Impact of High School on Club Nationals (Open)

Even though crusty old rsd addicts continue to loathe any poor new player who dares to post to the boards about high school ultimate the effect of the younger players on the sport is undeniable. Let's take for example the two of the semifinalists in the open division (Johnny Bravo and Seattle Sockeye), look at the rosters and see how many played competitive high school ultimate.

In my mind it is slowly becoming essential for club teams to recruit and maintain talented younger players from their area, and you'll notice that the succesful teams incorporate and involve developing players in their programs and allow them to develop into major parts of the machine.

Now im not saying that it is impossible to win without players who formerly or currently play(ed) in high school, but i think it will become apparent in the next 4-6 years (or less) that high school ultimate has a major major impact on the club scene in the USA.

Anyway, to the rosters...

Sockeye
Location: Seattle, WA

Roster
No.	HS	Name	Height
00	*	Ryan Seguine	5’10’’
1	*	Jimmy Chu	6’0’’
2		Roger Crafts	5’10’’
3		Blaine Robbins	6’3’’
5		Ben Wiggins	5’10’’
6	*	Danny Trytiak	5’8’’
7	*	Chase Sparling-Beckley	6’4’’
8		Seth Crockford	5’10’’
9	*	Sam O’Brien	5’10’’
10	*	Moses Rifkin	6’2’’
13		Matt Sewell	5’9’’
14	*	Sam Chatterton-Kirchmeier	6’2’’
16		Thomas Sebby	6’4’’
17	*	Jeremy Cram	6’0’’
20		Mike Caldwell	6’2’’
21	*	Dave Bestock	6’0’’
22		Mark Stone	6’1’’
23		Andrew Fleming	5’11’’
24	*	Alex Nord	6’4’’
27		Ryan Winkelmann	5’9’’
34		Will Henry	5’8’’
56		Mike Jaeger	5’11’’
44		Jaime Arambula	5’5’’
99	*	Ray Illian	6’2’’

Johnny Bravo
Location: Boulder, CO

Roster
No.	HS	Name	Height
1	*	Kyle Weisbrod	5'9"
2		Wilmer Wilson	5'11"
3		Will Deaver	5'8"
4	*	Colin Gottlieb	5'9"
7	*	Hector Valdivia	5'11"
9	*	Steven Rouisse	5'11"
10	*	Adam Simon	5'11"
11		Brett Kolinek	5'10"
12		Forrest Collins	5'11"
13		David Street	6'4"
16		Ryan Farrell	5'9"
19		Parker Krug	5'11"
20		Josh Ackley	5'10"
22		Matty Lipscomb	5'10"
25	*	Justin Salvia	5'8"
28		Martin Cochran	6'2"
38		Andrew Mangan	6'2”
50		Beau Kittredge	6'2"
60	*	Jolian Dahl	6'1"
77		William Brotman	5'8"
84		Adam Zwickl	5'10"
89		Mitch Schminke	6'1"
15	*	Teddy Tripoli	5'9"

this information was compiled from personal knowledge, various posts on RSD, and will be updated in accordance with your comments - if you have any further information please post it.

Top 7 PlayUltimate Hacks

ok, so you know PlayUltimate is the definitive source for high school ultimate news and commentary, yada yada or you wouldnt be here. however, there are a few things you can do to make full use of all the possibilities the site offers...

the top 7 -

1. get firefox. seriously, do it now. don't mess around with internet explorer any more, its not worth it. firefox protects better against adware, spyware, pop-ups, it loads pages faster and hell makes the site look better. you also get tabbed browsing, unlimited extensions, customizeable themes, and a ton more. all FOR FREE. its open source software, thus its free. literally entirely free. there is no reason not to get firefox, its a beautiful thing. (scroll down on the right hand side for a link to download firefox)

2. RSS feeds, wonderful, beautiful little time-saving creatures. Just click on the RSS tab to the right and click on one of the chicklets for whatever RSS aggregator you currently use. You can also just click on the "subscribe to this feed" link below any post on the site. If you dont currently use an RSS reader i highly highly encourage it. Google Reader is what i use and my personal favorite at the moment. Or if getting all of your information from the various blogs and news sites you frequent all in one easy to use, convenient location is too nerdy for you, you can also use RSS feeds to get an update by email whenever there is a new post. (just click on the RSS tab and put in your email address)

3. Connecting users and readers from all over the place: the Frappr!, and Facebook Group are great ways to connect with other high school ultimate enthusiasts from around the country. Im not a myspace user, but if someone wants to start something there, go for it.

4. promoting the site: see something you like in a post? click the link below is to Digg it, or add it as a bookmark on del.icio.us. If you have your own website you can also use some of the cool tools on the right hand side of the page (scroll down a little) to add a link to your webpage, you can even put scrolling headlines from the site in your myspace, xanga etc. also, think someone you know would find an interest in the thing you just read? below every post there is a link to "email this" to a friend. they get no spam or anything like that whatsoever, just the article you forward to them.

5. recent site comments, if you look to the right, there is a box showing the most recent comments on the site. if you are wondering where new things have been posted, just glance here and click on the timestamp to go directly to the comment.

6. archives! the archives are becoming an awesome resource for information about past high school ultimate events and coverage. research an upcoming opponent, prepare for a tournament, or figure out things from other's mistakes. just click on the "archives" tab and then you can look by month or you can search the entire site for something specific.

7. high school ultimate videos - we are attempting to build a sizeable collection of high school ultimate videos. we dont host any of them, we just link to them on youtube, or google video etc, so if you hear of a video, or for that matter see one, post a comment or send an email and we will post it on the site. right now we link to 17 different videos over 3 years, not too shabby, but wed like to make it a bit more comprehensive.

hopefully this provides some new and fun stuff to do around the site and as always if you have any suggestions ideas or tips, dont hesitate to email them to PlayUltimateBlog@gmail.com

CHS: Westerns 2006 Open Story - HD Added

Our Westerns 2006 Open Story is now available for download (and streaming). The short film tells the story of our open team at this last years' Westerns Championship in Boulder, CO. It follows the boys through Saturday pool play and into the outcome of Sunday.

It is available in 3 different versions, with 2 in HD:

Westerns2006Story (ipod video - m4v - 347.4MB) - 640 x 360
Westerns2006Story HD (mpg4 - mov - 1042MB) - 1280 x 720 (STREAMS)
Westerns2006Story (divx video - DivX - 291.7MB) - 720 x 400
Westerns2006StoryHD (divx video - DivX - 858.6MB) - 1280 x 720

Update: the film has now been dowloaded more than 437 times and pushed over 99Gigs from my host server!

The film has generate a bit of controversy. Some of this has come out in the comments that have been added to this post and as I stated in one of the comments, I would like to make it clear that this video is our story and both the challenges and frustrations that went along with it are part of that experience. I hope that you can watch the following and see it for what it is worth. And though our disappointing finish at this last years' westerns can be attributed to the specific games against Lakeside and South Eugene, our collapse is ultimately our own responsibility and blame solely lands on us.

Open Thread: Weekend Tournaments and Club Nationals

Big weekend for ultimate - Cold Fusion will be taking place in Eugene, OR and at the very same time (actually games began today) Club Nationals are taking place in Sarasota, FL.

So feel free to post results for, or talk about either tournament, anyone know high school players who are playing in club nationals? Already there have been some upsets, Revolver over DoG in pool play leading into power pools which begin tomorrow.

Any predictions from the crowd for either tournament? Score reporter has some ideas for Cold Fusion. On the club side can someone break the strangehold of the northwest? Its gonna be an interesting weekend, comment all the way through.

Keep it here folks.

[Edit 10/27 @ 11:03pm] - check out Alex DeFrondeville's recaps of nationals days one and two from the DoG perspective. The UPA also has writeups availiable at their site - http://club2006.upa.org . Cold Fusion action begins tomorrow, let everyone know whats going on if you've got information.

Cold Fusion - October 28th, 29th

Eugene, OR - 5 days from now, 15 ultimate teams from up and down the West Coast will converge upon Eugene to open up their seasons with the long-running Cold Fusion juniors tournament. Though this tournament comes long before most High School teams even begin their competitive season, Cold Fusion promises to matchup some of the best programs from the 2006 Western National Championships in a mixed 4-3 format. This is now to say however, that the entire tournament will be dominated by agressive powerhouses, on the contrary, many teams are splitting into X and Y, or A and B (even C!) teams to provide good competition at every level. For the first time Cold Fusion boasts a Middle School Division, where three young (but amazingly talented) teams will show the world that they're the Future of Ultimate. It promises to be a weekend of exciting High School Ultimate, and the first showing from some of the best teams from the West Coast.


Below are the pools and seedings as published (subject to change). Let the hype begin.


A Pool
(1) CHS A
(6) Lakeside
(7) HOTI
(12) Raw Meat

Pool B
(2) Dark Meat
(5) South X
(8) CHS B
(11) Windchill

Pool C
(3) MoHo
(4) Tribe
(9) South Y
(10) CHS C

Pool M
Junior Meat
Kennedy
Roosevelt

Weekend Open Thread - Fall Brawl Edition

Fall Brawl this weekend in Jersey, and im sure teams are playing elsewhere. Use this thread to post any scores if you hear em. If you play individual games against other teams, people would love to hear the results (in addition to posting em on the score reporter of course) as well. So feel free to post em here.

Enjoy

Fall Brawl - Oct 21 - Excitement Brews...

So right after Kit Kat in terms of prestige for the east coast tournaments has got to be the Fall Brawl, only in its third year it is already attracting talented teams from Needham, Mass. to Beacon in NY, to Columbia to PA powerhouse Pennsbury.

The weekend will definitely prove to be one of the better indicators (in the fall season) for Easterns this spring. While no easterns prognostications will be in any way valid until the full range of competition can be assessed in the spring, many of these teams may be counted among those with the talent to be considered.

All that being said, this is going to be an intense tournament. The teams...

Pennsbury Peyote (PA)
Needham Ultimate (MA)
Columbia HS (NJ)
Princeton P-Huc (NJ)
Beacon Blue Demons (NY)
Watchung Hills Warriors (NJ)
Scarsdale Hellfish (NY)
Stuyvessant Stickyfingers (NY)
JP Stevens HS (NJ)
Cheltenham Spirit Animals (PA)
Pennsbury B-Unit (PA)
Central Bucks East Nasty (PA)
Columbia High School B (NJ)
Watchung Hills Warriors JV (NJ)

Pennsbury and Columbia have already begun to prove their dominance in PHUEL and NJ tournaments respectively, however many of these teams will be making their first fall appearances. (note: look for a writeup of Pennsbury and Columbia's fall seasons as of yet coming next week... seriously im working on it, swear to frisbee.)

However all of them enter as traditionally strong teams -

Needham arrives as one of the stronger teams from Massachusetts, and if the UPA score reporter has been adequately updated they are returning considerable numbers from the previous year.

Watchung Hills comes in having had a strong program since the late 90s, where they took teams to consecutive national appearances. While they may have trailed off for their program's standards in the past few years they have opened this season undefeated, and having not lost a game since June 11 when they lost to Columbia 10-13. It will be interesting to see how they fair in this tournament, if their early season results are a product of competition or rather that this is a renaissance of sorts for their program.

CB East returns after a big season last year finishing 2nd in the state to Pennsbury. However they have lost big names like Eddie Peters as well as a few other members of the national champion Philly SEPDA team, so again this tournament will be a very interesting indicator of their potential for the spring. Even moreso because they were conspicuously absent from Kit Kat this year, which from my recollection might be the first time since the inception of the tournament 11 years ago - i have to check my sources on that though.

Princeton comes into the tournament looking to prove something to its critics who say they have graduated too many stars to remain a strong program. However i think it would be a stretch to put them any lower than the third best team in New Jersey right now. Their competition being Columbia and Watchung Hills

Rounding out the top teir according to the automated rankings is Lower Merion who literally graduated every member of their team last year (to many formidable collegiate ultimate programs i might add). However this is not a team without any experience, the A team now consists of last years B-team - underclassmen who gained valuable playing time experience playing tournaments in A's shadow for the past year. If things stay the way they were last year they are also Coached by Paul Minecci, a Philadelphia ultimate legend for those not in the know, so i wouldnt count them out for a second.

In the semifinals i would expect Pennsbury and Columbia, but the other two teams are a bit more up in the air. Needham will make a serious bid for one of them, but their opponent could be any one of the dark horses named above (or perhaps someone i've neglected to mention).

No matter what the makeup of semis or finals it promises to be an exciting tournament that will give a good indicator as to the potential of a lot of these teams for the spring.

[Fall Brawl UPA Score Reporter Site]
[Fall Brawl Tournament Site]
[Picture at top is c/o Mark Rosser - Pennsbury after winning 11th Annual Kat in the Hat]

Hooray! More coverage! New contributors!!

We are happy to announce the addition of two new contributors to the PlayUltimate family,

Jay Huerbin who will be covering the Pittsburgh region
-and-
Lou Abramowski who will be handling Minneapolis and greater Minnesota area

We are happy to have them and look forward to reading all their posts!

On a side note, i promised that Columbia and Pennsbury preview last week, it didnt work out. It seem though, that whenever it does eventually get written and posted it will still be salient, given that Peyote and CHS faced off in the finals of the first tournament they both entered - seems like that might turn out to be a bit of a theme through the rest of the season.

I promise it will come at some point though.

Northwest Club Open Regionals

Just thought I'd start a post that I hope to finish tomorrow...

A few of our best HS players in the country are playing in one of the best regions in the country; The Northwest with the likes of Seattle Sockeye, San Francisco Jam (now known as Justice League), Portland Rhino and the new and upcoming Hippo loosely based in Portland. If you haven't been following the action, you should because four of these teams will be heading to Nationals in a few weeks and very likely winning it.

Also exciting is that at least 2 of the teams at this year's regionals have high school players on their rosters. Already mentioned has been Jacob Janin of South Eugene HS who plays for Hippo. They did fairly well today and kept their number 2 position in their pool. They will be facing Rhino tomorrow morning who had lost to Furious in the Saturday afternoon Semi-final match up. What you might not know is that Jacob Janin's older brother, Eli Janin (sophomore at the UofO and played for Churchill HS in Eugene, OR) continues to play for Rhino. Also making things even more interesting is that both Jacob's and Eli's dad, Jay Janin, plays for Hippo...

What you probably didn't know is that an unknown team named District 7, put as the last seed in the A pool with Sockeye, is made up of (and I can only guess led by) a cast of 3 of best HS players in the country right now from Northwest School in Seattle, WA named Jeremy Norden, Ben Vargus, and Riley (cannot remember your last name). They ended up breaking seed this afternoon to a well known California team named the Oaks. They then got the privilege of playing Blackfish (D3) in Hippo's pool. They beat them by some score (unknown to me) and now will be playing Invictus at 8am Sunday morning. They win that game and they have a 3 more games to make it as the 4th seed and birth to Nationals...

UPDATE: If you didn't already see, Hippo ended up being beat by Rhino who went on to get the 4th seed. Eli Janin now becomes the first Churchill HS graduate to make it to a Club National Level Championship. Congrats to him and good luck to Rhino. Hippo ended up being tied for 6th place (or right around there) and District 7 ended the day somewhere in the 13/14 spot after lossing Sunday to both Invictus (15-3) and then to the Oaks (unknown score). Congrats to all the HS players who did so well in the open series.