03 Oct 2014
Friday, October 3, 2014

Ultiworld NE Mixed Regionals Preview.. background

Friday, October 3, 2014 0 Comment

Ultiworld had asked us to provide some information to them preceding NE Mixed Regionals in Devens. We wanted to be able to provide some information to an organization that is trying to bring legitimate news & discussion to ultimate.

However, we also didn’t want to open up the kimono too much prior to regionals and divulge anything that might hurt us. In the end, we settled on what we do best — had fun with the responses.

The Ultiworld article, written by the witty and (thankfully) affable and good-natured Alisha Schor, can be found in all its “mysterious” glory, can be found here: http://ultiworld.com/2014/09/24/ne-mixed-preview/

Our original and complete answers to her questions, are revealed below for your reading pleasure.

We may not be going to Texas in a couple of weeks, but we will keep on finding reasons to laugh.

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Questions:

  1. To start, can you give me a brief run-down of who you are and why you decided to play in the USAU series this year? How often do you practice, what’s the experience level of your team overall, etc.

We’re a mixed team from Toronto that’s the end result of many frustrating years of 3 different teams finishing 5th, 6th, and 7th at Canadian Nats. So we slammed it all together and over the years even attracted top talent from some surrounding ultimate communities as well.

  1. Does your USAU series roster differ much from your WUCC roster?

For medical reasons, Rob Ford felt he needed to decline his roster spot for fall series.

  1. Can you self-evaluate for me and tell me if you are where you’d hoped you’d be at this point in the year? Also maybe give me some of the highlights and lowlights of the regular season?

Finishing 5th at WUCC was short of our hopes but in perspective a great achievement. We have been challenging the top US teams all year and have always been within striking distance of winning tournaments. Finishing 4-2 against Wild Card, Slow White, and The Ghosts gives us confidence. 2014 Highlights include: scoring a stunning villa and sipping wine & slurping ACE gelato pool-/lake-side instead of staying in the WUCC apocalypse barracks; and getting away with WUCC player ID photos (still available on wing23) that included a computer-generated soccer player, a footlong hotdog mid-swallow, and a (fake) moustache & (real) nipple combo. The season lowlight was getting TMF’ed 6 times at the US Open for profanity (e.g. “F*, nice D man”). Oh yeah, another highlight was T’ing up an observer who kept giving us TMFs.

  1. Going into regionals, are you looking at the specific strengths & weaknesses of teams? This year, you’ve gotten to play Wild Card & Ghosts a lot for example. Do you prepare for particular matchups?

We all know that regular season rosters can change so much, especially with all of the travel involved this year, that rosters can appear pretty different from tournament to tournament. We definitely work on game plans for these teams but more importantly use them to critically evaluate what we struggle against, what needs work, and what we can add to our games. That said, we’ll definitely prepare for a universe point game. [NOTE: we ended up being 2 for 2 in universe point games in Devens!]

  1. What are one or two major things you’ve been working on between sectionals and regionals?

Learning names & getting enough jerseys. Wish we were kidding.

  1. If you had to choose one thing that you believe your team does better than anyone else in the region, or one quality that Union has, what would that be?

It’s a tie between Ladder Worlds and MFK.

  1. What’s your goal for the tournament?

Keep winning & if we get there, don’t lose that 1/2 game. Also, Fewer TMFs. Added bonus: leave with more friends than we started with.

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