A bunch of Christians who play Ultimate Frisbee got together recently and chucked around ideas that might help establish and grow a community of Christians in the sport. There are other Christian people around who play, but we don’t all know each other, and many find the culture at tournaments a little difficult at times to reconcile with their faith and practice.

I was in on that discussion.

To get things rolling, we’ve put together a site and a web forum as a means of helping people find out who other Christians are, chat, organise to meet up at tournaments, pray for one another, and a bunch of other things. It may go in different directions. We’ll see.

The aims that we chucked around were the following:

1. Get discussions running on any questions about the Christian faith
2. Get to know other Christians in the frisbee community.
3. Give each other some accountability during tournaments. (Not in a bad way, but you know)
4. Ask about how to handle situations that come up regarding conflicts between frisbee and faith
5. Introduce topics for study, ie. we could have continuous threads running about various sections of the bible
6. Have general fellowship with each other
7. Make online prayer requests… if that’s not too awkward for people.
8. Introduce new people to the concepts and beliefs of Christianity
9. Challenge each other to really show God’s love to everyone!

It’s kinda primarily aimed at those who play at a tournament level, but open to anyone in the frisbee scene. No, you don’t have to be a Christian to join (but understand that this is what we’re on about).

If this sounds like something you might be keen to be a part of, check it out. Sign up, contribute.

And let me know what you think.

On the final day of ultimate nationals, Channel 9 came and did some filming for their ‘weird sport’ segment.

If you watch closely, you can see

• the point where Matt tore/spasmed his quad/hip-flexor
• where we actually won
• me for a brief second, sitting next to the trophy

[Courtesy Channel 9's Wide World of Sports]

My ultimate frisbee club, Fakulti, has finally won nationals.

Over the Anzac Day long weekend each year the Australian Ultimate Frisbee Championships are held, in both Open and Women’s divisions. This year was up in Coffs Harbour, which treated us to weather of all kinds over the 4 days.

Our club has a history of making finals – I think 5 out of the last 6 years one team from the club has made it through to the last day. This year, instead of splitting the club into two even teams (for development of younger and more inexperienced players), we took an A and B squad.

I made the A team… just. (There are lots of very good players in Fakulti.)

We stormed through the opening games pretty much unchallenged, with the closest games being 15-9. The final against Fyshwick United (Canberra) was much closer, with points trading until about 10 all. We eventually won 15-12 in a bit of a nail-biter, which the crowd appreciated. There’s nothing worse than turning up to a final only to see one team absolutely dominate (last year’s AFL final, anyone?).

So, finally, we’re national champions. I missed the awards ceremony as we made the trip back to Sydney a little earlier, leaving halfway through the Women’s final. So I only got my gold medal today. Here ’tis.

2008 Champions. Yay for us.