Rob Brice with a nasty lay out grab! photo by Tori Stelter
Florida is still Nationals caliber
They couldn’t go back to Nationals without Brodie right? Well they definitely can’t go back without Cole Sullivan, Alex Hill, Alton Gaines, and Nathan Sage right? It’s early in the season, but all signs point to Florida continuing their dominance of the South East Region. Despite being down 4-2 to Georgia in the Finals, Florida brought the deficit to 8-7 at half, and then ran away in the second half to a 15-10 victory. How did they do it? Suffocating defense.
Miguel Palaviccini was a big presence on the field for Florida in 2011 - photo by Scaughty
Sky’d Magazine – Southeast Florida Gator Preview
by Bryan Jones
With contributions from John Legend
In the 2011 USA Ultimate College Championship Series, the Florida Gators emerged victorious in the quest to capture the lone bid from the Southeast Region. The Regional restructuring was both a blessing and a curse for these newly organized Southeast teams. While they no longer had to contend with the programs from North Carolina, South Carolina, or Virginia for Nationals berths, their Southeast region did not have enough depth or competitiveness to garner more than one bid to Boulder.
Looking forward into the 2012 season, a number of established powerhouses and growing programs will be looking to dethrone the Gators.
Fallout is Gainesville’s annual hat tournament hosted by the ladies of FUEL. It is one fun-filled day of Frisbee, complete with co-ed teams, prizes, and of course some good-natured competition. Despite Janus being the same weekend and pulling some of our players away, Fallout still managed to host about 180 people!
This year FUEL decided to hold a draft, rather than for one person to be left trying to put all the teams together. Friday night before the tournament we all got together for our draft party and potluck. After all, what is the night before a tournament without some quality carb loading? Although things got heated at times, we all had a good time picking our teams and bonding as a team. I think drafting our own teams was an awesome idea and allowed some of the newer players to serve as captains, gaining some great leadership experience.
Team Spikeball from Fallout X
I was co-captain of the Yellow team (Team SpikeBall) with Jenna Dahl. I’ve always loved playing with Jenna and I was excited to be partnered with her again this year. We had a couple pre-draft meetings to start looking up players and getting our desired picks in order. When the draft rolled around we were able to put together a solid team, comprised of all of our best friends.
At the end of last year, the future of FUEL was up in the air. They just lost the majority of their best players (Kate, Bobo, Michelle, Meg, Pav, Dani, Kuhse, Alicia, Stacie, Stephanie) and they all knew they would have to “man up” and push the team forward. After recruiting some excellent athletes and working hard during the Fall season, FUEL is all very excited to shine at their upcoming tournaments. They are all happy with where the team is headed, and they all know what they need to work on to meet their goals. Since their team is relatively new (lots of rookies), they can improve on the basics of the game and on fine tuning their mechanics while delving into some complex strategy. Even after this year, FUEL has a bright future ahead, due to passionate players, dedicated leadership, and a damn good reputation to uphold!
FUEL 2012!
Captains Jackie Fane and Emily Roberts help us break down the 2012 FUEL team:
NGN is an evolution of the live streaming NexGen provided for the USAU Club Championships last year. We saw the potential for an online television network that regularly broadcasted ultimate using multi-camera setups, elevated perspective, instant replays and expert commentary.
New technology and the rise of the Internet mean professional production values are no longer the sole domain of major sports networks. We’re excited to discover what this means for sports and television and in doing so bring the world’s best ultimate into the homes of tens of thousands of people around the world.
We’re asking the ultimate community to help us put these first two tournaments on the air with our promise that we’ll be able to deliver more games and events in the future (think Easterns, ECC, Labor Day, WFDF World Championships, NexGen Tour, etc.) The long-term sustainable success for NGN requires a strong fan base that demands live ultimate—the kind of fan base that can help us raise $20,000.
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