Fuj is a proud participant in the Central European Clubs League

The day had passed, the temperatures were hovering around freezing and the field was bathed in the light from the green mercury vapor lamps high above. Not that the lamps were any good, half the field was dark and half was barely bright enough to see the disc zipping through the air. Nevertheless, there we stood, Petr, our captain, with the disc, six meters from the zone, Nate blazing from the back of the stack for the scoring cut and our first international victory. How Sweet! But misfortune strikes at the most inopportune moments, and Nate slows his cut for a second and then speeds up again but slips and the disc speeds by his outstretched hand. Chorche from Mental Discorders, our Slovak nemesis, picks up the disc races to the line and puts out a HUGE huck for Matus, who pulls it down over a skying Petr for the score, game and tournament. Crushed, we spent all winter reliving this moment.

Same field, same teams, same tournament, same final, different year. Again the score is tied in the point cap and after we were ahead all game, Mental has come back to tie and force the game into the cap. We take the pull and march down the field in full flow. A laser-like forehand to Carlos, captain of the Terrible Monekys, another Czech club, gives us the disc six meters in front of the end zone on the home side of the field. David makes a hard cut, but Carlos looks him off. Lukas blazes into the space that David is clearing out of and Carlos whips a curving forehand to him in front of a diving Mental player and Lukas snatches the disc out of the air, plants his foot in front of the line for the score ending the tournament on a far more satisfactory note. This year we won't have to mull our loss all winter.

In fact, 2004 was a great year for FUJ. Czech National Open Champions, we won two CEL tournaments, another regional tournament and were in at least seven finals. We competed in Paganello, exceeding our seeding by 13 places, finishing third in the lower pool, our first tournament on sand. We hope to head back there in 2005 and place in the winner's pool. We came on strong, sending good teams to Rotterdam (13th), Nurenburg, the CEL tournaments and had many of our players on the Czech Mixed National team which finished sixth at the worlds in Finland! Is that not hot! We rounded up the season by hosting the Central European League finals in Breclav, on the Czech/Slovak/Austrian borders and finishing third and taking the spirit award! Our sister team, the Hot Beaches, took first place in the Women's division at the CEL finals, and are also looking forward to the Euros in Rostok!

 
                          

   
2004 Czech Open champions!
 Back row from left: Strom, Mira, Maro, Pablo, Jeff, Iain, Colin
Front row from left: SteveO, Nate, Petr (capt.), David, Joe

A little about the team

Fuji (pronounced Phooey) started playing as a team in the Czech Ultimate League in 2000. Before that we were a bunch of guys and gals who played pickup disc on Letna Plain throughout the 1990s. We decided to give the league a shot, though, and we had so much fun that we decided to grow our team, play harder, go to more tournaments and drink more beer.

So we did. We've gone to about 100 tournaments in the last four years and had some stellar finishes like LAST in the EUCCs in 2001 (27th out of 27!). Not to dwell on past misfortune, we redoubled our dedication to the game, practice and getting better players on our team and have started to do a lot better.

Frequently we win the parties which, suspiciously, doesn't help us win tournaments. We have managed to put together a bunch of spirit victories, though, like in Winterthur, Switzerland (2002, 2003), Basel, Switzerland (2002), Rumba Cup (2002), Winterthur again (2003), and the Czech League finals (2003) so that bodes well for the future. And three of our players helped the Czech National Coed team win the spirit award in the 2003 Euros!

After our first victory in last year's Chrast tournament, FUJ has become accustomed to being in the finals of tournaments we enter. 2004 has already brought us victory in our home CEL tournament Celakovice where both our men's and women's team brought home gold and now the open team has won the Czech championship. We also combined with Yellow Fever to bring home the gold in an Austrian coed tournament and a mix of both of our clubs played against each other in the coed sandsplash tournament in April.

What to do next? Well, we needed to grow the team. One day on our practice pitch we found a bunch of scouts who were tossing the disc, so we took them aboard and started to train them. Then a bunch of women decided disc was a totally righteous sport, and they came to us for training. So NOW we have three teams, an open squad which participates in about 20 tournaments per year, a B squad, which goes to about 8 tournaments a year and a women's team called the Hot Beaches.

CENTRAL EUROPEAN LEAGUE

In 2002 some teams from Czech, Austrian, Hungry and Slovakia decided it would be really cool to play against each other a lot and try to raise the level of the game in all four countries. So we founded the Central European league. Each year each country hosts one tournament  and points are awarded on the basis of teams' finishes in these tournaments. A final is held between the top eight teams every year to determine the Central European Champion and bragging rights in the region for the upcoming season. You can find out more information on the CEL website, which is listed on our links opposite.