After a high-speed-chase-style hour in the mountains, we made our flight last night and arrived in Bogota unharmed. We’ve left the home of Nando (Colombian international player, and currently with Mamoots) for the smaller town of Cahiqua, a quiet spot at the foot of the mountains with a polo complex big enough to house 8 fields.

This will be my first experience with a Colombian tournament, but I have already heard a lot about the tour here. There are a ton of tournaments, ranging from Disco Volador (this one) and Nationals to a myriad of smaller, more local tournaments. Ultimate is thought of as an expensive sport here, in large part due to the travel costs. The majority of our team will be meeting us after their 14-hour charter-bus ride through the central valley of the country.

Colombia is, like many emerging Ultimate scenes, feeling a bilateral pull regarding tournamnet and team rules. On one side, they have a rapidly growing community that feeds off of the easy tournament entry and informal team-management process. On the other hand, WFDF dictates that Colombia needs to push the pace into ‘legitimacy’, having rosters for teams and holding a tour from which teams can build points in order to qualify for World events. That rift of intentions has caught up, and the current strife is that the tournament decided that players, for this tournament, are only allowed to play for a team in a single division.

No problem, right? This is standard fare in the US, where only in special circumstances (like Wildwood) would anyone be expecting to play on multiple teams in a weekend. However, in the developing scene here there are many players that take this opportunity to play down into the ‘B’ open scene, or women that play on Open teams as well as Women’s teams.

Ramifications: In the long run, this is probably how tournaments here will end up being…but for now, this decision has forced the players that usually play more Ultimate now to make tough decisions. On Women’s team in particular, whose captain routinely plays high-level men’s Ultimate (seriously, she would be a major force for any women’s club in the US) has decided to forego this tournament, and instead avoid the situation (and take a deserved holiday after a long season). Tournament organizers recanted the decision a few days before the tournament (but well after the time necessary for this team to review their decision).

In the end, there is no perfect solution here. WFDF wants European organization now, and more formality means less playing opportunities. The tournament organizers are being pulled in two different directions: the one WFDF wants in order to fairly allocate bids, and the one more likely to grow the game at a grassroots level.

On the field: We are playing at 8600 feet, and trust me, you can tell the difference. The ability to throw end-to-end, even on these very large fields, is present even in the lowest level teams. You simple will not impress a Bogota team with large throws. Pulls are routinely floating down in the back, and based solely on hangtime and height I would say that the average pull here is better than at UPA Nationals. Leading throws are more difficult, because the air doesn’t seem to want to stay under the disc. Hammers are more difficult to float then I am accustomed to.

We play a Venezuelan team first, and they have some great athletes but run an offense with cutters at least 30 yards away from the throwers, leading to a lot of necessary 30-yard flat throws. When those inevitably float, we take advantage and hold a 4-point lead for most of the game. Handler-cutter separation is especially difficult to maintain in a flat stack offense, as all 4 cutters must equilibrate to a more useful (shorter) distance in order to be a threat cutting both ways.

The wind blows in for our game against Matanga (Bogota), and you can tell who bends at the waist (rather than the knees) when they want to throw low….those throws get tossed us into the air. Lots of injuries in this game for this reason. We are a bit more consistent (willing to huck) upwind, and ride this one out to a 3-4 point win.

Our team is exhausted, both by the change in air and the long bus-ride. This is going to be a strong night of sleep, and then three games tomorrow.