Singapore Ultimate Open 2015 – Quick Reactions
For those who were there, these are my takes on the weekend. If you disagree, reply below, or just be wrong all alone. For those who weren’t there, here’s what you missed.
Welcome Party: (cue tumbleweeds)
Venue: Turf City is an expansive venue that offers a large number of natural grass and artificial turf fields. The fields are very spread out and rather inconvenient to manage in their entirety on foot. The tourney organized a regular shuttle though that made the fields a lot easier to deal with and made the size close to a non-issue. Well-played.
Each of the two field areas had it’s own command center that organized the food, beer, round announcements, and medics. Nice.
The Grandstand, right next to one set of fields, is an air-conditioned restaurant center that also featured a supermarket and upscale vender area. It was great as a place to rest, grab eats if you weren’t into the tourney food, or grab extra drinks. Convenient.
The semifinals and finals were played in the field area next to the Grandstand. The tourney organizers had two mediocre grass fields or two slightly above mediocre turf fields to choose from for the big games. They put the games of turf. I believe they chose… poorly. We play on grass here. And those turf fields were pretty unforgiving in terms of heat, give and space for fans. How did you semifinalists and finalists feel about that?
The venue was not accessible easily by train or bus. And the taxi stand got absurdly busy after the games. This was annoying. Not avoidable perhaps, but annoying.
And I did hear some mumbling that the women’s division, the larger of the two on friday, found their way onto more crappy fields than the guys. Discuss.
Competition:
Open/Women’s: Lots of great games all three days. On friday in the Open division, Crackerjacks Well Done held off a strong Chinese Taipei squad on universe in their final game to lock up the top spot in the round robin format. They were carried by their Cambodian pickups Heng and Vutha. Crackerjacks Fresh Meat took the second slot due to losing head-to-head to their teammates. Chinese Taipei took third and Shiok, the only team to beat the champs on the day, took fourth.
In women’s, a rather dominant collection of singaporean women, ajumMARS, took the top spot. Chinese Taipei fought valiantly in the finals, but were overpowered. Zero Discplacement took third and the amazing women of India, Chick Flicks, took fourth.
Open Division Results:
1) Crackerjacks Welldone
2) Crackerjacks Freshmeat
3) Chinese Taipei
4) Shiok
5) Hardcore
6) Carebears
Womens Division Results:
1) ajumMARS
2) Chinese Taipei
3) ZD
4) Chick Flicks
5) Hibiscus
6) Chuckies
7) DT
8) Carebears
Most Spirited Teams:
Open: Chinese Taipei
Women: Chick Flick
Male MVP: Javyel Koh (Shiok)
Female MVP: Yi-Shan (Chinese Taipei)
Mythical 7:
– Janice (Chuckies)
– Sangeetha (Chick Flick)
– Amanda (Hibiscus)
– Lilia (ZD)
– Bobo (Chinese Taipei)
– Nick See (Shiok)
– Gordon (Crackerjacks Welldone)
Mixed: We can’t go as far as calling the weekend earth-changing yet, but how the weekend played out definitely showed some changes to the landscape of ultimate in Singapore.
Day One ended with a Chuckies team on top of the standings. Yes, Chuckies. But these aren’t the old Chuckies. These are the Ben Ho-improved Chuckies. Chuckies Stout defeated Rascals… and then beat Shiok (those worlds guys) to put the original 11th seed on top. Freakshow, undefeated as well, took the second seed and Shiok took the third. And then Chuckies Lager were fourth. Excuse me?
After Round of 16 games and Quarters were played, semis moved to the turf with Chinese Taipei (one of them) facing Chuckies Stout and Shiok against Freakshow. Chuckies fought hard against a very good Taiwan team, but couldn’t quite keep up with their pinpoint hucks. Taipei moves on.
On the other field old “friends” Freakshow and Shiok were tied up in a close battle. The game went to universe. Shiok pulled and got the D. Then they threw to the endzone and it was dropped. I had been commenting on the inefficiency of their D line right before that happened. Oh wait, foul call. Looked like a phantom call from the sidelines. Love to hear what the players saw. Disc goes back. Shiok puts it in for the win. (Freakshow won the third place game over Chuckies)
In the finals, Shiok went up a couple breaks because of defense. Chinese Taipei reeled the game in because of sweet hucks and Shiok sloppiness. Universe. Shiok scored and took the crown. A win is a win, but I’ve seen Shiok play better.
And Chuckies. Dang. Go Chuckies.
Mixed division results
1) Shiok
2) Chinese Taipei White
3) Freakshow Green
4) Chuckies Stout
5) Rascals
6) Zero Displacement
7) Chuckies Lager
8) DK Maroon
9) Chinese Taipei Blue
10) Lagi Shiok
11) Get Hucky
12) AUR
13) Carebears
14) Vortex
15) Thirsty Camels
16) Rojaks
17) Disctractors
18) HCUK
19) Indian Rush
20) Shuang
21) Freakshow White
22) DK Blue
23) Discindo
24) Guardians of Sexy
25) Little Rascals
26) DK Orange
27) Underdogs
28) Zero Gravity (4-3 on the weekend. Won last 2 games. Ya got me on this one)
Beer: There was beer on the fields. All three days. Actually a lot of it. There was still beer left after the finals. It was Corona though. Bottles. Bottles and caps are bad on fields. Lesson learned. Well done though.
Halftime Show: I was set to race against Praveen Kumar (aka Rocket), you know, that guy who won the footrace at U23 by a mile, at halftime of the final. He didn’t show. In discussions later we decided it probably would have ended up a tie. But I had a really good shot of winning. Rocket was scared.
Party: There was one! It was at a bar and everyone got 2 free beers and a bunch of food. The food wasn’t super impressive and the beer was Asahi. But this was pretty damn good for Singapore. And, as it was a Singapore party, most players didn’t show up so there was as much free beer as you could drink. One team actually took a bunch of beer to go. Some I spoke to were more fans of dancing than just standing around drinking. Me no. Basically this was just a bar where you got to hang out with your teammates and opponents and drink beer. And I liked it.
Mic: You couldn’t always really hear what Keeks was saying. Often he was saying that you were not allowed to bring beer bottles onto the turf fields. This I think people heard. Many disrespectful people brought bottles on the field anyway. He didn’t say no beer the liquid. There are other ways to carry liquid without being a dick (I was not perfect at this, as usual, but did correct my ways).
Anyway, what wasn’t reported on the Mic was the score. People watching had no clue. I had to walk around the field to get the info to report. This should be a major piece of information relayed. Along with critiques of players’ attractiveness.
Banana Boat Layout Challenge: This was a thing. A slip and slide thing. The top 5:
Fabian (FS Green)
Jonathan (DK Maroon)
AJAI (AUR)
Rocket (Indian Rush)
Gold (Indian Rush)
Respect for Elders: The team Zero Gravity was a reunion team of Freakshow players that had played 2000-2001. It featured the first UPA(S) president and many of the folks that helped found ultimate in Singapore. Any love for these guys? (cue crickets)
Volunteers and their Use: Volunteers are great always, but this was an especially good group. They kept score quickly. They also were given the responsibility to tell teams when they were running out of time to pull or end a time out. They did this politely but firmly. They did not have any enforcement power as far as I could tell, but players listened. great job volunteers and organizers.
Food: I don’t really eat field lunch. But there was one. The one review I heard was kinda negative. There was food for all as far as I could tell though.
Final Score: 8.2/10. Well done Singapore.
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2 Comments
joe
August 20, 2015Hey Jared,
Thanks for the write up. I totally agree with the turf field for semis. I know the grass isn’t the best, but the turf is way too hot and not ideal for laying out. Hopefully for semis and finals next time they put something else there.
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