Watching the Finals

We beat the Swiss again, the score was 17-8 again. It was a nice good spirit game. Very European ultimate, which we are very good at.

The final day of the Worlds began rainy. We had a nice party yesterday and everyone has gotten over the bitterness of falling out of the top eight. Slowly it is time to start thinking what are the lessons we have learned here. One of the most obvious things we take from here is the fact that defense is much tougher than we are used to in Europe. Also the determination to get the disc by any means necessary (jump / lay out / fight / run) caught us by surprise. In the top teams every one has their eye on the disc at all times, so even when we though we had gotten a turn over there was still someone reaching for the disc. When it comes to playing as long as the disc is in the air, I think even Mexico beat us.

Womens’ ultimate is developing towards mens’ game, at least everywhere else than Europe. Tougher, more physical, quicker handling, more straight forward and typically bending the rules rather than playing with good spirit. We are really nice markers, in ten games we got only two or three calls of marker fouls. In the women’s final Japan called that more marker fouls to US in one half time.

Next up is the open final game, we’ll see how dirty it gets between US and Canada.