casual ultimate » guest blogging from china - summer league on the other side of the world

while it pains me that tobias funke can no longer be the first thing i see on casualultimate, this is a great post from our very own brady, who just returned to chicago after a year in china. check it out to learn more about summer league, beijing-style:
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Sunday began like many in the past 6 weeks. Plenty of heat, time spent
cramming some food into myself in the early afternoon to make it thru the
long summer league day; and hoping that I remembered to wash my summer
league jersey before the crowded van ride to the fields (not that Beijing
doesn’t provide enough smells to mask any offending odor my jersey may
contain).

As i blogged about before, Peggy and I really lucked out with the location of our apartment. As it turns out, ‘carpooling’ for ultimate meets a mere 10 minute walk from our apartment building. The meeting place for all trips ultimate in nature is in front of the local Dongzhimen mall. There we all pile up on the steps, creating quite the staring feature for the locals, and wait for everyone to show up 30 minutes late (ultimate time being
universal).

Transportation in China is relatively cheap, but people still prefer to pinch maos when they can, especially when the directions to the place we are going are rather difficult to explain to your average cab driver (who will still act like he/she knows where he/she is going). Also, since getting fields is even tougher here than in Chicago and only a few people are on top of where we are going this month; we rent 3 vans (13 people fit in each) and cram into them for what is always a ‘bonding moment’ of a trip to some
hopefully grassy area. We have pretty nice fields for summer league as it turns out, just past Happy valley Amusment Park (haven’t been yet, but Im planning to go). The fields are big enough for our 4 team league to have both games going simultaneously (though with a shared sideline and about 35 yard wide fields only).

The fields we’ve been playing on have one flaw, they are near enough to a factory that more often then not we are running around and breathing in what smells like burning perfume, sulfur, or something. Forget playing at altitude, try playing when the local factory has the one day a week when they burn off all the chemicals they are done using. Yuck.

However there are a lot of great things about Beijing Summer League. Thanks to the hard work of several ex-pats in particular, ultimate has started to spread to the locals and there are even a few local club teams that competed at tournaments this past year. While many of these players are from local universities and go back home for summer, there is still a good contingent of local players on every summer league team. Its really exciting to witness the growth and excitement of the local ultimate community. Another great thing is we draw and audience everywhere we play.

These fields happen to be stuck right next to the local neighborhood’s public park. When the local guy with the 15 foot whip isn’t spending his Sunday cracking the whip in the middle of the park, we are public entertainment #1 (I can now understand why whipping people is a devastating punishment.the whip cracks sound like LOUD fireworks. Quite something to see). The locals (mostly kids) line up along the old fence and watch us from the moment we show up and stretch until the moment we pack up and go home. Sometimes they even tear the wiring that is keeping old fence holes closed and sneak in to watch us at a closer distance…at least until the guy overseeing the fields comes to scare them away and rewire the holes closed. (This repeats pretty much every week with no tactical improvements by either side, this is pretty typical of Beijing life.)

Summer league involves more than just the games here. It was setup particularly to help expand the number of people playing in Beijing and their skills. On alternate weeks we warm up as one big group of about 70 people and then split into beginner and advanced skill sessions / drills. The other weeks we work as individual teams on the basics of game play (stacks, dump n swing, etc.). Next we play your standard ultimate game to 13 with about an hour an a half time cap to save some time at the end for us to mix it up and break into one or two pickup games. Many of the people end up going out for a big dinner at a restaurant after the game (once we squeeze back into vans for the ride home). Its quite a complete day, running from about 2pm to 9pm if one stays for dinner.

This particular week my team was again undermanned/womanned with low turnout. We were matched up against Peggy’s team, certainly a bitter rival. Somehow we found ourselves battling all the way to double game point, with us receiving. My team, employing a horizontal stack that we just learned, ends up with the two middle receivers both taking off deep after I get the disc centered off of the pull. Both of the players had a few inches and a few steps on their defenders, so I decided to push it and let a forehand fly. Alas, not the trajectory one would want as the throw hangs and arcs a bit too much. Somehow all four players manage to misread it (summer league),
however one of our players makes a great grab falling over while trying to chase the disc arcing over his head. We patiently work the disc the last few yards and put it in the endzone for our first win of the season. Peggy will never let me live that throw down, but Ill never let her live down the loss. so all is well.

(The game in question above was about three weeks ago.our team finished with only that win in the 6 games of play before the playoffs. However we pulled out our semi-final last week against the top team (who only had one loss). The forehands looked a lot better last week . Peggy’s team won the other semi-final so tomorrow its put up or shut up in Beijing as we decide which one of us will have bragging rights for all eternity).