This years southern european regionals for the European Ultimate Club Finals (EUCF) were held in Nantes, France. Only two weeks after the World Ultimate Club Championships, not everyone was ready to play another competitive tournament. We were missing some players who were injured or on vacation. But we took the chance to develop some of our young and promising talents.

Results from the first day:

Pool Game:  Freespeed  15:5  Friselis (France)

Pool Game:  Freespeed  15:4  Barbastrej (Italy)

Quarters:  Freespeed  15:11  CUSB La Fotta (Italy)

With three victories we were qualified for the semifinals, where Flying Angels Bern was waiting for us. In the other semifinal, Tchac and Iznogood had a french battle. Here are the results:

Semis:  Freespeed  10:14  Flying Angels (Switzerland)

3rd Place:  Freespeed  15:10  Iznogood (France)

The third place qualified for the Elite Pools (top 8 teams) at the EUCF in Frankfurt, played from october 3rd to 5th.

Here’s a short summary of our participation at the World Ultimate Club championships 2014 in Lecco, Italy. We updated on a daily base on our facebook page. If you’re interested in reading the news from back then, go and check out our facebook page.

__After a long and intense preparation for this tournament, Freespeed had a perfect start into the tournament. The first game resultet in a rather easy victory over the hungarian Champion, playing with our long time legionnaire Gabor. The second game was an exceptional performance from our offensive line, playing a perfect game with no turnovers at all! Results of the first day:

Freespeed  15:4  Lézer Pávák (Hungary)

Freespeed  15:11  Phoenix (Canada)

Here’s the link to the video recap by Benjamin Aellen

__Day two had only one game for us. We played some well known rivals from across the border: the austrian team FWD>> (Forward). The game was not especially good, but in control most of the time, resulting in a safe victory. Result of day two:

Freespeed  15:10  FWD>> (Austria)

Video of the day

__On the third morning Freespeed met one of the big names in Ultimate of the past decade: Furious George, Vancouver! A bad start made it difficult to stay in the game, but with hard work, some luck and spectacular plays we fought our way back into the game to keep it tight to the end, but losing it anyway. The second game was probably the most disappointing game from the last couple of seasons! We played not at our best and EMO played a really good game. They won the game. We were out of the competition. A very hard moment in this season. Results of the third day:

Freespeed  13:15 Furious George (Canada)

Freespeed  11:15 EMO (England)

Video of the day

Entire Game vs. Furious George

__We recovered well from the major disappointment of dropping out at this early stage and managed to give one of the colombian teams a tough fight next morning. It was the only game for us on day four. Results:

Freespeed  17:12  Comunidad el Oso (Colombia)

Video of the day

__On the last day we met two well known rivals: CUSB La Fotta from Bologna and Chevron Action Flash from Manchester. Both were intense games. We ended up winning the first one and losing the second one. This brought ourselves the 18th rank. Not quite what we aimed for, but a valuable experience and quite a good achievement. Results:

Freespeed  17:12  CUSB La Fotta (Italy)

Freespeed  13:16  Chevron Action Flash (England)

Video of the day

__That’s it from the 2014 World Ultimate Club Championships. Only one more thing. Our media guru worked even harder than we expected him to and created a entertaining and wonderful summary of this experience! Click here for 12 minutes of distraction.

After some years of playing close to or at the top of big european tournaments, we are looking back at the 2013 season as another very successful one! Hard work in countless practice hours, tactical adaptions before and during the season and great execution by everyone led to the obvious highlights of this season: Defending the title at Tom’s Tourney, coming 3rd at Windmill Windup and playing the finals at XEUCF!

Probably less obvious, we’re about to reach another milestone in our club history. After starting a junior program a few years ago, we now start to integrate the oldest and most experienced juniors into the competitive open team. This might be a big opportunity for further step-ups as a team. We can now integrate young players who don’t have to start from the simple basics, but already are familiar with some of our strategies and have solid skills and athleticism.

Overall, we’re proud and happy with another awesome year as a team, in which we overcame very difficult moments, celebrated great games and took steps into the future of the team!

Seeing many new talents from all parts of europe, as well as teams improving in various aspects, we are looking forward to the european 2014 season as a probably more competitive one than ever!

For our preparation, we still have one big question mark: Despite the mostly great performances from Flying Angels and Freespeed on an european level in the last years, Switzerland has only one spot in the open division of the 2014 World Ultimate Club Championships (taking place in Lecco, 40km off the swiss border…). Since we lost the 2013 national championship finals to Flying Angels in double game point, we have no spot yet. We’re still hoping for some changes on the WFDF side to make the current european number 2 club team play at WUCC 2014…