USA Ultimate

 
The 2010 USA Ultimate Club Championships in Sarasota, Fla. are just around the corner. Leading into the championships, usaultimate.org will feature previews for each division, courtesy of our team of contributors who will be on the scene in Florida to cover the event for the website and USAUltimate magazine.
 
Throughout the event, October 28-31, be sure to visit usaultimate.org for complete coverage of the tournament, including daily reports from each division – Masters, Mixed, Open and Women’s – round-by-round highlight videos produced by UltiVillage, multiple daily photo galleries from USAU photographers Matt Lane and Scott Roeder, and a daily wrap-up webcast of highlights, commentary and reaction from the day’s competition. Also, be sure to check out live video streaming of all championship games!
 
Be sure to follow all the action at usaultimate.org and discuss the tournament on our message boards.

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2010 USA Ultimate Club Championships
Masters Division Preview

By: Tony Leonardo, special to usaultimate.org
 
Much like the Mixed division about seven years ago, the Masters division is shaping up as a strong division and less of an excuse to party. With more teams dedicating themselves to conditioning, tournaments and the obligatory recruiting, the competition has naturally increased.
 
These days a strong Masters team more closely resembles a top-tier Open team, perhaps just a shade below USAU Championships level. Teams run hard and rosters run deep.
 
The addition of the Grand Masters division has created more tournament opportunities and the increased sense of a season with cross-continent rivals.
 
And finally—thankfully—the trend of naming your Masters team after some process of aging has gone out of fashion. No more teams with "old" in their name, no more mileage references or anything to do with undergarments – well I guess you have to give props to the SW team Depends, though.
 
This year’s new crop of first-time teams? Slow Country Boil, Le Tigre, Rumble and Fig Jam. Not a single reference to Icy Hot at all.

POOL PREVIEW

Pool A: "The International Pool"
 

The top three teams in this pool all competed at Club Worlds in Prague this summer and a fourth, the DC/Philly combo Chesapeaked, sent both their captains and a third of their team with OLD SAG.
 
If Worlds was an indication of team strength then Surly wins this easily and Chesapeaked moves up a few spots. While its tempting, the truth is that Worlds will not be a forecaster.
 
Surly has kept its ex-Sub Zero roster largely intact and the additional add-on of Ron Kubulanza for Worlds will also pay off in Sarasota. Surly is returning the entire core of the team that won in 2008 and lost in the finals last year and there is nothing to suggest their number-one seeding won’t be maintained throughout. The have all the tools, can they remain hungry (and not just thirsty?)
 
GLUM (Green Light Ultimate Masters) looked ordinary in Prague: at Regionals they beefed up considerably, ran endlessly and cut down on turnovers. They fronted and out-hustled DoG, posting a 13-10 win. Coming in fifth in Sarasota last year, this team is a strong bet for semis and is seeded correctly. It should be noted that this Toronto-Ottawa collective is now the longest-running Masters team at the Championships.
 
Calgary’s Fig Jam also looked unspectacular at Worlds but like GLUM are bringing a huge and deep roster to Sarasota and only five of those guys were in Prague. This fourth-year team is filled out with experienced players from Troubled Past, Big Sky and Throwback – teams who have all had great success at the Championships. Fig Jam absolutely rolled the competition at Northwest Regionals and that can never be a picnic. Expect this team to work hard and be kept under the radar for only so long. Saturday will tell the tale with three good matches.
 
Atlanta’s Ball & Chain is in its second season and brought on 13 new players this year to add to last year’s heartening Sarasota appearance where they started off 0-5 but finished with three straight wins including a victory against Boneyard. They are definitely looking towards a run at semis but will face stiff competition to get there.
 
Chesapeaked is the most interesting piece of the puzzle. Led by Washington D.C. stalwarts AJ Iwaszko and Phong Trieu and having picked up a strong core of OLD SAG, this mash-up team could either compete against themselves like 2009 Regionals or their recent Regionals 15-5 loss to Boneyard, or they could rise to the occasion behind their abundant talent and experience and upset their way to quarters. Be especially wary of Patrick Mackie on the field, this tall and rangy Texan is hard to stop.
 
Rounding out the pool is the Southwestern collective Le Tigre, nominally an Arizona team but (like many teams) carrying a few from the Colorado Double Black collapse and some former Ironwood players. At Southwest Regionals they posted Saturday sandbag-like scores, a 13-0 loss to the Beyondors and a 13-3 loss to a Nationals-hopeful Nice Guys (San Diego). On Sunday they took the game-to-go against Nice Guys 15-7, a remarkable reversal. They carry a large roster for Sarasota and could be a sneaky contender.
 

Pool B: "Domestic Legacies Pool"

Whereas Pool A has both Canadian teams and four teams from Worlds, Pool B is more traditional: domestic teams based on the legacies of former Championship club Open greats from Santa Barbara, Boston, Raleigh-Durham and Chicago.
 
Let’s start with the re-formed Beyondors, nominal heirs to the two-time Condors National Champions from a decade ago. Last year’s Beyondors roster was an exact replica of 1996-2004, but this year’s Beyondors are nothing alike. The team was actually put together by veterans from another former Masters team from Southern California – Tempus Fugit. They added guys from Dallas’ Mileage (who bowed out to a disappointing 8th at Nationals last year), Double Black and those eponymous Condors, specifically Dugan, Lobue, Headley and LeFevre. And that’s it. This team is more SoCal in name than Condors and it will be a test to see if preserving the name and prestige will pay off in Sarasota.
 
Boneyard, according to an old teammate of mine who played against them at Regionals, was "the best Masters team I’ve played against in 10 years." With Ring of Fire standard bearers like Ray Parrish, Brian Lang, Jon Proctor and Augie Kreivenas on the roster and a bunch of new and fast guys, that high praise may not be so far-fetched. Their only hitch may be that they were never tested, having only played three quick games at Regionals. All comfortable wins. This team might be the bettor’s upset pick to win it all.
 
Death or Glory seemed ready to concede an end to its remarkable two-decade run after neck surgery to leader Jim Parinella in the off-season, a decision not to go to Worlds and a winless Sectionals appearance. Instead the core offense—ten or so guys who have played together for almost the entire DoG run—are back to follow Parinella and Alex DeFrondeville. They lost some of their patented "Rent-a-D" players but filled those spots with always-dependable jet-setter Calvin Lin, a handful of tall and athletic Northeasterners and notable Colorado talent thanks to super-recruiter Dave "Flash" Fausel to construct what is yet again a formidable team
 
Chicago’s Real Huck is another group with a core of players who come from established club open teams with multiple Siesta Key stays. Last year they came close to making a semis breakthrough after starting off with an upset of the favored Beyondors. They eventually faced stiff competition in quarters and fought hard, but fell to a respectable seventh place. This year with the same group of guys back, and led by Paul Callaway, Gary LeDonne and Eric Zaslow, among others, expect them this team to have a little more in the bank for a deeper run.
 
For the first time in recorded history, more than the minimum number of Masters teams showed up to a Regional tournament (happened in the Northeast with eight teams) and less than the minimum showed up in the Northwest (with only four). As a result, the Masters anti-wildcard came into play and the NW lost a bid and the NE gained it by virtue of strength of last year’s Championships. Rumble, a collective of ex-Above and Beyond, ex-DoG, ex-Red Tide, ex-all over, took that third bid. They are a surprise seed here at #9, perhaps, but their Frankenstein-like roster includes plenty of Nationals veterans and enough run and gun that they could upset some of these top teams.
 
Charleston, South Carolina’s Slow Country Boil came to Regionals in Texas as a second-year team and put up good numbers on top seed Ball & Chain on Saturday, losing by one. By Sunday, however, things were different. They lost by 9 to Atlanta but still won out to make their first trip to Sarasota. With a small roster of 19 and only 17 making the trip, depth and experience may be an issue for this tournament but good home cooking will not.
 
More Masters Division Notes:
 
GAME SCHEDULE
 
SCORE REPORTER
 
TEAMS & ROSTERS