Hey everyone,

Another holiday weekend is upon us, which means another LA Throwback Free Beach Hat Tourney. We’ll be celebrating the importance of interdependence between all people, all peoples, and the natural world with some fun beach ultimate on Sunday July 3. This will be our second Interdependence Day Free Beach Hat tourney (the last one was pre-pandemic, in 2019 if you can remember back that far).

This time, we’ll be adding a potluck at the end. If you can’t bring something, don’t worry, but if you can, please do. This will be our first time trying this, but we hope it will be festive.

Sunday July 3, 10 am ~ 3:30 pm, between lifeguard stations 28 & 29 in Venice/Santa Monica.

Registration is free up until Thursday June 30 at 7 pm. ten bucks thereafter, but please do not sign up until you’re fairly certain you’ll make it.

The event will be 4×4 mixed. To make sure that women are able to play in gender balanced games no matter the ratio of men to women at the event, we’ll be using megateam format. In megateam format, each mega-team consists of two squads, a mixed squad and an open squad. When two opponents play, they compete in two games on two adjacent fields simultaneously, a mixed game and an open game.

Before each round, the team picks who plays on the mixed squad and who plays on the open squad in that round. This format allows everyone who wants to play mixed to have a chance to do so and everyone who wants to play open to do so. No playing in both games at once. Your team’s record is determined by what happens in BOTH games in each round. In mixed games there is a required 2/2 gender balance. In open games there is no mandated gender balance. For the final round, the mixed and open teams combine back into a single megateam, and we play a mixed 5×5 game with a genzone. We are planning for each team to play 3 games to 11 and one game to 15 (last game of the day, the playoffs!).

As usual, we’ll have lined fields, scoreboards, water, oranges, and ice. There will also be a massage table where you can work your friends’ kinks out for them. At the end of the day, everyone will bust out whatever they’ve brought to share with others and we’ll enjoy each other’s generosity! Maybe we’ll play throw some lead passes into breaking waves down by the water if people are up for it.

We won’t be requiring masks, but you must be fully vaccinated in order to play. We highly recommend but will not require that you also be boosted.

We look forward to seeing you out there!

(Please note, we will *NOT* have cups for water, even though we will have 5-gallon jugs of water out there. We ask that you bring your own container for water.)