The Bali Nusantara Cup Promises You A Good Time

Jakarta, a plane flight away from Bali, runs this tournament by proxy. It began a bit shy of a decade ago: the Jakarta group contacted a sports firm in Bali to see about putting on an Ultimate tournament in Kuta, everyone's favorite over-developed Indonesian hot spot.

Voila! The Nusantara Cup (nusantara translates to archipelago). The Jakarta expats did an excellent job of promoting the tournament and crafting its image as classy and state-of-the-art with an online image campaign. Even the notoriously peevish Dan Murphy put aside his misanthropy to make Bali larger than life.

But the Bali Cup was only seven teams and that meant the more goodies for all of us.

The Tournament Play, Blah Blah Blah

The tournament was structured as a vacation: play begins on Friday and ends on Saturday, giving you Saturday night to live it up and Sunday to chill on the beach.

The teams in no particular order: Saipan Trench Ultimate, the "trench" being a reference to the famed Marinas Trench located near Saipan. These guys were a unique group of mostly older adventure jocks wearing Led Zeppelin-themed Ultimate shirts. They partied extremely well. Shiok and Freakshow from Singapore brought strong teams. Discindo was the home team from Jakarta and Jiwa, their B team, was amply suited for the Bali vibe. Hong Kong Junk, so named for the South China watercraft, brought what looked like a ragtag team of expat guys and HK women. And us—Vietnam Ultimate Defense-Offense Organization, aka Vudoo. Vudoo consisted of five Aussies, three Filipinos, three Americans, two Europeans, one Canadian and only one Vietnamese. We were the international pick-up squad.

You might expect Bali to be played on the beach. The region is known for surfing, getting a sun tan on the beach and drinking Bintang while either surfing or getting a sun tan. But instead we gathered at a small soccer complex on the far end of town. There was free beer, massages by a local troupe of blind men, watermelon and energy drinks.

Competition was supposed to be a toss-up for second place to Freakshow, the six-time defending champion. Vudoo, Shiok, Hong Kong and Jakarta were considered contenders and the good-natured but rough-edged Saipan team, finalists three years back, rounded out the field with Jakarta's Jiwa.

On Friday it played out that Vudoo was weaker than expected, Shiok was stronger and the others were roughly on target. Early Saturday provided elimination games.

It began with Vudoo defeating Jakarta Discindo, putting Vudoo in a good position for semifinals. Hong Kong stayed safely ahead of Jakarta in the next match, knocking Discindo out and advancing both HK and Vudoo. HK and Vudoo matched up in a pool play game, won by Vudoo 10-9 to take third. Shiok, playing fast but clean, had no trouble defeating either team in pool play.

The semifinals were thus Freakshow versus Hong Kong and Shiok versus Vudoo. Shiok had lost to Freakshow in pool play by two but carried with them a few international recruits, namely Derek Ramsey from the Philippines and the travelers Ashley and Finn. These recruits plus a smart, steady and quick-moving offense proved lethal against Vietnam in semis. Vudoo's offense evaporated in the sun while Shiok's youth capitalized of defense, sending them to a dominating 13-2 win and a berth in finals.

Meanwhile Junk and Freakshow were engaged in more of a slug-it-out type of game with neither team able to push ahead. By the time the hard cap sounded it was tied up at 8s and Freakshow was pulling. All Junk had to do was score to record a remarkable and unexpected upset. We've all seen this situation before and how many times does the heavily favored team come out on defense, step it up, cause a turnover and capitalize for the win? Often, but that didn't happen. Junk hucked it deep, pulled it down and won the game.

For the first time since the tournament began Freakshow was not in the finals. Instead it was Shiok versus Hong Kong. There was no way Shiok could lose this game unless half their starting line took payola and feigned injuries. That not being the case, Shiok pulled away early, the rain came down something fierce and the game was essentially over by half. Final score was a lot to a little but both teams looked pretty happy to be out there even with the continuous downpour.

The Tournament, Continued.

The games were over, but the tournament was not. Hotly contested and yet to be determined was the party winner. A long night lay ahead for teams daring to take on Jakarta's Jiwa. Champions are expected to stay awake well past dawn and last year an early-morning impromptu game of Ultimate on the beach crowned a winner.

First things first, however, and that was the tournament dinner and prize ceremony. Male and female MVPs, spirit awards and trophies for first, second and third were on hand. The trophies were hand-carved wooden Balinese guard demons holding a disc. The first place trophy looked like a well-made chimera but it was probably just a garuda on all four legs. It was long and mean and you wouldn't want to steal the tiny wooden disc in its hand.

First and second place were easy to determine, but third place was a different matter because Freakshow and Vudoo hadn't played the third-place game. I had noted the issue during finals when sitting next to Steinar Cramer, one of Freakshow's leaders. I suggested we could ro-sham, best of 17, for third place. This worked for our team earlier when Jane won shirt color by besting Howie. A few other ideas for breaking the "tie" were bandied about before Steinar suggested we settle with a best pole dance routine. Figuring this was a common Ultimate endeavor in this part of the world, I agreed.

Fast-forward to the tournament dinner. The prizes were going out, including female MVP to our very own G (which she graciously conceded should have gone to all of our six women, who were awesome). The TD then announced first... second... and finally third place to... Freakshow. Steinar stood up to receive the Balinese demon.

Naturally I had to defend my team's honor. I stood up and informed the TD that a pole dance was determined as a way to settle the tie. She then pointed to John Holdoway, dressed like a go-go dancer from 1977. "John will be the pole."

Steinar went first. A few gyrations, a couple of good moves, some canny dancing nanny routine, the crowd clapped but I had a chance if I could make sure I didn't look like a fool. I determined that my first step would be to jump on the pole and hold steady, then slide down and maybe spin off into some sort of breakdance maneuver before re-approaching the pole for a game of hide-and-seek. Unfortunately I did not convey this information to the pole and when I leaped onto John as a koala bear would leap onto bamboo, my weight caused John to sway and then topple.

I shook off the temporary loss of a pole and re-gathered my drunken nerve. John re-positioned and I took the opportunity to bust out a few moves I had evidently stored in the recesses of my memory from watching Showgirls or perhaps just watching show girls.

The crowd roared in approval. Third place was ours. I returned to our table victorious, with the demon in hand. Throughout the night there were pictures to be had with "Nusantara Cup, Juara III."

Set The Course For The Happy Shakes, Mr. Sualog

Lester Sualog is an experienced captain. Last year he had assembled a team that partied hard and still made it to the finals, losing by only two points in a well-played 2.5 hour match to Freakshow. This year Lester wanted more.

This year's version of Vudoo was stacked. Knowing that travelers don't have obligations, he had me, Jane and Neenah as party locks. Lester chose the quietest Ultimate player in Asia, Mouse, because of his ability to stay awake, ears perked, as long as necessary. At the last minute when Vudoo needed more men on Friday he wisely picked up Nicolai because Nicolai was born to drink.

Lester knew the constantly changing whereabouts of freewheeling Holdoway, he who would determine the champion. Our first destination on Holdoway's heels was the bar with the rocket shakes. A rocket shake is an icy concoction nicely dosed with shrooms. Patrons of the legalized hallucinogenic joint included the Saipan team, a guy twirling fire outside in the street, three go-go girls on the inside and various street vendors plying trippy toys that glowed neon.

Jane bought a squeaking duck puppet.

After the happy shakes we convened at a nightclub. As the party theme was "tropical island" many of us were dressed like idiots along with the fact that we were mildly tripping. Us showing up at a happening Bali club on a Saturday night made for a disturbing sight. Nonethelss the limbo was brought out (see the writeup on Boracay) and the Shiok boys rocked the house, Enrique in particular was crazy stretchy, a pro I think.

Next up was Double Six, the motorcycle bungee jumping place. There's a 12-, maybe 15 story high tower overlooking a swimming pool inside Double Six. Lester had wisely suggested we wear bathing suits so Jane and I jumped right in the pool without noticing the bungee jump until a rapidly approaching human figure came hurtling at us from above. This sort of action went on all night. Saipan sent up several of their finest. Friends of Jiwa sent up their completely wasted friend who managed not to toss his lunch. The tournament MVPs were awarded a free jump and G performed a rather lovely swan dive to a twisting pirouette.

Later in the night, around 5am or so, we had run out of things to do so I introduced pokey. This proved a worthwhile skill game that kept us going for another hour. By 6:30 or so the sun was rising. Lester dutifully counted our numbers: we had a starting six, but so did Jiwa. Let the games begin.

Leaving the club our first destination was a 7-11 where we picked up beer for the morning. Then we headed to the beach, drew up a field in the sand and matched up for fun. Nobody was talking this seriously but after Jane scored five straight goals to make it 5-0 for Vudoo it really devolved. That's when we asked the small gathering of excitable 8-year olds watching us if they wanted to play. Most of the Jiwa players spoke Indonesian so this turned out to be a real fun thing.

The kids jumped on the field, 3-4 to a side. They ran around, dropped thousands of passes, dove awkwardly in the sand, skied each other and threw discs into the ground. Not much different than, say, Dave Wolfowitz on a bad day. Best of all, they were gleeful, even when Spiderman kept D'ing them up. Playing Ultimate with kids will always remind you of how wonderfully childish the Ultimate scene truly is.

Oh and this being SE Asia, it wasn't until after playing for 30 minutes that they took off their flip-flops.

Eventually the kids tired us out and besides, none of us had slept yet. We took a group picture, John declared the party an ofifical tie between Vudoo and Jiwa and Lester gathered the troops for one final mission: poaching the free breakfast at the fancy tournament hotel.

Lester got a full list of all the Ultimate players and thier room numbers. Since most of us weren't staying at the hotel, we used the list to provide the maitre D' with names. Thus I pretended to be Biran Marterer and Neenah may have been the one to officially poach the breakfast belongtin to Liz, the TD.

After breakfast we were supposed to swim off the sand in the hotel pool but decided to taxi back down to Kuta instead and retire for the afternoon.

Losing in semis was a disappointment but scoring Juara III, winnning the party and snagging a free breakfast more than made up for it.

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