f! The Blog

This post is dedicated to the unquestioned highlight of the annual Ultimate Frisbee event calendar: the 2008 UPA Club Championships. Read on if you ever wondered

• what UPA means,
• why you haven't played there (yet), and
• why North America is a step ahead of the rest of the world.

The UPA Club Championship Series, which began in 1979, is the largest and most prestigious Ultimate tournament series in the world with over 600 competing teams. The entire series takes place in the fall over the course of approximately six weeks.

UPA means Ultimate Players Association, and Wikipedia describes it as follows: ...a not-for-profit organisation that serves as the governing body of the sport of Ultimate Frisbee in the United States. It's main focus is the Championship Series; it sanctions certain tournaments that are held throughout the year in three divisions (Club, College, Youth) and runs the championship tournaments at the end of the respective seasons.

The UPA Club Series factsheet states, that over 10,000 club players participate in the club series with about 1,300 going on to the championships. The open division was established in 1979, women’s in 1981, masters in 1991, and mixed in 1998. The UPA’s club division is comprised of six geographic regions:

• Northeast
• MidAtlantic
• South
• Central
• Southwest
• Northwest.

Any club team may participate in their sectional tournament. The top teams at sectionals then qualify to participate in their regional championship. The top finishers at regionals qualify to compete at the UPA Club Championships, a four-day tournament that is held in late October each year. Sixteen open, 16 women’s, 16 mixed and 12 masters teams participate in the championships with at least two teams representing each region.

In the following an overview of the winners of the last ten years of this competition, the results in more detail can be found by following the event's links:

1. 2007 UPA Club Championships

   • Open: Sockeye (Seattle, WA)
   • Women: Fury (San Francisco Bay Area, CA)
   • Mixed: Shazam Returns (Seattle, WA)
   • Masters: DoG (Boston, MA)

2. 2006 UPA Club Championships

   • Open: Sockeye (Seattle, WA)
   • Women: Fury (San Francisco Bay Area, CA)
   • Mixed: Mischief (Sunnyvale, CA)
   • Masters: Throwback (Seattle, WA)

3. 2005 UPA Club Championships

   • Open: Furious George (Vancouver, BC)
   • Women: Riot (Seattle, WA)
   • Mixed: Brass Monkey (San Francisco, CA)
   • Masters: Old & in the Way (Boulder, CO)

4. 2004 UPA Club Championships

   • Open: Sockeye (Seattle, WA)
   • Women: Riot (Seattle, WA)
   • Mixed: Shazam (Seattle, WA)
   • Masters: KAVU (Ketchum, ID)

5. 2003 UPA Club Championships

   • Open: Furious George (Vancouver, BC)
   • Women: Fury (San Francisco Bay Area, CA)
   • Mixed: Donner Party (Lake Tahoe, CA)
   • Masters: Refugees (Miami, FL)

6. 2002 UPA Club Championships

   • Open: Furious George (Vancouver, BC)
   • Women: Lady Godiva (Boston, MA)
   • Mixed: Donner Party (Lake Tahoe, CA)
   • Masters: OLD SAG (Philadelphia, PA)

7. 2001 UPA Club Championships

   • Open: Condors (Santa Barbara, CA)
   • Women: Lady Godiva (Boston, MA)
   • Mixed: Trigger Hippy (Missoula, MT)
   • Masters: Keg Workers (Seattle, WA)

8. 2000 UPA Club Championships

   • Open: Condors (Santa Barbara, CA)
   • Women: Lady Godiva (Boston, MA)
   • Mixed: Spear (Raleigh, NC)
   • Masters: Keg Workers (Seattle, WA)

9. 1999 UPA Club Championships

   • Open: Death or Glory (Boston, MA)
   • Women: Fury (San Francisco Bay Area, CA)
   • Mixed: Raleigh Llama (Raleigh, NC)
   • Masters: Old & in the Way (Boulder, CO)

10. 1998 UPA Club Championships

    • Open: Death or Glory (Boston, MA)
    • Women: Lady Godiva (Boston, MA)
    • Mixed: RedFish BlueFish (San Francisco, CA)
    • Masters: Cigar (New York, NY)

An apparently perfectly working system that produced most of the best teams world-wide. The future will tell us if European Ultimate and it's EUCS will scale one day to UPA's dimensions, and how Ultimate in hot-spots like Japan, Columbia or Australia evolves.