Ultimate Frisbee Tournament in Manila!!!

Yesterday, during WYA AP's General Assembly I met a WYA member and former intern who plays Ultimate here in Manila. There was a tournament today in the South and I joined her team! The tournament is ongoing for the next few Sundays leading up to the start of Monsoon League in mid-August. The team is composed of players who've started within the last few weeks to few months, making me the Ultimate Ancient on the team.

We played 3 games, with a one hour break between each game. There is a guy's team also as part of their club and we would alternate field time with the guys. It worked perfectly as we would cheer for them, then they would cheer for us. It also worked perfectly as I didn't bring any cleats, and one of the guys had cleats my size! So his cleats played six games, while we each played 3, and by the end of game 2 we were sharing foot sweat and the cleats were pretty gross!

This is the rainy season here, meaning the temperature is mild by Manila standards but still in the 30's (Celsius) plus humidity. I also haven't played Ultimate since early May and am wickedly out of shape/fat after a few weeks of eating Asian food. Thankfully I did have experience to comepensate for my heat/fitness drawbacks. During the warmup they decided that I would be handler. As that is a position I am always trying to get better at, I happily obliged. The games were fun, the girls on the team have great spirit, acknowledge that they're playing to gain experience and were so happy to have me playing with them. The first game we played we had a few competitive points although we lost by a rather large amount. The second game we played, the girls had poor spirit. They would double team, stall count fast, and not give disc space - then call foul on me if I touched them. Even if we were both 10 feet away from the disc... They were obviously also a new team, but not one with such great spirit as my team. The final game we played the defending champs for Manila and the girls were good. It was great to play against a team with flow, great throws and solid defence. A bit discouraging as the game ended in 20 minutes with a score of 11 - 0 but I will admit I made enough mistakes on my own that I wasn't a huge asset to the team to compensate for any lack of experience or skill.

One of the guys from the team then drove me to WYA AP's office for a meeting this evening to finalise plans for the Decade of Dignity and Development Conference which begins on Wednesday. He even invited me to join Tuesday evening for practice for a different team which is apparently much more competitive, so I may :)

Tomorrow, Ren and I travel to Cebu, just for the day and meet with WYA members there.