Edinburgh Beginners Indoors 2002

Hey Camdisc

This weekend saw the 11th Edinburgh Beginners Tournament, to which we sent a team. Dave Eaton and me were the hat wearing 'experienced' players, and the beginners were Kurt, Felipe, Brooks, Matt and Patrick. It all began at the station on Friday night. We were casually playing with a disc (as you do) awaiting the last team member with growing anxiety as the previously delayed train miraculously became on time, when a random girl we'd never seen before came up and asked if we were waiting for Matt - "He's on the bus!". After stalling the train we just got under way and were en route to Edinburgh. Many hours later we were met by our gracious host Sally (of Ro Sham Bo) who had asked for the Cambridge team after fun and games with the Dublin boys staying in her flat last year!

We arose bright and early on Saturday morning and headed in to the sports centre. It was a great venue, built for the Commonwealth Games and absoulutly massive, easily absorbing 32 ultimate teams. Our first match was against the Jedi and we had a great start, playing some tough O and the beginning of the dedicated defence (Felipe and Brooks both taking out the opposition a little more than was strictly necessary!) which was be the mainstay of our performance. Kurt almost went straight home when Sarah (of Sheffield) fame wasn't there, but fortuantly stayed and we took the game 6-4.

Our next pool game was vs. Shooting Stars of Dundee. At the beginning, our O was a little lacklustre, meaning that we were 4-1 down with 5 minutes left on the clock. But we then pulled out all the stops with some great safe passes, completions and quick strikes (two scores in one minute!) we finished by winning 5-4. Brooks' pulled of an amazing leaping catch right in the corner of the zone.

UCD (Dublin), our opponent in the final pool game, game out strong, building a 2-0 lead and we failed to recover freom the onslaught of their experienced players awesome pitch length hammers, although we picked up speed and adapted to their play. The 5-7 loss put us 2nd in our group, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise...

This set us of for an epic cross-over (14 v 3) with the chance to finish the day in the top 8 for the first time in recent SB history! We were all psyched for the game, and came out with all guns blazing against Lancaster's "Fish". An immeadiate score (helped by the run of favourable tosses that Dave had managed throughout) set the scene for the early lead we developed. Everyones play came together really well in this game, with excellent stack play and very good defence notably by Brooks and Kurt. Matt and Patrick proved to be safe handlers and the whole team worked well together. So we finished the game and the day 9-5 up and in 3rd place!

After an economical supper of steaming mounds of pasta and sauce, a tired team headed down to the party, which was at a club called the Cavendish (home from home for the physicists on the team!). There was this girl from Fish who seemed keen on a bit of Cambridge Sharking - getting a bad response from Kurt she was pushed on to me and then to our illustrius captain (who shall remain anonymous) with whom she remained, and whose hat she wore somewhat conspicously thereafter. Kurt took advantage of Rob Y's absence from the squad to spend some 'quality time' with his sister Gemma who plays for Mute, but declined the clothes changing competition! The team took advance of my brief absence to all run away home tragically early, leaving me to find my own way without a map at about 2am through the streets of a dangerous, dark and unknown city. But I'm not bitter, so that's okay!

We went into the second day determined to make the most of our top eight position. The first match was vs. Durham's Northern Lights. It was fierlcly competitive, with a virtual sudden death point at 1-1 (over 10 mins long), after which we lost momentum to lose 4-1. It was a great game though, with stron play by everyone. Not bad for 10am on Sunday morning! Northen lights went on to finish 2nd overall, losing to Puca in the final (presumably: we left with 2 mins to go with the score running at 10-5, so who knows what might have happeened!)

We were up 7-4 with 5 mins to go in our 2nd match of the day, against York, but were really gutted to lose the match 7-8 on sudden death. This was probably related to the number of subs available!

So, going into the last game of the tournament, we were all really keen on getting a win to finish on a high. We faced St Andrews' "Flatball Project", a strong team led by strangely shaved-headed experienced players (combining their hair would have given a full head of hair!). We really hit our pace in this game, building up a 5 nil lead by half time, with some excellent end zone takes by Felipe. Everyone played fantastically. To alleviate the lack of hammers thus far, Kurt pulled out a huge pitch hammer length hammer to preciously, umm, no-one at all! But it didn't matter, we took that game 8-6 (losing a litte momentum at the end, but hey, never mind!), and finished 7th overall. This was a fanstastic result considering the extemely high quality from all the beginners teams.

I'd just like to say congratulations and thanks to everyone who played. Brooks was nominated mvp, but everyone was fantastic and also we improved greatly as a team as we went on, definitly desevering our top eight place! Matt definitly has caught the frisbee bug - he didn't want to put the disc down at the end! Cheers to Dave for organising it all.

We just made it to the train on the way home, when only one of the expected two taxis was waiting for us, making it back to Cambridge about 12 last night after an excellent weekend.

Cool, that's it!

James

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