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Published: April 16th 2008
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me, throwing
found this in a random guy from the tourneys album. this is the game against patatas bravas from barcelona only having a day before the tournament after morocco and still being a little sick, i was less than thrilled for the drive. 8 of us: me, sergi, jose, mac, jordi, alberto, ana, and miguel, met at santa justa and we left in two cars. i rode in miguel´s audi with ana and sergi. we listened to a bunch of spanish music from the eighty´s and they kept asking me if i had heard any of it before but it was all totally new to me. we didn´t get to the place until about 1145 pm and we just went straight to bed. the complex was interesting. they had a bunch of fields, tenis courts, etc. and then pools, a cafeteria, and a dorm. our whole team stayed in one room with 6 bunk beds. Juan Carlos, Sara, Flor, and Magli met us there.
the first day we played against Quijotes A from Madrid. We started slow and didn´t play great. we were losing 1-10 but pulled back to finish 5-11. after we played Patatas Bravas from Barcelona. They through a cup on us, a zone defense, that we weren´t ready for and didn´t really have much success against and
the team
at tony romas. from left to right: Sergi, Ana, Jose, Mac, Juan Carlos, Sara, Flor, Magli, Miguel, Alberto (falling over the table), and Jordi ended up losing this one by a similar score. our third game was against Comando from Valladolid and it was a lot better. we were down 2 when time ran out and we scored the point to make the game continue. however, they scored on a deflected disc to end the game right after. so the first day wasn´t great 0-3 but we played our best game last and Madrid and Barcelona aren´t exactly the easiest teams to play your first games against.
that night for dinner all 12 teams went to Tony Roma´s which was really weird. The restraunt tried to seem really American, like kind of over the top. There were framed portraits of all the presidents and stuff like that. It looked like the kind of thing you´d only see in D.C. or maybe Philadelphia or something. the food was great though. they just brought course after course: salad, chips and guac, potato skins, chicken wings, cheese sticks, more chicken, and finally ribs. no one left hungry. it was funny eating a bunch of american food with the people that i usually eat a bunch of spanish food. alberto would not believe me that the mozzerella
me and jared
in our jerseys, kind of. mine was on backwards since the fronts blank and for some reason hes wearing the jersey of the other team from valladolid instead of his own. kinda random, i suppose sticks were just breaded fried cheese. every team was singing songs and clapping during dinner and joking around with eachother. it was pretty cool.
after we left the restraunt there was a caseta outside, one of the typical tents from Feria in Sevilla. inside they were playing flamenco music and handing out manzanilla, the typical drink of Feria. since my team was from sevilla and they had to miss part of feria to be there, they were excited. alberto and ana started dancing sevillana, the local flamenco variety, and all the other teams watched and clapped. sergi danced to and so did mac and everyone else watched and shouted out the occassional ¨¡ole!"
i woke up sunday morning and my legs were useless. i hadn´t ran for nearly a month before the tournament because of travelling, visits, and tests so i was not in the best of shape endurance wise. it took me a long time to warm up to play. our first game was against the other team from valladolid, corocota, on which my friend on my team from uwl plays. actually, we guarded eachother most of the game. this one was close too. but we ended up winning by 2 in the end. nice to not lose for once! then after that we played Quijotes B, from Madrid and beat them by 2 also. i ended the game with one of the goofiest curvy passes i had ever thrown that our captain read better than his defender to get the last point.
everyone got shirts for the tournament and the winners got a gift basket full of food. our team actually won the spirit award for the best sportsmanship and attitude throughout the tournament which means we got a big food basket too! some of which we ate on the way back in the car.
one thing about frisbee here that is different from the states is the sportsmanship. frisbee, ideally, is supposed to be all about sportsmanship since there are no refs. but in the US, often winning seems more important. i remember playing teams in intermurals and being angry at the other team or how we played or a questionable call. but here it´s not like that. there aren´t that many teams so every team knows every other team and they´re all friends first. competition is intense but not at the cost of friendship. after every game after shaking hands everyone sits in a circle from both teams and talks about the game and how they always love playing the other team. it was amazing. seeing everyone come together as friends after every game and talking and joking like old friends was so refreshing.
we weren´t the best team out there but everyone had a great time, especially me. i played pretty well and made a few good plays but there is no question that the thing i´ll remember most is the teams coming together as friends at the end. i think when a league is smaller and newer this is easier. since ultimate in the states has become fairly impersonal when the madison summer league has nearly 90 teams you just can´t know everybody. but the importance of friendship and just having a good time together over just wanting to win is the important thing and it´s definitely something that i´m going to try to remember whenever i play.
well, it´s 1:20 PM now and I catch an 8 AM bus to Madrid for a 5 PM flight to Paris tomorrow. it might rain when we are there, but one of my profs assured me that Paris is even more beautiful in the rain so it´ll be good however. i´ll try and blog again next week some time. hasta luego
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