Review by Tom Leitner

What an incredible turnout for the 2003 World Disc Games, it was great to see everybody come to our humble town to compete, play and party together! The weather couldn’t have been any better – sunny every day with highs in the mid 70’s and a soft ocean breeze. 2 rounds of preliminaries on the beautiful fields at UCSC led up to Friday’s much anticipated semi finals indoors at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium.

Semi Finals

The first round in the Open division was absolutely smokin’! The trouble is when so many teams play well that one or more team that played well doesn’t advance. This was the case for the Velasquez brothers who, despite a few mistakes, played brilliantly. The 4 teams that followed all knew they had to play their best or be on the sidelines for the finals, and each team did what they had to do to advance in one of the best semi final rounds in recent memory.

The women’s semi went pretty much as expected with the top 4 teams advancing to the final. It was fun to see new pairings in the women’s division – and it looked like each team had put a good amount of time into their routines which added to the anticipation of Saturday’s Final at Cabrillo.

The second round in the Open division had some great moments but overall the play did not compare to the earlier pool. Perhaps because of the late start time – the last team to play Ted and Dave M. started their routine before midnight and finished just after midnight Saturday morning.

Women’s Final

In the Women’s final Mary Lowery and Judy Robbins hit enough big combos – including Mary’s sick bad attitude catch and digitronic and Judy’s awesome 50-50-50 roll, to take the gold. Lisa and Cindy came away with silver after a very promising start to their routine led to a couple costly breaks in flow. They deserve a lot of credit for battling back several times and getting their routine back on track. Third place went to Lori Daniels (a newly crowned world champion for her win in DDC) and her partner Anne Graves. These ladies look good together as their styles compliment each other very well. Mandy Carriero and Bethany Sanchez took forth place with a nice routine finishing less than 3 points out of medal contention.

Open Pairs Final

Congratulations to Arthur and Dave on their win…I am waiting to see the video before I can report on this round since I was warming up during most of the routines.

There were lots of familiar faces on the sidelines:

Stork (who incidentely retired from his WFDF position at the tourney), John Kirkland (who won DDC w/ Greensage), Tom Boda, Tom Shephard, Evan David, Z, San Francisco’s Sun Ray Hawk and Dave Zooninis, Modesto Mutant Evan Furtado, Ron Kaufman, Craig Simon, Jon Anthony, Glen Whitlock, Joan Amberg, Heather Gray, Richie Bartal, Mark “Dr Disc” Atherton, Tom Sahlit, Doug “stat man” Korns, Johnny “Air” O’Malley, Farmer Mike and Tam, Beast, Carl Dobson, Melissa Trail, Matt Gauthier, Dave and Amy Schiller, Steve Hubbard and Carolyn Yabe, Marco Regalbuti, Tom Cole and many others.