Surat Ultimate Open (SUO) is an Ultimate(frisbee) tournament that is held at the end of the year. Ultimate is a non-contact game. It isn’t an official sport as yet, but is spreading fast all over India. There are no referees in the game and all the disputes are supposed to be resolved by the players that are playing. It is also, therefore, called a spirit game.
SUO has always been hosted by Fountainhead School (my school) and this year also by Tapti Valley International School (for their grounds), where teams from across India come to participate. This time the event was co-ordinated and put into action by Pranjal and me. To top it off, I also played. It all began few months back when we were returning from a frisbee tournament in Bangalore (BUO). There we were elected as Tournament Directors(TD). Another reason why I had taken up SUO was because I like to organise events and SUO was one of the biggest opportunity to organize an event on a national scale. Last year, 2 of my friends had taken up this and they had a lot of fun organising it. I know what my strengths are such as, I can easily manage things and talk to people but I need to learn to control my words in certain situations.
Celebrating after winning
The event was supposed to happen on the 5th and 6th of December, but there was a lot of prior work that was to be done before the event. And the biggest obstacle was that Pranjal and I were going to play on both the days. So,we appointed Jayani and Yash, who’ll be responsible for the work while we are playing.
There were total 28 teams (Open- 22, Women- 6). Getting their arrival and departure details and making people pay money wasn’t easy. I was so glad Pranjal was with me and took care of the other half of the teams, otherwise I would have gone furious collecting updates (accommodation, transport, food) from all teams. Apart from that, we were not able to get volunteers. Most difficult was to get volunteers for score keeping. We spoke to some of them and convinced them for score keeping. We could’ve have given them the task without consulting, but that would have been unethical.
Team line-up
As our midterm exams got closer, we drifted away from all that we had to do. I had one week before I was going on a holiday for 15 days out of India. I had to do all the work in that one week because as soon as I got back, I had 5 days till the event. Managing studies and doing all the work in that one week’s time before going on a foreign trip seemed impossible.
After I got back from my foreign trip and realised what a big mess I was in. There were 7 days left for the event. We got the shocking news that a massive flood had hit Chennai and they won’t be able to come for SUO, which was a major disappointment. All flight and trains in and out of Chennai had stopped. We refunded their payments as it was ethical and the reason they couldn’t make it was genuine.
Women Tryouts For National Team
Pranjal and I had distributed few activities and on some we worked on collaboratively. We had arranged rooms for every team. We allocated rooms as they arrived from 4th November. After dinner, Pranjal and I were playing frisbee in school, Pranjal slipped and she had to be rushed to a hospital and got to know that she had fractured her bone. It came like a shock to me and I couldn’t process that she wouldn’t be able to play any of the matches (she was one of the main players in my team and also the Spirit Captain). I sat with my coach to discuss strategies as we were one player down, which was not good for us. Around midnight, more teams arrived – I took them to their allocated place and asked them to take one mattress per person to sleep on. Soon, we got people coming to me and asking for mattresses and I realised that we were out of them. I panicked. I freaked out. This happened because few teams that had come without informing us, hence we were short on mattresses. I thought of all the possible solutions and decided upon utilizing the spare mattresses that the security guard has. After some time everybody was well settled, then Pranjal, Jayani, Yash and I had to look for a place to sleep. We called off the long, tiring day around 2 am in the morning.
Next morning, another glitch occurred where the Organising Committee(OC) members (scorekeepers, registration desk heads, photographers) were 30 minutes late which led rescheduling and postponing of all the matches. However, I ensured that the issues with OC members didn’t affect my game play.
I was able to maintain a balance between my game and management work. We had a match against the toughest team post lunch, which we lost. Last match was the easiest match of all, we won against Surat B team with straight 13 points. However, during the spirit circle we realised that players of Surat B had been offended with our behaviour during the match. They had thought that we were laughing on the mistakes that they were making and mocking them. But, honestly, that wasn’t our intention at all – all we were doing was enjoying the last game of the day and refreshing ourselves, we had no clue that they were hurt by that. All of us apologised with the bottom of our hearts and gave our reasons, they still didn’t look satisfied, so we listened to what they had to say and we accepted our mistake. We ended the day with distributing chocolates and dissipating the grudge between the two teams.
After losing the semi-finals on the second day and securing the 3rd place, I went to Tapti Valley grounds and helped there with score keeping. After the finals, we had the award ceremony where I presented the trophy to the winning teams, as I was the TD. Many people stood up and appreciated for organising SUO. It was a proud moment when people applauded me and acknowledged my efforts for making this event a success.
Sleepless nights, disputes and confusions, end minute hassles, misunderstandings – were few of the things that I experienced from the day one of the event. I was exhausted and filled with glory (irrespective of the fact that we didn’t win the tournament). I learned something that I would have never realised by reading or by watching other people go through it: time management, how to talk to strangers and making them feel comfortable; how to act calmly in crisis; to persuade people and make them do things they otherwise wouldn’t; how to not shout at people and control feelings when needed; and many more. According to me, the most important thing I learned was the importance of appreciating others. Appreciating always strengthens relationship bond and gives out a positive vibe. I’m glad that I took the opportunity to organise SUO’15.
