MANILA. Ultimate frisbee and fun.

The word for “ultimate frisbee” in Vietnamese is “ném đĩa.” I don’t know what “ultimate frisbee” is in Tagalog. I realize this as the elderly taxi driver—fresh off blatantly charging me double the usual fare—asked me what I was doing in Manila. I had said “ultimate frisbee,” which was somewhat unsurprisingly met with a blank stare. I reach into my bag and pull out a white plastic disc, and hold it up for him to see. His face lights up as he exclaims “Oh yes, yes! I know!”

When you take cab rides with friendly taxi drivers in foreign countries, most of the questions they ask are pretty standard. Where are you from? Do you like Obama? How do you like (insert country name here)? Are you married? Do you like (insert ethnicity here) girls? However this cab ride was different. This time, as we navigated through Manila at an excruciatingly slow pace—Manila traffic is horrible and my driver had no idea where my hotel was—I slowly explained the rules of ultimate frisbee to my cab driver, who barely spoke a word of English.

Welcome to Manila.

This past weekend I took a weekend hiatus from teaching English in rural south Vietnam to go play ultimate in Manila at Manila Spirits, one of the largest tournaments in southeast Asia. Manila Spirits this year had over 1,000 players attending for up to three days of ultimate. Friday was one day of Open/Women’s (14 Open teams and 8 Women’s teams) and Saturday and Sunday were two days of Mixed (48 teams). Teams came from Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia, to say nothing of the dozens of Filipino teams that showed up.

I would be playing both Open and Mixed with VUDOO, the organizing body of ultimate in Vietnam. Our team was comprised of expatriates, friends from other countries and Vietnamese players and local Filipinos. There were two other Vietnamese teams, RMIT and Big Eye, both entirely composed of Vietnamese players, but VUDOO had a more diverse composition. Coming into this tournament, I knew about five of the VUDOO players and that was it.

I settle into my hotel in Manila only to receive several calls from my teammates. Someone missed their flight, and as a result I am now the sole representative of VUDOO Open in Manila. I am now captain for registration purposes and the captain’s meeting, captaining a team where I don’t even know a quarter of my teammates.  Sweet.

Luckily the registration and tournament fee was totally covered by Lien one of the representatives of VUDOO’s Women’s team. My job as captain was to listen in on the captain’s meeting and have first dibs on the free San Miguel and nachos. Totally qualified for that.   

I ended up spending the end of the evening with my friend Drian, a Filipino living in Vietnam who I met playing in Ho Chi Minh City. Drian was playing with his local team, and he introduced me to a bunch of his Filipino friends. At the end of the day, I’m sitting with Drian and his friends, a cold San Miguel in my hand, listening to rapid-fire Tagalog and occasionally asking questions in English. It’s hard to be dissatisfied with this.

I’m never able to sleep the night before a tournament. Nine years of playing ultimate, and I still go to bed knowing that I forgot to pack something. I hope it won’t be anything important.

Friday morning I hop on the tournament bus to the Alabang Country Club Polo Grounds.

Tourney bus

The fields

Gorgeous surface

We arrive at the fields and I warm up with Drian’s team before the other VUDOO players start to arrive. 

At any club tournament in the world, there is the top tier of clubs. These are the ones with set rosters, intense and regular practices and defined goals for the tournament. They are also the ones who will walk away with the victory at the end of the day. Here those teams are China United Ultimate Party, Boracay Dragons, and some others. 

VUDOO falls on the other end of the spectrum, a pick-up team of diverse individuals who are affiliated with each other through the loosest of mutual friendships and an intense love of ultimate. Over this weekend, we will be forged into one team, but at first, we’re just a random collection of people. This in and of itself is not unusual, you find these teams at every tournament. What is unusual is the extraordinary diversity among my teammates. There’s the Thai guy living in Chiengmai, then the handful of expats living in Vietnam, then the American working in Laos who our captain knows through a mutual friend, a few Filipino players and a bunch of Vietnamese students. We make a motley bunch.

Our games start at 8 am against SLEX, a local Filipino team. SLEX was a good opening test for us, a handful of good players but other than that not too much depth. After a spirited and tough game, we successfully get past SLEX, 11-8. 

Zero flips the disc to an open handler

Vu with a pretty huck. Pretty sure I caught this for a score. 

Kyle with the disc

7 on the line

Running down on the pull

Cheering on VUDOO Women

After our game against SLEX we moved on to face the Boracay Dragons.

The Boracay Dragons are the best team in the Philippines. They train year-round, have incredibly selective tryouts and are known worldwide for their incredibly athletic layout grabs. They represented the Philippines at the World Beach Ultimate Championships in 2011, almost upsetting the U.S. in the finals. They are not the tallest team in the world, but they are unbelievably fast.

I found myself admiring the Filipino style of ultimate showcased by the Dragons, and displayed later in the tournament by Team Cebu. Unlike the college ultimate scene, where vertical leaps and jumping over defenders is showcased, the Filipino style is built around optimizing insane speed. When U.S. college players throw deep they tend to prefer floating the disc out, letting their man leap and catch it over a defender. When the Filipinos throw deep, they almost never float the disc at all. Instead, they throw the disc into space, letting their man run onto it.

They also never stop running. Ever. They are sprinting around the field at full throttle the entire time, until your vision starts to blur a bit just from tracking your man. Then as soon as you lose a single step he breaks for the endzone, running onto a disc that is thrown out into space so you have no play on it. I’ve played against players like that in college, smaller guys who didn’t necessarily have great vertical ability but more than made up for it in insane quickness and a top gear that defied human biomechanics. But this is the first time I’ve played against entire teams where everyone was built like that.

Of course, the flip side to that is that a shorter team, even if it is faster, will necessarily be weak defensively against deep throws. I’m 6 feet tall, with a decent vertical and a pretty good ability to read the disc. In college, I was pretty good in the air, definitely capable of skying the odd fellow or jumping over a defender when necessary. But in the Philippines? In the air, only one player I played against was really able to cover me deep. Vu would just throw floaty deep throws that hung in the air for an eternity, and I would jog over and then jump over my guy, who despite being faster than me was hampered by being 5’7”. When I was paired with Kyle, a 6’3” former college player from Colorado College, we were almost unbeatable in the air.   

However, the Dragons never even let us put up any deep throws, their defense was so relentless and when they had the disc, they always scored with a clinical offense. Final score: 12-1.

Post-game huddle with Dragons. Almost every game ended like this, captains of each team saying what the other team did well and wishing them good luck. Very good spirit. 

If you haven't started admiring our jerseys yet, you probably should. Designed by Rain and made by Vu, they are some pretty sweet threads. 

After the game against the Dragons we had another game, then closed out our day with a game against Hardcore ultimate. By that time our legs were pretty tired so I don’t remember most of either game, other than fact that we lost and were outrun. VUDOO Open went 1-3 on the day, but one of the losses was to the Dragons so I don’t feel too bad about that.

At Manila Spirits, just as at any tournament in the world, there are several moments when one of your teammates runs into his or her close friend or acquaintance from a former tournament and they enthusiastically start catching up. This is not in and of itself unusual.

What is unusual at Manila Spirits is the vast diversity of languages you hear when this happens. You’ll be chatting with your friend on the sideline, then just as you turn away you hear a girl greet him in enthusiastic Thai. Or Malaysian. Or Tagalog. Or Mandarin. Or Vietnamese. English is the lingua franca of the tournament, but all around you there is an aural barrage of different languages taking place. 

Shot from the finals

We stuck around to watch the Open final between CUUP, a team of American expats in China, and the Boracay Dragons.  I’m pretty sure all the guys who played for China had elite ultimate training in either club or college. I recognized a lot of jerseys–Tufts, Indiana, Machine to name a few—and their whole team just played like an American club team. Fast, aggressive and athletically intimidating. The Dragons were fast but CUUP was better, and in the end the Americans prevailed. 

That night, the option for food was local Filipino food or Domino’s. I’ve been living in rural Vietnam for the last 3 months and have not tasted Domino’s in a very long time. You can already guess what my vote was. Don’t judge me. 

Okay, you're judging me. Fine, I deserve it. 

Friday night, we went out to the tournament party. Normally I am against going to tournament parties because there are games to play the next day, and I’m generally just too tired to make it to the party. But this weekend I decided, it’s Manila! I have to go for it here.

The party itself was definitely a lot of fun, but for me the highlight was actually the pregame. Lester, one of our Filipino teammates, offered to show us around the local scene before we went to the parties. Lester is one of the original fathers of VUDOO and an elder statesman in the Filipino ultimate community, so I was definitely excited to chill with him and have him show us around. To pregame, Lester took us to Cable Car, a Filipino beer pong bar. I haven’t played beer pong since I left Chicago. I was in ecstasy.

Filipino beer pong

Next morning waking up was a bit difficult, not going to lie. Still, I managed to drag myself out of bed and get onto the tournament bus in time.

Saturday we would be playing Mixed, or co-ed ultimate. Our team was entirely changed from Friday, not only because of the addition of girls. Of the guys, only Vu, Felipe, Kyle, Christian and myself would be playing with VUDOO for mixed. The Vietnamese students were playing with their own teams, Ekk was playing with the Dragons and the Filipino dudes all picked up with their local teams.

We brought in another wave of imports. There were two Malaysian girls, another pair of Americans from Laos, a huge bunch of Filipino guys, another Thai guy and two American expats living in China.

Saturday was even more fun for me than Friday. I think part of it is that I’m just more relaxed playing Mixed. I’ve played a lot of co-ed ultimate before in high school and summer league, but all of my high-level ultimate has come in the Open division. As a result, I think I am instinctively more competitive when I play Open ultimate, which can be frustrating when you are playing on an entirely new pick-up team. When you play with a pick-up team your expectations have to be flexible and you have to be extremely forgiving of new teammates, something that does not come easily if you are super competitive.

I also think VUDOO Mixed had a more coherent identity than VUDOO Open. It’s hard to really point at how or why that changed, but I definitely realized at a certain point that VUDOO Mixed had a real identity. It was approximately: We play hard, we support each other, we play with good spirit and we never give up. We may not always win, but we always play hard and we always have fun.

First game was against Weekend Karma, a team that we blew out of the water pretty quickly, a good game to get new players used to working with each other and working out the kinks. VUDOO, 11-2

Second game was against Team Cebu. These guys were the second-best team I played against. SO FAST. Gaah. I’m still having nightmares about trying to cover this 5’3” cutter who just moved like mercury. We fought hard but ended up losing. Team Cebu, 11-6

Look at how sweet these jerseys are!

skying some dude

High release backhands

Lunch time

Third game was a tough one. We were playing Monster, a team that beat VUDOO last year, and I had been hearing about the rematch all tournament. We were really evenly matched, came out trading points and no one ever really went on a run. It came down to universe point. On offense, I grabbed a big throw over two defenders, then laid out in the endzone only to watch the pass fall out of my reach. Monster would walk the disc down the field and score. Monster, 10-9.

Final game of the day was against Gardeners, a local young Filipino team. They were spirited players and they hustled, but honestly we let them stick around. People were really tired and we made a lot of mistakes that these kids pounced on. Game came down to universe point again, and this time we punched the disc in. VUDOO 10-9

Kevin displays proper swag form

The party that night was fantastic. Mayan Apocalypse theme, went to this big club, everyone was having a blast. Apparently there were drag queens at some point? I don’t know, didn’t see that. Had so much fun I wasn’t back in bed until 4 am that night. 

This also happened. Caution tape limbo is a thing now

Felipe came to wake me up 5:45 am. Through constant cajoling and a firm resolve, he somehow convinced me to get up, get packed and get on the bus.

I got to the fields dehydrated, hungry and incredibly tired, with a first round game against SLEX (the same team we had played in Open on Friday, but now in Mixed) looming. I lowered my head, fighting my headache and general exhaustion and resigning myself to a game that was probably not going to be fun for me.

That was the best game I played all tournament.

I have no idea why, but for some reason I was untouchable that morning. I caught 5 scores, leapt over defenders with startling regularity and made a big defensive play in our endzone on the last point of the game. However, it wasn’t enough. SLEX scored on universe point, final score 10-9 SLEX.

Throughout the day, VUDOO had been giving “MVP” VUDOO hats to the other team’s best player, as a nice little token of good spirit. After this game my teammates gave me one of the “MVP” hats, which I was not expecting at all. It was so nice of them and I really loved it, that hat is now a definitive part of my frisbee swag.

VUDOO still had two more games, but I unfortunately had to duck out early. The folks at Ben Tre College had insisted that I be back for class on Monday, and since they so generously allowed me to come in the first place I felt that was a reasonable request. Unfortunately, the only flight that got me back in time was a Sunday flight at noon. Boooo.

Well, I brought all my bags to the field, so I caught a taxi to the airport, sweaty, dehydrated, hungry and still cleated up. I sprinted through customs, hurriedly changed in an airport bathroom and then passed out for the entirety of the flight back to Ho Chi Minh City. Got on a bus back to Ben Tre, got to my room and immediately fell asleep.

On the cab ride back, the driver was amused at my appearance. He asked me what sport I was playing, and all of a sudden my ride back to the airport was immediately occupied with a slow and thorough discussion of ultimate frisbee. As I got out of the cab and walked into the airport I suddenly stopped and started kicking myself. Four days in Manila and I still don’t know what “ultimate frisbee” is in Tagalog.

Thanks for reading!

Peace,

jeffers