CHICAGO TUNE-UP 1999

"Buncha crampers," designates Jason Flock, captain of the Cutters, a second year team out of Bloomington, Indiana, as two teammates share a banana. This is Flock's sixth Tune-Up. "It's about gettting a look at some good competition from around the country, and you get to find out what works, what the strengths and weaknesses of your team are for the fall season."

Six years ago, Tom Coffin, Lynne Nolan and Mike LasCola founded Tune-Up. The next year Cola and Lynne decided to fly out elite teams for the pre-season mixer. Thus it is officially the Tune-Up Invitational. It has changed since, as the number of teams has increased to 84, lessening costs for all and getting everyone involved. This year, they added a Co-Ed division which was a success.

Lynne and Cola enjoy running the tournament, as much as that can be said. It ain't easy getting together over 1600 Ultimate players, notoriously lackadaisical, for 460 games over two days of play.

"We've purchased our stripers. We now have 284 cones," says Lynne jokingly. Really, they are prepared. And truly, it shows, because Tune-Up has been pulled together without a hitch since its inception. "It's a credit to the players that comeÐ they realize we have a quality thing. And this year the Chicago teams really helped us setup the tournament," she says.

We know about the Curse of Tune-UpÐno open team has won both Tune-Up and Nationals, and perhaps only the Maine-acs in 1994 have done the feat on the women's side. Now, I cannot predict who won Nationals now....but it probably wasn't...

Furious George and Ozone. Furious felt comfortable for this tournament. They wanted to be here last year but the airlines wouldn't let them. So 1999 became the year they came to kick some American butt, and they did so most righteously, beating Death or Glory twice, again, the last one 15-11 in finals. "We try to win every tournament we play in," says co-captain and scoober machine Jeff Cruikshank. Still, they were good-natured and as athleltic as ever. And what were those high-top Nike cleats they were wearing?

Ozone, between veterans Chris O'Cleary, Jami Cashin, Angela Lin and Michelle Chabot, went through pool play on Saturday undefeated, "Our offense is not playing well, but we're 4Ð0," said O'Cleary. On Sunday, Ozone continued its winning ways, beating Catchit (name change from the more scatological Catshit) 10Ð9 and then escaping Nemesis, 11Ð10. For the finals, they came back from down to best Fury in a tempest of rain, 12Ð10. So it couldn't have been any better for the southerners, who received strong support from recent University of Georgia graduates.

As for the rest, a different story for each. DoG unveiled old faces, bringing back Paul Greff and Jeremy Seeger, but keeping youngsters Forch and Safdie away for the weekend. DoG should have lost to Sockeye, but won on a defensive stop 11Ð10. And they should have lost to Anodyne too, but pulled it off 12Ð10. So what was happening? Seeger explains: "I think our legs may have been a little heavy. We're not at the best tournament strength, this is kind of a conditiongin tournament for us." Ah, these sneaky, conniving, sandbagging northeasterners, up to their old tricks.

And Godiva too? The Lady lost in pool play to Philly, 12Ð9, and narrowly avoided an upset at the hands of Fury. What was going on? Teens was there. Molly was there. What more do they need? Poochie, Parham, Gwyn Tracy, more all in attendance. Well, I think they were doing a little more scouting than playing probably. Gauging the competition, measuring their level of play without the adrenaline spikes of Nationals. So they still won their pool and lost to Fury in semifinals, and Fury is a good team.

Fury did look pretty darn good. JD and Kim Zabora have benefitted well from Stanford. Dom the Bomb, AJ, Martina, they were in the house and causing a ruckus. Hard running, good handling skills, not afraid to put the disc up, this team looked solid in Naperville. I think they were in Tune-Up finals last year too, so this is definitely a program on the rise, and with a feeder school like Stanford you can bet they'll be strong for years to come.

Everyone knows the story of Tune-Up, right, about how the teams are bracketed off to start and then the great vertical migration begins? And the legendary games that end 10Ð9? This tournament has all that. Funny, because the format is almost identical to the new structure of Fall Nationals, although it has been played here for five years. Four pools of 4 for pool play games to 13, then reseeded with top two from each pool advancing to pre-quarter pools, where they play, and then advance straight to semifinals from the results of those pool play matches.

All games, except semis and finals, are capped at one hour and 15 minues and there is no half-time. The strict time frame and cap (add 1 when horn sounds) often results in those weird 9-8 upsets and whatnot. But the advantage of such a tournament are clear: you get to see as many teams as possible in two days of play, and even get to advance to a higher bracket if you are a lower-seeded team.

For instance, Sub Zero got to play Furious George, the Houndz, Ring of Fire, Anodyne and others. Good practice for Nationals, to be sure. Speaking of Sub Zero, the Minnesota boys looked pretty good, beating Ring of Fire again, but losing to Houston and then Furious for the second time, in semifinals, which was a very good game.

Other props should be given to Anodyne for playing well despite being short-staffed, Kansas City, Black and Gold, and Cloverdale Invaders for making the move up a bracket. Second Wind, the new Chicago team, looked a little weak, but they are young and can only improve. Ring of Fire played well, but can't seem to get over Sub Zero. The Houndz looked very good and certainly are a strong up and coming team. They made semifinals and lost to DoG by 6 or so. Great shirts tooÐa skeleton with a gallon-hat. Cool. Now even more girls will want to watch Brian Harriford sky (oh did I mention they picked him up in the off-season?) Sockeye lost almost a half-dozen players to BoG but they still have a consistently solid team. Had they beaten DoG, they might have even made semifinals. Sohei, now called Secret Squirrel, was up and down, as was Sick of It All.

There was no Women on the Verge to sweep Tune-Up this year, thus leaving it open to Fury and Ozone. But right behind them were Nemesis, Rare Air, Philly, Backhoe and CatchitÐall Nationals teams. Nemesis, the home team, wasn't as tight as they could have been according to Lynne. She claims that all the distractions of running a tournament and staying in different places (namely: home) meant that the team had lost an edge. Even so, in a close and well-spirited game they beat Philly early Sunday morning in a "weird wind." Finally this year, Nemesis got some support in the form of new recruits. Philly, for their part, were still rump-shaking to TAFKAP. Rare Air was looking to turn some heads (which they eventually did at Regionals) but were still unable to get by Fury in quarters. But they did beat Nemesis in pool play (thus re- establishing the Colorado-Chicago-Philadelphia axis).

Twister and Vixen fell out of the A bracket after the pool play shakeout, but they regained composure against a bevy of up and coming teams like Toast (Bay Area), Super Cosmo Lift (Seattle), Diva (Florida), Clutch (Detroit) and Jane Air (Minnesota) to win the B bracket. Congrats to those Bostonians.

In the Co-Ed division, Joey Gray's Naughty Bear, outta Seattle, a hotbed of co-educational activism, bested the Go-Go's (sponsored by the 'get up and go' beverage). The Go-Go's were formed, apparently, when no strong Open or Women's team could be formed in St. Louis and so the top players combined. The co-ed division really advanced exponentially in talent this year. In semifinals were the Raliegh Lamas (North Carolina based, and featuring the inimitable Kenny Dobyns, who actually mucked up his knee pretty bad her in Chicago) and Blind Date, I think.

Personally, I would like to thank Cola and Lynne Nolan for the tournament, and the Shiels, keepers of the ultimate Ultimate hospitality in the Chicago region. Also congrats to Rich Farmer and his wife on the new baby.

OhÐI must add this. During the women's semifinal between Ozone and Nemesis I spotted a very large umbrella emblazoned with the logo of a high school from my home town, 100 miles east of Chicago. Curious, I came around to speak to the umbrlla but it was a girl named Esther. She had driven to Chicago to watch the tournament so she could get an idea of the top level women's competition. For the fall, she was going to try and start a team at her school. I thought that was pretty cool.

It had always been a goal of mine to come back and play in Tune-Up. This season I was injured and could not, so I took Cola's invitation to come and cover the tournament (and visit the folks back home nearby as well). I got some swell T-Shirts and Tune-Up discs in exchange for writing up the tournament in the UPA Newsletter and posting some stuff to RSD.

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