This was Cathy Liggins logo printed on the t-shirts for the first Two-Hat.
Rumour has it that in the dim dark ages (back when Andrew Morris had only been playing Ultimate for 10 or 15 years), Ultimate tournaments used to be held with some regularity in Tasmania. According to legend the last Tasmanian Ultimate tournament was held in January 1989 - way back before the first Melbourne Hat. (Was there life, let alone ultimate, back then?)
Anyway, the times are changing. A few months ago, an American exchange student (Josh Shapiro) and I got to talking about the standards of the local (Tasmanian) game. It soon became apparent that we had just appointed ourselves as Tournament Directors for a brand new tournament on the Australian Ultimate Calendar. All we needed was a name, a date, some fields and some ultimate players. The planning began.
To ease the locals into competitive ultimate, we decided on a half day tournament, with 4 teams playing a round robin format. The publicity machine began, entry forms were prepared, a stunning t-shirt design emerged, the media were alerted, the overseas contingent invited. To entice players to sign up, we cunningly offered a pre-registration discount.
The local media coverage included radio interviews and pre-tournament coverage (with photo) on the front page of the Hobart Mercury. As the tourney got closer and the pre-registrations rolled in, we began to get worried - instead of worrying about whether we would cover our costs, we began to worry about whether 40 printed t-shirts would be enough. The rules committee met and controversially decided to outlaw the bounce pass, unless your name was Garry Davidson.
On the day of the tournament, we were blessed with an overcast morning. As our midday start approached and games got underway, this gradually changed from dry to light drizzle, to medium drizzle, to heavy drizzle, to large puddles on the playing field.
Despite a very wet afternoon, the tournament ran pretty smoothly. The local TV stations turned up to film a couple of points in the rain, the Mercury ran a post tourney story with another photo, and with the very soft ground there were no broken bones. The results were pretty tight for the top three teams, maroon, green and purple, all with a 2-1 win-loss record. Despite pressure from Sam Waugh (who just wanted to do some heckling), everybody was too tired and too wet to play a final (which would have been a replay of the last game anyway), so the 3-way tie at the top was only broken by points difference with only 2 or 3 points separating 1st from 3rd.
On the day we had 34 players, but with fine weather, we would have struggled with t-shirts and field space. The biggest personal disappointment was that despite having Garry Davidson on my team, he refused to attempt a single bounce pass - maybe they don't bounce too well on puddles!
This was Cathy Liggins logo printed on the t-shirts for the
first Two-Hat.
Thanks to the captains James Reid, Andy Simpson, Craig Mundy and Sam Waugh, the t-shirt team (Cathy Liggins for design and organising printing of the t-shirts, Denny Liggins for persuading her to design it, and Andy Simpson for delivery), Garry Davidson and The Tasmanian University Ultimate Frisbee Club (for the BBQ and the club gear), Peter Purdon for collecting money and entries, Josh Shapiro for inspiration and co-TD-ing and various other people for helping run the event.
Cheers
Jemery (Two-Hat TD)