It’s been a while since we’ve had some serious activity on both the CUF yahoo-groups as well as on the field. I think I shall start my mail with my apologies for letting the group lull without any direction for the last month or so. There have been some other things that have been on my mind which have taken my attention away from CUF. Mama as a founding member, and Vatsan, AJ, Abhi and KK as some of the earliest members really have shown their enthusiasm in keeping things going when I (who had voluntarily taken up responsibility of setting up and maintaining communications on this group) had my attention diverted.

The last year was amazing. No one who’d started playing in July (including me) would’ve thought that a tournament with 40 participants would’ve been possible in such a short while. Three cheers to everyone who contributed in any form to the tournament.

So, that brings us to the question, what now? What beyond the tournament? I have had the opportunity to participate in (and sometimes just listen to) a number of conversations about this with/between our members. It is indeed amazing how many people are thinking about CUF actively. From all these conversations, and the emails that we’ve exchanged in planning for the tournament, I think I can summarize the feelings that everyone has, as follows..

a) The tiering system - We have experimented a bit with this in the last month (after the tournament). I think we see a pattern emerging, and we will go ahead and solidify this practice going forward. There will be two tiers and people who feel that they’re somewhere in the middle can rotate between both the tiers.

b) Training camps & drills - Everyone who’s playing regularly these days knows what their current strengths and short comings are. Each one of us I think are also able to say where we aspire to be as we keep playing more games. It will be my priority over the next couple of months to train everyone and try to give them the required tools / throwing & catching skills to get to where they aspire to be. Starting this weekend. We had decent success with the throwing camp conducted last month, but we were able to cover only the backhand. Having had a chance now to gauge what everyone’s training speeds are, we will conduct a “Forehand” throwing camp this Saturday. So, everyone, please mark this on your calenders and land up at the game for sure. I guarantee you that if you learn it this weekend, and practice enough, you will have a perfect throwable / usable forehand by the first week of February.

c) The All-India Tourney (triangular series between Ahmadabad, Chennai and Delhi) - We are in the midst of finalizing the dates for this tournament which will be held in Delhi. The Ahmadabad team is driving the efforts of coordination and they’re trying to get dates from their own team mates. It will mostly be in the last weekend of Feb / first weekend of March. From our side, we will hope to travel as a group of 14 people to the tournament. I had proposed having a tryout-date for this tournament from which we could pick the 14 people who would play, but then there were many people who felt that picking based on 1 day’s performance is unfair. So, I think Shankar, Mama, Sukrit and I will get together sometime in the next week or two and come up with a list based on (i) skill (ii) athletic capabilities (iii) availability for the tournament and practice sessions. This will be based on our respective judgements on players based on the last couple of months of watching everyone.. and not based on just one day of play. The practice sessions for the tournament will more than just the weekend games, and will involve playing on hard ground with some grass cover on it.

d) Mailing list moderation - A number of people have come up to me individually and have asked for moderation on the mails that flow in this yahoo groups. I agree that some of the mails have been very very out of context and have nothing to do with Chennai Ultimate Frisbee. Having said that, I’d like to maintain the friendly atmosphere we have both at the games and on the yahoo-groups which has helped us all bond so fast, and helped the club grown. So, I urge everyone to please pause for a second before sending out an email, to think about its relevance to the group. We are having members of multiple nationalities from long distances who’re on the group because of their interest in the group. Please consider this and exercise judgment before sending out emails to the group.

I hope I have been able to capture everyone’s feelings in this email. I really look forward to having amazing fun with everyone of you playing the game. On behalf of the few of us who wanted to start this group and get UF going in Chennai, Thanks everyone for the brilliant support and enthusiasm you have all shown.

Cheers,
Manu