South East Regional Ultimate Championships 1996 - Priory school, Hitchin Pool play, Saturday 19th October In the pool play there were a couple of upsets: First Touch (seeded bottom of the four in pool C) overturned Mohawks (second in the pool). And Village People knocked Lurkers out of their 4th seed slot in a tight game (Lurkers playing ironman seven). Strange Blue 2, a largely beginners' team in their first tournament, gave Shotgun Wedding a surprisingly hard time. In the knockouts (incidentally, can a different tournament format be found which really identifies the top 5 teams in a region, independent of seeding?), First Touch continued to mock their number 14 seeding by taking the 4th seed slot from Village People 10-7 in a long game. In the 2nd/3rd semi-final, played in a windy rainstorm, neither UTI nor Violently Happy could produce more than a couple of up-wind points; UTI fended off V.H. by a narrow margin. In the final against Shotgun, UTI's upwind scoring rate was reduced to zero and Shotgun won convincingly. Fifth place - the lowest place qualifying for the nationals - was contested by Strange Blue 1, Lurkers, Exotica Playthings and Village People. Strange Blue beat Lurkers, and Exotica beat Village People. The 5th/6th final was won by Strange Blue who managed to score the crucial upwind points in a close game. It was a good spirited, wet and windy tournament, with excellent fields and fine cups of tea available all day; Mad Kows won the Spirit award. Final placings were [with initial seedings in brackets]: 1 Shotgun Wedding [1] 2 UTI [2] 3 Violently Happy [3] 4 First Touch [14] 5 Strange Blue [8] 6 Exotica Playthings [7] 7 Lurkers [4] 8 Village People [5] 9 (Plate) B.G.A. [11] 10/11 Mad Kows [15] 10/11 S.F.A. [9] 12 Angels [12] 13 (spoon) Mohawks [6] 14 Albatross [13] 15 Strange Blue 2 [17] 16 Hurricane [16] 17 Bliss [10] Details about Strange Blue teams' progress. On Saturday SB1 beat Hurricane 15-2, S.F.A. 15-6 and lost 15-5 to Shotgun (going up 2-1 to start with). SB2 had at least 5 beginners, and played wonderfully together, They turned Shotgun over many times and gave SB1 a hard time to start out with (the final SB1-SB2 score was 15-3). On Sunday they won two of their four games and only lost to Albatross 8-6. On Sunday SB1 played UTI (I wish we could have had the opportunity to take on the 3rd or 4th seeds!). We were down 8-0 at half-time, but then mindy started a comeback in the second half with a huge upwind point and we ended up losing 15-5. We beat Lurkers 15-8 (?) by getting several upwind points in rapid succession in the first half. We had a much closer game against Exotica Playthings, winning 12-9. Two things won us this game: first, huge Ds and sound O produced an upwind point. And second our glorious captain Graham made the excellent decision to start by pulling to them from downwind so that at half time having just scored downwind, we received the pull upwind, and scored downwind again to widen our lead to 3. The SB1 team was Adrian L, jimmer (Sun), andy plater, chris shark (Sat), Gen, Greg, phil, luke, mike, natalie, mindy, david, graham, dora, ian.