Or à Paris, European Ultimate Club Finals

This year my women’s team, the Woodchicas, won our regionals qualifying ourselves for the European championship in Paris. We brought a larger squad this year (thank goodness; this way people weren’t looking like they were going to throw up after every point) and wanted to defend our title from Basel last year.

However, whoever thought that having an outdoor tournament in Paris in November was a brilliant idea should look at long-term weather trends. As expected, at least for the first two days, the weather was cold, rainy, and muddy. At least on Sunday the sun came out for our final against Iceni (from London), same matchup as last year. It was an exciting final for the admittedly small crowd in the huge stadium. We were down 5-8 at the half, but with some fired-up defence and great hammers from our handlers came back to win it 14-11 in time cap. We can officially call ourselves European Ultimate Club Champions for another year and showed everyone that last year wasn’t just a fluke!

Here are some highlights from (mostly) the tournament official photographer. It’s easy to tell the difference between the games on the mud-pits on Saturday and the beautifully manicured grass on the Sunday. There were some great plays and great catches. On the mud-fields my team is in black, in the final, we’re in red. Any photos with myself are easy to find because of my nearly-fluorescent blue shorts.

Day 1: game against Dogma from Russia:

Freezing in our group photo afterwards:

Before the start of the final. Maybe it’s difficult to read, but they shortened our team name to “Woodchic”.

Shoe foul. This woman literally was standing on the back of my shoe so that it came off when I tried to run.

Other game highlights:

Monster defense by Inga in the last point:

Celebrating after the win! Someone had the forethought to bring champagne.

Unfortunately I missed the medal ceremony because of an early flight, but it was awesome to be part of the team!

Here’s a further summary of the wonderful things that are French and its eccentricities.

• Delicious fresh baguettes
• Suspicious looking men burning fires in garbage bins in (potentially?) stolen shopping carts who were actually selling roasted chestnuts. (sorry no photo)
• The Eiffel tower obscured in fog.

• Taking-in the 360° water lily paintings by Monet.

• Having a bathroom so small that you have to take the toilet paper out to have a shower to avoid dowsing everything. Having a shower so small that the shower curtain shows the full contour of the toilet protruding into the showering space.

• The mudpits that were called “fields” we played on for two games. When you are trying to sprint and your shoe stays behind in the mud because it’s that deep I think it’s time to shut down the fields. Here is one shot of a woman making a bid a little too late and my teammate Valerie after a dive:

• Playing on brand-new velvety-green grass to a crowd of 20,000 …empty seats. No, there were at least a hundred or so spectators and it was cool to hear the “oohs’and “aahs” of the crowd in response to the play.