FUJ has won Czech Championships In Ultimate Frisbee Again!
Double scalp
Few days ago I wrote an article about “Spirit of the game and how important it is to the game. Not only we have won the Spirit, but also the actually tournament, thus taking all the prizes available from the biggest Czech tournament – the Championships. This article will report course of events from the tournament.
Unlucky start
Our leader, captain and great friend had one of his awesome ideas again. The day before tournament he organized a friendly meeting in a pub. As always, few hours were spent there. And as always after the pub with any Frisbee player, it was throwing time afterwards. Prague has a lot of huge lit places, therefore is a paradise for late night throwing. For the first time in 8 years I managed to injure myself. I stepped on a step with only half of my feet and sprained my ankle. One freaking day before the Championships. After several minutes I wasn’t able to stand on the feet anymore and my friend called Uber for me. I thought that the tournament was over for me before it even began.
Saturday photos
I was at home, writing articles on Steemit, so I have no idea how we actually played. The only thing known to me is that we crushed everyone. I can’t speak about the events from Saturday, but I can show you some photos.
Saturday morning at my place
I spent previous day on crutches. When I woke up on Saturday I forgot that something happened to my leg. I jumped out from the bed and landed on both feet. Then it struck me…I expected pain, but it never came. I tried walking and the ankle was working just fine. I decided to go for a test run and everything was still fine. I ordered shared ride to the city where the tournament was held at night and after the day of writing I went to reinforce the team.
Sunday
After surprising everyone that I arrived with an intention to play we emerged onto the field. By winning the yesterday’s group stage we ensured easy opponent for the quarterfinals. We played Left Overs, team from Brno that has quite a lot of good players, but lack the team synergy and whose players do a lot of personal mistakes. Our offence continued to be absolutely flawless and at the same time our defence was very effective. We managed to beat them 15:7.
The following opponent was presumably the second best Czech team Yellow Block. We know how to play against these guys. They lack the ability to fully concentrate on the task at hand and rarely push us to the limit. No one expect though such a decisive initial drive, during which we managed to take the lead 5:0. Few minutes was all it took to take all the positivity from their effort and we kept smooth lead throughout the whole game, winning yet again 15:7.
The finals were here, and we were still overflowing with energy, while the opposition went through couple of hard matches. The opponent for the final match were Prague Devils, which were able to give us a pretty good fight on the European Qualification two weeks ago. They had the upper hand there for good half of the match and we refused to let that happen again. Our start was pretty decisive again and we took lead 6:1. Devils though didn’t go down without a fight. They changed their defence and started guarding the middle of the field pretty heavily. Our offence got stopped for the first time during the tournament more than once. Before we managed to use the sides of the field effectively Devils closed the lead to the difference of 2 (12:10). A very long and exhausting point followed, but after the initial struggle in our offence took the disc back and finally managed to cut through the oppositions defence. In two following points we broke the Devils finally again and took home the win 15:10.
Summary
We are officially the best Czech team again. Apart from the situation around the finals half, we were never pushed to our limits. Our current shape is the result of about 5 year’s old plan to become a competitive scene on the European level. One of the major steps we have taken was to concentrate solely on men’s training (all other Czech teams still train mix even though they are trying to compete in men’s division). I believe that if we keep up our hard work, we will dominate the Czech scene even more in upcoming years, thus forcing the teams to concentrate on men’s division more if they want to be able to compete with us. This is great news and motivation for us all. In two weeks we are going to Caorle (Italy) to compete in European Finals. Our aim is to reach the top 8 brackets. Wish us luck! :)
Also show some love to @klarkamatej – the provider of the beautiful photos ;)
