The hype around the start of WUCC is growing! in less than 5 days we will be playing our first game in Prague against Jeremy Codhand, from the UK. The other teams in our pool will be Gronigal Dizziness (NL), the Chad Larson Experience (USA) and Freespeed Coed (CH).
The schedule for the first couple of days has finally been published, and we will be facing Codhand on sunday morning at 8.30am, GD on sunday afternoon at 4.30pm, Chad Larson experience on monday morning at 8.30am and Freespeed Coed on monday at 12.30am.
Who are our opponents?
- Jeremy Codhand (Seed 15)
Jeremy Codhand are a mix of players from all over the UK. They won the UK Mixed Tour last year, and they are a young, fast and athletic team. This game will be a repeat of the first game we played in Amsterdam at Windmill Windup, where Codhand beat us with a really harsh scoreline of 15-2. In that game Codhand came out incredibly strong from the very beginning with a very tight defence, several layout d's and beautiful hucks winning the first half to 0. In all faireness we had a terrible game, made basic mistakes and did not play at all to our full potential. We are looking forward to giving them a much tougher game in Prague and begin our Worlds adventure in the right way!
- Gronigal Dizziness (Seed 18)
Gronigal Dizziness are a dutch team from Groenigen. They came 4th in last year's European club championships and were runners up in this year's Windmill Windup (where they lost the final 15-10 against Codhand). They are an experienced club that has been growing from stregth to stregth during the last couple of years, and will no doubt be bringing a strong team to Prague hoping for a high finish in the tournament
- the Chad Larson Experience (Seed 2)
The Chad Larson Experience are a team coming from the United States. We don't know much about this team other than they are one of the main contenders for the final victory, and that they came second in last year's UPA Mixed Nationals. This will be our wake-up game on monday morning. We are very excited to be playing against one of the top Mixed teams in the world, and are hoping to give them a good run for their money!
- Freespeed Coed (Seed 31)
Freespeed Coed come from Basel, Switzerland. Little we know about this side other than it's the little sister of the Freespeed Open team, one of the strongest Open teams in Europe that will be participating in WUCC in the Open division. We have never faced Freespeed Coed in any warm-up tournaments to Prague, but we have seen them in Talampaya where they ended up in the bottom half of the tournament. Is this because they had an unlucky tournament and were missing some key players, or because Freespeed decided to focus it's strength on the Open team?
A look at the schedule and what to expect
The first two days are going to be very tough. Two early morning games mean that we'll have to wake up at 6am on both mornings and come out firing from the very beginning. Monday morning will be particularly difficult since we will only have 2 hours to recover between our game against Chad Larson and Freespeed.
The schedule says that the top 3 teams in the pool will automatically advance to the top 24 of the tournament and will get to play in the higher power pools on tuesday and wednesday. This means that to avoid the dogfight in the bottom half of the tournament we will need to win two pool games. The first day of play will therefore be key for the rest of the week. Hoping to win our last pool game against Freespeed, a victory against Gronigal Dizziness will place us in the top 3 of the pool and in the top 24 teams of the tournament, which would be a fantastic achievement for all of us!