All-Star Ultimate Tour Blog | Adapting to the Differences

In partnership with the Tour, Skyd is pleased to present articles from the Tour Blog.

By Carolyn Normile

Yesterday night, we played Vancouver Traffic. The feeling of yesterday’s game was very different from Monday’s, for a lot of expected reasons. The venue was located at a park, not in a stadium. The crowd was older; there was no elementary school league using the field before us who then stayed to watch. Traffic was also more unknown to us, so there was a lack of scouting because we weren’t matching up against our close friends and teammates.

But, it was still an amazing game of ultimate nonetheless.

Traffic threw some zone at us, and it was really cool to observe how our team was able to collaborate and come up with a strategy that helped us fight back in the second half.

Something else stood out to my teammates and me were the amazing volunteers who helped us from the minute we got there until the minute we left. It made us feel welcome and emphasized the incredible support that ultimate communities have to offer. To all volunteers — thank you so much.

One of the biggest takeaways from this game was the realization that each city is going to be very different from the last. Everything from the venues, crowd, opponents, style of play, and weather is going to vary so much. Learning how to mentally overcome these differences is a challenge that our team will face. Although we lost our game tonight, we have learned so much about ourselves and what this experience is going to be like. We have just arrived at the venue in Portland, and I’m excited to see what Schwa has in store.