Last time I posted to this blog was in April 2009, in Israel. Well, it’s July 2010, and I’m in Israel again. But this post is about Prague.
I flew to Prague with some other Seattle folk via Paris. In Paris, I had a croissant and cafe au lait, just because. Arrival Prague, got myself to the hostel. Met up with teammates, walked for a long time in the heat up a big hill in flip flops. Gorgeous city. All the buildings’ facades are intricate and colorful and beautiful. Seeing the city from above is great, as cathedrals point up and the river winds under bridges, and one can imagine life here through the ages.
Next day we, my ultimate team Seattle Sockeye, moved into the dorms we’d be staying at, aka the barracks. Communist era prison type dorms. But all in all, just fine and dandy. World Cup games are on at normal times on this side of the Atlantic. The beer in prague is good and cheap. Crowns = Kroners = Money. About 20 to the dollar.
I was in Prague to play in the World Ultimate Frisbee Championships. We played ultimate everyday for 7 days. It was hot, and beautiful. One night there was horrendous rain and lightning and thunder, and at one point the lightning and thunder were not so separate and the thunder was also electric. Exciting. Probably the team Chain Lightning (ranked #1 after winning last year’s Nationals) got excited, but then at the end of the tournament they were sad.
We lost a game on day 3 to Revolver from the Bay Area, a team that has had our number for the last year or so. The game got called due to lightning at 13-10. Long days, a lot of just dorms->food->fields->repeat. We won all our other pool play games, so kept our #5 seed and were set to play our quarterfinals game as an evening showcase against Boston’s Ironside in one of the stadiums. All I knew of Boston was that we were going to be pretty evenly matched. There was a nice crowd of hundreds and hundreds of people, and the game did not disappoint. They put a clever zone on us early and caused a couple mistakes, but we figured it out and improved on offense. Late in the game our defense picked up, and we ended up winning 17-15. This made us the #4 seed, set to play semis against Chain Lightning, who was the strongest team at Nationals last year, and only got stronger on paper since then.
The 8:30a semis game was a good one. A lot of back and forth, with our defense making some nice adjustments to their offense. Because of time, we were capped and the game was to 16, this when we were down 15-13, receiving. We scored on offense, and got two breaks in a row to win on double game point 16-15. We were ecstatic. They were pissed. This meant we’d be in finals, and were guaranteed at least 2nd place. Turns out Chain lost to Japan’s Buzz Bullets and didn’t get a medal.
The tournament party was that night at a gorgeous park on a peninsula in Prague’s river. Wonderful. Our team got decked out in “Bro” gear, with our pink polo shirts spray painted with an “Abercrombie & Fish” logo. Pretty excellent. Unfortunately we were not able to “go big” that night because we had to play the next day. Ah well.
The finals were the next day at 2:30p, in the heat of the day. This was day 7 of playing. It was hot. We were matched up again against Revolver. We very much won the pre-game, singing and chanting and rapping and smiling in the “tunnel” before they announced our names. They were non plused. Unfortunately the game was theirs though. We were fatigued, and hadn’t really re-established our goals after exceeding our original goals of just getting into the finals. Personally, I played a terrible game, which sucked, and we lost by several. Silver medal to go along with the silver from 2008 worlds. This one felt a helluva lot better than the last though, when we wanted and expected to win.
The icing on the cake was that we won the Spirit Award, meaning out of 40-something mens teams from around the world, we received the highest cummalitive rating from our opponents over the course of the tournament. On one hand this was surprising, as it is rare for a finalist to also win spirit. On the other hand, it makes sense, because our team is so fun, and we exhibit joy on the field.
We “went big” that night at a 5-story dance club downtown. Hopefully the pictures stay private…
The next day I wandered Prague with friends, and went to the airport, watched the world cup finals, and got on a plane to Israel. One crazy adventure to the next.
This is far and away the longest I’ve sat at a computer since June. I’m going to go play badminton now.
