Ultimate Frisbee

About a month ago, a group of about 15 of us went to Jeju for the 4th International Jeju Ultimate Frisbee tournament. We formed two teams - 18 Puppies (my team), which is a play on the translation of some pretty foul Korean words, and Snatch, which refers to grabbing a frisbee intended for someone else. And, er, I'm TOTALLY sure that is what they meant with the name, and there weren't any alternative meanings of the word implied, and there were no jokes made AT ALL. Just like there were no alternative meanings to the team named Rooster Candy. If you need that spelled out, send me an email.

We didn't have enough people for two full teams from Mokpo, but we had too many people for one big team, so we divided and pulled in some players who registered as individuals (instead of as a team) and we TOTALLY lucked out with the quality of the people we picked up for our team. Basically, while the people on our team were reasonably athletic (and, as an aside, I'm still sort of shocked that I get to count myself in the "reasonably athletic" category, albeit the slightly-slow-and-lacking-in-hand-eye-coordination part of that category) our frisbee-handling skills, well... Let's say there was a pretty good reason we were playing in "C" division. The two people we picked up were awesome, and they taught us a lot and, in all honesty, really sort of carried us. I mean, we were there to have fun and would have been competitive in our division, but let's just say (as someone on another team pointed out) we didn't have many people in cleats on the field. The fact that it was windy as all get-out actually worked to our benefit, as we were able to run a reasonably effective defense while our ringers new teammates had enough experience to work with the weather conditions. We were advanced to the "B" division for the second day of the tournament. Where we got spanked by the team that got knocked out of the "A" division.



Part of 18 puppies (including one the people we picked up - the one second from the left)


The whole team


Rich making our super-fancy tee-shirts


There were teams from all over Asia, including multiple teams from China, an all-women's team from Japan who were AWESOME (well, almost all women, as they had one guy because this was a co-ed tournament, but he didn't see a lot of field time), Thailand, the Philippians, Taiwan, as well as a bunch of teams from Korea and some other places I think I'm missing. Also, Jeju is just flat-out awesome. It is almost like taking a break from being in Korea.

Next weekend is a "hat" tournament here in Mokpo, where everyone enters as an individual, says what their experience level is, and then teams are drawn up. It will be interesting to see how many people make it down (or up, in the case of the Jeju players) and should be a pretty awesome time.