The Fresh Urbs

10/10/2017

What an amazing season for the Fresh Urbs! We are so excited to have achieved 2nd place in the Dutch National Mixed Competition this year! Especially since we have only just recently celebrated our 2nd birthday as a team. ✌️

We want to send out a huge congratulations to our challengers in the finals, current European champions, GRUT. A well-deserved victory for you all! It was an honor to play you in the finals and we look forward to playing you again soon.

We also want to thank our organizational club, Crunch Ultimate Frisbee Amsterdam for allowing us to be a team and encouraging us to compete under the flag.

We can't forget to give a shout out to the team members who were not able to play with us this Mixed Competition, you were definitely missed and never forgotten! 😍

And finally, to all of the other teams who challenged us this season and let us play some amazingly spirited and competitive games of the best sport around - Thank you & we look forward to next year!

01/10/2017

GRUT congratulations!! We loved watching you win:)

29/06/2017

The Fresh Urbs G-**ot 2017 report: A tale of mythical sea animals, the counter-wingman and half-molten artificial fields in Belgium.

On the 25th of May, the Fresh Urbs travelled to the beautiful city that is Gent to play Belgium’s well known tournament -**ot G-**ot - Frisbee Tourney For this tournament we picked up our buddy Vince, as we were short a couple of people due to Rising High taking place in the same weekend.

A bit scared of the forecast (a heatwave would be hitting Gent that weekend) we build up our Urbs-camp and went to sleep early.

Come morning, we walked down to G-**ot HQ for some breakfast and made our way over to the fields. This would be our only game on the grass pitch (since G-**ot only has 1 grass field) where we found out we would be playing the 20th seed, from Germany, who would go on to win the tournament. When we arrived at the field, we quickly found out that the organization had forgotten about the far away field. Quickly we made an improvised field with lines consisting of shoes and hats, paired with a scoreboard made of water bottles. After a nice warmup and the revelation of our 2 Fresh Urbs flags secretly brought by Thomas, we were ready to go. We quickly found out that Lokomotive had some seriously strong players and an even stronger deep game, which caused us to throw a few of our poach defenses and zones at them. The German team named after a train showed us why they were named after a train when they boarded the breaktrain for a few precious breaks at the end of the game, earning them the win. Fresh Urbs 9-12 Lokomotive.

After the first game we made our way over to the artificial turf, hungry for more frisbee playing. At this point it was already starting to get really warm (even more so because of the turf). After our warmup we walked onto the pitch to face our next opponents; the Porta Pirates from Germany. Making use of the wind, we set up our zone. The Pirates had some good handler movements, but were a bit unlucky at times and couldn’t really put in the goals. Fresh Urbs 15-1 Porta Pirates.

At this point it was really starting to get extremely hot outside, causing us to hide in the shade until the next game. Our quite long break in between games caused Chloë and Dan to explain a new spiritgame, kissing rugby, to our team. As we had time enough, we also played a couple of rounds and ended up loving the game. This was also the moment where we got our first look at the monster that is The Gek.

After this we made our way down to the field to face our 3rd opponent of the day, DISConnection from Germany. Both influenced by the heat from the sun and our opponents, it became a heated game, with layouts and D’s all over the field. In the end Linde managed to get a turn on their offense close to our own endzone. After a slight overthrow on Linde, yours truly managed to get a layout garbage catch into huck to hit Vince in the endzone for the winning goal. Fresh Urbs 11-9 DISConnection.

Considering the heat and the amount of games played, we were quite tired after this game. Due to the way the pools were designed, we still had one more game to go, so we got ready for our last game of the day. We played against Ouftimate - Ultimate Frisbee Team Liège from Belgium. It was a really close game, but the size of the team came through for us, causing us to get a couple of breaks in the end. Fresh Urbs 13-10 Ouftimate.

After this some of our team went to take a swim at the lake that was next to the tournament to cool down our overheated heads and bodies. After taking a shower we met up to take a nice tour on a boat to the city center of Gent. After enjoying a great meal we set out to explore Gent a bit. This resulted in ice-cream and a lot of fun for everybody. After this, we set out to take the party bus back to the campsite.

Playing an extra game on Friday meant we got to sleep in on Saturday, which was much appreciated by everybody. After a nice breakfast in bed organized by Dan and the Gek, we started heading out to the fields to face another insanely hot day on the Belgian fields. Our first game was against the Flying Rabbits Ultimate Club - Brussels from Belgium. The rabbits already had a game before, so they were just a bit more tired than we were. The game stayed insanely close all throughout, because of the solid handler plays from both sides. Fresh Urbs 10–8 Flying Rabbits.

Doing so well meant we made it to the quarterfinals! Pumped about this, we went into our game against the Mosquitos Ultimate team from Austria. We came out blazing, and took a big lead right from the start. As the time cap neared, we were up 10-6. We ended up slightly overshooting our receivers deep causing the Mosquitos, who never gave up, to take the game from us. Fresh Urbs 10-11 Mosquitos.

After this tough and painful loss, we had a while to calm down and relax in the shade before our last game of the day. Refreshed and ready to go, we headed into our game against from Belgium. Jetset also happened to be hit quite hard by the intense heat that lingered on the fields, causing them to have a shortage of players due to heatstroke and injuries. This gave us the edge, resulting in us taking the win by using our legs. Fresh Urbs 13-9 Jetset.

After this we got into our traditional love circle and then went on to the party! The party saw the appearance of a mythical animal, namely the landshark. Said landshark ended up being carried across the party people before disappearing as quickly as it came(after dancing naked for about 5 minutes). The party also saw the birth of the glorious move called “the counter-wingman”. This move consists of rubbing a (very) sweaty male body on a guy that won’t leave your female teammate alone at a party (execute at own risk). The rest of the party consisted of dancing and jumping Urbs until late in the night. At some point Erin even broke her flip-flops by dancing too hard. This was solved by getting rid of said flip-flops and continuing to party barefoot.

Come morning, all Urbs crawled from their respective tents to play our last game. After a relaxed breakfast and hanging in the shade to watch the semi-final unfold and roll and massage our painful muscles, we went into our last game. We played the German Indiscutabel. inDISCutabel came out firing and took a lead at the start. We kept fighting until the end, but we weren’t able to close the gap. Fresh Urbs 7-10 InDISCutabel.

In the end we ended up taking 6th place, one place below our seed. We enjoyed an amazing final between our friends from Lokomotive and the Gentle All-stars team. After all this, we all somehow managed to make it back home in one piece. We want to thank Gentle Ultimate for organizing, all the teams we played against for the amazing game and our amazing teammates Aaron, Madi and Vince. Aaron for showing up to support us even in Belgium, Madisyn for flying in on Saturday to help us out and Vince for not only coming over to play with us, but also lending out his car to Dan so he could make it back home for beach practice on Sunday morning(allowing him to party with us instead of taking the train on Saturday evening).

Tournament roster consisted of: Andi, Anouk, Bram, Chloë, Dan, Erin, Gergö, Jeff, Jill, Kevin, Linde, Madisyn, Markus, Oline, Robert, Suzanne, Thomas, Tim, Valerie, Vince.

Report by: Kevin

12/06/2017

Fresh word of the weekend: Family

07/06/2017

The Fresh Urbs are getting ready for Windmill ✌️☮️

03/04/2017

The Fresh Urbs Frozen Cherries 2017 report: A tale of a weekend filled with layouts, new rivalries, insanely fast paced b**r races and a night of dancing.

Friday

On Friday march 31 the Freshest of Urbs travelled down to the always awesome and lovely Vechtzoom in Utrecht for our first tournament this season; Frozen Cherries! For some people in our squad this would be their first tournament with the team, as our open trainings only concluded 2 weeks before the tournament. The people that arrived on Friday had a lot of fun playing table tennis, drinking some b**rs, listening to the lovely wailing from the karaoke night that was going on, and just chilling with our friends and rivals in general.

Saturday

We were playing in the first round of games; 9:00 AM. This meant we had to get up early if we wanted to get some breakfast, dance moves and a warmup before the game would start. After some initial eye rubbing and hugging with the latecomers we all put on some extra layers to protect us from the drizzle and the wind, and went to the fields. After earlier mentioned dancing and warming up we walked onto the field, supported by our awesome coach for the day Robert (and his banter) and our Fresh teammate Chloë who sadly wasn't able to play with us due to her having a broken toe.

Game 1
We started the tournament off versus Schleudertrauma - Ultimate Frisbee Magdeburg, a team from Germany with some Dutch(ish) pickups. They took advantage of the wind, and came out with a zone right from the bat. We had a bit of trouble getting through the zone at first, and threw passes into the willing hands of our opponents quite a few times. Luckily our own intense man D managed to win us back the disc a lot. In the end we ended up trading breaks back and forth, and the game ended with our win; Fresh Urbs 10-5 Schleudertrauma

Game 2
Fired up from the first win and looking for more, we started the second round versus the athletic Danish team DTU Ultimate Frisbee. Coming out strong as we did, we took the first 4 points of the game. After that, DTU managed to find back their rhythm and started fighting back. The rest of the game was intense, with layout catches and blocks from both sides all over the field. We managed to hold on to our lead, and traded points until the end of the game. Fresh Urbs 11-7 DTU. Unfortunately we lost our teammate Michiel after this game, to a painful knee injury.

Game 3
The next game was a game that had both teams excited and pumping with adrenaline before it even started. In the third round we were playing Toys ‘R Us, aka the new (or old) UTKA Ultimate team. The game started out with the eager Toys from Utrecht taking a 3-0 lead. We managed to regroup and take some points of our own. After closing in again, the game became an intense game with tons of running, skying, great hucks, spicy defensive plays and best of all, incredible spirit. The defense from both sides were pouring on pressure, and no score went uncontested. This resulted in some accidental contact here and there, but this couldn’t stop both teams from exhibiting amazing spirit. Almost no calls were contested, and most ended up being retracted. Despite some unlucky injuries on their side, and some amazing defensive plays by Oline, Bram and Dan, the Toys managed to hold on to their lead, and take the win after all was said and done. Fresh Urbs 6- 8 Toys ‘R Us. That day, on that field, a new rivalry was born. A rivalry that will hopefully keep providing us with games as intense and spirited as this one for a long time!

We just came out of the cozy and sweaty embrace that was the spirit circle with the Toys ‘R Us, when Robo came bearing good news; we had scored just enough points to get a draw in the pool with the Danish DTU team. With us having beaten them in our game, we ended up taking first in the pool and we went into our crossover game to finish our first day.

Game 4
Our crossover game was versus the German Hallunken - Ultimate Frisbee team. Hallunken had picked up somebody we know well… Our Fresh buddy Joram, who was playing his comeback tournament after beating a tough ACL injury! As the game started we started running, and never looked back. The tired Germans kept fighting, but couldn’t manage to keep up with the size of our squad in the end. Fresh Urbs 13-5 Hallunken. After the game we got a good look at all our opponents underwear, which we had to match up to their players in a fun spirit game.

The party

After that, it was time for dinner and a well-deserved shower. Dinner turned out to be amazing, with lots of delicious food to choose from. After we had all showered, we met up at the brand new Urb Central (provided and inhabited by Bram) to share some sweet compliments (and booze).
After that, we all got changed into our party outfits and went to the b**r race. Our selection of the most experienced and fit players was easily made. As the race started, grandpa Peter tried his best to keep up with all the energetic kids around him. Although he was feeling spry and definitely wasn’t lacking in determination, he couldn’t help but be outran (but luckily the ever steady Robo was there to help him safely crawl under that net on the ground). After grandpa finished his run accompanied by the entire crowd’s cheering, grandma Alix took over (after handing grandpa his well-deserved b**r of course). Walking through that hoop like she was still in her twenties, she arrived at the energetic ball of energy that was Pippi LongStocking (Anouk). Supported by the equally strong knight Oline, she casually pumped out some totally unnecessary push-ups along the way to show how easy the race was to her. Together they easily made it to the final part of the race, which had Valerie face first in a tub of ice cold water to fish out some cherries. I dare say we did pretty well in that b**r race!
After that, we were off to the party, where we danced and rolled around in the boat load of stuffed animals that was the VIP room. It took the party ending to get our two PartyGermans Robo and Markus to finally go find their tent.

Sunday

Having made it to the quarter finals we all enjoyed a nice sleep in, as we didn’t have to play in the first round of games. After a breakfast with the team we enjoyed a nice and easy warming up in the warm sun before we went into a red-hot quarter final, joined on the field by our coach from the day before, Robo! Taking Chloë's spot from the day before, our (also injured) teammate Aaron showed up to support us through the games we would have that day.

The quarterfinal

Our quarter final was a game against the spicy Aggressive Recessive team, whom we had partied with the night before. Both teams came out stronger and fitter than anybody else expected, playing like it was a Saturday morning, instead of a Sunday morning. Aggressive Recessive brought a devastating deep game to the table. They managed to score a couple of times with perfect full field hucks on open receivers. We battled back using our hard cuts and solid handler plays. Dan and the speedy Linde had another dozen of game changing layout D’s. After getting a couple of breaks, we were able to get away with the win, Fresh Urbs 13-10 Aggressive Recessive.

The semifinal

After a nice break and another warm up in the sun, we walked onto the field, ready for our semifinal! In this game we played Frau Rauscher & the Bembelboys (Eintracht Frankfurt Ultimate Frisbee) , another team from Germany. They came out in a zone, which our solid zone offense led by Dan and Robo had to puzzle through. On offense they gave us a lot of trouble with how tall their men were and the way their handlers were cutting deep and scoring on us. After getting scored on like that a couple of times we adjusted our play into a poachy help-defense. This helped us get a couple of breaks, which we managed to hold on to until the end of this insanely close and well spirited game, thanks to Anouk making an insane catch near the endzone in one of the final points, and Valerie following that example by making her first ever layout on grass to keep possession! Fresh Urbs 12-10 Frau Rauscher & the Bembelboys.

After the semifinal we had a 3 hour break until the final, which was used hanging around in the sun with our team, watching the rest of the games. When we had about an hour left, we gathered at the warmup field for some stretching and to play a fun dancing game to get in the groove. After, we did another warmup, and got ready to storm the field for the final!

THE FINAL!

Our opponent for the finals was the young Feunendalers team (Frisbeeclub Veenendaal Tijgers). This team consisted mostly of youth players from Veenendaal, who had picked up the athletic JP from Airborn. They started the game by coming out in a zone defense. Our zone offense, once again led by our steady handlers Dan and Robo worked through the zone to score our first point. Through hard work, intensity and defensive pressure we managed to break to 3-1 right away. After that both teams kept trading points. On offense the Feunendalers would often score in one big shot, resulting in a really even game. Just before halftime a layout D by Dan gave us the opportunity to break again, resulting in us taking halftime 7-6. In the second half they tried a couple of different zone defenses on defense, but our offense was on fire and kept scoring every time they were on the field. After a couple more hardfought points the Feunendalers managed to get a D on our offense and converted that into their second break of the game. Shortly after, the timecap went on. We put a powerline on, for an amazingly hardfought point with an insane bid from JP who barely dropped the disc in our endzone after their hardworking defense managed to get a turn on our offense. After a couple of turns Robo managed to get an around pass to Anouk in the endzone, for our game winning score. Fresh Urbs 12- 10 Feunendalers. Even though the game was insanely close, the spirit never suffered under the pressure, and all calls were discussed calmly and fairly.

After we were done celebrating, we went to the prize ceremony. Not only did we win the tournament, but we also won 3th place overall, which was calculated from the results from the games+ Spirit+ the party+ the b**r race (yours truly is guessing this was the deciding factor, considering our record time for this part of the competition)!

We would like to thank UTKA for organizing this amazingly fun tournament, all the teams we played against for their awesome spirit and plays, our trusty teammates Chloë and Aaron for coming out to support us, and weird drunken kids from the neighborhood for throwing rocks at our tents.

Tournament roster consisted of:
Alix Goldstein, Anouk Boukema, Bram Steenhuisen, Dan Eppstein, Gergõ Hrubó, Jill Steenkist, Kevin de Jongh, Linde Wits, Michiel van der Leur, Madi Lu, Markus Nagel, Matthijs Damen, Maud Ottenheijm, Oline Stokhof, Peter Coenen, Robert Bormuth, Thomas Lievestro, Tim Huijg, Valerie Thornewell (and also Suzanne Slob)

Report by: Kevin de Jongh, Photo by: Jonathan Clarey, Video by: Thomas Lievestro

26/02/2017

We just received a mysterious message from Herbie/Windmill!
http://www2.freshurbs.com/footage/Mixed-FreshUrbs.mp3

08/11/2016

We're famous!

Mixed competition with the Fresh Urbs! Started from the bottom now were here #3!

17/10/2016

Report – Final Competition Day
On Sunday October 9th Fresh Urbs travelled to the world’s hotspot of ultimate Frisbee, Veenendaal, to compete in the final day of Mixed Competition 2016. Two seasons of training, competing and running round as spirited wild animals with opposable thumbs had led to this day.

Game 1: Fresh Urbs vs Rusty Bikes
This game was a biggie. Playing the Rusty Bikes in the quarter finals? Yes please minister. We’ve trained next to these demigods of Dutch ultimate for months, picked up with and against them, admired them from afar for their skills and physical attractiveness and so we knew how contested this game would be. The confetti we covered the pitch with prior to the game was testament to our excitement and with sweaty palms and trembling legs we yelled Urbs on Fresh and took to the fields.

Points were traded back and forth like Sheila between Markus and Joseph. It was a close game. Interestingly, only one of two teams could win this match. Perhaps the only thing bigger than the spirit throughout was the size of Jill’s smile as she got to play some ultimate despite her injury or the size of Tim’s ego after he scored point after point after point like a greedy meerkat.

At halftime we switched to a zone defence we had been working on and suddenly the D line were winning multiple points in a row, proving exceptional at D and O. The newly formed ‘DO’ line rendered the original O line defunct for the rest of the game, and rolled us out to a 10 – 8 victory!

What a wonderful experience!!

Game 2: Fresh Urbs vs. GRUT
We were through to the semi-finals. Drawn against Grut, a team that had very recently finished second in the European finals, we were feeling incredibly confident of an easy victory. How hard could it be?
It turns out really bloody hard. Grut are absolutely amazing at ultimate Frisbee. Our heads were anywhere but in the game, we didn’t catch very many Frisbees and ultimately we crawled to a 15 – 2 defeat. We learned the hard way that if you don’t try hard enough and if you play badly, a team as good as Grut will s***k your bottom.

So with our cheeks still painfully red we were glad to see the end of the game. A disappointing result, but definitely one we could draw some lessons from for our final game against Crunch 1.

Game 3: Fresh Urbs vs. Crunch 1
Technically named ‘Crunch 3’ we were now up against our number 1 counterparts. Victory not only meant third place in the final national standings, but also local bragging rights in Amsterdam. Who had the biggest bo****ks?

We brought back our focus from the first game, adopted a new tactic of catching our discs and throwing them to our team mates and embarked on a tough, competitive fixture. Either team could have won this but with resilient zone defence and creative offensive handling and cutting we saw out an 11 – 8 victory. Special mention goes to some incredibly alluring layouts from Dan and Linde and some beautiful and squirrel-esque handling from Anouk.

Such close results were commonplace for us as a team. In 2016 we finished with an 88.9% win record by losing only 1 of our 9 games. However we rarely won by a big margin and conceded a total of 70 points throughout the season in comparison to the 93 we scored.
Perhaps this is indicative of us as a team - maybe we let leads decrease that we shouldn’t and maybe we don’t finish off teams like we should. Or maybe this suggests that when we’re in a tight game, our spirit and determination consistently push us to victory.

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Either way, it’s been an amazing season. Braids have been braided, lay outs laid out all over the shop, pizzas digested and excreted, spirit animals unleashed, bums slapped, high fives high fived and smiles smiled.

We only hope that in 2017 we can improve as a team, get even better at Frisbee and even more better at having fun. See you then ######x

Comp Day 3 Roster Consiste of Anouk Boukema, Kevin de Jongh, Jill Steenkist, Oline Stokhof, Dan Eppstein, Nena Ruijs, Thomas Lievestro, BrAm Steenhuisen, Andi Ganz, Michiel Van de Leur, Maud Ottenheijm, Markus Nagel, Linde Wits, Tim Huijg & Joseph Evans

Report by Joseph Evans
Photos by Jill & Tim

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17/10/2016

Yess!! We have our own website now!!

We are The Fresh Urbs, a passionate mixed Ultimate Frisbee team from Amsterdam.