Alex Blanchfield.
Osgoode resident Adam Blanchfield plays on Ottawa’s only competitive ultimate frisbee junior team, RessureXion. The 17-year-old hopes to play varsity ultimate when he graduates from high school next year.
Emma Jackson
This weekend the Ottawa Carleton Ultimate Association will host Canada’s biggest tournament of the year, welcoming 68 teams and 1,500 athletes from across the country to Osgoode Ward to fight for a chance to compete in next year’s world ultimate frisbee championships.
The Canadian Ultimate Championship will decide which five Canadian teams will compete in the world tournament from each division: men’s, women’s, mixed, juniors (19 and under) and masters’ (34 and up).
Between Aug. 11 and 14 each team will play as many as five games a day before they even reach the final rounds on Saturday.
It’s only fitting that Canada’s ultimate frisbee championship would take place in Ottawa. The city boasts the world’s first and largest purpose-built ultimate frisbee facility, one of the world’s largest ultimate frisbee leagues at 5,000 players strong, and the world’s oldest annual tournament that predates even this weekend’s 25th annual nationals by a year.
In 1997 the league was still struggling for field space as it was considered a fringe sport by the City of Ottawa. It decided to pool its resources and purchase a piece of land in Ottawa South off Manotick Station Road. The Ultimate Parks Inc. facility now has 19 fields that are maintained and set up specifically for ultimate frisbee games.
Cory Bowditch, one of three tournament directors and a long-time player in the local association, said the sport’s popularity in Ottawa grew from the high tech boom in the early 2000s, where word of mouth spread its popularity through that sector and into the government’s ranks. Now the league is focused on attracting youth to the sport.
“Obviously we’re always trying to bring more people into the sport. Ideally we would really love more and more youth to get involved, because they’re where the sport will come from in the future,” he said.
Osgoode resident Adam Blanchfield, 17, is a senior player on Ottawa’s junior team RessureXion, and has been playing ultimate since he was in Grade 5. He said the team has fairly low chances of moving on to the world championship, partly because Ontario school boards and municipalities don’t sanction the sport in the same way as other provinces like British Columbia.
“In Vancouver, it’s in all the high schools. We don’t have that here. Even at (St. Mark Catholic School in Manotick) we don’t have it, and we’re walking distance from UPI. We’re so close to the best privately owned fields in Canada, and we don’t have a team,” he said.
Because the sport isn’t sanctioned, resources aren’t allotted in the school board for coaches, travel expenses and time off from school to take part in the sport, making it harder to convince teachers and students to participate.
However, Blanchfield said he has hopes for the sport he fell in love with as a kid looking for a fast, competitive, non-contact sport. Universities are beginning to offer scholarships for their varsity ultimate teams, and next year Ultimate Canada will split the juniors into separate men’s and women’s divisions as participation continues to grow.
Blanchfield, who wants to be a diesel mechanic, said he plans to factor competitive ultimate into his post-secondary education choices, with dreams of going to the national championships on a varsity team.
“Kemptville College offers the (mechanic) program through Guelph University. Just as a coincidence, Guelph University was the men’s national champions for ultimate (last year),” he said. “So, who knows?”
Spectators can check out the ultimate tournaments happening all weekend at the Ultimate Parks Inc facility Aug. 11 to 14. For a complete schedule visit www.cuc2011.com.