On the first weekend in June the Walldorf Wanderers organized the Big Bowl for the fourth time. Big Bowl is this year the biggest flag football tournament within Europe (Flag Oceane was cancelled this week and will not take place as announced). The Big Bowl tournament is played within three groups: Youth, Ladies and Open. In 2010 a new record of participating teams was set and after four years we experience that our capacities are limited. So Big Bowl will not get much bigger anymore. 46 teams were in Walldorf in 2010 to play flag football. So all the teams out there watch out: next year you have probably to book fast as the tournament attracts more teams every year. So thats the basics. What really happened within the three days (Yes three days, as we have to start on friday so to have enough time for all the games) comes now:
First of all everybody within the Walldorf Wanderers organization has to help during the tournament by recruiting helpers and cooking or baking. And also during the tournament there is many things to do so that everything goes well. Before the tournament I called my brother so to persuade him to help me out as a helping hand during the tournament. A big thank you to him for doing a great job supporting the tournament. I also had to prepare two salads which was quite stressy as I was travelling aroung in Germany due to other personal reasons till Thursday night and had to work on friday before the games started. All the other Wanderers were already building up the tents, bars and all the other stuff on Thursday. So a lot had to be done all beforehand the tournament could start. Before I saw it I never guessed what a huge amount of time and effort is necessary to organize such a tournament (As some of you know I played for the Augsburg Dragons / Raptors before I moved to Frankfurt. So I took part in Big Bowl II as a player of a foreign team). And as the tournament gets bigger the organizational effort gets bigger as well. But nevertheless the whole tournament went very smooth and on Sunday a huge delay within the schedule could be prohibited. If you took part in the tournament and saw any possibilities to improve it please post a comment. We ourselves have some ideas as we try to improve every year but we also depend on your feedback! At the end we are quite happy how everything went this year. Thanks to everybody who helped to make it the great experience it was!
So at the end some words concerning the sports. I played this year the whole tournament for the first team of the Walldorf Wanderers. I can only write some words concerning the success of the second Walldorf Wanderer’s team and the Womens’ German National Team which are also both part of our organization. The second team reached the play offs which I wouldn’t have predicted after the games within the Hessonian league. The ladies made the third place behind the two favorite teams Israel and Austria. So afterall the tournament was a success for both teams. Walldorf Wanderers I won all the games within the group phase and then went through to the final without big problems. Within the final you could see that you don’t always have the luck that we had within last year’s Big Bowl. The referees decided against us during a critical situation of the game and instead of having the possibility to tie the game we suffered another touchdown. So therefore we lost the final which was much closer than the result suggested. Now I’m looking forward to playing more of these highly competitive games with the best flag football team I ever played with even during my time in Walldorf. And concerning the organization of the Big Bowl I am just proud to be a small part of the whole organization!
If you missed the Big Bowl this year you can read through our live ticker at www.walldorf-wanderers.com.
Some personal best of pictures which my brother shoot during the tournament can be seen here:
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