The Fresh Urbs

The Fresh Urbs Frozen Cherries 2017 report: A tale of a weekend filled with layouts, new rivalries, insanely fast paced beer races and a night of dancing.

Friday

On Friday march 31 the Freshest of Urbs travelled down to the always awesome and lovely Vechtzoom in Utrecht for our first tournament this season; Frozen Cherries! For some people in our squad this would be their first tournament with the team, as our open trainings only concluded 2 weeks before the tournament. The people that arrived on Friday had a lot of fun playing table tennis, drinking some beers, listening to the lovely wailing from the karaoke night that was going on, and just chilling with our friends and rivals in general.

Saturday

We were playing in the first round of games; 9:00 AM. This meant we had to get up early if we wanted to get some breakfast, dance moves and a warmup before the game would start. After some initial eye rubbing and hugging with the latecomers we all put on some extra layers to protect us from the drizzle and the wind, and went to the fields. After earlier mentioned dancing and warming up we walked onto the field, supported by our awesome coach for the day Robert (and his banter) and our Fresh teammate Chloë who sadly wasn't able to play with us due to her having a broken toe.

Game 1
We started the tournament off versus Schleudertrauma - Ultimate Frisbee Magdeburg, a team from Germany with some Dutch(ish) pickups. They took advantage of the wind, and came out with a zone right from the bat. We had a bit of trouble getting through the zone at first, and threw passes into the willing hands of our opponents quite a few times. Luckily our own intense man D managed to win us back the disc a lot. In the end we ended up trading breaks back and forth, and the game ended with our win; Fresh Urbs 10-5 Schleudertrauma

Game 2
Fired up from the first win and looking for more, we started the second round versus the athletic Danish team DTU Ultimate Frisbee. Coming out strong as we did, we took the first 4 points of the game. After that, DTU managed to find back their rhythm and started fighting back. The rest of the game was intense, with layout catches and blocks from both sides all over the field. We managed to hold on to our lead, and traded points until the end of the game. Fresh Urbs 11-7 DTU. Unfortunately we lost our teammate Michiel after this game, to a painful knee injury.

Game 3
The next game was a game that had both teams excited and pumping with adrenaline before it even started. In the third round we were playing Toys ‘R Us, aka the new (or old) UTKA Ultimate team. The game started out with the eager Toys from Utrecht taking a 3-0 lead. We managed to regroup and take some points of our own. After closing in again, the game became an intense game with tons of running, skying, great hucks, spicy defensive plays and best of all, incredible spirit. The defense from both sides were pouring on pressure, and no score went uncontested. This resulted in some accidental contact here and there, but this couldn’t stop both teams from exhibiting amazing spirit. Almost no calls were contested, and most ended up being retracted. Despite some unlucky injuries on their side, and some amazing defensive plays by Oline, Bram and Dan, the Toys managed to hold on to their lead, and take the win after all was said and done. Fresh Urbs 6- 8 Toys ‘R Us. That day, on that field, a new rivalry was born. A rivalry that will hopefully keep providing us with games as intense and spirited as this one for a long time!

We just came out of the cozy and sweaty embrace that was the spirit circle with the Toys ‘R Us, when Robo came bearing good news; we had scored just enough points to get a draw in the pool with the Danish DTU team. With us having beaten them in our game, we ended up taking first in the pool and we went into our crossover game to finish our first day.

Game 4
Our crossover game was versus the German Hallunken - Ultimate Frisbee team. Hallunken had picked up somebody we know well… Our Fresh buddy Joram, who was playing his comeback tournament after beating a tough ACL injury! As the game started we started running, and never looked back. The tired Germans kept fighting, but couldn’t manage to keep up with the size of our squad in the end. Fresh Urbs 13-5 Hallunken. After the game we got a good look at all our opponents underwear, which we had to match up to their players in a fun spirit game.

The party

After that, it was time for dinner and a well-deserved shower. Dinner turned out to be amazing, with lots of delicious food to choose from. After we had all showered, we met up at the brand new Urb Central (provided and inhabited by Bram) to share some sweet compliments (and booze).
After that, we all got changed into our party outfits and went to the beer race. Our selection of the most experienced and fit players was easily made. As the race started, grandpa Peter tried his best to keep up with all the energetic kids around him. Although he was feeling spry and definitely wasn’t lacking in determination, he couldn’t help but be outran (but luckily the ever steady Robo was there to help him safely crawl under that net on the ground). After grandpa finished his run accompanied by the entire crowd’s cheering, grandma Alix took over (after handing grandpa his well-deserved beer of course). Walking through that hoop like she was still in her twenties, she arrived at the energetic ball of energy that was Pippi LongStocking (Anouk). Supported by the equally strong knight Oline, she casually pumped out some totally unnecessary push-ups along the way to show how easy the race was to her. Together they easily made it to the final part of the race, which had Valerie face first in a tub of ice cold water to fish out some cherries. I dare say we did pretty well in that beer race!
After that, we were off to the party, where we danced and rolled around in the boat load of stuffed animals that was the VIP room. It took the party ending to get our two PartyGermans Robo and Markus to finally go find their tent.

Sunday

Having made it to the quarter finals we all enjoyed a nice sleep in, as we didn’t have to play in the first round of games. After a breakfast with the team we enjoyed a nice and easy warming up in the warm sun before we went into a red-hot quarter final, joined on the field by our coach from the day before, Robo! Taking Chloë's spot from the day before, our (also injured) teammate Aaron showed up to support us through the games we would have that day.

The quarterfinal

Our quarter final was a game against the spicy Aggressive Recessive team, whom we had partied with the night before. Both teams came out stronger and fitter than anybody else expected, playing like it was a Saturday morning, instead of a Sunday morning. Aggressive Recessive brought a devastating deep game to the table. They managed to score a couple of times with perfect full field hucks on open receivers. We battled back using our hard cuts and solid handler plays. Dan and the speedy Linde had another dozen of game changing layout D’s. After getting a couple of breaks, we were able to get away with the win, Fresh Urbs 13-10 Aggressive Recessive.

The semifinal

After a nice break and another warm up in the sun, we walked onto the field, ready for our semifinal! In this game we played Frau Rauscher & the Bembelboys (Eintracht Frankfurt Ultimate Frisbee) , another team from Germany. They came out in a zone, which our solid zone offense led by Dan and Robo had to puzzle through. On offense they gave us a lot of trouble with how tall their men were and the way their handlers were cutting deep and scoring on us. After getting scored on like that a couple of times we adjusted our play into a poachy help-defense. This helped us get a couple of breaks, which we managed to hold on to until the end of this insanely close and well spirited game, thanks to Anouk making an insane catch near the endzone in one of the final points, and Valerie following that example by making her first ever layout on grass to keep possession! Fresh Urbs 12-10 Frau Rauscher & the Bembelboys.

After the semifinal we had a 3 hour break until the final, which was used hanging around in the sun with our team, watching the rest of the games. When we had about an hour left, we gathered at the warmup field for some stretching and to play a fun dancing game to get in the groove. After, we did another warmup, and got ready to storm the field for the final!

THE FINAL!

Our opponent for the finals was the young Feunendalers team (Frisbeeclub Veenendaal Tijgers). This team consisted mostly of youth players from Veenendaal, who had picked up the athletic JP from Airborn. They started the game by coming out in a zone defense. Our zone offense, once again led by our steady handlers Dan and Robo worked through the zone to score our first point. Through hard work, intensity and defensive pressure we managed to break to 3-1 right away. After that both teams kept trading points. On offense the Feunendalers would often score in one big shot, resulting in a really even game. Just before halftime a layout D by Dan gave us the opportunity to break again, resulting in us taking halftime 7-6. In the second half they tried a couple of different zone defenses on defense, but our offense was on fire and kept scoring every time they were on the field. After a couple more hardfought points the Feunendalers managed to get a D on our offense and converted that into their second break of the game. Shortly after, the timecap went on. We put a powerline on, for an amazingly hardfought point with an insane bid from JP who barely dropped the disc in our endzone after their hardworking defense managed to get a turn on our offense. After a couple of turns Robo managed to get an around pass to Anouk in the endzone, for our game winning score. Fresh Urbs 12- 10 Feunendalers. Even though the game was insanely close, the spirit never suffered under the pressure, and all calls were discussed calmly and fairly.

After we were done celebrating, we went to the prize ceremony. Not only did we win the tournament, but we also won 3th place overall, which was calculated from the results from the games+ Spirit+ the party+ the beer race (yours truly is guessing this was the deciding factor, considering our record time for this part of the competition)!

We would like to thank UTKA for organizing this amazingly fun tournament, all the teams we played against for their awesome spirit and plays, our trusty teammates Chloë and Aaron for coming out to support us, and weird drunken kids from the neighborhood for throwing rocks at our tents.

Tournament roster consisted of:
Alix Goldstein, Anouk Boukema, Bram Steenhuisen, Dan Eppstein, Gergõ Hrubó, Jill Steenkist, Kevin de Jongh, Linde Wits, Michiel van der Leur, Madi Lu, Markus Nagel, Matthijs Damen, Maud Ottenheijm, Oline Stokhof, Peter Coenen, Robert Bormuth, Thomas Lievestro, Tim Huijg, Valerie Thornewell (and also Suzanne Slob)

Report by: Kevin de Jongh, Photo by: Jonathan Clarey, Video by: Thomas Lievestro