CamboCakes at WUCC ( in English )
- By Tjeerd Ates -
Hey people persons, as you will all know by now the World Ultimate Club Championships 2010 ended a week ago. One of the three Dutch teams representing Holland were your own CamboCakes. We were one of the 48 Open teams contending over there in Prague, together with 32 Women’s, 40 Mixed and 16 Masters’ teams. Quite a lot of people all together, about three times the size of Windmill Windup. Anyway, that’s not what you want to hear about, right ? You want to know how awesome we were ! So there we go.
The first day ( Sunday ) brought two matches against very tough opponents. First was the Nomadic Tribe from Tokyo, Japan who beat us 10-17. A loss some of us regretted, because of a sloppy middle part of the game, but had we won this game we were going to get stuck in 24th place after being slaughtered every next match in an upper pool, so it was a good thing we lost. After that we played Mephisto from Montreal, Canada. There isn’t much to say about this game apart from the fact that we tried, but lost 6-17. We went back to our dorms, one of ten huge communist-style buildings where about 1700 of the over 3500 people attending were sleeping, to eat small portions of prison canteen quality, to shower, to play disc golf, to lose some wallets, to macklite and to sleep.
Day two ( Monday ) was an easy one with only one match against Spanish Mubidisk from Tenerife. We played a great game and beat them confidently with 17-11, although the staff along the sideline were determined that we should play on to eighteen because time was over at 16-11 and you usually add two to the highest score even if 17 is the hard cap. It didn’t really matter. While our coach Andrew was trying to convince her she was wrong we scored 18-11. Our first win of the tournament and we were loving it. We chilled out for some time, watched the showcase game and I believe we slept like roses.
The day after that was Tuesday and a very important day. It didn’t start as very special though. We had an early start against Ultimate Vibration from Paris, a game we lost 13-16 after playing some pretty decent Ultimate. Despite being decent, there was some anger and frustration at not having been great ‘though. I guess we were looking forward to venting that frustration on some other team but someone ‘up there’ was clearly not going to let us. Just as we were starting our warm up after having watched some top-notch play it began to pour. And not just a little bit. Cats and dogs and thunderstorms. At first everyone was ordered to stop playing and we tried to find some shelter in two dug-outs close by, using our umbrella’s in a way that would have made the Romans proud. But after discovering some leaks in the dugouts we decided to flee towards the shelter of the stands of the stadium. Speaking of that stadium, it was the biggest stadium I’ve ever seen. Inside this one stadium there were eight (!) football fields. Anyway, after the skies had cleared after about 45 minutes the organization decreed that the fields were too waterlogged to play on for the rest of the day, so we were allowed to go home and put on some dry clothes.
Back at the dorms we started a huge dancing party on our floor ( with two Colombian teams, one Slovenian team, us and some other people ) with our Blockrocker : a huge speaker with an iPod dock. But none of that really mattered, because that night was the night of the semifinal l! We went to the town square with the whole team to watch the glorious match on a big screen that was set up there. We kept the crowd alive with our cheers and vuvuzela and afterwards some of us went to an underground bar where I got into an absinth-induced bet, some others went to find a legendary five-floored danceclub and yet some others went to watch some titties at a local strip club. I won’t give any names.
Then came day four ( Wednesday ). Our first day on the satellite fields that were a half-hour bus ride away from our dorms. On artificial turf against Mexicans from Mexico City. Who we should have beaten pretty confidently. But instead we lost to them 7-10 after being ahead 6-4. With three points that took over ten minutes. We were a bit upset afterwards. Not so upset that we couldn’t win our second game of the day ‘though. We played the Hungarian LOL from Budapest and beat them with a pretty easy 15-9. Justice had been served. We again watched some world-class teams play each other, had a bit of dinner, watched Spain beat Germany and were actually pretty pleased with that result. :o)
Another easy night and a new day ( Thursday ).The first match was against another Japanese team called Loquitos from Nagoya. They pretty much wiped us out. Our offence was very static and we couldn’t really do anything on defense either, 7-17. Next game was against Cota Rica from Rimini. We’d played them at Tom’s Tourney and got wiped out after having a very good first half. This time we managed to play our A-game through the entire match and that paid off with a 17-13 win ! That was probably our best match of the tournament and we were all very happy. That night some people went partying to celebrate their awesomeness, some people played Saboteur at a local bar and others got chatted up by transvestites.
Then to the last of our playing days, day six ( Friday ). The playoffs for 37th to 40th place. In the past we always played one of our last matches of a tournament against UFO. Now we were the only Dutch Open team, but that didn’t matter. Again we were up against … UFO. The Finnish ones from Tampere this time. We were pretty much on fire that day and that game, so we won it 17-15. After some pride and happiness we had to play our last game against Dublin Ultimate. The last time we played them (n London we lost to them by a small margin on a very windy day. This time however we started superbly and kept on rocking the scoreboard. They could hardly get through our defense and we beat them 17-7. Good end of the tournament !
It wasn’t all over ‘though. There was some stuff we still had to do. Like shaving my head and … party ! Friday night brought us to a huge outdoor venue with a couple of buildings, a big stage and multiple snacks and drinks stalls along the river. It was a bit too big for my taste, but if you ask certain other people you’ll probably get some very enthusiastic reactions. Anyway, that Saturday was the day of the finals and while some of you were ploughing through Hargen’s sand we were sitting on the stands in Prague watching the best Mixed, Women’s and Open teams. ( The Master’s final already was the day before. ) Well, we did not watch the Mixed final. That one started at 9:00, just a bit too early after the night before.
And that was pretty much the end of it. Two ends actually : the end of the most awesome tournament most of us ever played ( in my experience anyway ) and the end of the season. A great season if I may say so. We went to England twice to get experience from great teams we had never played before, we rocked Tom’s Tourney and rolled the Windmill and this World Championship was a great cherry on top. Plus we were able to lure some people away from the black hole that is UFO. ( That’s right, I said it. ) I haven’t really got the words to express my feelings further, but they’re all good, so I’ll leave it at that. Long story short : I love these guys !