Novovengo Wins 2nd Annual Brisbane Indoor Ultimate Championships

Well, it was such a fun day that its taken a little while to get around to writing the report, but congratulations to Novovengo for winning the 2nd Annual Brisbane Indoor Ultimate Championship!

After some mucking about during the week, the tournament solidified into a five team shoot-out, featuring several recoverees from last year's championships (many now in new forms), as well as a number of 'never-played-indoors-what-a-hoot' types. The draw was a round robin followed by Semis and a Final.

Round 1
The Opening Round involved a lot of folks trying to adapt to the continuous pace of indoor Ultimate. eQUisiTe, with a few northern-hemispherians (ie people who've played a bit of indoor) managed a win over the working-it-out Heroes, 21-14, while the well organised Novovengos (ie the team had been finalised and regoed two months ago) defeated the more casual X-Pats (photo below) 21-11.

The X-Pats, along with Assistant TD Rohan in green.

Round 2
The first round bye allowed the UQ Pickup Squad to get it together and enter the event in Round 2 with a win over the X-Pats 18-11 at time cap. Meanwhile, Novovengo began to put its big blue stamp on the event, defeating the Heroes (team photo below) 21-7 in a speedy gonzalez game.

The regular every day Heroes with Rohan (in green of course!) and uber-pickup Cassie. Where was Carl?

Round 3
Novovengo 21 defeated ExQUisiTe 7; UQ 18 (along with TD JdR for a few points) defeated Heroes 14. By this stage we'd sussed out the electronic scoreboards and thanks to the X-Pats for starting the trend of the bye-teams manning them - they add a lot to the excitement, particularly when the scores get a real roll on! Here is a photo of the UQ squad - special respect to Megan and Ash who played the whole tournament without a sub - IRONWOMEN!

UQ looking lean and mean.

Round 4
After a short break, it was back on the courts for probably the biggest round of the day. Both the Heroes and the X-Pats (who now had a number of fans watching on) were looking for their first win. Meanwhile, ExQUisiTe and UQ were trying to work out who was the number 2 team (behind the resting Novovengonians). As always, the scoreboard tells the late - Heroes 21 def X-Pats 12; and ExQUisiTe 17 def UQ 16. Here's a photo of the E's in their nice pink outfits.

ExQUisiTe - Simon was particularly awesome in pink.

Round 5
The Heroes finally got to sit this one out and watch a bit, and in this case they got to see Novovengo defeat UQ 21-11 and ExQUisiTe defeat the fast finishing Uncanny X-Pats 21-16. This put the X-Pats out of the Finals and into the 'lets see who can throw a basket from the other end' game.

Finals

The Semi-finals saw some interesting matchups in the 1v4 and 2v3 stakes.

In game one, we won't sugar-coat it Novovengo put on a show of 'how to keep possession and thereby keep scoring under semi-continuous Ultimate' to defeat the Heroes 21-1. A tough lesson for what was otherwise a semi-continously improving Heroes squad.

For contrast, over in game two, the tussle was on, with points and hard defence keeping the scores level throughout, before the final whistle saw ExQUisiTe advance to the final over UQ 17-16. Tough luck to the students. Maybe if Tyson played a bit better ....

The Grand Final was seeped in fluroscent tinted haze as exhaustion started to settle over the players and spectators. If we recall correctly, the underdogs eQUisiTe were neck and neck with Novovengo for the first half - perhaps the score was 8-7 at one point, before Jack's posse swept ahead to win something like 16-8 (if someone remembers, please correct us).

Heroes took home the spirit prize, and a perpetual trophy as been purchased - it just needs engravery before going to light up the life of the Novovengans. Well done all and see you next year (at a new mystery venue!).

The Champions!