Zing, September 2006

Zing, 2006

In September 2006, Zing played in the Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships at Ballarat, Vic. After being unable to get a team together for Mixed Nationals in 2005, this was the third Tasmanian Mixed Ultimate team to attend Mixed Nationals. Zing were initially seeded 16th, and suffered from a number of injuries, both just before the tournament and during the tournament. Initially it appeared that selections would need to be made to get onto the team, at least for the men, but a series of withdrawals meant that the team had to look for a few pickups instead!

Day 1: 3 games

Friday kicked off wet, windy and plain old miserable...not exactly the best conditions for ultimate. All the same Zing took to the field for its first game against Newcastle (who eventually won the tournament). We had only 8 players for this game as Basil, Coit, and Shavawn were still making their ways to Ballarat. Zing lost the game 5-15 (or close to that). The second game was against Blokes and Sheilas (the ACT WUCC team). Zing started the game with 5 guys and 3 girls as Kylie injured her quad in the warm up. Blokes and Sheilas lent us Lou until Basil and Coit turned up half way through the game. After which we played 5-2. This game turned out to be rather intense with a few hard Ds taken by Coit. Zing lost 2-15. The third game of the day was billed as a demo game for a local Ballarat high school against Ballarat. By now the rain had stopped but it was still windy. Zing started the game playing 5-2 until Shavawn rocked up half way through the game. In the end Zing won this close game by a golden goal. Can't remember the final score.

Day 2: 4 games

Day two started with lots of wind and cold temperatures which stayed with us all day. Zing battled through four games in these awful conditions. The first two games of the day we won. The first was against a Sydney team (I think?) and the second against the bottom seeded Adelaide team. Then after lunch we had two big games. By this point we were playing with 7 guys and 3 girls but for these last two games Cath Bowker agreed to join us as a ring in. The first game was against Honey Badgers (another WUCC team). When time went the games was tied. Zing scored the next point. Then unfortunately after a few turn overs we lost the next two points to lose the game 8-9 (I think). The last game of the day was not our best. We had all put in so much in the Badgers games that we had run out of steam. We lost to MUUF (not sure of the exact initials of the Macquarie Uni graduates team) by a few points.

Day 3: 3 games

The last day of the tournament was once again cold, wet and windy. Our first game was to avoid the 17-20 playoff, which we won easily (can't remember who it was). The second game, which we had to win to beat our seeding (16th), was against one of the Sydney teams who played the last point of every game in their jocks. This game was closer than the first game of the day but we still came out on top. Our third game of the day and last of the tournament was against the combined Australian Juniors teams (plus Abra). There were so many injuries on both teams that by the end of the game we were playing 6-1, which was to the Juniors teams advantage. In the end the Juniors won placing Zing in 14th for the tournament.

Thanks

Thanks to Shavawn Donoghue and Matt Petrie for holding the team together in somewhat trying conditions, and to Tim Johnson and Shavawn for putting together the team report!

Team list

The 2006 Zing team comprised:

Zing team photo, Ballarat, September 2006: (back row) Tim Wise, Naomi Petrie, Shelly Slater, David Lockhart, Tim Johnson, Coit Stevenson, (front row) Shavawn Donoghue (captain), Matt Petrie (captain), Isaac Petrie, Felix Kennedy, Basil van Riet. Missing: Kylie Mulligan. Photograph thanks to Shavawn.