Belgian History @ WUGC 1988

A picture of a picture from the belgian national team at the World Ultimate and Guts Championships in 1988, held at Sportkot in Leuven. Some of you will probably recognise the building in the back with the dressing rooms (where they still are today) and some of you might even recognise Glenn (Freezzzbeezzz) in the yellow shirt in the lower right corner kneeling down and Ollivier (Mooncatchers) in the left/middle of the picture leaning forward in purple shorts....

Cool picture ! Thanks Ollie for sending this !

PS: click images for a bigger view, or maybe save it to your computer and then try to zoom in (?)..

Picture below: a photo from a poster owned by Ollie (as previously posted on this blog)

Here's a little more info by Ollie:

"En attache une photo de l'équipe belge contre les Danois aux Championnats du Monde de Leuven en 1988.

On peut voir Glenn avec son t-shirt jaune assis en bas à droite.
La photo n'est pas de bonne qualité, c'est une photo d'une photo...


L'équipe belge à ces Worlds, c'était, j'en ai peut-être oublié:
Eric D'hondt, Luc et Bruno Peeters, Cristiano (Leuven), Jean-Charles et Vincent Dupin, Ingemar Boudin, Fred Claren, Paul Bernier (organisateur of Viareggio), Michel Dugardyn, Charles Reynier, Jean-François and Olivier(me) Cassart (Brussels), Michel Troost (Dave Namur), Bernard Franck (Louvain-La-Neuve), Eric Delafortrie et Jacques Doetsch organisateurs et aussi un peu joueurs quand ils avaient le temps.


Le joueur à droite avec les cheveux longs c'est un Danois (qui a changé son t-shirt), "A-P ", un joueur célèbre au Danemark et dans toute l'Europe."

BUOC Preview !!

Well, there you have it.

Belgian Ultimate Outdoor Championships.

Here to rock your world again, bring some flavour to your year or just calm the competition beast that lives inside of you.

A 'tournament' like any other for some, a true championship and highlight of the year for others.

Count me and my team in the second category.

Not that everything depends on being champion or not, but being able to have some good games at the highest level in our small country is something you've been working for for a few months now.

We all like ultimate for more than one reason, but one of those reasons, next to having a lot of fun, is getting to see what you are worth as a team against another team.

And yes, it's only 25 days from now !!!!

It almost seems impossible that this is already so close, so you better be ready !

-1st weekend 20-21/03/10: Jet Set: Division 1, Gentle: Division 2 & 3.
-2nd weekend 17-18/04/10: Gentle: Div. 1, 2, 3.

I believe this year will have another big clash between what seem to be my personal 4 favourites for the championship.

Mooncatchers, two time defending champion and in full preparation of the WUCC in Prague; Jetset as Kings of the Beach (Belgian Beach Cup champs)and always a good competitor at BUOC's; Gentle as former belgian outdoor champs in 2006 and 2007 and always a top seed at BUOC's, and FreezzzBeezzz with a high standard and a bunch of young guys (and some phenomenons?)....

I don't want to pretend these 4 teams will be best(in division1), it's just my first guess because of what I've been hearing and seeing around; I'm not going to underestimate Slijpschijven,XLR8RS,Schijnwerpers and Huyltimate (in random order) at all !!!

This year's BUOC will also be very special due to the new schedule:

In short it means that every game is important, not only quarter finals, semis and final.

So your team needs to perform on a high level from the very first till the last point of every game of every weekend.

There's two weekends in which teams can deserve points.

Whoever comes out on top with most points at the end of the second weekend is the new Belgian Outdoor Champion.

Here's the official explanation by VLUFF (Vlaamse Ultimate Frisbee Federatie-who are organising this year's BUOC, more info on belgian federation and the francophone federation coming soon)  :

 3 subdivisions of 8 teams

 1 champion

 2 weekends

 Each weekend is a tournament with a final

 Every team plays minimum 5 games maximum 6 per weekend

 Each team receives points for it’s position per weekend (ex the 1st team receives 36 points, the 2nd 34, the 24th 9 points)

 The team with the most points, both weekends added up, is the national champion.

 If 2 teams have equal points after adding up both weekends, the team that has the highest ranking the second weekend gets the highest position.

Longer version:

This format is based on the idea of the tour in the UK.

It’s goal is to stimulate competition and to try to avoid games without importance.

The BUOC will exist out of 2 tournaments. Each weekend a tournament will be played and the ranking in that tournament gives corresponding points. The Belgian Open Champion will be the team with the most points added up after 2 weekends (see list points per position).

The list of points is made with the possibility to grow to 32 teams if this format would be kept for the next couple of years.

The tournament format for each weekend will be:



 Per division 2 pools of 4
 round robin. The 1st team of every pool goes straight to the semi-finals, the 2nd team plays a crossover game with the 3rd team of the other pool. The 4th team goes straight down to the bottom brackets.
 Semi-finals
 Finals


Length of the games:


1st division:
-poolgames: 70 minutes, cap + 2, = 80 minutes for each game.
-crossover games, semi finals and finals: 75 minutes, cap + 2, =90 minutes for each game
-big final: until one team reaches 15 points (no time cap)


2nd and 3rd division:
-poolgames: 60 minutes, cap + 2, = 70 minutes for each game.
-crossover games, semi finals and finals: 75 minutes, cap + 2, =90 minutes for each game
-big final: until one team reaches 15 points (no time cap)


The ranking of the first weekend will be used to determine the seeding of the second weekend. There are two exceptions: after the 1st weekend the last team of the 1st division switches position with the first team of the 2nd division, and the two last teams of the 2nd division with the two 1st and 2nd of the 3rd division.


After the ranking the second weekend points of both weekends will be added up and the team with the most points will be champion. If 2 teams have equal points after adding up both weekends, the team that has the highest ranking the second weekend gets the highest position.


By creating subdivisions of 8 it not only ensures more competitive matches between the teams it also makes it possible to divide the Belgian competition over 3 location. This is not ideal but with the difficulty of finding good locations in mind it gives more options. The second weekend will be held at 1 location and if possible the first weekend too.

Here are the teams in each division, based upon ranking from BUOC 2009 (and so this was last year's final ranking):

Div 1
Mooncatchers
XLR8RS
Gentle A
Schijnwerpers
Freezzzbeezzz
Slijpschijven
Jet Set
Huyltimate

Div 2
Diabolic Heaven 1
Gentle B
F*** Hellfish
Freespect
ULB
Gentle C
Diabolic Heaven 2
Pixels

Div 3
Mooncatchers 2
Propellers
Gentle E
Gentle D
Skywalkers
Zeppelins
Frisbier

Let's go, Belgium !

Tourney Report - Objectif Moon 2010

  

I'm having some serious problems with my layout.

Computer says no.

Grrr.

It's not working like it should so I'm gonna keep this really short ! 

4 words is all I need to describe this tourney (and by keeping this short it doesn't mean I didn't have fun, on the contrary!!):  

indoor madness and a wicked party !!

Cool to see this bunch of international teams come to Brussels to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Mooncatchers !

Crazy thing is there were only two belgian teams,XLR8RS and another one by the crazy name of Dump For Joy.

A whole bunch of youngsters from Freezzzbeezzz,Jetset,Freespect and Gentle combined in one ultimate party team. Man, we had a blast !

The tourney was won by Cheeck2Cheeck, a team from Austria that beat LeNuc (FR) in a spectacular final.

I've never seen such a thriller ending of an indoor final....What I seem to remember is C2C being in the lead with 13-11, then LeNuc coming back to 14-14 after some really nice plays, and then 2 drops in the endzone by C2C while trying to end the game (which was a cap+1 until 15). During this universe point (or golden goal or sudden death or whatever you wanna call it..) one Austrian guy did two MAAAASSIVE layout-D's and showed that their fighting spirit was worthy of the victory.

Happy 10th anniversary to the Mooncatchers !!

    And thanks for all the cocktails, haha !

 

Check out the link below if you wanna see some more pictures by Pierre-Alain from Moon.

http://picasaweb.google.com/padelamin/OMoon2010Brussels  

More pics coming soon, including a Dump For Joy teampic ! (Fab? Rrobin?)

Random Video - Belgian Open @ 8NationsCup

Here's a video of the Belgian open team playing against Colombia at the first edition of the 8NationsCup in Girona last summer (2009 that is).
Pretty interesting to have a video from this point of view (high on top of a hillside next to the fields).
Cool to see where everybody's going and what's happening; usually when you see videos of belgian teams you have somebody with a picture camera making a miniature movie of something too much zoomed in...
Anyway, I enjoyed watching it and it really made me long for the season to start.
Imagine (or if you were there, remember) that where we were playing in this video there was no wind at all and it was something like 32 degrees Celcius.
Feeling hot hot hot !
Go Belgium !
Thanks Joren, for sending this video (or at least trying three times ;) )
And yes we won this game !
If you wanna see who was on the team check this out : http://gethorizontal.blogspot.com/2009/08/belgian-open-8nations.html
By the way, if you haven't read this before, there's plenty more to read in the archives of this blog.
Have a look around and tell me what you think...

Oh, and if you want to see some more videos of the 8NationsCup here's the link : http://www.youtube.com/user/the8nations (including videos of MissB and a hilarious warmup-- I already posted these videos, check them out by clicking on the label '8NationsCup' on the left side of this blog.)

Tribute To Fred Morrison - Frisbee Inventor

Okay, it's a shame that a lot of people only get honoured when they pass away but in this case I'll just go with the flow; if it wouldn't be for this man we might not have known this game.
His name is Walter Fred Morrison, and as the official inventor of the frisbee he died last tuesday 09/02/2010 at the blessed age of 90.
As is common with inventions that go way back it isn't always clear who was exactly the first one to invent something because there were no real means of communicating with people who might be doing the same thing in a different location. That's why some say there are other persons who also invented a frisbee-like toy around the same time.
But hey, I've come to honour mr. Morrison in this post and so here's his story in short:

Fred Morrison, a Los Angeles based inventor and carpenter, invented the first flying disc called the Pluto Platter (see picture on the left) in 1948.

Due to not being able of making his disc very popular he sold his invention somewhere in the mid fifties to a toy company called Wham-O.

This toy company started a huge advertising campaign and also patented the name Frisbee. Frisbee is still a registered trademark (by Wham-O) and the name finds it's origins in the Frisbie Pie Company. This was a pie company that produced pies by baking them in pie tins (a metal shape used to bake the pie in) which students used to throw around with.

In 1967 some students at the Columbia High School in New Jersey (USA) started a game with this frisbee and called it 'ultimate' because they believed it was 'the ultimate game experience'.

The rest of the story is pretty obvious (ultimate grew and spread all over the world...) but all of this was due to one man who wanted to make a a plastic version of the Frisbie that could fly further and with better accuracy than a tin pie plate.

Picture above: Fred Morrison in a space suit throwing his Pluto Platter, as there was a big wave of interest in all things that had to do with outer space and UFO's and so on...

If you like more information about this, click on the links below.

It's actually quite interesting to read where all of this comes from.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa980218.htm

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/12/BATM1C0CVH.DTL

Join a tribute group : http://www.facebook.com/pages/Beat-Heat-Sushi/300057608930?ref=nf#!/group.php?v=wall&gid=312689323872

Some would say "if you want to know where you are at now, you should know your history.."; well here's your chance.

Thanks to everyone who made an effort to update me on this news !

I received 11 emails, 2 text messages and one phone call from a local newspaper called 'De Gentenaar' and after another phonecall me and some other Gentle players were interviewed by AVS, the local Ghent TV company.

(Aan alle Gentley's die dit lezen, het is te bewonderen op AVS op woensdag of donderdag- hun programmatie wordt steeds geloopt, komt voor in het item Kiosk-TV, kleine kans dat het daarna ook online komt.)

Thanks, Fred !

"Innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress."

G Whaaaaat ? G-SPOT !!!

Subscribe to one of the coolest (mixed!) tourney's around !

Gentle's Supreme Party O-yeah Tournament, the name says it all....

Unofficial teamlist for now:

1.Mubidisk (Lanzarote,Spain)

2.Mokum (A'dam, NL)
3.XLR8RS (Brussels, B)
4.Jetset (Leuven, B)
5.Extradry (Venice, It)
6.Mixed Veg (Ireland)
7.Frizzly Bears (Aachen, GER)
8.Frühsport (Köln, GER)
9.Ultimate Delux (LUX)
10.Gentle 1
11.Gentle 2 ......????

We'll be bringing you a whole lot more than last year !
So we'll focus on making you as comfortable as possible during your stay.

This means: a better campsite (flat!! and closer by), more food (all you can eat, included in the price), closer toilets and as much fun as you had last year (but better !!)

Register by mailing to gspot_2010@yahoo.com
Hurry up ! Limited spots, unlimited g-spots !!

Big thanks and props to Leen for making this flyer !

Tourney Previews - 2010 - The Year of the Tiger

As you can see above, 2010 (called 'the year of the tiger' according to the Chinese calendar) has a lot to offer !

So let's all make some extra efforts to make all of this happen for the people who need it.

Below is a message from Bert (Slijpschijven) & Sigi (Diabolic Heaven) who are organising the trip to the U20 and the U17 championships in Germany.

They desperately need a coach or captain to help them coach the U20 team ! If you are interested contact them!!!!

More info on the U23 team coming soon, I'm still getting in contact with the players that are enthousiastic about this (since I kind of don't know who they are yet).

"From august 3th till august 7th the “EFDF European Junior Ultimate Championship 2010 U-17” and “WFDF World Junior Ultimate Championships 2010 U-20” will be held in Heilbronn , Germany (500km from Brussels )

After last year’s success at the EUYC 2009 in Vienna where Belgium played with 3 teams we’re organising the trip for the Belgian youth teams again.
Our junior teams proved last year that they have a lot of potential and great spirit.
Unfortunately Guido (main organiser last year) and Olivier (U-20 coach last year) can’t make it this year. Luckily, Glenn will help us again with the financial part of the organisation.
For this years WJUC we’ll try to go with 4 teams: 1 open U-20, 1 women U-20, 1 open U-17 and 1 women U-17!
As we’re planning to go with 4 teams we’re still looking for someone to coach the open U-20 team or to help us in coaching the U-20 team
Can you please spread this message in your club and help us to find a coach?
We would also like to ask you to send us a short list with players who have, according to you, a decent level to participate in selection days that we will organise.
For the U-20 Championships players must be born in 1991 or later
For the U-17 Championships players must be born in 1994 or later


According to VLUFF data we have 107 boys and girls who are in this age group, but we’re sure that there are even more youth players in Belgium .


We’re pretty sure to find enough players for the open U-20, the women U-20 and the open U-17, but we’re not sure we’ll find enough girls for the women U-17 team… So, teampresidents, can you please ask around in your team if there are any U-17 girls willing to go to the WJUC? Their level of play isn’t that important, we see it as a good opportunity to learn a lot, get more experienced and to form a nice group. Last weekend on the juniorsday in Brussels I saw a lot of U-17 girls so please ask them!


The first selection day will be held on Saturday 06/03/2010 from 11am till 2pm at “de Blaarmeersen”, Gent . We’ll come together at 11am at “de roeiclub bij Guillaume” (where we have dinner during BUOC). Fisrt we’ll have a short meeting and then we’ll go to the training fields to have a 2 hour training.


Afterwards we’ll have one or 2 more selection days (depending on the number of people).
Please send us your short list before february 14th 2010 (please don’t forget it guys)
Thanx


Bert & Sigi "

More info at
http://www.wucc2010.com/
http://www.u2timat3.com/index.htm
http://www.wjuc2010.de/

Random Picture - Simon Says

A real nice picture of Simon from Slijpschijven in action.

(Click on the image for a better view, please do, because in this case 'bigger is better')

Nothing special to mention, I just like this picture and wanted to share it.

It makes me think about all the good times that we already had and those that are about to come.

As far as I'm concerned the outdoor season can start.

I'm ready (and working out to be even more ready than ever!)

Some blog updates coming tomorrow afternoon.

Precious Plastic # 3 !!

Yes, it's been a huge while since I posted the previous edition of Precious Plastic.

A little recap for those of you who don't know what this is about: one of Belgium's players shows his favourite disc (or one of the favourites) and tells a little anecdote about it...

Check out the picture above with Glenn from Freezzzbeezzz (Bruges, TT) proudly showing a disc from the NFB he received after the Freezzzbeezzz became Dutch Indoor Champion in 2003.

It was the second time in a row that the bruges' Beezzz managed to win the Dutch Indoor Competition.

If you remember one of my previous posts that was about the age when FreezzzBeezzz kind of won the Belgian Ulitmate Indoor Competition a few years in a row.

What made this special, and why you can see such a big smile on Glenn aka Sikken's face is because this competition was actually on a much higher level than the belgian.

Consider it the high days of Freezzzbeezzz with two NL championship titles to celebrate the work with the youngsters they had been preparing for years (some among them later started their own team in Ghent, Gentle!)

Glenn likes to think back about these days and really cherishes this disc he received after winning the championship.

Below is the other side of the disc and another pic with a little story !

Below is another picture of Glenn showing of one his most precious ultimate shirts.

It was the shirt of the Belgian national team used at the World Ultimate and Guts Championships held in Leuven,Belgium back in 1988. (more about that somewhere this year??)

When I was four years old Glenn played his very first real tournament, and that was this World Championship.Damn.

He had been playing since 1986 and got in the national team after two years.

He had played the Belgian championships two years in a row, but never went to an actual tournament.

The shirt is all worn out but that really doesn't matter since I would also be proud if I had a shirt like that.

(I remember the pride I felt when I first put on my shirt that said Belgium at the European Beach Ultimate Championships in May 2008.)

Cool stuff, Sikk'n, I'm glad to have learned so much of the game from you.

Keep on rocking in the free world !

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you wanna see the previous edition's of "Precious Plastic" click here http://gethorizontal.blogspot.com/2008/09/precious-plastic-2.html and here http://gethorizontal.blogspot.com/2008/04/precious-plastic-i.html

More importantly, if you have any kind of special disc or a cool story you want to share, just bring it on !

If you like all of this, don't hesitate to put on some comments, it's kind of strange just to see some numbers in the sitemeter without really knowing what people think about this website.

Keep on reading, but more importantly, keep on playing !

BUIC Yesterday - Pictures and Report Division 1

Before I say anything, I'd like to remind you to click on the pictures for a bigger view or download.

Yesterday 5 teams had the honour to fight in first division of the second day of this year's BUIC.

Five teams playing a day to remember. Yesterday showed Freezzzbeezzz on top of their game starting the day by beating Gentle with 1 point after a really hard fought game. The bruges' team went on to beat every other team in this division, including Mooncatchers, the reigning champions after what seemed in my opinion another epic battle. Two teams completely fired up trying to show the best they had and trying to see who could keep it together mentally. After some really nice pressure and sweet points and catches by FB the Moons had some troubles keeping up with the pace. Bruges came out victorious and took a ticket to playoffs.

Gentle became second of the day, only losing to FB with as mentioned before only one point. This is an indication that the playoffs are gonna be quite interesting !!! Gentle won the three other games and with this they secured a spot in the playoffs due to the overall points ranking.

Since Moon was 1st and Gentle 2nd at the previous day, and this time Gentle 2nd and Moon 3d they have a tie in points. This means that it is impossible for Gentle not to go to playoffs due to the final ranking, whatever happens on the 3d indoor day.

So, as a conclusion of the two teams mentioned above, Mooncatchers stay in 1st division by beating Freespect and Diabolic Heaven.

Those two teams both go down to second division, even though they put up a really nice and hard fight against every other team. DH succeeded in beating Freespect, for who it was the very first time they ever made it into 1st division. (congratulations on that !)

In second division Slijpschijven and Huyltimate proved a bit too strong for the other teams and they come back to play on the highest level...

Below (and above as well) are some pictures by me.

If you have any others or any other info, just send me an email and I'll gladly post all of it.

This BUIC just keeps getting more and more exciting.

Damnnnn !

Picture above: And yes, this was the personal battle of the day. Two of Belgium's greatest catchers in the air, up against eachother, one on one. Let me just call out that this battle has only just begun... !!