China Nationals 2008

I woke up Saturday morning after consuming a fair amount of beer the night before, but luckily I had stopped by the 7-11 on the way home and picked up a 2 Liter of water and it was by my bed. When my alarm went off the coin flipped the right way and I felt ready to roll. Jim and I hit the road and it took us a while to get to the fields. We talked on the subway and it turns out his dad did NROTC and was a sub nuke guy. 

We got to the fields and they were on a sod farm and the grass was the best I'd seen in Beijing, let alone in my entire spring season that year. People started slowly arriving at the fields because some were just arriving in Beijing that morning. When all of the teams had assembled it was interesting. There were the usual expat teams that I had grown accustomed to playing in Asia. Beijing Big Brother was broken into two squads, Big Brother Ugly Trolls and Big Brother Hot 'n Sexy. I was on the sexy team. Then there was Shanghai, who had also split into two squads. There was another new team from Beijing, all of Chinese people, some local, some foreign.  

Then there were a bunch of Chinese teams from various universities that had been introduced to ultimate within the past two years. These teams were composed of lots of students, ranging from completely inexperienced girls or guys wearing casual pants and sneakers to athletic dudes with throws. Of note were Tianjin Speed, a team from the Tianjin Sports University and Air Kazak, a team composed of Kazak and Afghan looking dudes from the minorities university in Beijing.  

Playing against the Chinese teams was interesting. The girls seemed to outnumber the guys, and they would sit at one end of the field during the game (as opposed to on the sidelines). They didn't seem to be that into the game, but would occasionally start very loud and enthusiastic cheers (Tianjin jia you!). And after some points, one of the girls would go off the field exhausted and another one would take her place. I tried telling them that if they sat on the sidelines they could see the game better and get more involved in the game. They seemed to acknowledge the idea but didn't act on it. Oh well. I was however, building some decent popularity amongst various females just for talking to them and throwing with them.

I'll talk about the tournament party in my next post. Sunday:

Of note though were the Tianjin Speed and Air Kazak teams, who would face off in the finals of the Nationals portion of the tournament. Saturday was just a round robin to get every team 4 games against a mix of expat and Chinese teams. Then on Sunday they split off the Chinese teams for their own bracket to determine a National Champion. Air Kazak were the reigning champs after the inaugural Natties last year. My team had played both teams on Saturday, and both were surprisingly athletic and some of the players had decent throws. We easily handled both due to having tons more experience. And its not like we aren't athletic.  

Anyways, the finals. I predicted Air Kazak would win due to a size advantage and what seemed to be a decent offense when we played them. They would send the 2 girls to the other endzone making it 5 on 5, then they would run a lot of mid range shorty cuts and move the disc very quickly. Air Kazak started the game on a strong note and quickly gained a commanding lead and it looked like it was going to be a blowout. The Tianjin team was very aggressive, too aggressive for their throwing ability and Air Kazak capitalized off many turnovers.  

Going into half I rooted for Tianjin just to see a good game. And come back they did. They strung off a bunch of breaks in a row to tie the game and go up a few. At this point it looked like they would continue all the way and take the game. The play was interesting to watch, it was a step above typical intramural ultimate because they had better throws, but they still are extremely risky with their throws and rush everything. So its fast play with lots of turnovers. Good for spectators! Anyways, Air Kazak stopped the bleeding and starting scoring a few in a row to tie the game up. All in all it came to 12-12 with a hard cap at 13, Universe Point! If I remember correctly, Tianjin almost scored for the win, but turned it over in a rush. Then Air Kazak marched down the field and threw for what they thought was a score and started celebrating.  

But I was down there by the endzone and the receiver was obviously straddling the out of bounds line. The Tianjin team started objecting to him being OB, and I told them that if they thought he was out they needed to call him out. So they did and Zahlen (kind of acting as an observer) set them straight and gave Tianjin the disc on the goal line going the other way. Fortune did not favor them however, as within 1 or 2 throws they turned it over very close to their goal, and Air Kazak picked it up immediately and threw a quick score for the win and to retain their national title. They were ecstatic and Tianjin Speed was quite heartbroken and sort of emotional. But hey, they have good players and losing sucks, you just have to remember that feeling and use it to motivate you to work hard enough to win next year.

So yeah, China Nationals was cool. It was cool seeing so many new players and the progress they've made. It was cool seeing "Ultimate in 10 Simple Rules" from the UPA printed on a big poster in Chinese. And it was cool seeing all these Chinese teams rocking fly Five Ultimate jerseys that Zahlen donated to all of them. And it was cool playing with my friends from a few years ago and with new people. They all commented that I had improved a ton. I told them that all I do at home is play ultimate.