Quick notes as a precursor to World Championships coverage to come:

- team roster additions for WUCC: Sam (C-K) Chatterton-Kirchmeier & Jolian Dahl

- seedings are out, with Chain Lightning holding the #1 spot

- last chance to see Chain stateside, this Saturday (June 19) at the Chain / Ozone showcase

Atlanta Elite Ultimate Showcase
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Chain, 3:00pm; Ozone, 5:00pm
Walker Park – 200 Memorial Place, SE 30316
Free!

facebook event page

~photos courtesy of Christina Schmidt

It was great to see a lot of the Chain alumni from the 80′s and 90′s in attendance. Wanted to give a shout out to those guys for paving the way for the current team. You can see a lot of those old-school faces in the photo booth pictures below (and more on the facebook page):

Also – thanks to all of those that helped make the event possible. Russell Snow, Ben Spears, and Frank Wooten of Chain Lightning for organizing everything from the Chain Lightning side. Krog Jam and everyone involved in helping the bands setup and keeping things running smoothly. Andy Grimes for bringing The Pickle and helping with food sales. Spin Ultimate for providing the gear and raffle. And everyone in attendance for helping us fund-raise for our trip to Prague. I’m sure we missed someone in there, but thank you again to everyone that helped make our party such a success.

Please email fritolay0517@gmail.com if you are interested in tryout out.

Chain Lightning will be hosting a party @ Krog Jam in Atlanta on May 1st.
We are going to have 3 live bands and a DJ.
There will be plenty of drink for all (21+ only).

Start Time:
Saturday, May 1, 2010 at 8:00pm

End Time:
Sunday, May 2, 2010 at 2:00am

Location:
Krog Jam, 10 Krog St., ATL GA

Part of all sales proceeds will go toward helping Chain with the costs of traveling to Prague, Czech Republic, next July in pursuit of the 2010 World Ultimate Club Championship (WUCC).

The culmination of a year’s work for Chain Lightning begins Thursday morning in Sarasota, FL. The seeding and pools for the Championship are below:

We enter this year’s tournament as the #2 overall seed, Chain’s highest ever. No sneaking up on teams this year, so hopefully we’re not the team getting lulled.

The rugged opening day holds NC’s Ring of Fire, OH’s Madcow, and San Francisco’s Jam, the defending champions.

Just about all the info fans could want:

club2009.upa.org
pdf of the tournament schedule
UPA score reporter for the Championship
streaming video information (live and highlights)
twitter update search for #upa09

At this point in October, it can be distracting and sobering to be reminded of “real life”, work, people who aren’t players on your team – anything, really, that gets in the way of wanting to focus on that first pull of Nationals.

Nevertheless, that stuff remains out there.

Mike Sweeney, a former Chain (circa ~2002-04, and in blue in the above picture) and UGA (circa ~1997-99) player, has been battling cancer over the last year. He has stage IV metastatic melanoma – serious business. One of the treatments that may still be able to help Mike in his fight is adoptive T-Cell therapy (or TIL). Quoting a website update from the Sweeneys, “Since high-dose IL-2 and Biochemotherapy didn’t result in complete remission, TIL therapy is the only treatment left that offers a curative response. All other treatments, including chemos and radiation, are considered maintenance drugs for stage IV melanoma.”

The treatment is considered an experimental approach (and thus beyond insurance coverage), though, so friends of the Sweeneys have set out to raise money toward the $200K pricetag. Details about giving, and about how Mike and Cabell are doing in general, are expressed in the links below:

http://www.support4sweeney.blogspot.com/
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/mikesweeney/journal

As of last week, $126,000 had already been raised. If you know Sweeney, you won’t be surprised that his need could elicit such an outpouring. He is one of most loved and loving people I’ve ever known – and he still has 2 or 3 of the best 10 catches I’ve ever seen.

Even if you don’t know Mike, the links are well worth reading for inspiration from the grace he and his wife are displaying in the face of this challenge.

-Rob Barrett

2009 roster page

The strong class of newcomers includes: Brandon Perales (FSU, Vicious Cycle), Nick Lance (Ga. Tech, El Diablo), Peter Dempsey (Georgia), Robert Runner (Virginia, Guillermo Y Compania), and Will Lokke (Wisconsin, SubZero).

Scrimmage line at a 95° afternoon tryout at Emory, held later in the day to avoid the real heat
(L to R: J. Wooten, Markette, Kirby, Kid, Poole, Runner, Nilan, Tiarsmith)

Countering the 5 additions are 5 losses (Bellair, Schrafft, Segal, Sieling, Smith) — and those are all players who’ve played roles in the last 3 Chain seasons, which have, not coincidentally, been the best in the team’s nearly 30 year history.

Big picture, the team enters the year with a great deal of potential, hoping to extend the season to the last day of competition. Essentially all of the vets who were giving retirement serious consideration (e.g., Barrett, Jay Hammond, Simpson, Tiarsmith) have opted to return for another run / lull. Now the real work begins.

This past weekend, for the 2nd time in Chain Lightning’s three-decade history, the team reached the semifinals of the sport’s biggest championship. Just as in 2006, we lost in the semis, though on the strength of its run, this year’s team can likely lay claim to being the best Chain team ever.

In Saturday morning’s quarterfinals, we romped 15-8 over Toronto’s Goat, gaining a measure of revenge for last year’s excruciating loss to them in the same game. Along the way, however, star big man Dylan Tunnell went down for the remainder of the competition with an extremely sprained ankle.

The semifinals loss (10-15) to Boston was a well-played and highly intense game, in which the Ironside players made just a couple less errors, versus extreme pressure from the Chain defense.

More details and memories of the individual games to come.