paganello 2007

"every paganello you attend takes 2 years off your life" - anonymous player

so in my season of breaking out and attending "fun" tournaments i wound up making it to italy for the biggest beach tournament in the world, playing with the defending champions (NoTsuOh). i had been on the road for nearly 2 weeks when i got to rimini, travelling in africa and italy/switzerland for various work meetings.

i should have realized the trouble i was in for after the first night. i arrived at the hotel and met up with some of my teammates as well as some other americans and europeans in the hallways. the sight of familiar friendly faces was a pleasant change from my work travels. after a little socializing we went to the tourney party, which was quite a festival where i saw even a few more familiar faces. sometime after midnight we headed to "the barge" where most nights ended. after a few drinks there and meeting with more of the teammates a number of us took the beer taxi home to get ready for our 11am match. i think this left us about 4 hours of sleep to get ready.

our team was composed of a few condors, a few doublewide guys, and an assortment of other current and ex elite players. the first day's games were harder than i anticipated. i was hoping for a few sleepers to get used to new teammates, playing on the beach and getting 4 hours sleep, but we were thrust right into it. don't remember opponents or scores, but i remember working harder than i wanted. on the first day i also ran into some south african players who had hosted me when i went there in fall 2002, and it is great to see their program developing so well.

i had dinner with just one other teammate as we went back to the hotel after playing rather than going straight to dinner. definitely some of the best tourney food i've eaten, but i guess that's what you would expect in italy. the second night was similar to the first, except everyone backed off the partying a little bit, which didn't really mean more sleep, just less pollution. the barge proved to be a veritable minefield of drinks, which some of us maneuvered more successfully than others. the second day of playing was to set up the quarterfinal brackets. again some hard games, some we overlooked and made hard and others where we had to play well to make them hard. the strange thing was that two of the four 'power' pools looked very weak, and 2 looked strong. we were in a strong one, and we had to cross over with another strong pool for the quarters.

again another great meal, although this time with the team. another party, this time at the tourney tent. it seemed like an optional costume party, and some of the teams and people had good setups. very entertaining. then to the barge. sunday play started with a game that was meaningless to us as we had already secured the top spot in our pool. for our efforts we got another tough american team in the quarters. we were focused and played probably our best game of the tourney in delivering a solid victory. after this tough game, the semis were a rather easy affair, and saw our biggest margin of victory of the tourney.

at this point it should be said that the stadium court at this tourney is one of the best venues in ultimate. big enough to handle a large crowd, but small enough to pack in all the energy that sometimes gets lost on a big ultimate field in the middle of a bigger polo grounds or soccer complex. we were lucky to play one game there each day, and the semi gave us a taste of what to expect in the finals.

sunday night was another great meal and because of the late start on monday (men's finals were at 2pm i think) people heated up a bit. i woke up at the last possible minute to get breakfast on monday, and it also turned out to be just in time to see some of our guys get home. the finals set up a match against british/swiss/american team who eeked out their semi victory with a hand block on universe point. we knew they would be a handful. we started on offense and gave up a break right away. however, the first 4 times we pulled we had chances to get that break back and just gave it away. after trading for about 8 points we gave up another break and things seemed to be slipping away towards the end of the first half. the opponents worked the disc well and were able to connect on a lot of short stuff to keep the disc moving and keep our defense off balance. the second half was more trading, with an odd break here or there and when the cap came on we didn't have a last push in us to grab the title back.

overall this tournament is a lot of fun, but the quote at the top is right on. i think 4 days of staying out late, drinking too much, and being out in the sun all day definitely took a toll. we were probably the less disciplined team when it came to sunday night behavior and that may have cost us a bit of an edge in monday's final. i'm not sure i'm quite comfortable with the whole concept of these frisbee tournaments that don't focus on the frisbee, and this tournament is definitely more than just a couple of beach ultimate games. but it was good to see some old friends, and meet some new ones.