Recap: The Southend Ultimate Tournament

Good day, my kind bloggers! Today, I will inform you about the great Southend tournament that all of you missed – maybe. The purpose of the tournament was to bring all the Southend schools together to raise awareness of the overwhelming progress of ultimate in the Southend. Various AGE-UP members and southend youth ultimate players had joined together to organize the tournament.

I missed the beginning, but when I arrived, around a hundred-forty players and spectators were present. Prior to my arrival, everyone had divided up into 6 co-ed teams. High schoolers took charge and captained their teams. However, only 2 high schoolers were allowed to play at a time – phooey. I was on team #5.

Before lunch, players gathered in Jefferson community center’s gym to listen to Southend ultimate representatives present. Arianne and Tugade went up first to introduce and explain the reason for the tournament. Up next were Paolo and Renan, who spoke about the surveys that Sam helped them with last year. Dennis, Miko, and Miguel spoke about the current state of ultimate. When Dennis asked, “How many of you guys were/are coached by high schoolers?”, half of the youth players raised their hands up. Dennis then commented, “I believe that we high schoolers should back off when it comes to coaching middle schools, because they need more experience with real coaches.” Jhanelle, Kendra, and Tiffany presented about AGE UP’s progress and current state. Henry Phan, who in my opinion had the most inspirational speech, rallied the audience to succeed with their ambitions.

After, we had to complete a survey by reading posters that the speakers had put up. The posters had ways to help Southend Ultimate become better and required that we put an orange sticker up to the one we agreed most with. Personally, I chose the “better transportation” option on of the posters because I live way out on Beacon Hill, and it usually takes forever for me to get to games.

Finally, LUNCH. We had pizza, but due to all the people there, two slices were permitted per person. Though, can you keep a secret? Some of us had the spaghetti that someone had brought and no one else noticed, mwhahaha! During that time, we all got to get a break from the running and just hang out. It was fun to just chill.

Once all the food was digested, we played in single-gender teams. The girls had to hike up to Jefferson due to the limited space on the Mercer turf. We were serious for the first part and played by dividing into 4 different teams – dark and white. Towards the end, we played shtick. It was FUUUN! HIGHLIGHT OF THE GAME: I threw it deep several times to Hue and the last time I threw it Hue caught it! YAY, and tossed it into the square. Making the score 1-0. We won, yes.

After a nice game of Shtick, the girls hiked all the way back to Mercer’s turf to hear the closing ceremony. There, we had closing remarks and the high school captains acknowledged a player on each single gender team, who got to choose a prize.

Author’s Note: I’m sorry, Leah Fury forced me into writing this and I didn’t really pay attention to everything because I’m such a knucklehead. I was too focused on lunch because I was a hungry little hippo, too. Leah knows about this little message too.