign teams of Hong Kong ultimate? Who would we play against? How much would I play? How well would I play?


Furthermore I was giddy for Japan. The tournament could hardly have been in a better location for me. Here was a country I had never been to, that I very much wanted to go to, and which was really quite convenient for me to get to. Were this tournament in Europe or South America, I doubt I would have gone. As such, it was in Osaka, a 4 hour direct flight from Hong Kong.  I really didn't know what to expect out of Japan.  I hadn't seen many Japanese movies or shows, and been exposed to little Japanese culture growing up in the US outside of sushi and Dragon Ball Z. Part of me thought it might be a futuristic society with incredible automated devices, squeaky clean metallic infrastructure and ultra polite and friendly public servants all around.  Part of me drew from my Asia experience, where every towering metropolis has a much more traditional, simple substratum devoid of the advanced technology, hearkening to the rustic days of yore.  Was that the real Japan? Or would it be kinda like the US? Despite a grueling schedule of 10 long games of competitive ultimate over 6 days, I was determined to see as much of Japan as I could.

That plan didn't start off so well.  I flew with teammates Kyle, Grant and Kristen with a stopover in Beijing.  Beijing isn't exactly on the way to Osaka, but this was the cheapest flight available, a solid 2700 HKD round trip on China Air. Our layover in Beijing was scheduled to be about two hours, but after taking a bus to and boarding our connection flight, we sat still for half an hour before they told us the plane had mechanical problems and we'd have to return to the gate.  It's no fun getting off a full a plane, grabbing all your luggage, and boarding a bus to an uncertain near future. We didn't know when we'd take off and by now it was getting late. In the mass of angry Chinese passengers mobbing the airport officials, the authorities were expectedly opaque in communicating the situation and certainly in no mood to translate into English. After about 15 minutes of hopping uncertainty, I caught the time of departure in Mandarin and it turned out to be only an hour away.  We reconvened and decided we had enough time for a beer. Amazingly we found bottled Guinness at a bakery.

We land in Osaka around 1am, seemingly as the last scheduled flight that night. We go through immigration, baggage and ATM hunting. We have lots of printed out information on the house/hostel in which we are staying, but we have no clear plan of how to get there. The trains into the city closed at midnight, and Kristen read up on the price of taxis on an inflight magazine: either 1700 or 17000 Yen.  1700 would be about $20 USD, which would be great. 17000 would be $200 USD, which would be unjustifiable.  I had heard that Japanese taxis were famously expensive (rare in Asia) and my fears were confirmed true when the price turned out to be the latter.  While we were rumbling around for cash and transportation options, China Air had unbeknownst to us provided our flight with a coach bus into the city. We discovered this and hurried on, but were told it was full.  That's fine, we'll stand or something. Nope. The bus was FULL, with additional chairs brought and passengers sitting all the way down the aisle. There was literally no room for the four of us to stand.

One airport official spoke English, and so we worked with her extensively to remedy the situation. Could they call a van? Did the airport have any petty cash that would help us with a taxi? Could she drive us? Should we wait until 5am for the trains to open up? The official was pretty slow on delivering updated news, and an hour later (part of which we spent working on our throws on the sidewalk) she informed us there was no cash, but we could get a cab and they would redeem it for us. They had no forms in English, but they did have some in Chinese.  We weren't thrilled about this idea, with the very likely possibility that said Chinese form would never get redeemed, and it was actually a relief when we discovered that we'd need a Japanese bank account for this to get processed. Idea nixed.

Now it was near 3am and we started really pressing on the officials. In the discussion I heard someone speaking Mandarin, asking "how many are they?"  "Four," I answered. Turns out he had a car, worked for China Air, and it was essentially part of his job to drive us home.  The man was from Beijing, didn't speak Japanese and only a bit of English, but we plugged our address into his GPS and fit everyone in comfortable and rolled out. During the ride, Grant asked me, "Cal, he doesn't speak Japanese right? The GPS is giving instructions in Japanese." I was aware, and just a tad worried. Turns out he could only get us to the general area of our house, the Shin-Imimaya station, but we had instructions from there and could walk. As the last people to arrive, we had previously seen emails from teammates complaining about how hard our house was to find, including one young player who gave seemed to have given up in desperation, found an internet cafe and emailed the team to go find him. We had laughed heartily at him, but as we circled around in confusion, we wondered if he would get the last laugh. The address system was so foreign, so we had no idea what 3-3-36 Ebisu-nishi really meant. Despite it being 4am, there were a fair number of Japanese milling about and I asked one on a bike to lead us to the address.  He wondered about it for a little bit, then started biking away with my paper. I followed him as briskly as I could with my luggage. He pointed left, then right, as if wrestling with his own confused mental map, then ultimately led me to an intersection. There he got off his bike, shook his head in frustrated apology, and pointed at the street name. I was excited! It was the street on our address. Then I noticed it wasn't. Here I could read the Kanji. Where our address ended with 西 (west) this one ended with 東 (east). We had gone to the east version of this street.  He apologized to me with a lot of short head bows, and then pointed me to the right general direction. We ended up walking back that way with some more gesticulated help and when we were finally in the right area and still couldn't find the house, the man on the bike reappeared and pointed at the correct house.  What he had done in the intervening 15 minutes, I don't know, but I'm pretty touched that he decided to come back.

So I'm sure you're all furious that I've written 1600 words and we haven't gotten into game action or Japanese living.  Well your fault for reading my blog in the first place. Our first game was in the late afternoon against France, and so we were able to get some sleep after our 4am arrival. The fields were in an immense complex called Sakai, to the south of the city. Navigating the metro system was quite a challenge. The Japanese system is legendarily intimidating to foreigners, with several privately owned companies operating the extensive rail system in addition to the municipally operated subway, totally 70 lines.  I had never experienced a privately run system, where a company metro map did not necessarily show the lines and stops operated by its competitors. If a private company went out of business, it's stations were liable to disappear. I think during my first visit to the rail station, it took us 10 minutes to figure out where to go and what appropriate tickets to buy, and we were aided by a rare bilingual old man. Not only was the system map complicated, with too many lines for the color palette and with all the Japanese names meshing together, but that was just half the battle. The incoming trains were, similar to New York, liable to be local or express or somewhere in between.  They were also, dissimilar to New York, liable to be women's only or first class (guaranteed seats).

The tournament provided shuttle buses from the nearest station, and we pulled into the massive complex seeing grass and flying discs everywhere. A soccer stadium that could seat 1000, where top games were showcased, welcomed us, followed by a fenced section of finely mowed grass fields. Our games would take place on these perfect pitches or on nearby artificial turf, which were a great change from the coarse Hong Kong fields we had trained on.

So onto the games!  Our team was assembled like a pickup team, and so we had some growing pains familiarizing ourselves with our teammates, trying to figure out good strategies and lineups.  The French team we faced was a polished one, that though not overly athletic, had a few stars and didn't turn the disc over against us. While stepping onto the field the first time, an intense sudden feeling came upon me. This was World's. It had arrived. I had thought about this tournament for so long, trained for it for so long, but here it finally was and the judgement would soon begin. I would have to guard some elite players and push myself through the deepest bouts of exhaustion. I didn't want to turn the disc over, I didn't want to drop the disc, I didn't want to do anything negative. I had to take deep breathes and remind myself to think positively, to not fear failure but to anticipate opportunities for success, to showcase what I could do.  Those nerves were hard to settle and I turfed the disc the first time I threw it. I learned quickly that playing ultimate at this stage made a huge difference.  Something about the setting, the fields, the uniforms, the officialness of it all really magnified the play.  France beat us handily that Sunday. The next day, a fast and familiar Philippines team beat us in the morning, but in the afternoon we beat a decent South Africa team for our first win.  Beau managed to get an unbelievable Callahan in this game, by making a layout D near the goal line that macked the disc back to the handler. He then got up, blocked the lane while his man ran behind the handler.  The handler finally dumped to Beau's man, who bobbled it, where Beau scrambled and jumped to snatch the disc and land inside the end zone.  Later I caught my first score by making a sharp S-cut off a turnover.

We'd finish the week with a close loss to Russia, a blowout at the hands of Japan, a decent loss against the US, a terrible game against Colombia played in torrential winds where we lost because they started first, and wins over Netherlands, China and Finland.  The play was top notch and every point I played was challenging. The games were long and intense, but with only two a day, none of us ever got as sore as we normally were at the end of tournaments, although it wasn't fun being sore for a full week.  Our team came together within the first couple days, both on the field and off, and aided by our Canadian imports, we were able to move the disc against anyone.

The ultimate that I took part in was the best of my life, but so was the ultimate that I saw the best I'd ever seen firsthand. USA vs Australia men's, a game that ended in heartbreaking fashion for the Wombats, was absolutely incredible.  The US team was Revolver + Kurt Gibson, a San Francisco based club team that hadn't lost in two years and featuring ultimate superstars such as Beau Kittredge, Mac Taylor and Robbie Cahill. The Australian team had extensive tryouts over the whole country, and everyone who made it had to sign up to do TWO tours in the US before Japan.  I saw many other notable games included the Canadian Master's Open team Nomads, every single Japanese team and seeing my college teammate Logan Rhine playing for New Zealand.

I fought the fatigue and tried to see as much of the city as I could. I ventured to Osaka Castle one morning when we had a bye, walked around the downtown area of Namba where I saw both an outdoor climbing wall over a busy street on the outer facade of a giant entertainment complex that spilled, and a "shoe kitchen" inside a department store. The Japan I saw didn't utterly shock me or seem like a futuristic society, but I did pick up some subtleties that leads to me to think that Japan is possibly unique as a modern non-Western nation.  While many Eastern and otherwise non-Western nations have become well developed, few of them can boast as many indigenous ingenuities as Japan.  To an extent, whether you're in Bangkok, Brussels, Boston or Beijing, if you're in a developed area, it can feel very similar. It's the same technology that has gone into the escalators and the streetlights and the computers. Many of these things were invented in the west and imported directly into these places. I have no idea  how different technological evolution has been in Japan, but to me it felt different. It felt like the Japanese started engineering cars, dishwashers, light bulbs and malls, and only kept a mindful eye towards how these same concepts were developing abroad. Some of these products turned out well and became very popular abroad, with Toshiba, Sony, Nintendo, Honda and the like all international household names. This has occurred to the extent where when I see a Sony Blu-Ray player or a Nintendo Wii, it simply doesn't cross my mind that these products are Japanese.  But then some Japanese products didn't leave the islands and they were cool with it. So you have all these toilets with remote controls and a dozen different settings that honestly kinda scare me. You have vending machines that pour beer for you, shopping streets giving off unique vibes, and game shows that are just frightening.

On Friday night I was one of the few Hong Kong players to attend the tournament party. The World's party turned out to be one of the best ultimate parties I've ever been to, spearheaded by an insane group of Kiwis and Australians, and a surprisingly fun Japanese open team that would have liked to have been playing in the finals the next day, but took solace in chugging sake from the bottle instead.  Located in the back room of a bowling lanes complex, the setting was odd, but it may have been the most international party I've ever attended. I'd like to think that's saying a lot.

World athlete

I can't believe I haven't written about ultimate here yet. I've only written twice since I've moved to Hong Kong, which is pretty bad, but ultimate has been an immense part of my life here - more than it ever was in the states, which is hard to believe. Ultimate was only a part of my social life in the states, where I had friends from all sorts of school-related activities and other places.  Upon landing here, I really didn't have any friends right away and so I found the ultimate community right away, which is a great way to make 30-40 quick friends.  Ultimate on this continent is so great in so many ways, which might go counter to your expectations if you knew a little bit about ultimate.  After all, it is an American sport and many, many more people play it in the states.  In addition, unless you live in downtown Manhattan, field space is easier to get in virtually every American city than in Hong Kong, or most Asian cities. Even though it is very much a fringe sport, it's still relatively well known (at least people have somewhat heard of it) and it's  relatively easy to find a league or pickup. The top teams are extremely competitive, to the extent where I don't think an athlete like me could possibly make an elite club team.

In Asia, the obscurity of the sport serves to make the sport more fun, not less.  Spread by Americans, ultimate has invaded the rest of the world in some predictable ways.  Countries with strong US connections, like the UK and Australia, have very strong ultimate programs.  The top nations read somewhat like a G-8 summit, with Japan, Italy, Germany and Sweden also in the mix.  Locally, the community seems to be about 60% ex-pats (a lot of Canadians) and 40% local Hong Kong players, though quite a few of those have experience abroad.  The result is an interesting, diverse player base with vastly different experiences. However total, there are less than 200 active players here. The ultimate experience, which is a mixture of athletic and social everywhere you go, definitely leans more towards social in Asia.  A lot of this is because of the numbers - it's easier to get to know everyone that plays ultimate in the entire city. When you aren't playing against different strangers every week, you tend to become closer to your opponents.  In addition, for the ex-pat community, it is a chance to meet a lot of people also undergoing your similar experience, with a hobby in common to boot.  One surprising thing I discovered was that many of the ex-pat ultimate players learned to play in Asia, and not from their home countries like me.  They found the community here through friends and really clicked with it.  Even many more were just casual players back in North America but more serious here.

Teams here are weird and not exactly set.  There are many tournaments throughout Asia over the year, in places like Hong Kong, Manila, Bangkok, Shanghai, Jeju, Hanoi etc. Individuals decide on their own what tournaments they can attend, and then teams are formed based on the people who go.  Amazingly, you will see many of the same people from all over Asia at all these tournaments. Some former Asian ex-pats who have now moved home, often plan their vacations to return to Asia around these tournaments, playing in them with their old friends.  It's quite a scene.  You will see many teams of friends living in disparate cities who assemble at tournaments and form a team that has never practiced together.  Some of these teams not only compete but win tournaments.  In more casual tournaments in the US, this isn't entirely unheard of, but it's certainly rare.  The US tournament scene in addition is dominated by the club championship series.  Most club tournaments early in the season are opportunities for strong clubs to get experience playing together and to train for sectionals/regionals/nationals.  These are teams with tryouts, practices and identities.  Many teams here just have jerseys.

There is also the National Team scene.  In the US this doesn't enter the conversation very much, because the US is the best country in the world at ultimate. To make the team, you have to be absurdly great.  I've seen a lot of great players but I'm not sure any of them will be on the US team to World's 2012 in Sakai, Japan. Here in Asia, there are many countries, all theoretically with national teams, and a wide disparity in the talent between them. There are also relatively strict eligibility rules, limiting the number of foreigners a national team can have.  In Hong Kong, to be an eligible local, you don't need to have a HK passport (which I don't have), just a ID card with 3 stars (which I do have).  So through some very friendly rules, I was eligible for the Hong Kong National Team.  Though I'm still very much an average player in the states, a marginal club level handler, here I'm one of the best males.  I was one of the players selected to represent Hong Kong in the Asia Oceanic Ultimate Championships in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

The AOUC occurred from Dec 1-4, and had an open (men's) division and a mixed division.  The countries in the open division were India, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan. In the mixed division we had Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia and Japan.  If you're surprised at the number of teams present, you should be. In all my time playing ultimate I've never been to a tournament with less than 8 teams - the average college tournament I went to had at least 24 open teams. With only 4 opponents, we played everyone twice. I think organizers were disappointed with the turnout, which was not an improvement over the exact same tournament held in 2007.  Traveling for this tournament is difficult and expensive, especially for the many countries in the region with a low GDP or visa restrictions.  Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines could have competed very well at this tournament, but probably could not afford to attend.  China had meant to send 2 teams but its players could not get visas. We even had a player who was born in Guangdong province, who though had been in Hong Kong for over 7 years, could not get his visa processed.  Only a first world country like Australia could send a team on 8 hour flights. Incidentally, this was India's first time at the tournament, but they were woefully underprepared.  The team did not have cleats and barely had forehands.  They scored 1 point all tournament.

At this point I will shift from informative to the old Cal travel diary story-telling style.  It should be a different blog post but no one reads this anyway.

I couldn't make the Thursday games because of work vacation time restrictions. So I flew in on my own Thursday night with the intention of playing Friday and Saturday, still with the opportunity to play all our opponents.  I was very excited all day, unable to sit still at the office.  However early in the day I got an email from DragonAir saying that my 7pm flight had been moved to 9:55pm due to "operational reasons."  I'd be getting into Kaohsiung after 11, which wasn't terrible but not ideal.  Whatever.  At the same time I'd been having difficulties with my phone. My American iPhone had been unlocked, but the unlocking was no longer working no matter how many times I repeated the procedure. My Uncle Andrew, who apparently travels with at least 4 cell phones, had given me his 2 year old spare and so I put my pin into that one.  However, some point in the last 2 years, the phone's touch screen had gone haywire and it now reacted terribly. I could not type at all and half the time I pressed anything, it made a call. I also could not turn it off without taking out the battery.  So I'm extremely frustrated with all this phone stuff, but I throw it all in my bag and worry about it later - after all I'm going to a foreign country where I won't have service anyways. I Google our lodgings in Taiwan - the Kindness Hotel, and check it out on a map and write down its name in Chinese.  I wrote down the number, I saw that it wasn't too far from the airport and near a subway, etc.

DragonAir website said my 7 o'clock flight was cancelled.  I had been under the impression that it was delayed.  Still I had the email saying I was on the 9:55 one, so I hoped for the best and went to the airport early.  I had walked all the way down to the subway and was waiting for the cars when I realized I didn't have my cleat bag.  Absolute necessity.  Went back up and got it.  Whatever.  The subway trip to the airport took about 45 minutes including 2 annoying but manageable transfers. Airport security however had issue with my nail clipping scissors, which are important for ultimate tournaments.  Whatever, they're really blunt, but I'm here early so I'll go back and check them in.  Second time through security and emptying my pockets and laptop, they check my backpack again.  This time they discovered a mysterious sharp object in my bag. For the life of me I didn't know what it was.  They went through all my stuff before finding this thing I use to remove my studs in my cleats.  Completely harmless.  Sigh.  In a very pissy mood, I put all my clothes back into my backpack and glared at security.

I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo all the way through the flight and hopped out in Taiwan, excited to be in a new country for the first time in over a year.  After picking up my cleats, I confidently walked out to get a taxi, ready to pump out some Mandarin.  However after telling the taxi driver where I want to go, he looks at what I've written down, pauses for a minute, and then finally starts driving.  We're on the road for about 10 minutes when I happen to see a sign for the hotel on the side of the highway.  We keep driving though, and I get suspicious that this driver is trying to cheat me.  We drive another 10 minutes before I get uncomfortable and say I think we've gone too far.  We insists that we're going to the right way, to Kindness Hotel.  I tell him the address that I've written down and ask him what district we're in.  He's like "Huh? I thought we were going to this place." Oh you're kidding me.  He tells me there are like six Kindness Hotels in Kaohsiung.  Crap.  I order him to turn around and go to that street.  Very conscious of how tired and frustrated I am, the drive back to 福德街 seems to take forever.  He gets to the street and asks, "What now?"  I'm like "huh? Take me to no. 22."  At every street intersection he turns around to ask me what to do next.  At one point I snapped and said "THIS IS MY FIRST TIME IN TAIWAN! YOU'RE FROM HERE! YOU'RE THE TAXI DRIVER. YOU TAKE ME THERE."  I can't remember the last time I was this mad.

There was nothing at 22 FuDe street.  It was a completely empty narrow alley.  The driver turns around like "I told you so."  He told me there was a Kindness Hotel 4 blocks away, and I was like great! take me there.  We get there and I can't wait to get out.  I'd been very observantly watching the meter this whole time and it said 35.0.  I didn't know a thing about Taiwanese money or prices, just that it was less than Hong Kong, so I threw him a 100 dollar bill. He responded that it was actually $350, and with the airport fee, $400.  You've got to be kidding me.  This sounded like a lot - I didn't know then that this was about $10 USD.  I didn't want to argue though so I just gave him the cash and ran away.  I go straight to the concierge in a huff and say, "Room 715 please."  They respond at me with blank stares and say, "we don't have a room 715." What?? I show them my booking information, complete with the address and telephone number of the Kindness Hotel.  They tell me that I'm not at the right Kindness Hotel - there were 13 in total.  At that I threw my cleats bag on the ground as hard as I could.  They figured out which hotel I should have been at from the phone number, called me a cab and told the driver where to go.  At this point it was 12:20am.

Somewhere along the cab ride I started freaking out.  I had gotten my information about the hotel from Google - I had no idea at the time that there were 13 places with the same name. Everything I wrote down could have been inaccurate, including the phone number.  There was a chance I had copied the phone number from the tournament website, in which case it would be correct, but I wasn't sure.  I had no working phone, the only thing I could do was go to reception and ask to use the computer. I mentally readied myself to arrive at the wrong hotel and to get set for another half hour or so before I could sleep.  However, right when I landed and opened my taxi door, I heard someone exclaim, "Cal!" I looked up and saw my teammate Mary, and my goodness she could have been a vision of Mary mother of God at that moment.

Luck had it that our first game was at 10 and I had plenty of time to sleep.  I quickly noticed that, purely in terms of facilities, this would be unlike any tournament I had ever been to.  Nearly every tournament I'd ever been to, my team had driven up in crowded cars and stayed 6 to a room in some crappy motel, and played very early in the morning in some fields in the middle of nowhere. Here, we stayed at a 4 star-hotel, usually 3 to a room. The showers had separate soap and shampoo for men and women - we also had a bathtub.  The breakfast buffet consisted of more than bagels and frozen hard-boiled eggs, but instead had offerings ranging from toast to tofu, congee to cereal to ice cream.  Yes, ice cream with cereal.

All games were held at 3 stadia spread out over the city, including the Kaohsiung National Stadium which was built for the 2009 World Games.  I missed out on my chance to play there, which is a pretty special place with a dragon weaving design that hearkens to the Bird's Nest.  We had buses shuttling us to our venues.  It was a little weird, a little cool, playing in these giant stadiums with tons of empty seats surrounding us.  After the games, Taiwanese food was catered to us, which certainly beat the bananas and peanut butter bagels I was used to stateside.

 Host Taiwan was our first opponent.  Ultimate had caught on strong in Taiwan and the organization there took this tournament very seriously. Talent wise, the team was only slightly better than us, but they had played together A LOT more. Supposedly the team was composed largely of a university team, and they had been required to take 2 weeks off together and basically go to a training camp for the tournament.  Unheard of.  That makes a huge difference in ultimate, especially in Asia where tournaments often consist of pickup teams playing together for the first time.  After giving Taiwan a hard fight for the first half, our star Calvin left to fly back to Hong Kong for a work event.  We got rolled pretty good in the second half. We were never at full strength for the rest of the tournament, steadily dropping players.  

Australia is another regional power, predictable from its English-speaking ties to the US.  They had assembled their team by broadcasting a call for people capable of attending to put their names into a hat. A committee had then selected the players based on what they knew of them, getting input from people in different regions.  There were no tryouts.  The process, which I actually think was really good, created a team of mostly older players who could afford to take a vacation to Taiwan, and included two players, Kwang in Guangzhou and Sarz in Shenzhen, who were located in China.  They didn't play with great chemistry, but with a lot of veteran experience, they came together during the weekend.  They had some very talented females who were able to huck to each other over all the men for scores.  They beat us pretty good too.

Singapore was the one team we should have beat.  This Asian city-state is even smaller than our Asian city-state and has a Westerner dominated frisbee scene.  Still they managed to put together a talented young team with lots of athleticism and players willing to play defense. They made a lot of mistakes though and we went up 4-0 on them right away. Since we had lost by 3 the previous game, we needed to win by 4 to surpass Singapore in the standings. We were in position to do so at 9-6 when soft cap blew.  We scored to make it 10-6, game to 11.  When they made it 10-7, we knew that we had to win this next point.  Unfortunately we didn't catch a pull that ended deep in our end zone, and ended up turning the disc right on the goal line.  Just like that our dreams were squashed.  10-8 then became 10-9.  That point seemed to have been played out entirely within 20 yard of their end zone but through several blunders and a dropped layout by me, we failed to score.  On universe point, we drove right down to the end zone before dropping it.  They turned around and hucked it, and all I could do was stare as a lucky breeze blew the disc away from our defender into a Singaporean player in the end zone to win the game.  That was among the worst losses I have experienced.

The Japan team played us right after that.  It was my first time ever seeing the legendary Japanese players in person. Japan is a preeminent world power, with their top club team Buzz Bullets routinely beating the best American clubs and winning worlds.   With the upcoming 2012 worlds in Osaka, I think Japan should be favored.  They are renown almost mystically in the US for a disciplined, unorthodox style of play.  All of this was on display when we played them. Unfortunately we got rolled so hard (17-3) that I didn't even really get to see their full performance, but they were certainly impressive.  The team never relented, keeping great form even when there was no need for it.  A wide open Japanese cutter caught the disc at full speed, stopped and threw a low release flick just inches above the ground, with absolutely no one on her.  This was one of the better teams I had ever seen - the other tournament teams would have lost to most good club teams in the US.

Two ultimate stories

A big part of this graduate year of mine was the rare opportunity to play a 5th year of collegiate ultimate. Collegiate ultimate, as governed by USAUltimate, actually has strict eligibility rules that essentially mandates that players can only get 5 years of eligibility, starting from the day they first play in a USAUltimate sponsored event and continuous. This means that if you play all 4 years of college, take a year off and then go to law school, you can't play as a law student. You do wonder how much this is a factor for certain people. I know someone who played ultimate at Colorado, one of the top teams in the country. This year I saw that he was a law student playing at Cornell, also one of the top teams in the country (and going to Nationals), as well as a top law school. He seems to be in a situation that is both tremendous for his academic and athletic life, which makes me inclined to believe that ultimate was a significant factor in his decision to choose schools. For me, it was certainly a factor, an added bonus that made the the lure of staying school all the more attractive. I definitely wasn't going out of my way for a 5th year, and I'm certainly not a good enough player to justify that, but it was a nice reward. And incredibly, my 5th year exceeded all my expectations, taught me more about ultimate, athletics and myself, capping my college career better than I could have possibly imagined.

I don't want to or need to recap the season, but there are two stories worth telling. Coincidentally, they both took place on the same field, the great turf fields at the University of Delaware.

I need to start off by saying I've always been interested in the mental aspect of sports, ever since my own mental struggles essentially caused me to quit tennis. I think the mental aspect of

sports, or really any sort of pressure-filled endeavor, is pretty relatable to most people. In athletics, I always had the most difficulty with moments where I had too much time to contemplate what I was going to do, such as free kicks in soccer or serves in tennis. That's one reason I'm in no rush to play golf. I love however when sports allow for instincts to take over, when you make plays without even thinking about it. Ultimate is mostly a sport of fast-paced instinctual response. However just like tennis, a poor play can linger in your mind and really dog you if you let it. Sometimes, the nature of the game is such that you make a bad pass and then don't have a chance to redeem yourself for quite some time. It took me years to learn to avoid dwelling on these mistakes, and to just go back out and play as well as I can. But I made a lot of progress over the past year and felt very confident in my mental game entering a tournament at Delaware this past fall.

I think it was a semi-final game against Shippensburg (a random rival). We were down 12-11 in a game to 13. Ship was pulling to us and we expected them to throw zone. I was handling on this crunch time point and elected to receive the pull. The pull fluttered in the wind so I chose to let it hit the ground, rather than risk dropping it. However at the last minute it flattened out and suddenly I decided to reach forward and grab it and get a throw off before they set the zone. The disc was nearly ground level by the time I reached out and before I had a chance to second guess my decision, I was staring at a disc that had most definitely bounced off my hands and hit the ground. I had dropped the pull, a cardinal sin in ultimate, and on game point for the other team no less.

Despite all my focus on preventing mistakes from affecting my play, I stood there catatonic. Nobody on the sidelines could believe what just happened. Several of my teammates were already cutting to get ready to receive the disc. Shippensburg was quick on the uptake though and yelled to get into offense. Everyone on our team scrambled to find a man to cover and I tried to do the same, but everyone I kept going to was already covered. In ultimate, when you make a mistake on offense, you really can't think about it because you have to immediately play defense. Yet here I was, catatonic and unable to find someone to cover. Finally I saw the other team's main handler go to pick up the disc, and I ran to cover him. He was at least 6 feet, that is to say a whole 5 inches taller than me, and was within 10 yards of the end zone. If he got a break throw around me, the game could easily be over and I'd be the scapegoat, twice on this one point. It took every ounce of my focus and intensity to force myself to not think about the drop, to just focus on guarding this handler. He immediately did go for a backhand break, but I sidestepped right with him and hyperactively flashed my hands all over the place, and he had to turn and dump it. I sprinted with him, terrified to let him score on me. The handlers swung it to themselves for what felt like an eternity, but didn't get any closer to the end zone. My guy caught it again and this time went for a high release backhand. Somehow I reached my hand up as high as I could, and I think he only meant to fake the throw. But somehow, some way my hand hit the disc and maybe he accidentally released it, but the disc came out and sputtered straight to the ground. We both stood there, shocked, and I half expected him to call a foul or a strip. But he didn't, and I yelled "TURNOVER" and sprinted into offense. I let someone else pick up the frisbee because I was pretty terrified of committing another turnover. Shippensburg set up their zone and our other handlers worked it up the field. I was at the far sideline, half hoping I wouldn't have to handle the disc, half steadying myself for the possibility that I'd need to make a pressure throw. And the disc did come to me, but I looked off more risky options and made the simple throw back to the main handler. We made some more low risk throws and the cup grew impatient and tried to stop those throws. The disc comes back to me and I look back to the main handler. The Shippensburg defense moved to prevent that throw and succeeded. Suddenly I saw a crossfield opening to hit the handler on the other sideline. It was a throw I had misfired many times in my life but I didn't think about that, I just reached back and flung it all the way through the zone. The other handler caught it and quickly had open men downfield. That throw had broken the zone and we marched upfield and scored. When our captain Pete caught the disc in the end zone, I remember running right behind him and then falling to my knees, so grateful that my stupid error hadn't cost us the point and the game. We won the next point, the game and finished second in the tournament.

The next story is from this year's Conferences tournament (formerly known as Sectionals). Conferences is the first of three tournaments determining a national champion. This year in a restructured format, 6 teams would advance from our Conference towards Regionals, and only the winner of our Region could get a ticket to Nationals. Due to the restructuring, a funny consequence was that our conference only had 9 teams. Reaching Regionals, which had once been considered an exceptional achievement, was now a complete joke.

So we approach the tournament with the mindset that we would try to win it. Georgetown never won a tournament during my 5 years, so I was pretty eager to go out with a win. However, Saturday of the tournament was rained out. We drove up to Catonsville that night and started play on Sunday at 8am. We rolled over our first 3 opponents including a resounding 8-3 smacking of arch-rival George Washington. However, after a bye, we switched fields and played terribly against a decent Towson team. Losing by two points, we then watched in horror as our best player Mike Drost came close to getting a d but ended up getting his shoulder pulled out of his joint. He headed to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder and we lost that game.

Luckily our record that day automatically gave us a top 4 finish, which meant we would make Regionals. Unluckily, Saturday's washed out games would be made up the following Saturday, which fell smack in the middle of our Easter Break. We were the only school that had an Easter Break and half of our team would be scattered throughout the country. Our team had many discussions and ultimately decided to field a team and encouraged anyone who could play to come play. I actually flew home to Boston and drove down with fellow Bostonian Matt Kerrigan and stayed the night at another teammate's house in New Jersey. 11 of us assembled on the turf fields of Delaware again for an opening game against the host. Now 11 is plenty of players for a pickup game, but for high level college competition, it is an almost embarrassingly low number. The intensity of the game demands at least two full lines of 7 players, and most teams usually bring 18-22. But 11 was a good number for us that day because it essentially meant as much playing time as we wanted. Several of the players present that day didn't normally get too much playing time, so we relished this opportunity. We also knew that there were no expectations on us, and every score we got, every turnover we forced would be a huge victory and build our confidence.

With Mike Drost watching from the sidelines in a cast, we came out with a lot of energy and played Delaware even to 6-6. Then while catching a score, Matt Kerrigan bumped into his defender and popped out his shoulder. It was pretty unbelievable seeing two dislocated shoulders in as many days, and a huge loss for our team. With Matt at the hospital, we barely scored a point and lost badly to Delaware in the second half. I particularly remember playing poorly that half and felt completely frustrated that I was putting in so much effort with so little results.

Next up was a rematch with Towson, who was keenly aware that they were facing nearly half the team that they had beaten just the previous week. Now playing with 10 players, we came out with both vengeance and desperation, the likes of which you read about in historical battles where a vastly outnumbered force successively defends themselves. Towson probably never saw that coming and quickly went down 3-0. From there we never let them back up. Our team played as hard on defense as they possibly could and somehow made as good throws and catches as we were capable of. Everybody was out there making highlights. One of mine was a strong crossfield hammer that I threw to Alex Bodaken for a score that left Towson shaking their heads. I think around 11-7, Towson gave up and decided they wanted to go home, their regionals berth already secured. We won that game going away.

Finally we faced Maryland, with fairly low stakes on the line. The winner would finish 2nd, the loser 3rd and seeding at Regionals would perhaps slightly change. Mike Malloy had finished the Towson game with bad cramps and talked the Maryland team into shortening this game to 11 points, instead of 15. With one great upset victory in hand, we did not come out with much fire this game and predictably found ourselves down 1-3. On the following point, I played with some sharp knee pain and took things quite gently. As such, my man blew right by me on defense and caught the disc near the goal line. He threw a break throw around my absurdly weak mark to a wide open cutter in the end zone. The Maryland cutter then committed one of the worst drops I have ever seen in ultimate, flubbing that soft throw into the ground. I stared in disbelief, before deciding to pick up the frisbee and try hard. Though we may have been jogging through the motions, I felt that Maryland had insulted the game of Ultimate with that awful drop. We marched that disc downfield and made a nice score that fired up our whole team (now down to 9). With our intensity back up, the game became fun again. It seemed that every score we got was a sheer act of defiance, and we impishly kept trying to cheat death. I wasn't playing scared of making mistakes, but excited to bring our team to yet another unlikely point. When we had a chance to tie the game at 4-4, Malloy came back to play and we became convinced we would win this game. I think from there we took half at 6-5, and just rolled through to 10-5, capitalizing on Maryland mistakes like never before. After Maryland fought back for two points, we marched downfield on offense again. From the handler position I cut deep but found too many people in the end zone. Coming back in I caught the disc near the sideline, 15 yards from the end zone. Turning around, 3 people cut towards the front corner of the end zone. Looking away from that mess, I saw Alex Bodaken in the end zone again, maybe a yard off of his man. I was in the same position to throw a hammer as I had last game, and as I started my motion I think Bodaken actually shook his head. Too late. I fired and despite our team's collective terror, Alex jumped up and caught the pass. We had won the game, and I had hammered the nail in the coffin on my sectionals career.