Seige of Limrick

This past weekend I went on my first ultimate tournament in Limrick, which is on the west coast of Ireland. Trinity sent two teams (I was on the 2nd one) so there were quite a few of us going. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about frisbee!

We left Dublin friday night, there were a bunch of teams from Dublin going, so we rented 2 buses to take all of us down. Our bus left at 7:30 so we met and headed to the bus stop. The trip was about 3 hrs and we had quite the party bus going on, lots of singing and talking and a bit of alcohol mixed in. We got to the UL (University of Limrick) campus and immediately went to their school bar (apparently bars on campus is very common in Ireland). Ultimate in Ireland is a very close-knit community, most players know most other players, so the bar was filled with players catching up and talking. They were having drink specials, so I tried something called a black russian, which is apparently a white russian but instead of milk, use guinness. I think the fact that they were having drink specials on a friday night says something about the Irish drinking culture (namely that friday/saturday nights aren't go-crazy nights).

That night we stayed with one of the UL players and just slept in their kitchen. It was pretty cramped but we all managed to fit. I think there were 10 of us that night so we got nice and close with each other.

The next morning our first game was at 11 so we got up and headed down to the pitches to warm up. We played UCD2 so I got to play against Sean which was fun. It was a good game and we barely won at the end. Ultimate has a tradition of talking with the opposing team after the game and then playing random games together. It's really fun, and some of the games are pretty funny (aka, supposed to make you uncomfortable). I think my favorite one of the weekend was called over-under, and 5 people line up, every other one lying down and on their hands and knees and then the rest of the people crawl over and under them. The catch is that every so often someone calls switch and the people lying down get up and the people on their hands and knees lay down, even if you're still crawling under them.

Our next game of the day was against a team from Donegal. They were really good, and in really good shape so kept out running us. We lost that one pretty badly, but did manage to score a point. We then had some time off so got lunch and hung out a bit before our last game of the day against UL2. They were mostly beginners and weren't particularly good, but we were playing rather sloppily and so the game was much closer than it should have been but we did win it. After that we followed our host back to his house and sat around, showered, then ordered pizza. Me and Jen, one of my team mates, got ambitious and each ordered a 16" pizza for ourselves. I ate half of it and planned on saving the rest for breakfast, but it dissapeared overnight. Then I laid down for a bit, not planning on falling asleep, but woke up an hour and a half later. I was a bit tired :P

That night was the tournament party. There was a theme, freaks and geeks, but Trinity decided they didn't want to dress up so we just went. It was a lot of fun hanging out with the players and dancing, and seeing everyone else's costumes. One of the guys, Kevin, from the first team walked me, Jen, and Tara home and we went to sleep.

The next morning our first game was at 9 so we had to wake up pretty early and pack all of our stuff. We managed to get the team together and down to the pitches by quater till and so had time for a quick warm up. But, there was a scheduling mishap and the team we were supposed to be playing (the Donegal team again) hadn't been told that they were playing, so they weren't there. We ended up waiting for them to get there and playing a half hour game at quarter past 10. They won again, but it was closer this time and we played really well.

Our next game was almost immediately, and against UCD2 again. That was another good game, but they got an early lead and we couldn't over take them. Right after we did our game-thing at the end another team walked up and told us that we were actually supposed to be playing them right then, so we had to run over to their field and start another game against UCC. We were really tired at this point and so didn't play as well as we should have and ended up losing that game. I think we had 3 or 4 injured players at this point too. We got a 20 minute rest after that game before playing our last game of the tournament, against UL2 again. We thought it was quite strange that we played the exact same 3 teams (plus 1) both days of the tournament. We beat UL2 again and so ended up with the 'spoon' prize (you beat the worst team in the tournament).

Our team had been doing an "A game" award after each game, the prize consisted of a hat that you got to wear for the next match. The A game is the person who played to the best of their abilities, not necessarily the best player, but more the best effort, during that game. At the end of the tournament we voted on the best overall A game and I won it so I got to keep the hat. Now I have two warm hats :)

After cooling down we watched a bit of the 1st team's match for 3rd place (they sadly lost, but still ended up 4th in the tournament). Then Jen, Tara and I went to get lunch 1/breakfast (I had only had 1 slice of pizza for breakfast) at the sports bar near the pitches. Then we showered and headed back to watch the championship match. Those players were amazing! It was crazy to watch. They had an awards ceremony after it, but we were hungry again and so went and had lunch 2 for the day and came back just as it ended, in time to grab our stuff and go to the buses.

The bus trip back was not as interesting as the one there, I slept through most of it. We got back to Dublin at 9:30 and by the time I walked home it was 10. I didn't have much food, but made peanut butter toast (quickly becoming one of my staple foods) and some tea (which i proceeded to spill all over myself but thankfully not my computer) before going to sleep.

The next day my body wasn't very happy with me. I've been more sore in each muscle group before, but never has my whole body hurt so much collectively. I never fully appreciated how much you use your abs playing ultimate until yesterday morning when just standing made my abs hurt. So this is why we do core work during practice... We had practice last night which was really good to just shake out muscles and do some drills.

Other things in Ireland - my skype works again!!! I'm super excited about that so now I can talk to people again. Also, flowers are starting to come out! They're really cute, I've seen daffodils and little white snow-drop looking things, as well as 2 others I can't identify. It's awesome though to see flowers already, plus its getting warmer which is super exciting :) My travel-craziness is about to start, so I'm heading off to Scotland this weekend to hopefully find the Loch Ness monster as well as fun times in the high lands! (sorry for the super long post)