Every Australian Ultimate team is associated with fierce, iconic national fauna. We’ve got Firetails, Flying Foxes, and Mud Crabs. We’ve got Reef Sharks and Stingrays, Dingoes and Wombats. Barramundi, Bluebottles, and Wobbegongs. And though, yes, some of these animals' strengths might not translate very well to our land-based, hand-eye heavy sport, at the very top of the ladder, the apex predator, is the Crocodile.
Playing for the Australian Crocs is the highest representative honour for Ultimate Frisbee in this country. Every four years, seven of our very best women and seven of our very best men are chosen to represent us at the World Games—a week-long international sporting extravaganza that begins on the 7th of July in Birmingham, Alabama.
If you’ve seen (or, even worse, participated) in one of the 2022 Crocs running sets‚ you’ll have some idea of how hard athletes have to work at this level. For everyone else, this explainer article will offer a light introduction to our team, the competition, and how to follow along at home.
We’re hoping to put together some speculation on the tournament itself - if you’d like to put something forward you can message IOU on Facebook or Instagram, or email hello.ioultimate@gmail.com.
The World Games
Founded in 1981, the World Games is an international, quadrennial, multidisciplinary sporting spectacle that is NOT the Olympics. But it’s close. Since there are limited opportunities to be a part of the holier-than-thou Olympic programme, the World Games serves as a platform for the niche, the weird, and the wonderful. There are sports that you’ve never heard of (like Korfball), and there are sports that are just indoor or otherwise adapted versions of sports that you have heard of (indoor hockey, swimming but with fins on). There’s also Tug of War.
Ultimate has been part of the World Games program since 2001—which was also the only time the USA hasn’t won it (Canada beat them for the gold). In the past four appearances, the Aussie Crocs have won two silver medals and one bronze. You can watch almost every game they’ve ever played here.
As you’ll see from the footage, the brand of Ultimate we’ve been known to play at this world stage could be described as ‘Big Boys, Athletic Girls, Huck Huck Huck.’ This is a healthy byproduct of putting, for example, the Dowle brothers, the Phillips sisters, and The GACK on the same field. While this year’s team is on-brand on paper—in that it features both of the Phillips sisters and The GUCK)—Ultimate in this country is evolving. With some zippy handlers, some newfangled strategies, and more Western Australians than ever before, this iteration of the Crocs may well play with a whole new style.
It all kicks off on the 7th of July. IOU will post some links for viewing closer to the time, but it will likely be through the International World Games official channel. It’s not a very pretty website, but then again neither is this. Start preparing yourself for Central Daylight Time by having breakfast at 1:00 a.m. tonight.
Our 2022 Crocs
Here’s the roster of our 2022 World Games team:
Alex Prentice, Caroline Ma, Catherine Phillips (Captain), Georgia Egan Griffiths, Michelle Phillips, Oliva Carr, Sally Yu, Alex Gan, Alex Shepherd, Kyal Oh, Robert Andrews, Sam McGuckin, Tom Tullet (captain), Alex Ladomatos.
The reserves are:
Asaka Iitoyo, Alice Si, Lyra Meehan, Holly Reeve, Jono Keyes, Lochlan Wise, Timocles Copland, Peter Eley.
Anna Rogacki is the Head Coach (her second time in the role), with Nikki Shires as the Assistant Coach, and David O’Brien as the Specialist Coach/Manager.
One of the first things you’ll notice is that we have four Alex’s. No other country can possibly compete with this. If you want to have any chance of making the team in 2025, you could do worse than changing your name before the selection process starts.
There are many returning Crocs on the roster (Prentice, Cat, Mish, Rob, and Cupcake), and some new and exciting faces as well. Australian Ultimate fans will be familiar with these names—but if you’re not, just watch the gold medal matches of both divisions of the 2022 Australian Ultimate Championships (on Kayo?).
The Competition
Traditionally, Ultimate Frisbee (officially referred to as Flying Disc in the WG program), has had six teams compete at the World Games, determined by WFDF rankings. This year there’s going to be 8. With the disrupted international season due to COVID, there was some outrage about what countries deserved to qualify, which you can read on Ultiworld’s fancy schmancy website in your own time.
In Pool A we have:
USA
Canada
Great Britain
Germany
In Pool B we have:
Colombia
Australia
Japan
France
As mentioned, we hope to bring you some more speculation and coverage on the tournament as it develops, but all you need to know for now is that the USA does not have one single Alex on its roster.
How to Support the Crocs
We’ll be providing some updates and links as we get closer to the tournament, but for now, you can follow the Aussie Crocs on Facebook, their new unhacked Instagram, and YouTube. If there’s a Croc in your community, you could support them in a more tangible way by going for a throw or buying them some powerade powder or something nice like that.
The Crocs are having a showcase game this Sunday afternoon in Sydney, you can find more details about it here. This will be their final hitout on our shores—definitely worth getting down to see if you can.
This is a very exciting time to be a Croc. In just a few weeks and our best and brightest will be battling it out on the world stage. A message of good luck goes a long way (longer, even, than powerade powder), and so IOU would like to extend a very earnest and intensely capitalised GOOD LUCK to our athletes ahead of the big tournament. We know how hard you’ve worked, we know how much you want it, and we can’t wait to see you play the game we love at the highest level. Go the Crocs! Do us proud!