Regardless, in the spirit of the GDFU blog and an attempt to be more like Karen, I'll try to recap this weekend's tournament. Pictures will be lacking for now because I have a whole bunch to sort through, but that's how it goes.
As I mentioned earlier, single gender play is scarce in SE Asia. However, I didn't realize how scarce--this year's GenderMah was apparently the first single gender tournament ever in Singapore! It's actually a bit unfortunate for the female players, because I really think their development goes much more slowly when they're playing mixed all the time. The game is different, they might be more shy, and they get less opportunities when more athletic guys dominate the game. In fact, I asked one of my friends here how she liked her first experience on an all women's team, and she responded with "It's really empowering!" What a crazy thought-- that something that seems so normal to me is an "empowering" opportunity for someone else.
In any case, team GenderLah actually had a pretty good showing. I had no idea what to expect of the other teams and in fact very little idea of what to expect from our own team, having only just met them, but we worked pretty well together. There was an A and a B pool for Saturday's rounds, the A pool being made up of all the major club teams and the B pool, where we were, were more teams that were put together just for the tournament, or some of the younger/newer club teams. All games up until the semis were to 13 with 60 minute hard caps, and it was hot, so hard cap pretty much went off in every game.
Our first game on Saturday was against a JC (junior college) team. In Singapore, though, JC is what you do pre-college, and they were all really young and mostly inexperienced. We took that game with relatively little effort, 11-1. Next we played another group of 17-year-olds, a brand new club team that was formed, I suppose, to teach ultimate to younger kids. They were a lot more put together than the first team, but we took that game as well, surprisingly, mostly based on athleticism. (I say surprisingly, because we were a bunch of old farts.) Game 3 was against a team from Malaysia, and they put up a really good fight. They were fast and had a lot of run-through Ds on us. Plus they had a couple of girls who liked to huck, which challenged us a bit more. I can't remember the order of the points or who took half (or even if we got to half), but I do remember that they were ahead by a few points at some point close to hard cap, then we had a little pep talk about going-to, then we had a few messy points where some unjustified fouls were called, but in the end, we won on universe point (which they call "universal point" here; I don't know where that came from).
After the M'asia game was when the rain started, so we basically just sat around under the tent until even that got too wet, at which point we migrated over to a sheltered area within an HDB complex to wait it out. That was actually all well and good with me, because in the 3rd game I managed to roll my ankle pretty badly. The fields were in pretty poor shape, with long grass and lots of clumps of mud from the recent rains that were dragged up over the course of the day. So I was cutting and turning off my left leg, when the ground just gave out and I rolled my ankle and it was really surprising and painful. So when I went down and yelled out, "injury!" but the other team either didn't hear me or ignored me and moved the disc up quite a ways. And I was in a lot of pain and frustrated at the same time so I just yelled again, "INJURY!!!", really. Frickin. Loud. Haha and I think the other team thinks I have anger problems, but it was more a yell of surprise and release.
So I had to sit out game four, which started after the rains stopped, and were played in a veritable swamp. Game four was against Vudoo (Vietnam Ultimate Defence Offence Organisation), and it was a game that I thought we could have won. Unfortunately, we had two injuries (someone else rolled her ankle as well), and were pretty tired after the rough Malaysia game, and just couldn't put it together. We finished the day with a 3-1 record which put us at the top of our pool, but it still left a sour taste to end with a loss.
Oh, speaking of ankles, it turns out Singaporeans are not big on ibuprofen. I can't remember a sporting event that I've ever been to in my life where it was difficult to obtain ibuprofen, but after rolling my ankle I started asking around for some, and had to go through three teams before I found someone who had any! Everyone else just offered me "deep heat" cream, essentially Bengay, and some other pain relief patches. Then today I asked one of my teammates, "So, do people not really take anti-inflammatories here? Like, if you sprain your and go to a doctor, will he not tell you to ice and take ibuprofen for a couple of days?" She said, no, and just kind of looked at me puzzled. Hrm. Guess they're just tougher here.
Well, I'm sleepy now, so the Day 2 update will have to wait, hopefully not too long.
1 comment:
oooh i got cited on your blog! how awesome. :) that sucks that you rolled your ankle... did you tell your teammates that in the US ibuprofen is referred to as "vitamin I" because of its prevalence on sports teams? or maybe just smite? :P
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