Open Division Championship - USA vs Colombia

I came to WJUC primarily to watch and photograph the US Women's team, but for 3 days in a row I've been able to go watch the men play too!

Below are some images from their championship game.

Always nice when they try to show the tournament's disc :-)

This is not going to be a pretty landing

A slight mismatch :-)

(I wonder if they wanted to call him 'el gigante')

Alas, his hand is not open and his right arm a bit too high - otherwise, I would've thought that I found the FiveUlitimate guy ;-)

I thought it was a great layout, but I particularly liked the juxtaposition of layout images.

Women's Championship - USA vs Colombia

At the beginning of each championship game, the national anthems for the two countries competing in the game were played over the loudspeakers.  I couldn't resist trying to capture some of the pride and joy these young athletes seemed to be feeling representing their country in this world championship. 

Colombia was the #1 seed coming into the tournament and the US was seeded #3.  But as we saw a few nights ago when they played in the cold rain and mud, these two teams are fairly evenly matched.  The US won that game and the rematch today was likely to be particularly intense.

   Colombia took us to half, but the US fought back and eventually the softcap kicked in - the game was thus to 14.

Making sure the Colombian player is ok

With the amount of flying going on, I was beginning to think I was at an airport :-)

So, what is the ruling if your finger gets caught in the receiver's elastic wristband? (Click on the image to see what I'm talking about)

The match lasted about 2 1/2 hours! (This included about 20 minutes of stoppage when a Colombian player suffered a serious spine/neck injury and was carried out by medics - a WFDF tweet indicated that she was likely going to be discharged later that evening and word is that it's just a bad case of whiplash - hopefully she will get well quickly).

There were tears and smiles in the Spirit Circle, but it was still a place to share praise and respect for each other.  (IMHO, all these young women demonstrated exceptional, world-class athleticism and sportsmanship)

Teams USA and Colombia

Team USA

Women's World Junior Ultimate Championships Silver Medalists

Congratulations to the players and coaches on an outstanding journey - to me, it looked like it was 2 weeks of particularly intense work and pressure.  Yet it also looked like you had an incredible amount of fun being together and playing the sport you truly love.  It was a pleasure to watch you play, and a hoot to see you play in the stadium with all the fans. 

Rumor has it you may get together to play at Potlatch - I hope you do, and I hope I can be there too!