· Seattle Times staff columnist Jerry Large writes about the Asa Mercer Middle School Ultimate team.

· The Vancouver Sun previews the World Ultimate and Guts Championships.

· The Dingos, the Austrailian Open National Team, are documenting their travels through the United States and Canada.

· On Saturday, Ultivillage will be hosting a free webcast of the Opening Ceremonies and the Showcase Game between the Canadian and British Mixed National Teams at WUGC.

· The Way-Back Machine: October 30th, 1989. The New York Times reports on the 1989 UPA Club Championships.

We received an e-mail this week from Chad in Santa Barbara, concerning Tully Beatty’s recent article “A Season Long Thought Process,” and he had a question related to one bit of information:

In the article Tully says…

“Cortisone shots for severe plantar problems prior to Heilbronn in 2000 could be at the top of the all-time dumb list.”

I recently experienced the same problem, I had two Cortisone shots to combat serious (Ultimate induced) plantar fasciitis problems, continued playing Ultimate, and am now considering that decisions’ rank in my own bad ideas hierarchy. I wanted to ask Tully what he did finally to get better and how/if it has affected his training/playing.

We caught up with Tully, and this is what he had to say:

In the summer of 2000, the Raleigh LLama competed at Mid-Atlantic X Regionals as a warm-up for Worlds. Regionals was two weekends before the opening day of competion at Worlds. After losing to Spear in the semis, I took two shots of Cortisone in the afflicted foot.

For about a month it seemed like a great idea; and I was able to run, cut, sprint, pivot, jump, and stop pain-free while we were in Germany. By the end of the summer, the pain in the plantar was excruciating and it was clear I had done some damage. I’m not sure if it was nerve damage or tissue damage, but I basically had to hobble around on the ball of my foot, dead on the sesamoid.

I guess inactivity was the first smart move I made to get the healing started. Due to the pressures of grad school, I had to step off the Open team I was playing with that fall and I don’t think I cleated up again until WUFF Coed Nationals the following February.

After that, it was all I could do to not walk around in the house in me barefeet; I think that’s easier suggested than done. Curling or balling up a hand-towel with the toes also helped to strengthen the muscles in the feet. However, I think there was one exercise and one concept that worked best for me. Calf raises off the side of the bathtub assist in keeping the Achilles and the plantar stretched out, of course also forming Cussen-like calves; and similarly, all things are connected: Plantar; Achilles; calf; hamstring; lower back.

While I don’t stretch as much as I once did, I was diligent for about five years and I think that routine helped alleviate the fasciitis. 2004 was the last time PF was an in-season issue; I’ve never worn insoles and I’ve never worn a boot while sleeping, but those that I know who have, swear by them.

If any readers out there have any experience with recovering from Cortisone shots gone bad, or serious plantar problems, and have any recovery tips, let us know and we’ll be sure to pass it along.

UPDATE: Mike from Chicago wrote in about dealing with plantar fasciitis:

You wake up every morning, stand up, and as you flex your foot, you tear any newly healed tissue (and maybe some more of the old). I suspect this is why it is so persistent and hard to get rid of.

THE BOOT IS THE ANSWER. Sleeping with your foot in a flexed position allows the tissues to heal in the “stretched” position. You sleep in the boot and do some basic ankle rolls and calf stretches every morning for 2 to 6 weeks (depending on the severity) and PF becomes a thing of your past.

I tried inserts, exercises, stretching, strong anti-inflammatories, etc…nothing was working (the doc says try stop doing anything for 4-6 weeks…ugh) and I luckily stumbled across the boot. After 3 to 4 weeks of sleeping in the boot my PF was gone and has never come back.

Team USA (Sockeye) beat the German National Team last night, 17-10, in a friendly in Seattle, WA.

The first half went 9-2, Sockeye, as defensive pressure and smart lane-poaching was forcing the German O into long, pressured hucks that were lasering past their cutters. The Sockeye offense was able to make a couple extra passes around the endzone on each point to ensure an easy goal.

The second half was dead even, though, as the Germans were able to match Sockeye 8-8. A major change was the aggressive pivoting of the Germans; their handlers (especially #18 Flo and #13 Has) used their pivots to open up cutters. The German offense relies heavily on long I/O breaks, but when their handlers pivot aggressively to the dead side, it opens up more space by moving other defenders to respect those throws. The German long game started to connect as they were able to open up some cuts into the middle of the field, giving their best throwers good position.

There was a crowd of about 400 folks there to watch, and they also got to see some of the best middle school Ultimate in the country as Seattle’s Asa Mercer Middle School took on a team of combined Seattle Middle School players. Asa Mercer will be showcased again in Vancouver during World’s. The level of skill is still shocking to those that remember learning their first forehand at age 20, and the team works hard and together to move the disc.

This circulated around rec.sport.disc a while back, but it’s sure worth another view. Dan Rubenstein, the SI Tour Guy, filed this video report from the UPA College Championships in Boulder. Look out for the Barefoot Fedora Coach!! Lou Burruss, Oregon Fugue coach and writer for The Huddle.

Also, check out the SI Tour Guy’s tournament write-up.

As reported before, the initial World’s format had some serious flaws. Most notably, there were only four teams into the bracket play (power pools went straight to semis) but the #4 team never had to play the #5 team.

This, obviously, makes seeding hugely important. The #5 team must beat someone ranked in the top three to advance, while the #4 team never has to beat anyone better than seed #6.

Seeding is another matter altogether; WFDF has a history of using only information from their own play (which is usually simply the previous World’s…in this case, Finland ‘04). They have a pretty strong argument for this as well, since the previous World’s tournament is the only time at which countries have put together their National teams at full strength (this isn’t an issue for the US, which does not use a selection process to take the ‘best 20′, but it is a big issue for most other countries). We may look at 4-year old results and cry irrelevance, but this is an objective (and therefore fair) method of seeding. It’s better than subjective methods, at least. As long as it is stated in advance, then this is fine by me.

Just this past weekend, though, WFDF came out with a new format for the Open division. This format is significantly better, and has an expanded bracket. WFDF, and most of all the tournament directors, should be commended for their willingness to listen to reasonable arguments and their flexibility. Directing a tournament is not easy…and having to remake the schedule must have been a nightmare.

Kudos to Brian Gisel and the rest of the crew in Vancouver. Also, thanks to Adam Tarr, one of the UPA’s scheduling experts, who took his own time to reach out and present some alternatives to the involved parties. The UPA has put some serious resources into developing a uniquely useful tournament format manual, and Adam did WFDF a huge favor by bringing that expertise to bear on this year’s World tournament.

The new format is available at the Worlds site: www.wugc2008.com

UPDATE: Florian Pfender, of the a UPA Formats Committee and a WFDF Format Advisor, sheds some light onto the process these past few days and weeks:

So, at one point, there were 18 teams registered for the open division and we spent some time on formats, discussing several potential candidates. In the end it was decided to use the same format as 2004: 3 pools of 6, two top pools of 6, quarters, etc…

Then, two more teams registered and we (mostly Brian) made a 20-team format, then after one team dopped out again, a 19-team format. At this stage, all the schedules were written. Then, sort of last minute, another team dropped and we were back to 18. But, the old 18-team format didn’t fit on the fields, so Brian put in this provisional format without the quarters, and called it pre-approved or something the like (albeit, the seeds were not adjusted for not having quarters). It had some flaws in it. The flaw that you are talking about would have surely been fixed by a different seed distribution.

At the same time, Brian internally suggested an alternative format, which we then used as a basis for the now final format. I think he also solicited input from the US and Canadian teams. Even before Adam came in, this was our preferred format (still some flaws: if 2 and 3 are the two best teams, they will meet in semis and not in finals if you assume consistent play). Then Adam Tarr came into the discussion only with the published info and suggested a completely different, in my opinion a superior, format out of 4 pools more like UPA nationals. But I guess this was stylewise too far away from traditional WFDF formats, and the time was too short to properly discuss it.

So, with Adam’s help, we polished the alternative format up to what it is now. Everything was done in a big rush with quite some chaos and incomplete information, thanks to the late drop outs, but the current/final format is a good format.