Boracay Beach Open 2008

Hanging with the Dragons: Boracay 2008

Jane and I arrived in Boracay the same way everyone does: from plane to airport to bus to boat to tricycle-motorbike to the beach. As I've heard said of such travel, "It's a journey, not a destination."

We were there for more than a week and spent the majority of that time with our hosts Karen and Buboy and the rest of the 60 or so Boracay Dragons. The Dragons are a family and we were playing the role of long lost and never-before-seen cousins.

Nightly we were welcomed to feasts of fish, pork and prawn courtesy of the Dragon family. San Miguel, a very good Filipino beer, was cheap and plentiful. The gatherings were comprised of whoever showed up—the vibe was informal.

The Dragons (so named because a number of the earliest players were, and still are, Dragon boat rowers) hold a number of different job titles in this beach resort isle. Jude runs one of the main nightlife locations on the beach, the Hey Jude! bar and restaurant. Karen is a pre-school teacher. Buboy didn't seem to have a job but he had a trained sense of which birds to bet on for the cockfights. Datu runs two hip t-shirt stores in the main outdoor mall. James and Benjamin own another island fixture, the Summer Place bar and restaurant where we played cards every other night. Their brother is Vice Mayor of the city.

Panoy sails tourists around the island on his paraw (a skinny sailboat with out riggings and netted tarpaulins that make it look like a trimaran). Jenny manages a dive shop. Other players work at and/or own other bars and restaurants. The team is the town and when you're with them you are part of Boracay itself.

It was sometimes easy to forget that the weekend was all about Ultimate.

A Brief Return to Manila

Here we have to backtrack. Jane and I first arrived in Manila and there we met some of the primary expat players of the Philippines; Erik Waldie, captain of the Sexual Chocolate Manila-based summer league mixed team that came down for Boracay, Rob Locke, a longtime player and promoter for Filipino Ultimate and Bart Edes, considered one of the founders of competitive Ultimate in the Philippines.

Over plenty of drinks including the newly invented 'Barack Russian' (vanilla-flavored vodka, kahlua, coke) the group told Jane and I about the Ultimate scene in the Philippines.

Turns out Ultimate is actually kinda popular and it has great press. Erik's girlfriend Reema is a Filipino TV personality who often touts the game's values. Another top player, Derek, is a daytime soap opera actor who excitedly talks about Ultimate whenever asked. Tournament results are printed in the sports section of a mainstream Manila newspaper and we saw a glossy alternative sports magazine with some rad pictures and an article on the game that never mentioned the words "fun", "dog," "good exercise," or "non-competitive."

So, in short, Ultimate was seen as hip and popular in the Philippines.

Action on the Beach

As common in the region for all tournaments except the Singapore Open, there were few teams. There are several reasons for this. First, the beach is being subsumed by the sea. What was once a suitable field size several years ago now has a sloped edge where high tide sucks away the sand. This means that the tournament has always been 4-on-4, a great way to play beach, but not the preferred format of play for BULA, the international Beach Ultimate Lovers Association.

It was thought that 5-on-5 might have encouraged more teams to come, specifically ones from Australia. Another factor limiting the tournament size was its change of date: the tournament was moved up a full month from the prior year. And finally, getting to Boracay is somewhat tricky and had been expensive in the past, so teams from afar are often discouraged from coming.

We found a pretty cheap flight from Manila for $50 on low-cost carrier Cebu Pacific, so money wasn't as much of an issue.

The Dragons fielded three teams: White, Silver and Blue, roughly corresponding to an A team, B team and C team, as well as a fourth squad called the Beez, a team for newbies and less competitive players.

The goal was to have Dragon White meet Dragon Silver in the finals and this almost happened, even though White basically stockpiled talent and veteran experience. Notwithstanding, Silver was a very good team and Jane and I were honored to be their guest players.

To make a long story short, Silver played Sexual Chocolate twice, once in pool play where we lost by one point after a controversial two-point play and then again in semifinals where we lost by one point again at the cap when we needed a two-pointer to tie. I threw a one-point goal instead and the game ended. Duh. Anyway --

It's hard to understate how fun it is to play on the beach when a good crowd is on the sidelines. As both of these matches were high-profile, there were a fair number of fans, about a 50-50 mix of locals and other teams. After a hot score there was always a round of cheers and clapping. When tracking down a pass in the endzone you could hear the cameras clicking.

The finals were even more exciting. An announcer was there to provide color commentary and the field was ringed in its entirety by a crowd numbering three deep. Watching the top Dragons play is a surefire treat for anyone. They are supremely athletic, quick and fast and they have a tendency to show off with frequent layouts into the endzone. The result is an entertaining show.

Likewise Sexual Chocolate was a great bunch of athletes to watch. Big hunky guys Derek and Donald layed out for discs on every play. Karen and the girls were similarly inclined to hit the sand. It was never a dull moment.

The Games

I forgot to talk about the tournament action. Dragons Silver lost to SexChoc in semis, while Dragon White beat Dragon Blue. In the finals, Dragon White took an early four goal lead on SexChoc and cruised to a 9-point win, the game never in doubt.

Dragon Katol, so-named for their Dragon boat skills and evidently sponsored by Katol, a brand of mosquito-repellent incense coil, won the spirit award and the party award, disappointing the folks on Al-Alabang, a play on Al-Anon, a regular party winner. I believe Katol may have also placed fifth.

You Can End the Tournament But You Can't Stop The Music

All throughout the weekend a 10-minute long but seemingly endless remix of the current club hit "Please Don't Stop The Music" by Rihanna was pumping through speakers like it was the soundtrack theme to the tournament. Which it was. Unofficially. Or otherwise.

Naturally, after the finals, (((please-please-please-don't-stop-the-MU-MU-MUSIC)))
kicked in and everyone mingled about on the sand, dumping free Colt .45 on each other, swilling pizza and circling up for strange childhood games. The revelry lasted, in true Ultimate fashion, for about three hours, or until the sun went down.

This impromptu gathering was preceded by the Saturday night party at Summer Place where Reema hosted a series of games onstage, including a boat race drinking Colt 45 out of frisbee with a straw (ugh, that hurt my brain), a dance-off of some sort and a limbo contest—a staple of Ultimate parties in the region.

And then as the days wore on after the tournament and Jane and I hung around with our new family we heard our soundtrack theme song many more times, usually during cash games of Texas Hold 'Em at Summer Place or foosball matches at Hey Jude. We eventually left but in Boracay, the music is still playing.

• • •

go back to home page • read blogs on Bali, Malaysia, Bangkok •
• order a book •

frisbee! disc! leonardo! ultimate!