Editor’s Note: This article contains NSFW language

Vancouver Furious George is on its way to USAU Nationals after winning the Northwest Region, beating Sockeye in a result that few outside of western Canada saw coming.

Anyone who was sleeping on Furious heading into Regionals weekend can hardly be blamed – the team had a quiet regular season, only playing four games against Nationals-caliber teams in Seattle Sockeye and Portland Rhino Slam, and losing all four. The team’s past few seasons have been plagued with roster turnover and inconsistent results, including a rocky season last year that saw them miss Nationals and lose out on elite-flight status.

So, when the team’s offense punched in its final hold to close out a clean game and take the region, beating Sockeye 13-10, it may have raised a few eyebrows, but internally, it affirmed to team leadership that the direction they were taking this season – another step in a larger culture shift for what has been one of ultimate’s more controversial teams – was the right one.

“It felt like a really positive shift this year, perhaps more than any other year,” said fifth-year captain Kevin Underhill.

“We took a broader look at the season and saw it as a process and a program-building opportunity. I don’t know if I anticipated this high quality of play and such positive results so quickly but it’s great to see and be a part of.”

Furious George’s leadership, including first year head coach Matthew Berezan and co-captains Underhill, Fred Lam, and Alex Davis, put emphasis on developing a roster of players top to bottom that felt ownership of the team and of their season, said Underhill. This was a shift from past Vancouver teams that had been known for their “win now” mentality. Ironically, despite shifting the focus from “results” to “process”, the results are coming in faster than expected.

“[Winning at Regionals] is a confirmation for us that the things we’ve been doing this year are correct,” said Morgan Hibbert, a veteran of the Vancouver ultimate scene whose career has straddled playing with the iconic, fiery Furious teams of the 2000’s and the newer, quieter group that has still been looking for their breakthrough moment this decade.

“The way we’ve run the team, the way we’ve been coached, the way the captains have operated, this is the correct path, because in our test against a truly elite team, we did well. Whether we have great success and results at Nationals or not, we’re on the correct path.”

Cultural Shift

The last time Furious George won Northwest Regionals was 2006, the year after their third UPA title win in four years. The team also represented Canada on the world stage (with a few non-Furious pickups from across the country each time), winning gold at the World Ultimate and Guts Championships in 2004 and 2008 and establishing a reputation as one of the greatest teams in ultimate history, as well as one of the most intense.

“I don’t remember people smiling at practice before, when I was a rookie [in 2005]. It just didn’t happen.” said Morgan Hibbert, the only player on Furious George’s current roster who has won a USA national title. “There was a culture of winning in place, the expectation of winning. Every year the goal was to win, and anything short of that was a failure.”

“So you come into a team with that belief, that expectation, and then the practices we would have were just the hardest practices I’ve ever had in my life. We would just beat the shit of each other week after week.

“The amount of fights there were, the amount of people quitting one practice and then coming back the next, it was very much that classic ‘angry monkey’ team I came into. That was the sort of competitive fire they had.

“That held until around 2011, 2012, and since then it’s definitely changed.”

“Back in the day, the old guys needed to just fucking be angry at the world and yell at each other and shit.” -Morgan Hibbert

By the end of the decade, more and more players who made up the dominant Furious teams of the early 2000’s were retiring, opening the door for new players to not only join the team but begin to see themselves take ownership of what the team was and wanted to be. Underhill, who joined in 2009 as a teenager, was one of those players.

“Different things work for different groups, and I think that group rode a lot of that intensity,” Underhill said of the team he joined. “I’m not throwing an ounce of criticism to what those guys accomplished, they operated at a competitive level that is incredible.”

During that period, the team went through a relative slump as far as USA Nationals results, failing to finish in the top ten for a string of seasons and even failing to qualify multiple times.

“As those guys retired, the program went through a bit of an identity crisis where we tried to replicate some of that same culture with different personnel and it wasn’t working well, objectively. We were part of a group that was still trying to live a little bit in that past era while trying to cultivate younger talent, and the younger talent wasn’t as receptive to that,” Underhill reflected.

As Underhill took on more and more of a leadership role with the team, he remembers putting a diligent effort into shifting the culture from the top down.

“We talked about what qualities make an ideal teammate, and tried to hold to those things in our leadership styles while holding each other accountable. This year more than ever we’ve reached out for help from our team. We reached out for consultation, we reached out to gauge the team’s temperature a bit more, rather than just guessing.”

“No matter our finish at nationals, this project is just beginning.” -Kevin Underhill

On the field, the competitive intensity has stayed the same, but the way it is expressed has taken on a different flavour.

“I think people outwardly enjoy each other’s company more,” Hibbert said of the latest iteration of Furious George. “Guys are still battling hard every practice, but they’re not as nasty about. We do it with a smile and a bit of fun trash talk thrown in, instead of being cranky old men about it.

“It’s a much more relaxed environment, but it works for these guys. The nastiness and fire doesn’t work for this group.

New habits instilled by Berezan have helped changed the atmosphere at practice. “We’ve been doing a lot of mindfulness meditation, we spend five minutes as a team meditating to center us before we start,” Hibbert said.

“It keeps everyone really focused, because otherwise the team is just a bunch of young video game kids who are all over the fucking place. This is their way of being dialed in, whereas back in the day the old guys needed to just fucking be angry at the world and yell at each other and shit.

“All those guys are still brothers, they’re still best of friends,” Hibbert added of the 2000’s Furious teams. “It was just a different kind of friendship than the guys have now.”

Looking Ahead

The team, made up of a mix of veterans – including four of seven male players selected to Canada’s World Games team last year (Underhill, Hibbert, Brendan Wong, and Tim Tsang) – and a crop of talented, yet inexperienced, younger players, lacks some of the “middle group” that would normally give a team the depth required to make a deep run at tournament like USA Nationals. For a team finding themselves as a surprising five seed, approaching the tournament competitively while staying true to the process established so far this season will be a balancing act.

“We understand where we sit, we know that we’re a good ultimate team and we can play well,” Underhill said. “And like any athlete, when you go to an event you want to win it. A large reason why we play is to go to this event, and winning our region has re-motivated us to not just be satisfied with attending.

“That being said, our goals are a little more complex than that.”

The team’s fifth seed positions them second in Pool D, a challenging pool that will see them take on fourth-seeded Raleigh Ring of Fire, ninth-seed Chicago Machine, and the 16th-ranked Atlanta Chain Lightning two weeks from now in San Diego. Underhill outlined a team-wide desire to defend their seed in pool play and qualify for the top-eight bracket, while underlying a need to be realistic.

“None of this is going to come at the expense of putting the team first and making sure that at the end of Nationals we look back – no matter where we finish – and know that everyone was out there competing and feeling proud to be on the team, feeling valued,” Underhill added.

“Just to push to win as many games as we can at Nationals while losing sight of the long-term project we’ve been trying to build since the start of the season would be short-sighted. We’re looking three years into the future and looking to develop a program that’s sustainable.”

(Visited 2,572 times, 1 visits today)