Sunny weather and light winds greeted the jammers at the first ever Ocean Beach Wintershred freestyle frisbee tournament. Players travelled from all over California to play – from San Diego, Palm Springs, Sacramento, San Jose, San Rafael, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, San Jose, Cupertino, Berkeley, Lafayette and San Francisco. All together 19 jammers were on the beach – sideline jammers included Robert “date man” Lower and Art Viger as well as local wind masters Roger, Dave and John.
The teams really took advantage of the low-tide and the nice wind with everybody pushing their level ability to the fullest. It was really great to see Hal Erickson, Scott Weaver and Keith Armstrong return to action. Look for another Ocean Beach event later this spring 🙂

report from Carl:
The first ever Ocean Beach Wintershred (San Francisco, California) turned out to be an awesome day of jamming in the California sun. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect. Temps in the 60’s, excellent sea breezes, minus tide and crystal clear skies all made for some of the best jamming conditions these eyes have ever seen. Fifteen competitors competed in open pairs and also a random draw co-op division. There were many other friends who came out just to jam and watch us compete, and then there was the huge crowd out on Frisco’s main beach who were unexpectedly treated to a great freestyle show.

After a couple hours of mobbing, we started the pairs competition, random drawing the starting order. Kicking off the 1st Wintershred was the ultra turbo, super hein pair of Arthur Coddington and Dave Murphy. These guys blistered out of the blocks and rarely paused during their entire six minute routine. At one point, Arthur hit a nice triple spinning under leg to a triple chair catch. His against pulls and shoots were really working well and he sealed some clutch mega spinning crows and a textbook aerial gitus off of a Dave shoot. Dave used the perfect sea breeze to really peel out. He hit a bunch of quad spinning moves and one quint later during co-ops. One of my favorites was a really clean triple spinning flamingitis for maximum bonus points, that after a particularly sick combo of moves. His best though, might have been late in their routine when he started off down in the sand doing his legovers and rolls from off his back, then moving up he went into a quad of consequetive back rolls ending in a backroll set directly into a flamingitis. Near the end of their time I paused and panned my eyes across the sand for a second and noticed that everyone on the entire beach had stopped what they were doing and with jaws dropped, were watching in amazement what was taking place before them. Freestyle is an awesome spectator sport!

Another notable pair to play was the team of Tom Leitner and Hal Erickson. I haven’t seen Hal at any tournaments or jams recently, but it didn’t show in his play. He dusted the crust and hit some big moves, classic flat work and some big spinning seals. He and Lightning had a great passing game going with Hal terminating one run down by the water, with a monster crow. Tommy was in his element… on the beach, perfect day, solid breeze and he went off. On one brushing run Tom explored just about every option of brush imaginable. Starting off with a Double over didge, he shot out a set from a very bad attitude, spun, brushed again from bad attitude and then toured the beach on a consequetive brush/roll run for roughly thirty yards finally ending in a big crash and burn roots.

Other highlights…

Johny O’ Malley… Perhaps the biggest air gitis of the day. Sky City!
Keith Armstrong… Nice spinning flamingitis pull with a c & b gitis seal.

Tom Sahlit… Great spinning chair catch off a roll combo. Cool flamingitis

Melissa… Beautiful bad attitude catch off a roll set

Buti… Nice tipping sequence to a double leg over set to a spinning u leg catch

Scott Weaver… Incredible repitoire of rolls, spin changes and low spin moves

Doug Korns… Some awesome new turnovers, ud crow seals

Tam Wolfe… Stuck a spinning scarecrow, also a nice twisto shoot

Mike Esterbrook… Crow brush, double barrel catch and big vacation attempt

Mike Cloud… spinning triple fake pull, solid gitis seals

As for that crazy random drawing for co-ops… I’ll copy you from e-mail I sent to Laerb’s explaining how we came to draw such an awesome team.
I can tell you it was pure luck, because I was the one pulling the names out of the hat. It was pure chance. There were only six names left after drawing the first three teams and with pick 10 I selected Dave Murphy. I started thinking cool, because my name hadn’t come up yet and the odds of playing with someone great were getting pretty good. Next I pulled Arthur’s name and I’m starting to think this is getting a little weird and then to complete the team I pulled Tommy’s name out of the hat. What were the odds of that?

They played great, of course, coaxing eachother to push the envelope time and time again. I was calling out the time to the teams and when it came to the thirty second left call, they were shooting the disc back and forth and pulling off something really sick. So I looked around at everyone watching and asked if they didn’t mind if I let them play an extra minute or two. I got a bunch of thumbs up and we enjoyed an extended play version of a freestyle dream team.

– Carl Dobson