Belgian Juniors @ European Youth Ultimate Championships

Back when I started playing Ultimate, the best event I could play at was something like a belgian indoor championship day with the "African Killer Beezzz".

Bigger championships may have been around for ever , but as a young player it was pretty difficult getting at one of those championships..

Now these youngsters get to play European Ultimate Championships at the age of about 16

(players for Junior division must be born in '92 or later and for Under 17 division '95 or later)

Seems like these kids will be bangin with experienc in just a few years now.

After seeing the EYUC DVD "A brave generation" I can only imagine the level at this year's European Youth Ultimate Championships.

Our very own belgian team, Under20 lead by Eric and Ollie, seems to be doing more than okay, playing great games with scores like these :

Belgium - Russia 13 - 5

Belgium - Ireland 17 - 11 Belgium - Great Britain 10 - 16
Italy - Belgium 17 - 9
Czech Republic - Belgium 17 - 7

Picture by Tom's father Ludo (merci!!)

And for those of you who want to read some post-game-writings by coach Eric Delafortrie (founder of Funkadlic Disc Band - pre Jetset team!) here they are :

" ==> Day 2:

Waw, what a start, First game at 9AM, breakfast at 7h15...quit a challenge for some of our players...
Game 1: Belgium – Russia (9am):
Good start from our side, Quickly leading by 3 points, not realy giving in and keeping our advantage.
Most Russian players are bigger, faster, are with more, but our guys have (the most of them) quit some years of experience already and have always been competing in the regular BE competition, and that shows.
Calm, very composed plays, no issues at all in playing against the Russian Zone defense, doesn’t seem to impress them at all.


2 times 45 minutes of play and winning with 13-5, clear victor (not so simple as the score might suggest though).
After lunch (great Pollish sausage with bread, vegetables, a little Nap, and some drills on Zone defense and offense against zone defense, we are of for our 2nd game:


Game 2: Belgium Ireland (17pm):
Oepffff...in not time Ireland leads by 3-0, 4-1....but after our guys got their focus back we saw a belgian team fighting back and slowly but surely doing great defenses and scoring subsequently...and the the wind picked up, ahh Ireland does not like to play against a zone leading to a half time score of 9-8 for Belgium. Ireland is basically scoring all their point with deep passes...


A good zone defense in second half (when ireland is against wind) and a changed Force Middle defense in second half (when ireland is with wind) allows us to make quit some turnovers and score most of them....


Our Play is not that good, a bit chaotic but we also seem to have found our deep passes (Hucks) which will allow us over the game to score some 6 points.


In the second half Belgium Scored 8 points, Ireland 3, so final result is Belgium 17, Ireland 11...and another win, great way to start the tournament.
I do think after having seen Italy, Great Britain and Czechoslowakia, that we might have played the easier teams in our pool.
On Day 3 we only have 1 game, against Great Britain, surely not a game to expect too much, but certainly will learn us how strong we really are.
Well that is it for now, getting ready, breakfast, warm-up and then...Probably our toughest game at EYUC 2011 against Great Britain!


==> Day 3:

Today we thought was going to learn us the real strength of our team...a game against GB juniors, the defending champions.
Our team was good spirited, relaxed, hey...othing to Loose in this game.
So we started off really well, leading by a 2-0 and a bit later by 4-2, (don’t believe the gameplay report, is not accurate)
GB had quit some issues with our newly introduced Horizontal stack which really worked out well, the guys are smart and executed to near perfection the Horizontal Stack play.


But then, GB is with 24 players, we are with 13 left, (Jules from Gentle is slightly Injured (ankle twist) so we decided to have him rest for today) and as the game prgresses we start feeling that a bit, Half time score GB:9, Belgium:6


After Half time we came back to 9-7, even had a point for 9-8 , just a few meters away from the end-zone, but didn’t score, so GB 10, BE 7, then GB really made use of their number advantage, our guys getting a bit tired, leading to a 16-10 score for GB.


But, what a game, really well played, if we would have had the numbers (3 or 4 guys more) i think we would have been creating the first Upset of the tournament by beating GB, but we didn’t...


Now the really important games are tomorrow,


First against Italy at 11am, then against Czech at 17 pm, these will determine who we play against n the layoff as of tomorrow, winning 1 means we avoir Germany and would possibly have France or Austria as opponents in the quarter finals (if all goes well and we don’t get serious beatings...otherwise we will play for places 9-12)
Well that is it for now, getting ready, warm-up and then...hoepfully win them, or at least 1!




==> Day 4:



Back with 14 players today, Jules has been taped in, no pain, and can play, that is the good news, for the rest, tough tough games for us and fatigue really starts showing. But we made it to the quarter finals.


Italy – Belgium: 17 –9, It took our guys a while to get rolling again, which led to a 9-4 lead for Italy at Half time, Second half was much better, (8-5 for italy) leading to a 17-9 end score. This was after all a good game from Belgium, definitely the numbers play against us, 14 players is tough, especially since the other teams all have 20 –25 players on their team.


Our Game against Chezh we should forget as soon as possible, i think we dropped 1 out of 3 passes, we can’t win if we we don’t keep the disc going of course. I am not going to g in any detail here, end score 17-7.


Today (Day 5) we play the quarter finals , so this is GOOD, the bad news is it is against Germany, they have played 6 games until now, and only had 30 goals against them, so this will be tough, near impossible, if we win we will play the semifinal and will be competing for places 1-4, if we loose the game we will be competing for places 5-8
Well that is it for now, getting ready, warm-up and then...!
Read summary 5 tomorrow!"

Keep on reading, and definitely support your national juniors, they are the future of our game and they are the ones who will be beating you in just a few years now (or will be joining you to beat others,haha)
Let's go Belgium !