Tuesday 1 January 2008

Modern Ultimate

“The game is cancelled” were the words carved out by Beavan in the wet sand of Rimini. Shortly after he had finish spelling out this statement he experienced Colonel’s reaction to yet another Huck & Sea practical joke.


“I think the first thing I did was hit him.”

Captaining the team at their second Paganello, Colonel had been trying in vain to rally an unusually demotivated Huck and Sea playing in the last game slot of the day. Despite a passionate prep talk and a run through of some new tactics something wasn’t right. The players were really lacking motivation and no one seemed up for the game. Frustrated he called the team into another huddle.

“I told them we were going to loose.”

With no other option he broke with tradition and forced his team through a warm up. When complete he tried to again find the words to ready his team. But as he struggled to blend stimulating visualisations with talk of owning the opposition, Beavan walked away from the huddle towards the sea. One by on the rest followed as a bemused Colonel felt he didn’t know his team mates anymore. Eventually he trudged through the sand himself to see what his team were looking at. It turned out to be the words Beavan had written and the joke was once again on Colonel.

The attitude, the lack of motivation had all been a charade and in fact the game was to be played the following morning at 9am. He laughs about it now.

Huck and Sea players can’t take themselves too seriously and clearly require the ability to take a joke. This has been the mantra of the our favourite beach team since they were first assembled in 2001. The aim was to bring together the best student players from each region to create quality ultimate on the sand then kick up a storm at the party afterwards.

Essentially we look for people who have the skills.”

On pitch this translates into a fast, athletic defence which forms the core of team’s game.

“I’ll admit we are not the most tactical of teams. But we use our youth and speed to counter the experience of other teams.”

As the sudden death game against No-Tsu-Oh at paga last year proves, this can be very effective on the beach scene.

Skills on the pitch are all very well and good, but Lookfly like to see more from Beach Ultimate players and these guys don’t disappoint. The initiation is back to back car bombs and the pictures from Paga 07 say the rest. Their ‘original’ brand of banter is also large part of the team’s ethos. Colonel recounts how he was ‘coached’ in the ways of Huck and Sea humour at Paga 05.

‘They once gave me a gag count. Apparently I wasn’t funny enough so they started to count how many times I said something which made people laugh. When I made a joke enough people had to laugh for it to be counted as a successful gag. I scored 15 over the four days.”

With all this talk of Paganellos past, what have our beach boys got in store this year? Do they still stand by their prediction of a win against the backdrop of the Adriatic?

“We definitely aiming for that. But it’s not going to happen any time soon. The level at Paga is so high. If you look at the teams that make the quarters it’s the same teams every year and they are of a high level. When we make the quarters it will be a big break through.”

We look forward to it, let be honest it’s satisfying to see a new team to steal a title away from the established champions. But will the guys be forced to abandon their partying to do themselves justice the next day?


“We want to do it (win Paga) with out changing. The big teams like UTI and Catch don’t drink or party hard at Paga until they are knocked out. We are out partying every night and we don’t want to stop that.”

What about tactical partying? Select some guys to stay late and give them the morning off?

“No. We play as a team we party as a team. In fact we’d rather be a team like Houston, not UTI or Catch. They are out partying each night, play hungover and win games.”

Previously we labelled Huck & Sea the ‘bad boys of beach’ but when asked to re-brand themselves their Colonel told me they were ‘Modern Ultimate’.

I’m guessing their taste for irony might be wrapped up in this description. But if you are interested in what ‘Modern Ultimate’ looks like, go and watch them play. Huck and Sea are easy to spot, look for the guys wearing the best kit at the tournament and sporting yellow crips sides. In fact, just where did they originate from?

“Well we have a lot of ‘gangstas’ in the team, JJ being the biggest and we want to be able to identify each other so we wear our crips sides. I think it started around 2004 there was a song out by Snoop Dogg in which he talks about wearing his colours on the crips side. We were in a restaurant and napkins started getting used. It has carried on from there.”

Whether they’re ‘Modern Ultimate’ or classic debauchery, we believe Huck and Sea are everything Beach Ultimate should be. We still mean it when we say ‘don’t ever change’.