The Freespeed open team has just won the silver medal at the most important european club tournament!
the XEUCF is the equivalent to the „Champions League“ in Football. The best teams of each country are qualified for the regional elimination (Switzerland is in the south region with France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Israel and Ireland). according to the strength of the region, each region has a certain number of spots for the EUCF, the finals of european club ultimate. (every 4 years, the EUCF is extended to a bigger event with more teams and more divisions, called XEUCF. this was the case this year).
Freespeed has qualified for the finals ever since this format has been launched in 2006. in 2010 the Basel team won the bronze medal at the EUCF in Lloret de Mar in Spain. 2011 Freespeed finished 6th, 2012 9th. This year everything played for the swiss vice champion! here are the daily reports from the tournament:
Thursday, Day 1: Good start for Freespeed at European Club Finals. After a hard fought 15-14 win against the German Champs Bad Skid and a solid 15-6 performance agains Brighton Ultimate, Ragnarok from Copenhagen, the Finnish side Otso and defending Champion Clapham are waiting for us tomorrow. Let’s go Freespeed!
Friday, Day 2: Another successful day at XEUCF! Starting the day with a double game point win against Ragnarok (15:14) and coming out on top against Otso (15:12) after saving energy against a strong Clapham puts us trough to quarters. Congrats also to our friends and rivals from Flying Angels Bern for reaching the top 8. Watch out for the Swiss!!
Saturday, Day 3: After having enough time to recover from three games yesturday Freespeed managed to keep CUSB (who won the prequarter this morning) behind throughout the whole game ending in a well deserved 15:7 victory! Flying Angels managed to turn a game against VIF winning their quarters 15:14! For sure one Swiss team in the finals and both in top 4 of Europe!!! after some delay due to rain and lightning, Freespeed started the rematch of the swiss championship finals in this years XEUCF open semifinals. both teams started with solid offence, trading all the way to the first break in Basel’s favour just before halftime. in the second half Freespeed managed to put more pressure on their offence and score some more breaks. with a last break the D-line closed the game to a 15:9 victory! finals! unbelievable!
Sunday, Day 4: Freespeed Basel is looking back at amazing four days after winning the silver medal at the extended European Ultimate Championships in Bordeaux!!!
Clapham Ultimate was the only team that was able to beat us at this tournament. They started off the finals game with huge pressure on our offense line managing to provoke some turnovers. Although we never lost hope, tried various strategies, got some D’s and fought till the very end we couldn’t turn the game to our benefit any more and had to admit Clapham the very well deserved gold medal (15:8)! Their large squad of very athletic players and the experience they gained from playing together in USA clearly paid off. We will certainly check out the video coverage and find enough weak spots for next time… .
For us it was anyhow a great success story and the best result so far at Europeans! Although we were suffering from some injuries and dropouts of important players we were able to focus and win over several national champions to verify our current 2nd position European Ultimate.
Big thanks to all our supporters at the sideline and at home! You helped making this happen! And also great thank you to the organisers of XEUCF 2013 who did a great job and to Playo.tv and Get Horizontal for the media coverage! and here are all the results!