Help us celebrate the end of summer this coming Labor Day weekend with some great free beach ultimate!

It’s the 2021 Eric Brach Memorial Workingman’s Disc Free Beach Hat tourney (named for a legendary local player who made a legendary donation that’s gonna cover the pizzas and prizes).

Sunday Sept 5, 10 am ~ 3:30 pm, between lifeguard stations 28 & 29 in Venice/Santa Monica.

Registration is free up until Thursday Sept. 2 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, while maintaining appropriate gender balance in the mixed game and getting everyone enough playing time. No playing in both games at once, however. In each round you play in either the mixed game or the open game. 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 (so for example you could have 3/1 on one team and 4/0 on the other). 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 13 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, some pizza or other food after the finals (that we will serve to you to avoid crowding), and prizes for the winners, all on us (LA Throwback, this time mostly courtesy of Eric Brach…if you feel like donating to LA Throwback too, be our guest!).

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.

We’re very pleased that our juice sponsor, Suja Organic, will be providing their great Suja Organic Juices for all players.

With respect to health and safety, we are asking that you EITHER provide us with evidence of vaccination OR wear a mask. All those providing evidence of vaccination will receive a wristband when they check in. In order to play, you will need to be wearing a wristband, or wearing a mask. You can upload a picture of your registration card when you register, or you can bring a picture of it with you and show it when you check in.

Again, registration is free if you sign up by Thurs Sept. 2.  If you don’t register by then, it’ll be $10. If you pre-register and then can’t make it, please let us know. Please do not register unless you are serious about coming and playing. We know it’s free up until the Thursday before the tourney, but please don’t use this fact just to reserve a spot you aren’t pretty sure you’ll really use. Doing so makes planning very difficult, and leads to a lot of last minute shuffling of players. Again, if you’re not fairly certain you’ll make it, please hold off on registering until you’re pretty sure you will. Thanks!

This will be a random draw tourney but we will distribute players based on survey responses so overall team strength is as similar as possible. We use a random number generator to make the selections. Players will get an email the Saturday night (usually late) before the event telling them which team they are on and letting them know their team color.

The event will be at the same location as our prior Free Beach Hats, on the beach just south of lifeguard station 28 and the Ashland Ave. bathrooms (i.e. at “South Beach Park”) in Venice (technically Santa Monica, but most people think of it as Venice). Please be there by 9:30 am so first games can start at 10:00 am. We’ll finish up around 3-4 pm.

Look forward to seeing you out there!

ps. you can see pics from our Welcome Back Free Beach Hat in June, here.