f! 2009 EUCS Regionals Central East

This weekend saw some big upsets in the Open Division and many hotly contested games in both divisions.

During the first round of pool play in swirly difficult winds, Silence (Pool B) and Feldrenner (Pool C) convincingly finished top of their pools. The games for 2nd and 3rd place in these pools were however closely fought. Wall City clinched a win against LOL (15:13) to take the 3rd Place in Pool C and two sudden death wins gave Gummies 2nd Place in Pool C, 3rd Place went to Frühsport and that meant Team 1935 was knocked out of quarter-finals.

In Pool A, Woodies went on to cause the biggest upset of the tournament. After narrowly scraping a win over Dji Sam Soe (Game won at 17:16), their impressive zone defence caused Ragnarok all sorts of problems and Woodies won 15:10.

In the quarter finals, the match up of Ragnarok against Feldrenner was a re-run of last year’s EUCR finals. Feldrenner punished mistakes by Ragnarok to win solidly by 15:10. The semi-finals would be a matchup between the undefeated teams of the tournament: Woodies, Silence and Feldrenner. Here, Woodies beat thebigez (15:12) and Feldrenner beat Silence (15:12). The final was closer but the Woodies finally having recruited some young players proved too strong for Feldrenner, and they won the final 15:13.

As the qualifier for XEUCF in London, the 4th place and 8th place were perhaps more important than winning the final. A team that does not finish 4th in EUCR cannot win XEUCF in London. The 5th placed team in this tournament can only reach maximum of 9th place at XEUCF. Similarly, the 9th place team can only reach a maximum finishing place of 17th. The 4th/5th playoff was played between thebigez and Ragnarok. Ragnarok had had a good game against Wall City but the strain of playing well against the Woodies and then Silence seemed to show on thebigez. Ragnarok destroyed thebigez to win 15:04. The Gummies similarly seemed to run out of energy after their morning games against Wall City and Dji Sam Soe. Their 8th/9th Playoff was once again Team 1935, this time they couldn’t quite scrape out a win and Team 1935 went on to win 15:12.

Results

1. Woodies (Sauerlach, Germany)
2. Feldrenner (Mainz, Germany)
3. Silence (Prague, Czech Republic)
4. Ragnorok (Copenhaguen, Denmark)
5. Thebigez (Vienna, Austria)
6. Wall City (Berlin, Germany)
7. Dji Sam Soe (Austria)
8. Team 1935
9. Gummies (Karlsruhe, Germany)
10. LOL
11. Frühsport (Köln, Germany)
12. Mental Discorder
13. Foundation

Spirit Ranking

1. Woodies 13
2. Feldrenner 12,5
3. Silence 12,33
4. Mental Discorder / Foundation 12,2
5. -
6. LOL / thebigez / Dji Sam Soe 11,5
7. -
8. -
9. Gummies / Team 1935 11,4
10. -
11. Frühsport 11,33
12. Wall City 11
13. Ragnarok 10,67

The Women’s Division was seen by most teams as an important training tournament before London. Key players were missing from all the teams but the weekend was a perfect chance to try out new offences and defences. The format was a round robin over two days.

The Woodchicas maintained their dominance over women’s ultimate and won all their games this weekend. They faced a close first game against LLLeeds, but secured the win 15:13. Other games in the tournament were much closer and very strongly fought. Hot Beaches scraped a sudden death victory over Jinx (14:13) and later lost a sudden death game against Copenhagen (11:12). LLLeeds had one of the smaller teams of the tournament and were pushed hard to win against Jinx (14:12) and Copenhagen (13:11). Despite losing all their games and missing key players, Primavera showed that they were certainly not outclassed at the weekend. They paid well against the Chicas and Hot Beaches & lost by only 2 points against Copenhagen (10:12).

Results

1. Woodchicas (Sauerlach, Germany)
2. LLLeeds (Leeds, UK)
3. Jinx (Berlin, Germany)
4. Hot Beaches (Prague, Czech Republic)
5. Copenhagen (Denmark)
6. Primavera (Netherlands)

Spirit Ranking

1. Primavera 12,6
2. Woodchicas / Leeds 12,4
3. -
4. Hot Beaches 11,2
5. Jinx / Copenhagen 9,8