Tourney Report : Moon @ EUCR-W

Here's a little report written by Tof (Moon) about how our belgian champs did at the regionals :

"What a weekend!

team: Pierre, Quentin, Eric (Lulu), Nico, Tom, Arnaud, Benjamin, Benjamin (ULB), Benoît (Huyltimate), Pierre-Emmanuel (Huyltimate), Mike (XLR8RS) and myself

It starded Friday night with a long drive from Brussels to Loughborough (Midlands-England).

After a short night, we were ready for the battle against Fire of London. It's 2-1 for them, turn over but Arnaud made a point block. Aftrewards our golden hand scored the point for 2-2 but the contact with his defender was critical for him... Clavicle broken ! (sleutelbeen)

We tried to play ultimate in that conditions but it was physically harsh, they won 15-9.
Second game against Leeds. We started really bad with drops and individual mistakes. They were 7-1 ahead when we woke up. After Pierre's Callahan and several defenses, we came back but we lost the game 14-12. Too bad!
In the third game against Chevron action Flash, we began well before their legs crushed us 15-7.
In the fourth game of the day (75 min. each) against Cambo Cakes, we had to score up-wind twice in a row at the and of the game to win it really shortly 14-15. This victory counted also in the looser pool with UFO (Nl) and Fully Charged (GB).
Cambo won against Fully charged during our sunday breakfast then we knew that a victory against UFO woud give us the 7th place/10 of the tournament and a qualification for the 2nd division in London.
We played a really good and spirited game against UFO, ahead all along, giving all we had, we finally won 13-10.
Dead beat in the last game, we lost against Fully Charged 14-8.

We learned a lot about high level ultimate. We are really proud to represent Belgium in London next month in the second division... Let's see how it will be !?!

Tof"
Merci a Tof pour cet info !
This means that Moon will be playing in second division at XEUCF in one month !
Go, Moon ! Go , Belgium !

Moon vs. CamboCakes(NL)

16:30 Field 4] #CamboCakes 14 v 15 #Mooncatchers @ #EUCR-W

CamboCakes 14- 15 Mooncatchers !!!!!!!!!!

Beating the Dutch is always nice , we're still buddies with our northern neigbours but every once in a while it's fun to keep the rivalry by kicking some Holland ass. :)

Moon vs. Leeds

For all we know this could have been the best game Moon ever played but still lost , or maybe not ... But here's the endscore :
eucr_w 1115 4> #Leeds 14 - 12 #Mooncatchers #EUCR-W
Leeds 14-12 Moon
Can't wait for some more info.

Moon vs. Fire

EUCR_W: 09:30 Field 3] #FireOfLondon 15 v 09 #Mooncatchers @ #EUCR-W

So , 15-9 is not that bad... I wonder how this game went...

Mooncatchers conquering Europe ????

As I am writing this , saturday morning around 10-11 , our very own Mooncatchers (Belgian Outdoor Champions '08-'09) are fighting for our national honour at the Regionals for the Extended European Ultimate Championships.

So , as I mentioned before , right now Moon is playing their first game of the weekend and faith didn't give them a break : Moon vs Fire !!

Fire of London is a legendary team that for quite a while now has always done very well at European Championships (last year they finished second , after Skogshyddan from Sweden)

So , keep your fingers crossed that our Brussels boys might be in for a very , very big stunt...

As soon as I know more , I'll post it right here , I'm trying to find some stuff on Twitter and so...

Here's the seedings and poules for this weekend's regionals , some heavy games will go down there...

If you're wondering what these regionals are all about , here's the explanation in short :

The last weekend of september will host the XEUCF (Extended European Ultimate Championship Finals) , a kind of champions league for ultimate if you must.

For open teams , there's a regional qualifying weekend in advance , to give you a placing in the final weekend.

The top 4 teams of this weekend at our West-Europe Regionals (EUCR-W) and of each other region will advance to the division Open1 at the XEUCF in London.

Only Open1 teams can get medals in London.
Open2 teams can reach max. 9th
Open3 teams can reach max. 17th.

Check out the regions below here :

If you want more info , check out http://www.xeucf2009.org/index.php or keep following your favourite blog !

PS if you're wondering why MissB isn't there : they already placed for the XEUCF event at the end of september because they are the only belgian womens team...

Diabolic Heaven training for BEACH ULTIMATE

Check out some pictures and an some info written by Sigi (Diabolic Heaven founder and coach) on their preparations on the many upcoming beach events.

"Diabolic Heaven preparing its coed team for the beach…
Don’t we all wish summer could last forever?
Well, playing beach Ultimate always gives you a sunny feeling.
For some Belgian teams summer will last till the end of september because there are some nice beach tournaments coming up.
This weekend XLR8rs, Diabolic Heaven and The Monster Under Your Bed (Diabolic’s second team) will be playing at Monsterball in Monster, NL. http://www.ultimusprime.com/monsterball.html.
(don’t forget to check the blog again next week for a report)

Next weekend there’s the one and only Belgian Beach Cup with 20 teams competing
And 2 weeks later 11 (!) Belgian teams are participating in the Burla Beach Cup at Viareggio, IT. Besides there will be some Belgian players playing in international pick-up teams like Team 2, Sexxxpensive (?), Inexpensive (?)
Diabolic Heaven will play these 3 tournaments (all with 2 teams, 1 coed and 1 open) and thought that some extra training could be useful.
Moving and jumping on sand is quite different than on grass, that’s why DH contacted an expert…
Last week Liesbeth Mouha (Together with Liesbet Van Breedam our Belgian beach volley proud: check out the website of these ‘Olympic’ girls www.mouhavanbreedam.be) gave a training session for the DH coed team on a beach field near Hasselt.
As a professional beach player Liesbeth gave many tips on how to move more efficient and how to jump higher on sand.
She learned the players how to do a dynamic stretching and teached some nice vertical leap exercises.
After the training Liesbeth played a game of Ultimate and it seemed that she also liked our favourite sport a lot. (would love to have a player like that in my team )

Thinking a lot about the game in general and always on the search to improve our level of play we think things like this can be very usefull to develop our sport and to reach a higher level.
In my opinion, picking out some aspects of other sports and using the expertise of people who play a sport (other than Ultimate) on a high level can also improve our sport.
Sigi "

Something extra on this coming this afternoon , gotta go to work now ..

Cheers

Media : Smack The Beach Up in the Gazet

Click on the article for a bigger view (in Dutch...)
Some more articles to come in the next few days..
Thank Tim B for sending this over !
PS : if you have any interesting belgian frisbee stuff (no matter what) , feel free to mail me !

Random Pictures - A*dam Hat

Picture above : Freek early sunday morning when he woke up with breakfast being served right at his tent , while still in his bed.
Here's why : Freek was voted ambassador of the 2009 edition of A*dam Hat.
This means that a lot of people voted for you to be the ambassador , and that you actually brought most people with you to the tournament.
If I'm not mistaken Freek had some 12 people voting for him and that's why the organisation treated him like a god all weekend long (breakfast on bed , champagne , no standing in line , a very special seat with his name on it....)
Although next year's format will be a little different (being that only a*dam newbees will be able to vote for an ambassador) Freek still recommends it.
I quote : "I could easily get used to being served fresh white wine in a jaccuzi..."

Check out some more pictures of the lovely A*dam Hat tournament last weekend.
Pictures above by Freek/me and all pictures below from José Pires.
For more of his wonderful pics , check out http://joez.smugmug.com/Ultimate/ADam-Hat-2009/9392149_2LJUV#629045133_ht8Ln

Amsterdam by night on a flat boat for about two hours with a bar and a toilet on board , there's much worse ways to start a tournament !

PS : Check back starting from wednesday afternoon for some info on XEUCF (eXtended European Ultimate Championship Finals) with Mooncatchers playing this weekend at regionals !

A*DAM times...

Wow.
A boattrip trough the city centre , champagne for breakfast , a jacuzzi next to the fields and sunshine burning on your skin.
This was a nice , chill weekend playing ultimate in Amsterdam.
No huge problems like LAST YEAR , only good times and good games (which for my team called Macgyver ended in losing the final after a hard fight...)
Some belgians from XL , Huy , Jetset/Propellers , Freespect , Schijnwerpers and Gentle represented the belgian colours amongst an international crowd gathered for this hat tournament.
Nice !

Deutschland Neighbours ?

We all know Mooncatchers are currently Belgian Outdoor Champions , but how about our neighbours ??
Maybe you don't care but I still think it's interesting to know who's who in our surrounding countries.
Heiko from JUMP+REACH / GAIA Europe just sent out an email about the German Championships.
I just wanted you to read this and in the following weeks I might try and do the same for our other neighbour countries.
Here's the mail :

Hi,
Feldrenner Mainz won German Nationals last weekend 15-11 against Zamperl.
Feldrenner dominated all their games with comfortable wins throughout all three days of German Nationals.
A short report from a local German tv channel can be found here: http://koeln.center.tv/cms/index.php?id=42
Feldrenner played 12 finals of German Nationals since 1997 winning Gold 9 times and Silver 3 times plus Bronze 1 time in 2007 - so 13 years in a row of medal winning at German Nationals!
Cheers, Heiko

Report : Mini Hat

Tonight about 54 ultimate players got together to have some fun and play the game we all love so much..
The Gentle Mini-Hat was a big success !
We had four teams of about 13 persons and two fields (although actually just one football field divided in two ultimate pitches) and a lot of teams were represented.
A big bunch of Gentley's , some Freezzzbeezzz , some Schijnwerpers , some Slijpschijven , some Jetsetters and some XLR8RS got together for a night of fun ultimate.(hope I didn't forget any teams ??)
I love to bring people together like this , and as far as I know everybody enjoyed their evening playing ultimate with a lot of people you knew from before but only get to see at high level , high cost tourneys around Belgium and Europe.
So this was the point : to meet some other belgian people who also love to play ultimate and have fun on the field without having to travel for hours and pay lots of player and team fees...
I can't imagine any other sport where this could happen...
Tonight gave me a little spark in keeping all hopes up.
Ultimate brings people together in a way I've never seen before.
Okay , we all just happen to play the same sport , but I like to believe there's something more.
When you're out there playing ultimate with friends you like , there's no trouble in the world , no trouble in your mind , no problems , no sorrows , nothing but joy.
And I'm glad we succeeded in giving everybody who was here tonight a little reason to put a smile on their faces for about two hours...
Remember to keep the fun in ultimate....
Thanks for all the "thank you's" and hope to see you next time around....
Yours humbly ,
Bommie (having a hard time facing silence around here......)

Media : Me in an Irish Newsletter

Not feeling in a great mood to tell you all about myself lately , but still , I had a little interview , or better : Mark (Earley , Ireland) had a little interview with me...

Check out it below or click on the link to see the IFDA (Irish Flying Disc Association) Newsletter , issue July 2009.

"So, Bommie, you're the first Belgian to make it into the IFDA Newsletter. Congratulations! Before we get into the main part of this interview - your blog, Belgian Ultimate in general - tell us a little about your experience of Ultimate. How did you start? "
"Ever since I‟ve been a young boy I used to be part of the scouts - going out and playing games in nature, going on long hikes - two week summer camps with fires and swimming and all of that but most importantly getting to know new people. And so it was that some of my scouting-leaders were always throwing a disc around at all possible moments and places. I got into the whole throwing thing and took a disc everywhere I went. We even launched discs in the middle of a crowd at festivals all around Belgium, and so it didn‟t take me too long to go to the first practices with Freezzzbeezzz in Brugge. "

"How long are you playing now?"
"I‟ve been playing for about 7-8 years but it took me 1 or 2 years until the Frisbee bug really bit me and I really got into it.

"What club are you with?"
"I‟m a proud member of Gentle !
We started this team in September 2004 with some former Freezzzbeezzz (Bruges) players who were all studying in Ghent.

"What is it that really gets you about the sport?"
"I guess it's the whole vibe around this sport you can actually refer to as the spirit of the game. To me this is much more than playing fair on the field.
It's a state of mind I find a lot of ultimate players have and send out.
Ultimate is about the people and about keeping an open mind.
It gives me the opportunity to get to know my body, my friends and the world.
Ultimate changed my perspective on life, gave me confidence and got me thinking about who I am and how I do things.
All of this is what gets me about the sport, and so much more!
And besides, I love to run !

"Get Horizontal is the name of the blog you run. It began in late 2007, right? What made you start writing?"
Actually it officially opened in February 2008.
I got into the whole blogging because every day I sat at my computer and tried to find some new interesting things about ultimate.
But when I surfed around I didn't find anything on what was going on in Belgium.
So I just got started with writing all about this lovely game in our home country.
I had some experience with photography and graphic design and figured I could just make an interesting webpage for anybody interested in ultimate and more specifically the Belgian scene.

"And, the main focus of the blog is Belgian Ultimate?"
Yep, that's right.
I wanted players to be able to read about people and teams they know and things they are familiar with.
Another big thing is the idea that nice pictures need to be seen, and I started my blog just a little before the big facebook explosion last year…
The name „Get Horizontal‟ is actually just a metaphor for persistence, giving it all I got.

"What’s the next step for Get Horizontal?"
I should try and get more official or something.
I started a new part time job a few weeks ago so I should be having more time to publish things. Biggest upcoming posts might be a big history on Belgian ultimate and the birth of all Belgian teams.
I would also like to expand the „Precious Plastic‟ division with pictures of people and their most favourite disc and a story around it.
Maybe also a book in a few years?? Or a DVD? Who knows…

"You play in Ghent where there's been a huge surge of interest lately. What do you put this down to? "
We've got over 100 members in Ghent.
I think this is mostly due to the fact that Ghent is a big university city with lots of young people but also the reputation of Gentle.
We seem to be a very spirited team and so the word is spread easily.
A lot of players just heard others talking about playing ultimate in Ghent and came to join the team a while later.
Fact is that we don‟t even have so many players who were born and raised in Ghent…

"How is Ghent Ultimate dealing with this?"
We're trying to keep everybody happy.
It needs a big effort to organise about 5 teams all at once but somehow we manage…
Mostly thanks to the efforts of our board and all coaches!

"You recently helped TD the G-Spot tournament. How did that go? "
Well, it went good ! It took a hard effort to complete this tournament in a decent way but everything worked out perfectly.
We're already working on improvements for next year and definitely also wanted to thank all teams there, including your own „G What?‟ (aka Mixed Veg).
Directing this tourney mostly taught me to show more appreciation the people who have been organising tourneys for years now, they are the ones who give us the opportunity to get together for all those magic moments.

Thanks Bommie and best of luck with the blog!

IRISH NEWSLETTER HERE

Media : Jetset In A Local Magazine

Check out this article on Jetset (the Leuven based ultimate team) in a local magazine called Pas-Uit.
It's in Dutch so not all of you will be able to read it but most of you (I presume) will..
And check out Kevin (Jetset coach) getting horizontal !
Click on the article for a bigger view !

Thanks Tokke (Jetset) for sending this over !
If anybody else has anything interesting on belgian ultimate , you know where to find me .

Funny Old Frisbee Commercial

Watch this quite funny frisbee commercial from around 1966 , promoting our precious plastic for the very first time.

"Frisbee" as most of you know , is a registered trademark by a toy company named Wham O.

They also produced the hula-hoop and they are the reason we use the term 'flying disc' instead of frisbee in most official federation names like EFDF and WFDF (European and World Flying Disc Federation).

In 1991, in response to Wham-O's inconsistency on making the discs always exactly the same the UPA and WFDF switched over (in a very close vote) to the Discraft 175g Ultra-Star as the official disc used in Ultimate....

"This is the way to hold a frisbee. It lifts like a plane or a flying saucer.."

Thanks Arne (Gentle) for sending me this hilarious video of housewives catching a disc behind the back :)

Final Score @ WUGC 2008

Check out a little video of the winning point at the World Ultimate and Guts Championships 2008 , where Canada (in red) beat USA (blue) in the final of the open division.

Now thát's probably what you call a final.

Would have loved to've been in the crowd...

Mini Hat @ Gent 20/08/09

In follow-up from XLR8RS last year , Gentle also wants to invite all of you for a lovely summer evening of HAT ultimate during practice time.
No playerfee , 2 fields , 4 games of about 25min.
When ? Next week thursday 20/08/09 from 19h45 till 22h00
Why ? Two answers : Why not ? , and Summertime

Just to play some extra fun ultimate and get some people together.

Drinks afterwards "Chez Guillaume"

Send me an email (you can find my email on the left,below my picture) with your confirmation and give yourself a number between 1 and 5 (five being something like you've played ultimate since you could stand up)
Maybe we'll limit the spots , we'll see about the amount of reactions.
(BE ON TIME on thursday !!)

Quote :

Lately , when not thinking about other things (and sometimes trying to avoid certain thougts) , I've been thinking about this :
"A strong team is greater than the sum of it's parts."
Not many explanations to give on this particular quote , it's just something that found my attention since I've been thinking about my future ultimate career.
I've found myself to be at a level where I can sometimes make a difference on the field , or have an influence on a game (whether it be good or bad) ; I know I still have a lot of improvements to make on lots of different aspects of the game ; BUT , however I evolve from now on , I'd like it to be in a good team.
And I believe I'm in a good group.
Not trying to brag about Gentle , on the contrary , I just believe we have a good core group of players to build on for the next few years.
But , this post wasn't about Gentle , it's about synergy.
Check (by clicking on the line below) what Wikipedia has to say about this :
"Simply defined, it means that the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts."
Hmm , got me thinking , no other reason for this post.
Check back soon for some updates.

Belgian Spirit @ EYUC !!!

Great Spirit news all the way from Vienna : Belgium wins spirit in 2 of the 3 divisions we participated in !!
This is another important confirmation of the belgian attitude !
And next to that , the young guns showed to have a lot of talent and the abillity to give the "super"-teams a good battle on the field !!
Congratulations for nice results and rankings !!
(Maybe in a few years , with the same juniors only a few years older , also a top -sportive- position at a European championship ??)
Here's the final ranking as found on the website.

U17 Open:
1 Great Britain
2 Germany
3 Austria
4 Belgium
5 Sweden
6 Netherlands

SOTG Belgium

U20 Women:
1 Sweden
2 Finland
3 Great Britain
4 Germany
5 Latvia
6 Belgium
7 Italy
8 Great Britain II
9 Austria

SOTG Belgium

U20 Junior Open:
1 Finland
2 France
3 Sweden
4 Germany
5 Great Britain
6 Czech Republic
7 Austria
8 Belgium
9 Hungary
10 Russia
11 Latvia
12 Italy
13 Great Britain II
14 Ireland
15 Ireland II
16 Poland

SOTG Finland

By the way , this is the 200th post on this blog !
And last but definitely not least , yesterday my team and me won the XL hat tourney !!
A little report on that coming somewhere this week , I'll wait for some pictures to pop up ..

Juniors UPDATE 2 - Day 3

Check out another report and some pictures made by Sigi !
No time to translate though , I need to get going to play the XL Hat tourney in just an hour or two..
So , in Dutch , but maybe I'll translate later (sorry for the non-dutch-speaking..)
And some pictures as well , also made by Sigi.


"Dag 3 reeds.
Vandaag temperaturen over de 30 graden.

De U20 speelden eerst tegen tegen Duitsland, nog ongeslagen dit toernooi.
Sterke start van de Belgen die zeker de evenknie waren van de Duitsers. Zware wedstrijd waarbij er voor elk punt moest gevochten worden.
Dit lukte tot een ... (helaas stopt Sigi's verslag hier onverklaarbaar in de mail...ik fiks dit na Brussel XL Hat !)

U20 women
ook onze dames moesten eerst tegen Duitsland.
Duitsland eindigde 2e in hun poule.
Zeer mooi spel van de Belgische meisjes die elke wedstrijd groeien. De Duitsers hadden hun handen meer dan vol en het was duidelijk dat details over het resultaat van de wedstrijd zouden beslissen.
Onze oosterburen bleven iets koelbloediger in de afwerking en wonnen uiteindelijk met 14-10

De 2e wedstrijd van onze meisjes was tegen Oostenrijk, een sterk dames team dat reeds een tijdje samenspeelt.
Onze meisjes die elkaar beter en beter vonden speelden misschien wel hun beste wedstrijd van het toernooi.
Tot de half time demonstreerden de Belgen met fris en aanvallend spel: 8-4. De donderpreek van de oostenrijkse coach had echter effect, ze zouden de hele 2e helft een 3(wo)men cup zetten waar onze meisjes het heel moeilijk mee hadden.
Ze vochten echter als leeuwen en in een thriller gingen we de cap in met een 11-10 achterstand. Een hammer zorgde voor de 12-13 overwinning !!
Morgen spelen ze voor de 5e plaats :-)

De U17 had 2 loodzware wedstrijden.
Eerst zoals alle Belgen tegen Duitsland, ook in deze divisie ongeslagen met een 'nipste' overwinning van 15-8 tegen GB...
Voor onze laatste poulewedstrijd tegen de Duitsers wisten we reeds dat we hen ook in de halve finale in de namiddag opnieuw zouden tegenkomen.
De jonge belgen besloten 'verstoppertje' te spelen en hun tactieken niet te laten kennen, freestylend werd de wedstrijd afgesloten...maar wel serieus op ons bakkes...15-2.

De halve finale startten we sterk en hielden (héél even) gelijke trend.
De Duitsers zijn echter niet één maar 3 maten te groot en schakelden ook een versnelling hoger. Fysiek en technisch niet te evenaren en hoe hard we ook probeerden er was niets tegen te beginnen...opnieuw 15-2 op ons doos :-)
De jonge Belgen hebben echter een schitterende wedstrijdmentaliteit en staan erop gebrand om morgen hun uiterste best te doen en de 3e plaats te pakken..."

JUNIORS AT EYUC UPDATE

As you (hopefully) read before on this blog , our belgian juniors are playing the European Youth Ultimate Championships in Vienna right now (5-9 august '09)

Here's a report on day 2 (thursday) by Sigi (Diabolic Heaven / coach of the Under17 Open team)

Unfortunately I lost the report for day 1 (wednesday) since I had it all on my phone which is now completely broke/kaput/dead...

(Oh and by the way , this is a free translation of what Sigi wrote. Everything he said is in there and 99.9% of what he wrote in Dutch)

“UNDER20 OPEN:
-1st game against Finland. 15-6 loss.The belgian fenomenon of not waking up on the field early in the morning after having had a little too much Jupkes and Cara’s the night before.

Strong Fins and playing really fresh..

Belgium unfortunately never really got into the game.

-2nd game against Sweden.

The mighty ,known Swedish always playing top level in European ultimate.

The belgians started off being down 3-1 but then took over the lead and the game with nice plays and actions on both sides .

We went into the cap at 12-10.

Belgium kept the lead and scored 13-11 but in an impossible comeback the victory was handed over the swedish who took the game with 13-14.

-3d game against the unknown Russians.

They had only won one game before but always managed to give a good fight.

The belgians had a little trouble fighting the fatigue even against only 8 russian players.

Russia played a very single-focused game , hucking each and every disc to their supertall deeps.

This worked up until 6-6 when Belgium switched to a straight-up defense.

The russians had to work it up the sides and could no longer use their mighty hucks.

They couldn’t hande all the running on the sidelines and so Belgium played with wings to win the game at 15-8.

I think this victory means that Belgium is in the upper poule and will play top 8 !

Already quite a prestation !!

UNDER20 WOMEN:
Today only one game ; in the shadow of the Ernst Happel stadion where at the same time ten thousands of Jehova’s witnesses were having a meeting...

Our ladies had also seen the light and kicked some Italian butt ending the game with 15-3.

UNDER17 OPEN:
After having played only one game on Wednesday , Thursday showed to bring 3 games.

-The 1st one already against top-country Sweden.

Each and every one of the swedish players appeared to be more than a head bigger than the belgians and already impressed during the warm-up routine.

With a little ‘nonchalance’ they started the game against the belgian ‘children’.

It were exactly those ‘children’ that took the game in their hands with sweet diving D’s , upsides , hammers and crazy layout catches.

The swedish got mad frustrated about this and started to play really agressively resulting in many foul calls.

The more agressive they got , the more the belgians loved it.

We put up a solid zone defense and din’t give the 2 or 3 point lead away anymore !

Even bad scorekeepers couldn’t help the swedish (they forgot to mark a point for Beljam).

After having played for more than 95 minutes the belgians took home victory in the cap with 14-12.

The first big sensation of the tournament !!
Even before we got back to the mainfields (the fields where we had been playing were at about 25minutes walking distance) everybody knew about the stunt !

-Our opponents in the 2nd game were Holland.

These dutchies knew we had just fought a very hard , intense game and “grabbed us by the throat” from the very first minute ….. at least that was their plan !

After 15minutes the 'Hollanders' already asked for two time-outs to switch up their defense but even though the belgians were a little tired they played a real smooth game for the win at 15-5 , before 80minutes were even over .

-The 3d game of the day against UK (only Belgium and Sweden had 3 games on Thursday , all the other teams only 2) was actually one too many.

The belgians played along with the game up until being down 5-7 and then the light went out for this group of belgian youngsters (with amongst other three 13year-olds and five 14year-olds.

The british took the game ending at 5-15.

Buttttttttt , if everything goes according to plan (still waiting for the results of another game) the Belgian Under17 Open Team might be in the semi finals !!

That’s it , we are now heading of to the Vienna Carnivale (Carnival , Kermis , Foor ?..)

Greets
Sigi”

Keep on reading , folks.

Hopefully there's plenty more to come !!

And a big thanks to Sigi for sending over such detailed reports !!

PS if anybody has any other news about this championship , please send it to me !

EYUC Report

If you can read this , just come back here in a few hours , I have a few updates on how the belgian juniors are doing at the European Youth Ultimate Championships in Vienna !

Random Pictures - Smack The Beach Up

Check out a nice set of pictures made by Raf Celis (Schijnwerpers) at this year's edition of Smack The Beach Up ; a cosy , one field , hat tournament right on the market square of Mechelen organised by the Freespect crew.

Mersie Raf (picture above) veur de graave footoos joeng !

And last but definitely not least this picture below ; how cool is it to play ultimate on a square like this !

MissB Video+Important Message

Video above is made by Freek (Jetset) at 8Nations Cup in Espagna on the 26th of july.
This was a very tense game between Belgica and Espagna , watched by the complete belgian and spanish open teams..
Check out the hammer of Sofie Sap , caught by Anouk Bonte for the winning point , with her feet about a millimeter from the sideline. Wow ! I think some hearts skipped a little beat when they saw that disc go up in the air , but it's always cool when plans like that work out.You gotta give the crowd what they want , ey ....
Talking about MissB , here's a call/message by Nele M (Gentle/MissB) to all you talented (young?) women out there in Belgium :
"MissB organises two try-out practices:
Sunday October 18 from 2 p.m. - 5 p.m. @ Blaarmeersen in Gent
Sunday Ocotober 25 from 2 p.m. - 5 p.m. @ Sportkot in Leuven
We want to invite all girls & women who wanna play with us next season! We are asking all players and especially the presidents and coaches of the Belgian teams to spread the word and to pass the message on to interested players on your team! After the try-outs the MissB roster for next season will be fixed and closed for another year.

Interested? Send me a mail to confirm your interest and your attendance during one/two of the try-outs.

Thanx!

Nele for MissB
(nele[dot]masschaele[at]gmail[dot]com)"

European Junior Champs TOMORROW

Starting tomorrow (probably today wednesday 5th of august when you read this) a whole lot of belgian juniors will be starting one of the biggest ultimate adventures they probably ever had :
European Youth Ultimate Championship in Vienna ("Wenen ligt in Oostenrijk" , remember??)
Not so many info to give you now , I just wanted you to know that Belgium is represented with 3 teams and that's something to be proud of !
Junior open (Under20) , Under17 Open and Junior Women (Under20)

Here's the pools they'll be starting with :

If you're wondering who's playing on these teams I posted the team pictures a while ago when I went to see one of their practices.
Check them out by clicking right here.



All info at http://www.eoefc.at/eyuc/ but you'd better surf back here..
As soon as there's news , you'll hear all about it right here on your favourite website.
Disc Love !
Bommie

Funny Video @ 8Nations Cup

Belgian Open @ 8Nations

Here's a little report on the (unofficial) belgian open team at "35Degrees Cup" better known as 8Nations Cup; as written by Mike P (XLR8RS).

"Although we only managed 5th out of 6, we showed a lot of quality and fight on the pitch, and the future looks bright for Belgian Open Frisbee!

A quick summary :

The team:Schmit (Gentle)
Arne (Gentle)
Bommie (Gentle)
Freek (JetSet)
Jaymeen (XL)
Robin (Slijpschijven)
Gerrit (Gentle)
Mike (XL)
Joren (Slijpschijven)
Tof (Moon)
Laurens (Slijpschijven)
Mario (Swiss guy, trashes showers)
Tim op de beek (Freespect -sorry bout the mistake before)

First game v GB (Blue Arse flies and pick up) 14-17.

A good effort. We had them scared with some big D's but in the end they had a little more experience and fewer turnovers.

Second game v Holland we started strong, leading 6-5 with the disc for 7-5.

Then they did a straight up force to stop our long throws and started marking underneath, and they stopped turning over to punish us each time we made a mistake.

17-8 to the Dutchies, let's not let that happen again!

They won the final too, with a couple of dodgy calls but to be fair they deserved it, despite all our cheers for Ireland! ;-)

3rd game v Spain.

They started well, 5-1 ahead.

It got to 13-8 then we came back to 13-12 but missed too many chances at 14-12, always the last pass in the zone let us down, about 4 times!

Ouch. 17-14 to Spain.

With a bit more confidence, belief in ourselves and discipline in the cuts and choices of throw, especially in the end zone, we should have won this one.

Sunday morning we lost to Ireland 17-9, they were too strong for us basically.

We should learn from these guys, they have made the choice to raise their level by working hard at practice and doing things simply, I'm sure Belgium can do the same!

It just needs a bit of organisation, some simple structures (like Chimme put in place Southampton, horizontal plays, end zone plays etc), and the belief and confidence to consistently play at the high level that we reached at certain moments.

It was great that we won our final game v columbia 17-14, having started really strong (8-2) we let them get back into it at 12-12 but we finished them off well in the end for a well-deserved victory.
There is a lot of potential for this young team (mostly!) to do really well in the future. A great team spirit and of course we won the party (not very difficult!)."

As Mike mentioned before , there's lots of potential for a national team like this..

Let's keep working on that !!

Tourney Report - BUB 09

Check out a report by Ollivier (Mooncatchers - organiser) of the Brussels Ultimate Beach tourney last weekend at Bruxelles Les Bains...

Make sure to admire the pictures in this post , all made by José Pires (a legendary French ultimate player and outstanding photographer , whom I've posted about before !)

At the end of the post there's a link to more pictures by José , and do check out his archive !

"The Brussels Beach 2009 was a big success, 8 teams coming from different countries, Ireland, Germany, France and Belgium (3x) and 2 pick-Up teams with Germans, 1 English, 1 French, 1 Russian, 1 Brazilian, and Belgian players of course.

Some Belgian players played with another team than their usual one : Casa and Magali from XL with the Moon’s, Joëlle (XL) with the Hot-Hat, Eric (Moon) with Flip-Flops, Fred (Schijnw) and Quentin (Moon) with Eul’chtimate.

The atmosphere was great and we saw millions of offensive and defensive dives without any accident. Cool !

The sun was shining all week-end, and so the players enjoyed the tropical-beachy-cosmopolitan and colored atmosphere of “Bruxelles-Les-Bains/Brussel-Bad” long the canal in the Centrum of Brussels.

Results are:

Spirit of the Game = Flip-Flops (pick-Up team) really close with the other pick-Up Hot-Hat) Ranking =

1.Frizzly Bears ( Aachen ) - 3rd win on 4 « teams » editions !

2.Eul’Chtimate ( Lille ) – 1st International Final.

3.Hot Hat

4.Mooncatchers

5.Jet Set

6.Flip-Flops

7.XLR8RS

8.Ploughmen ( Dublin ) "

JOSE'S PICTURES : http://joez.smugmug.com/

Some other pictures by Ken : http://www.facebook.com/album.phpaid=110433&id=691341625&l=d92036eb3e and http://kenandhazel.smugmug.com/gallery/9053233_EPHcX

Pictures by Gwen : http://www.facebook.com/album.phpaid=107230&id=614661363&l=6b0fa7f407

Too bad I've missed this year's edition..

Hope the 8nations cup doesn't fall in the same weekend as BUB next year (which it will probably do unfortunately...)

Anyway , keep on reading , there's more to come and as I've been checking my sitemeter (which tells me how many people visit this site and when) I should be posting more during work-week.

So here's my first effort , hoping you'll read this first thing monday morning !!

Oh , and a big thanks to Ollie for sending me the report !

If anybody else has anything interesting on belgian ultimate , just mail me !!!