1997 Santa Cruz Classic

OPEN PAIRS

COOP

 By Roland B. Rush

"This is the way all tourneys should go. More people need to relax and have fun at the beach."  After numerous big-air, crash and splash water catches, Mikey Reid was overheard saying this on Sunday afternoon at 4:20. On this fabulous celebration of the Solstice weekend, about 35 jammers relaxed and had fun at beautiful Manresa State Beach just south of Santa Cruz, Ca. Even the park rangers commented that the weather couldn't have been better - not a cloud in the sky all weekend with a nice sea breeze.

The competition was almost an afterthought, with random mob-ops taking center stage, followed by the relaxing camping experience adjacent to the tournament site. Even the unique judging system increased the fun factor immensely by encouraging some sensational moves. The Skippy System reduces the stress of all competitors by only having one category, difficulty. No one stresses about working on co-ops or worrying about drops. Just go out and shred.

The best part of the system is the bonus points concept. Bonus criteria changes each time the system is used, and this year standard bonus points were given on a scale of 0-5 based on the quality of two moves: a roll to a partner's direct catch, and a tipping series. Five (5) super bonus points are awarded automatically to each team that did two moves: a change of spin and a water catch. 20 points were possible.

A spectator commented: "Is there some incentive for players to catch the disk and then land in the water completely submerged? Even that blond hair woman (Brenda Savage) catches it and crashes into the waves. It's great!" The bonus system may have even been responsible for the final outcome in Co-op.

Saturday's Open Pairs was held during low tide with 11 teams competing in 5 minute routines. With only one round, the players judged themselves and were called out to play in random order. The only problem with this is that some players had to play after sitting for one hour with no warm-up, resulting in some slow starts but hot finishes.

First place could of gone to either of the top two teams as both played the beach game magnificently, but Skippy and Tommy demonstrated home beach advantage and just barely outshredded Dave Murphy and Arthur Coddington for the title. These two teams were really hot and not only had incredible difficulty, but did lots of co-ops and caught almost everything despite that fact that these categories carry little weight in the system. Mikey Reid and Larry Imperiale overcame a slow start, and then got very hot with nearly maximum bonus points awarded. Brenda Savage and Steve Hayes played their all-out beach game, and although they were incorrectly announced as finishing last, they actually finished fourth, deservedly.

Sunday's co-op round seemed to be even hotter with 6 teams competing in 7 minute routines. Larry, Arthur, and Dave went out early and shredded throughout the 7 minutes, with lots of spontaneous exchanges, huge Dave Murphy catches in the water, and nearly maximum bonus points. Skippy, Tommy, and Mikey followed, and after a slow start, they put together an incredible sequen ce of moves that was the highlight of the tournament. It almost pulled out the win for them. First, Mikey did a huge Roots crashing into the water. He caught it, but at the time no one was sure he was completely submerged (which would have resulted in no super bonus points). So then Tommy does an incredible triple spinning pull into stuff I couldn't figure out, and then he ends the series with own his huge roots into the water Skippy then finished the sequence with some serious technical stuff and then culminated the series with a water summersault gitis, guaranteeing the water catch super bonus points while keeping his hat on the whole time. But with all this splashing around, they didn't do a roll to a direct catch, which cost them up to 5 bonus points. This probably cost them the title to Dave/Arthur/Larry, since the final tally was so close.

Third place went to Steve Hayes (the veteran), and Matt and Jacob Gauthier (the rookies). These guys played a go-for-it, spontaneous beach jamming style that was definitely appreciated. Matt and Jacob come from the Jammer Farm (as I call it) in Sonoma, CA, with head farmer Mike Esterbrook cultivating great up-and-coming players like Matt and Jacob, Mike Cloud, Tam Wolfe, and Art Viger, last year's Junior World Champion.

Art's favorite venue is the beach, and at thirteen years old, he demonstrated his increasing mastery of the disc all weekend. From Washington, Bob Boulware and Cindy Krueger also seem to have raised their games to a higher level. Jeff Krueger (formerly Splat, now Splash) appears to be back to his old shredding self after an injury that limited him last year. Guaranteed, these jammers will be forces to contend with in the near future. Thanks for spreading the jam, Mike!

Although there is always the need for the more elaborate tournaments like the Worlds, the main thing we should learn from this tournament is that putting on your own tournament is much easier than you think. This is not meant to minimize the great job by Skippy and Tommy in putting this tourney on.

Just get a date, a site, a PA system, and you're just about ready to go. You don't even need to make a tee-shirt, although we got really cool tie-dyes with Art Viger image on the front. Use the FPA judging system or develop your own system to experiment or to make people do crazy things. Charge just enough to break even.

The bottom line is if you can put on a fun tournament, people will come. We're just looking for a good place to jam with our friends and show off. Combine it with camping or some other fun activity. Provide us the opportunity to jam by putting on a fun, low-key tournament in a cool spot.

After an informal survey (actually I just made it up), the Kings of the Beach were Dave Murphy and Tom Leitner. These guys blew people's minds all weekend, and really used the beach conditions to their fullest. Tom played his high-difficulty technical and wind game to incredible heights, and Dave was just turbo all weekend. In fact, I now call Dave The Mailman as he crushed gitis after gitis (and other catches) from nice assists from his partners. Unlike the other Mailman, this one is likely to deliver big-time in majors this year. Brenda is my pick for Queen of the Beach and Art for Prince of the Beach.

Although some incredible spontaneous jams happened, a 4 person limit on mob-ops may be imposed for one hour each day. Some people found it tough to warm up with 12 people jamming with one disk.

During the final celebration at the Tampico Kitchen, Skippy sez "The spontaneous level of play was awesome. The thing about the beach is that you can't hide your game. You're either on or off. It's a showcase environment, if you have the game."

As a final note, Tom "Slick" Sahlit commented "it was all about fun, nothing else. It was Shredfest '97."