The 22nd March saw the Victorian Flying Disc Association host the inaugural “East Vs West” Showcase Game in Elwood. Teams were selected by the VFDA with teams being split along a line down the centre of Melbourne/Victoria to determine either East or West allegiance.

The feature game was preceded by a Country East (predominantly Traralgon players) Vs Country West (Geelong and Ballarat players) that ended in the more experienced albeit younger, Country West’s favour.

I was lucky enough to be a member of the West team for the feature game. Both sides were obviously all-star teams and neither had practiced together prior to the game, so the first team to gel would likely get ahead early on. The conditions were very windy, but as the captains had decided at the start of the game – no zone defence would be played. The crowd was appreciative as they were treated to a game dominated by long throws and pack grabs at both ends of the field as both teams played a man-on-man defence.

After trading for the first few points, East scored an upwind point breaking the mark all the way down the field. It was a defining moment in the game and West never managed to recover the upwind point they had conceded. In the end, East rolled over the West team in a convincing fashion.

In what was a thorough team performance, David Knight and Lauren Brown from the East team were awarded as Male and Female Most Valuable Players of the Game.

The “East Vs West” game was a fantastic initiative by the VFDA that brought players of all levels and from all over Victoria together to appreciate a high quality game.

Check out photos from the game in our Photo Gallery.

Up until this point, six weeklong youth Ultimate camps had been organised in Australia since the first one in January 2004. Upon returning to Australia, Matt and I had somehow been coerced into running the seventh!

The location for the camp was Ballarat, Victoria – our hometown – which made things a little easier than they could have been. After much preparation, 50 youth players arrived in Ballarat from WA, SA, Tassie, NSW, QLD, ACT and of course Victoria. The hardest part of the whole organisation for the camp (believe it or not) was collecting all the campers from the two airports and getting them to Ballarat! The volunteer support staff for the camp were many. They included head coaches, assistant coaches, people who made meals and looked after the players, people who taxied back and forth between the fields and the shops with bags of ice, people who drove a bus full of kids down to Ballarat from Queensland (!), and Matt and I – the Camp Directors.

One of the highlights, particularly for us, was the arrival of our good friend Jaime “Idaho” Arambula who had been one of our hosts in Seattle three months prior. Idaho is an excellent coach so Piers Truter (Australia’s U/20 Open Head Coach) had requested that the Australian Flying Disc Association fly him over from America to assist with our coaching for the week. After much discussion, it ended up happening, and Idaho became our guest for the week.

The coaches ran a great program and the improvement from day one through to day five was overwhelming among all the campers. For many, this was the first formal Ultimate Frisbee camp they had been to – so their skills improved out of sight. The week was also used as an initial scouting for talent for the 2010 U/20 teams that will compete at the World Championships in Germany.

At the end of a long week of logistics all the volunteers were tired but overall pretty chuffed with how well the camp ran. The skills we learnt running a camp of this size are invaluable and I am sure it will not be the last camp that we end up running….

To all the campers – I hope you go on to have an enjoyable playing career and find the sport of Ultimate to be as fulfilling as many of us have found it to be. And to all the volunteers – thanks so much for your contributions throughout the week, these things just don’t happen with out all the people willing to put in the hard yards!

See you at the next one!

Recently, Ultimate Victoria ran the Ultimate Frisbee segment of the Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation Conference (better known as ACHPER). The two-day conference for PE Teachers throughout Victoria was held at Monash University, Clayton campus. The Ultimate Frisbee session ran on the second day and was a great success with over twenty teachers from both regional and metropolitan schools attending the session.

Dan explains the backhand

The session included a brief introduction to the sport and then touched on many of the fundamentals of the game including preferred techniques for catching and throwing a disc. Many teachers commented on the Spirit of the Game aspect of the sport citing that it is a new and interesting concept when compared to modern mainstream sports (Ultimate Frisbee is a self-refereed sport that is played under the concept of Spirit of the Game where players are trusted to play fairly and honestly). Spirit of the Game is a great element of Ultimate Frisbee that can help to develop sportsmanship as well as provide many opportunities for conflict resolution in a competitive environment.

Steve Campbell talks tactics

Inclusion in the ACHPER conference is a great thing for the continued development of the sport of Ultimate Frisbee. Teachers who attended the session should now feel confident to teach many important aspects of the game. All teachers were provided with drills for a school team to practice, as well as shown other Frisbee games that can be used in a school class.

We look forward to returning to the ACHPER conference in November 2009. We are aiming to run multiple sessions in 2009 to avoid clashes with other sessions. If you are a Victorian PE teacher, we hope to see you there next year!

After learning about Ultimate Frisbee while watching an episode of Family Guy, Steve Heller, 21, decided to give the sport a go. Little did he know that this would soon result in him becoming the first ever league co-ordinator of the Traralgon Ultimate Frisbee League that would follow. With 50 newly registered players comprising 5 new teams, it’s fair to say everyone was a little surprised (and impressed)! After the league had been running on an indoor court for 2 months, Heller made the decision to move outdoors. Soon after, Ultimate Victoria made their way out to run a short session prior to a league game. Many of the players were still just learning their forehands and developing their understanding of both offensive and defensive concepts.

During the days either side of the league clinic, UV coached at Traralgon College and introduced approximately 125 students to the game. There was a lot of talent and enthusiasm at all of the sessions. Hopefully this bodes well for the future of Ultimate in Traralgon. UV plans to head back out to Gippsland early in the New Year.

If you are interested in playing at the Traralgon Ultimate League it runs Mondays 6:30 @ Agnus Brereton Park, Breed Street Traralgon.

Contact Us  for more information.

Following the World Ultimate Championships in Vancouver, Matt and I decided to get some bang for our buck and hang around a little while rather than heading back to Australia with the teams. After a week or so of catching buses here, there and everywhere in Canada, we crossed the border and landed in Seattle USA, a world-renowned hotbed of Ultimate. Seattle teams are known for their offensive flair with the Frisbee as well as innovation in training methods. In Seattle, we were to be coaching at the Annual Seattle Youth Ultimate Camp run by DiscNW. This camp is much larger than any youth Ultimate camp held in Australia with approximately 200 participants across two different venues for the weeklong camp.

On the first day, we met coaches from the Seattle area including some members of the USA national team that were along to assist with coaching. Unfortunately, the first couple of days featured some persistent rain so there was a lot of time spent to-ing and fro-ing in and out of doors in between lots of throwing and games.

Throughout the week, we experienced many different teaching methods as we worked with different coaches. We were impressed by the relative skill level of the young players. For the most part, they generated tremendous amounts of spin on the disc and good decision making when making passes downfield. I guess that is a product of picking up the sport at a young age and having access to fantastic coaching!

Many of the young players who attended the camp play for a High School team in Seattle and some even play on various club teams. Two weeks after the camp, we ran into a bunch of the campers in Burlington, Washington as they played a tournament with their team Small Fries (pictured).

The future of Ultimate Frisbee is secured in Seattle with a strong Association in DiscNW, great coaching in schools and many competitive touring teams. Seattle really is at the forefront of developing the sport and we met many interesting and helpful people that took an interest in our plans to grow the sport in Australia. Hopefully many of them make it over to Australia in the coming years to check on our progress!

Thanks for having us Seattle! Good on ya!

The Australian Youth Ultimate Championships is held annually in Sydney. This year it was held in July with open and women’s teams travelling from Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and across New South Wales to compete. Players also came from WA, Tassie and ACT.

The Victorian teams, Cooties (Coached by Greta Hunt) and Heads of State Youth (Coached by Matt Hill and Dan Rule) both performed exceptionally with both teams going through the tournament undefeated to capture their respective titles.

The Cooties team consisted of players from Melbourne, Geelong and the Ballarat area with many of them going on to win Silver for Australia in the Junior Women’s division in Canada. The Heads of State Youth team featured many Australian representatives as well. The 2008 victory for Heads of State Youth follows on from HoSY’s Australian Youth Ultimate Championships victory in 2006.