Boracay Open 2016: The Dragons Are Back On The Throne
Boracay Open will always have a special place in my career in Ultimate photography. This is where I met a lot of amazing people. Dislocated my thumb during the finals game last year. The Open made me fall in love with Ultimate Frisbee. I traveled all over the country and abroad because of the opportunities that this tournament gave me. It changed my life for the better. Three Boracay Open's later, and I am still here. Doing what I love, and doing what I am suppose to do. Making this tournament look awesome every year, through my photographs.
But this year is different. According to the organizers, it is going to be the biggest Boracay Open ever. 30+ teams, six playing fields, and more than 300 players all over the world are heading over to this little island. With that said, I also need reinforcements. I asked a couple of members of the PUI crew to help me out so we can cover a lot of grounds during the Boracay weekend. I also asked for a few more folks from the community to help me out with some video clips during parties and the finals. Fortunately, they all responded on a positive note. In the end, this is also the biggest PUI coverage crew, to date. Time to shoot the Boracay Open.
As expected, the games are exciting and intense right off the bat. Lots of amazing plays, a few upsets, and tons of surprises. Powerhouse Humiliswag of the United States, who are favored to be in the Finals for the second year in a row fell short as the team led by Tim Morril, Bob Liu, Nick Simonelly, Botchok, and Bolantoy tallied the biggest upset in Boracay Open history, losing to the "Party animals", Team Dime Piece in the Quarterfinals.
The Voltrons and Dragon Knights, also known as the Boracay Dragons Kids were definitely the biggest surprise of the tournament. With an average age of 15 years old and average height of 5 feet-tall, both teams gave everyone a run for their money as The Voltrons and the Dragon Knights lived up to everyones expectations. The Voltrons started at the bottom of Pool D, reached Pool C and dominated the final game. From Pool C, The Dragon Knights worked their way to reach the Pool B finals but they lost on a very exciting game against the defending Pool B Champions, Pancake.
The Pancake and Warriors semifinal game was also one of the best games I've witnessed during the weekend. Warriors was up by 4 points with under a minute left when team Pancake scored two Two-Point Bombs, tied the game and won on universe point. It was epic.
It only shows that no matter how strong your line and how preapared your team was, if it's not your time, it will not be your time. That no matter how small and young your squad was, if you work hard, play smart and run as a unit, anything is possible to take down the giants. That if you believe that your team can win no matter how hard it will take, Even how big the lead was, You will do everything you can to take that win away from the opposing team. Last weekend was definitely a great learning experience for each and everyone of us.
The classic Pool A Final match-up between The Boracay Dragons-Grey and Boracay Ultimate was the game that I was looking forward to witness for the past 3 Boracay Open tournaments that I have covered. Last weekend's final was definitely a game for the beach ultimate history books. After a two year hiatus, the Boracay Ultimate came back to Boracay Open on a very strong note winning all their games except the game against Dragons-Grey during the elimination rounds. But BU came back strong to reach the Pool A Finals. The Boracay Dragons Grey on the other hand, gave everyone on their path a hard time, wondering how to beat the legendary Dragons Play with the veterans like Panoy, Ben , Hendrix and Clyde playing on the powdery white sands of Boracay. No team has solved the problem during the Boracay Open weekend. Not until the final game of the tournament that we all thought, this might be the year when The Dragons fall. We were wrong.
It was a battle between these two giant Boracay teams. The Dragons were leading all throughout the game when suddenly Junthir Flores of Boracay Ultimate scored a bomb and changed the momentum of the game. It was an up and down battle between the two teams, until we reached the final point where Hendrix threw a perfect clean hammer to Nelson in the endzone. A universe point win. The Boracay Dragons are still the beach Kings and Queens of Asia.
Too many teams tried to dethrone them. Year after year, a lot of teams are trying to take away the Beach Kings of Asia title from the Dragons. BU almost did it this year. But the Dragons will stay on the throne for another year.
After 15 years (Yes. Fifteen years of Beach Ultimate!), Boracay Open has established a great name and reputation to the Beach Ultimate community. Boracay Open is not only the biggest beach tournament in Asia, but also one of the biggest Beach Ultimate tournament in the world. We can't deny that now. Congratulations to all the organizers, most especially to Karen Cabrera, Boboy Famorcan and Jude Lee, for making this Boracay Open a memorable one.
As for me, It has been a wild ride, photographing Boracay Open for the third time with a photo and video team with me. We just hope that we gave you a great time checking out the photos and the video highlights.
Yesterday (April 21, 2016), marked the PUI's first year anniversary. And we will do the best we can to give you better tournament coverage's in the coming years; and we sure hope that you will all still be there to support us. Again, we are forever grateful for all your love and support. We are doing this for the love of the sport. For the love of our community. And we are doing this for U!
Until then. More images to share. More stories to tell. It's All About U!
P.S. No broken limbs this time around... Just some weird tanlines.
See you in Davao city for Daba-Daba Ikaunom!
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