Ultimate: TEP in Colombia

Si Si Colombia

The long-anticipated trip to Colombia dawned in May with a horrendous flight from Vancouver to to Denver to Panama to Medellin. Despite suffering from almost twenty-four hours of planes and customs, my spirits lifted as we caught our first glimpse of Medellin out of the tunnel from the airport. The city spread out along the valley bottom and climbed up the sides of the steep hills, and tropical plants grew wild along the sides of the road. I was impressed by the traffic, which was chaotic and non-judgemental.

The tournament organization was a mysterious black box to me, and I had decided early on not to worry about it. We managed to make it to the hotel, did not manage to check in, managed to get some food, and then tried to prepare for the tournament days. I didn't actually know much about Medellin or Colombia and was surprised how few people spoke English (horrendous assumption on my part) but enjoyed trying to deploy my few weeks of Spanish I'd studied on Duolingo. I found the city very beautiful; there was a lot of mixed-use urbanism, interesting architecture, so many beautiful tropical plants, and loads of very pretty tilework on the sidewalks and buildings.

The Games

It was a three day tournament, so naturally I immediately rolled my ankle in game one. On the second day I decided I wanted to play, ankle notwithstanding, and got taped up and limped myself onto the field. Surprisingly this was a sound strategy and it got better and better throughout the day until I was more or less completely mobile.

We lost to Team Colombia in semis in a heartbreaker for us and a great day for the local crowd. I found the Team Colombian girls very fast and very stylish. The training resolution out of that is to also get faster and maybe get more stylish. To be determined if getting more stylish is feasible.

On the third day we played Team USA and lost on universe. It was very nice of Team USA to agree to play us because they were in finals against Team Colombia later that morning. We took ourselves off to a random field in a baseball diamond and played a game to 12, which we lost on universe.

Overall it was great to get reps against the top teams and a lot of fun to play the stadium games. I don't think I took the correct lesson from my ankle injury -- that pushing through is the way to go -- but that's fine, I haven't learned injury management in my thirty two years of existence and I will never stoop to internalizing that lesson.

After three days of sweating in the heat it was delightful to get some crispy Corona beers and watch the Colombia vs USA finals, where Colombia mounted a late-game comeback to win with some exceptional bids. That night we got to go dancing with the tournament teams and then flew back to Canada at 2am. The less said about those flights, the better.

The next tournament with the full team is US Open in August. Hasta luego!