Amadea and Bora--video

Here's a video of Amadea and Bora's performance at the audition for "Slovenija ima talent." Not easy doing a freestyle routine on carpet in such a small space!

Slovenia's got talent!

posted by Jean McCollister




Flipsi members Amadea and Bora showed off some their freestyle moves this past Saturday in an unusual venue: at an audition for the show "Slovenija ima talent" (Slovenia's got talent) at the Lev Hotel in Ljubljana.



We'll know February 7 whether the pair is selected to advance to the next round. Keep your fingers and paws crossed!

Here's Bora, charming fellow contestants:



And featured in the newspaper Žurnal24:


As well as on Pop TV, here.

16-year-old Amadea first took up the sport of discdog in January 2008, when she enrolled in a course with then 7-month-old Bora taught by me (Jean McCollister) at Ajdovščina Kennel Club. That season the pair competed successfully in the Young Dogs category, placing high in several competitions in the Czech Republic and winning the Young Dogs Freestyle class at the 2008 European Championship held in September near Prague. The following year they did well enough in the Open Freestyle class as well as in Super Pro Toss & Fetch at the 2009 European Championship in Verden, Germany, to qualify for the USDDN Nationals/Internationals Finals held in the USA. In 2009 they also participated in a series of fun competitions held in Slovenia (toss & fetch events) and won the cup for the series.

In addition to attending several courses in Ajdovščina with me, Amadea's development as a player has benefited from coaching from leading Czech players (Jakub Štybr, Lucka Schonova, and Veronika Urbaskova, among others), seminars with visiting Americans Bryan Lamky and Peter Bloeme, and an intensive 5-day course with European champions Sabine Bruns and Marcus Wolff.

The whole family have been active in the establishment and continuing development of Flipsi. Mother Alenka played a leading role in founding the club, and father Aleš is a qualified judge who has helped at many of Slovenia's dogfrisbee competitions this past year. Both Amadea and Aleš are instructors in the sport.

More about the Coljas and their fantastic frisbee dog Bora can be found on our members page here.

UFO Winter Cup, Hungary

posted by Jean McCollister




Several of us from Flipsi traveled to Gyuro, Hungary for a discdog competition on Sunday January 17, organized under UFO rules. The competition took place at a place called Tordas Zoo Animal Farm with a nice indoor facility. This was my first time competing under UFO rules so I was worried about disc management issues (only seven frisbees allowed rather than the ten that I am used to under USDDN) as well as unsure of the judging criteria, but we must have done something right because Lyra won the freestyle event (of 16 competitors) and even with a relatively poor toss & fetch performance (21st place of 51 competitors) came third overall. Having a break from training the week before a competition is evidently good for her: she spent the time playing in the snow with her friends Jana and Dean and didn't see a frisbee again until the morning of the event.




Amadea and Bora were first in Toss & Catch, third in Freestyle, and second overall. Their second round of freestyle was practically flawless, and Amadea's throwing in the T &C was amazingly accurate, especially in the second round: Bora caught disc after disc in the bonus zone.



Olivia and I were fifth in Freestyle, fifth in Toss & Catch, and fourth overall. Relative novices Tamara and Žak turned in two very nice freestyle performances and finished in seventh place.



Bamm Bamm is not yet ready for freestyle but enjoyed doing the Toss & Catch and finished in 8th place. Full results are available here.

The UFO Winter Cup was an enjoyable experience in all respects, but especially for the opportunity it provided to see discdog friends from Hungary and Austria. Thank you to the organizers for putting together such a nice event! Hope to see you again soon!

Videos:

Predstavitev frizbija na Ljubljanski razstavi

posted by Tomaž Šubic

V soboto 16. januarja ter v nedeljo 17. januarja sva imela frizbi nastop na CACIB Ljubljana 2010 oz. CACIB Tromostovje 2010. Gledalci so bili zelo navdušeni. Sam nastop me je zelo skrbel, ker že nekaj mesecev nisva zaradi zime nič vadila, poleg tega je bil sam teren zelo drseč... ampak nama je kljub temu uspelo pokazat nekaj atraktivnih elementov. Do mene in Mirjane-Blažke je prišlo veliko radovednežev, ki jih je marsikaj zanimalo o frizbiju. Vsem smo na hitro razložili, kako sva sploh začela z tem športom, kako danes deluje društvo in vsem smo seveda dali tudi letake društva.

Posnetek:

4fun competition in Selca

On Sunday October 11, there was a 4fun frisbee competition, the last in a series of six, at the Škoja Loka-Železniki Kennel Club. The grounds of the club are located in an idyllic setting, part of an expansive area of parks, sports fields, and meadows at the outskirts of the village of Selca, along the Selca branch of the Sora River. A footpath parallels the river, with several access points where dogs can go splash in it. Which my dogs happily did, during a pre-competition walk, even though the temperatures have dropped considerably in the last week or two.

Idyllic or not, one drawback of being so close to a river is the danger of flooding: in September 2007, heavy flooding caused extensive damage in the Sora Valley and elsewhere, and pretty much demolished the kennel club facilities, as you can see in the photos here.

But two years later the place has been fully renovated. True, after some rains earlier in the week, and due to slow-draining soils and a predominantly shady aspect, the ground was soggier than what we're used to in my part of Slovenia (the Karst, where any rain quickly percolates through the limestone surface and the rivers run underground), but apart from a puddle or two the field was not bad to play on. The weather stayed dry and we even caught glimpses of sun.

The dogs had a great time. They like the cooler temperatures even if their owners don't. ;) Mine do, at any rate, they were happier and friskier than I've seen them all season. Lyra in particular was in great form, catching almost all of my minidistance throws, and winning that event with two solid rounds and a total of 36 points. One of the very few times she's beaten Oli (who was fourth this time).

Full results can be seen here; below are photos of the awards for the top three finishers in each event.

Mindistance:

1. Jean and Lyra (obscured by Oli, who is in the picture only because I didn't want to leave her unattended), with 36 points

2. Maja and Nelly, with 33 points

3. Aleš and Ayya, with 32.5 points

Time trial:

1. Jean and Oli, with a winning time of 18.05 seconds. Not bad, but still not as good as Petra and Veni at an earlier competition in the season: 17.39 seconds, which is the fastest time so far for this event in Slovenia. :)

2. Petra and Gia, with 18.83 seconds

3. Maja and Bri, with 18.93 seconds

Men's Quadruped without dogs:

1. Aleš Sušnik, 51.05 meters

2. Roman Žitnik, 50.7 meters

3. Tomaž Šubic, 44.7 meters

Women's Quadruped without dogs:

1. Jean McCollister, 47.8 meters

2. Maja Kokalj, 47.35 meters

3. Daša Zakotnik, 35.5 meters

Quadruped with dogs:

1. Maja and Bri, 47.35 meters

2. Jean and Oli, 45.65 meters

3. Tomaž and Casper, 43.6 meters

And winners of the cup (cumulative results from best four competitions of six in the series):

1. Amadea and Bora

2. Petra and Gia

3. Petra and Buffy


It was a very nice conclusion to the season. Thanks to all who made these events possible. Although I was only able to attend two of them this season, I hope to be a regular in future, and I would encourage more players from Slovenia as well as neighboring countries to take part. It's a great way to gain competition experience in a friendly, supportive, and fun atmosphere. Rumor has it that there just may be a winter cup in the offing...

Last Slovenian 4fun competition of the season

Dogfrisbee 4 Fun tekma se bo odvijala v nedeljo, 11.10.2009 v ŠKD Škofja Loka - Selca pri Železnikih (Športni park Rovn).

Kako do vadbišča: http://kd-skofjaloka-zelezniki.net/zemljevid_kd.html

Tekmovalo se bo v naslednjih disciplinah:
- mini distance (2 rundi)
- time trial (2 rundi)
- quadruped s psom
- quadruped brez psa - moški
- quadruped brez psa - ženske

Štartnina je 5 EUR za nastop v eni disciplini ali 10 EUR za vse discipline skupaj in se jo plača na kraju dogodka.

Zbor tekmovalcev je ob 11.30 uri.
Prijave na mail: ales@wtf.si, prosim, če v prijavi navedete:
- ime in priimek
- ime psa
- gsm

ali kar na forum.

Tekma je zadnja, ki šteje za pokal Slovenije v dogfrisbee-ju.
Po končani tekmi bomo razglasili zmagovalce pokala in razdelili denar zmagovalcem.

Vljudno vabljeni!

Frisbee show in Nova Vas

On Sunday September 27 Nadja and I went to Bloke Ranch in Nova Vas to do a halftime frisbee show at their horse event, "Spretnost je umetnost." The organizers set up a very innovative obstacle course that horses and their handlers had to negotiate calmly and skillfully. The emphasis was on negotiating the course without resorting to whips, spurs, and other forms of force.

For the first round, handlers led their horses through the series of obstacles.

There was a gate...


a bridge, where the horse had to stand quietly and wait while the owner rang a bell three times...



a water obstacle (not pictured) followed by this weird-looking thing...



then a tunnel (not pictured), then you had to go with your horse into a sort of three-sided improvised chute (hay bales on two sides and the tunnel wall at the end, not pictured) and stand there for five seconds, then back out, then go and collect a wooden club and use it to tip the scary-looking creature pictured below into a bow.


During the second round competitors repeated the course, this time on horseback:


In between rounds the arena was taken over by our dogs. As a warmup I ran the obstacle course with Lyra:


She did a great job, but I was disappointed when the judges didn't give us a score so we could see how we compared with the horses' results. ;) I was also quite surprised when Lyra balked at the water obstacle, running alongside it instead of through it; I thought for sure that would be her favorite, but I guess she didn't want to get her dainty feet dirty.

After warming up Lyra (and the crowd), I launched into our frisbee routine. Somewhat adjusted for the smaller space available. And my first experience performing on sand. Interesting. Lyra got a mouthful whenever she tried to scoop up a missed frisbee from the ground, and I got generous amounts in my hair, shoes, pants, etc. But it wasn't too bad. Makes for nice soft landings anyway. :)





After I finished with Lyra, Nadja took over. Unfortunately I didn't get to see or hear much because I was busy changing dogs. She was fitted with a microphone, which confused Ginny a bit because when Nadja called her she ran in the direction of the speakers instead of towards the caller. ;) Nadja told the audience a bit more about the sport (and also about aussies) and demonstrated some freestyle moves, like weaving...



flips...





leg vault...



and flying...



Then it was Oli's turn to get sand in her mouth (and all over me):







(note water obstacle in background here...)





It was a very nice event, thanks to Maja and Jure at Bloke Ranch for inviting us! Next time I hope to come with a horse as well as a dog.