The Poncol Cup - Day 2

Participants in the finals of the Poncol Cup

On the second day of competition, the four teams and a few spectators made the hour-and-a-half bus trip down to Discindo's spiritual home, Lapangan Panahan (the Archery Field) in Gelora Bung Karno Senayan, to play in the final rounds of the Poncol Cup.

As in the previous week's play, Ketupat's combination of age, size, strength and athleticism served them well and they took out the top prize, a brand new professional standard frisbee donated by Discindo. In fact, all of the top four teams got a brand new disc, but Ketupat gets bragging rights, and that's all that matters really.

For photos see below:

Ketupat: Victorious

Crazy

Stupid

Kancil

Photos: Edwin Pieroelie

Please also note that the stupid layout of the photos is Blogger's fault, not mine. My html is right, it's their damn wysiwyg editor...

The Poncol Cup - Day 1

In late July 2006, Ardy came to some members of Discindo with an idea for a tournament. It sounded rather optimistic. A 12 team tournament, 2 months after the kids had thrown their first disc?

Ardy had been able to raise half of the budget from the local neighbourhood association, and with a little help from a few generous Discindo members, the tournament could go ahead.

There were over 70 participants in the tournament, though these things are hard to keep track of as rosters kept changing throughout the day when random passers by thought it didn't look too hard.

Pak Yadi, a local motorcycle taxi driver, decides to try and help out Bad Fresh in their quarter final against Crazy in the second half. Under his leadership Bad Fresh dropped their halftime lead of 6-4 and ended up losing 8-11.

The concrete field - complete with a foot high concrete step marking the front end of one end zone (visible in the first picture above) - did pose some challenges, but thankfully all participants seemed to have a sixth sense for it and serious injuries were avoided.

The tournament was played over two weekends, with the first day's play eliminating Somplak, Menanam, Bulldog, Baut, Bad Fresh, Tukang, Lazy, Batik, Obeng, Dazar and Censeiyar, with Stupid, Crazy, Ketupat and Kancil rising to the top to compete in the semi finals to be held the following weekend on Discindo's regular field in Senayan.

More photos below:

Gary, a Discindo member shows the finers points of the flick.

An exhibition game was held just after lunch with a mix of Discindo members, community members and students from the local school to show them how it's done. This is one of those students showing us how it's done.

Sugi, one of the stars of the Klub Frisbee Jakarta

Ardy Ferdianto, the organising force behind the Poncol Cup, and Klub Frisbee Jakarta

You can just see the step in the bottom right hand corner of this photo.

Photos: Andre Bald

The First Clinic

After a series of chance meetings with Discindo members, actor and drama teacher (and now sporting coach) Ardy Ferdianto decided he would come and find out about this strange sport that he kept hearing about. He was hooked, and began preaching the gospel to his students.

In May 2006 Discindo ran a clinic for kids from a small neighbourhood called Poncol before their Sunday training at Lapangan Panahan in Senayan. Around 40 kids turned up, learnt how to throw, how to catch and the basic rules of the game, Discindo gave them some old practice discs and off they went home.

Little did the members of Discindo know the revolution that was about to take place.

Despite the fact that the concrete field at the neighbourhood junior high school was not much larger than a badminton court, and the front end of one of the end zones was marked by a foot high concrete step, the kids began to p ractice on their own and started taking the hour and a half long bus ride to come to Senayan (where Discindo trains) once or twice a week.

See below for some photos of the clinic.

Note: We didn't teach them this move...

Photos: Edwin Pieroelie

Welcome

Welcome to the illustrious first posting on the Klub Frisbee Jakarta blog. This blog was set up to let the rest of the world how ultimate frisbee is developing in Jakarta and (hopefully soon) the rest of Indonesia.

For those of you who haven't heard of ultimate before, check out the very informative Wikipedia article.

Ultimate has been played in Indonesia now for over a decade with twice-weekly pick-up games in Jakarta and an annual tournament in Bali put on by Discindo. Discindo's membership hovers between 25-40% local players with the rest being made up of mainly American and Canadian expatriates; the odd Australian, Filipino, Japanese or random European player has been known to suit up in the Red and White and show them all how to play the ultimate sport.

Recently though, a new force has started to move in Indonesian ultimate, but to find out about that, you'd better read the next post.