Elite Invite Preview
Leuven to Host Elite Invite of the European Ultimate Club Season
Leuven, Belgium – The European Ultimate Federation proudly announces the upcoming Elite Invite, an integral part of the European Ultimate Club Season 2024. Scheduled from May 10th to 12th, this prestigious event will take place at the Sports complex Bruineveld, with the city of Leuven providing robust support. This tournament is set to showcase the finest in ultimate, featuring the best teams per division from across Europe.
Event Details:
Date: May 10th - 12th, 2024
Venue: Sportcomplex Bruineveld, Leuven, Belgium
Access: Free public entry on the ground; online streaming available at https://live.ultimatefederation.eu
Get your discounted access pass until May 10th
The Elite Invite is crucial to the ultimate calendar, offering the top teams a platform to compete at the highest European level.
Each division features eight teams that will try to get the important wildcard for the Championships Finals at the end of September. Those who do not win must keep up their performance throughout the season and try to qualify through the ranking system. Even though the competition was tight and a great checkpoint in the EUCS 2023 - the winners of Elite Invite 2023 did not win EUCF 2023. Will this year be a repetition?
For all games, stats and player numbers - go to https://eucs-schedule.ultimatefederation.eu and select the Elite Invite.
Revisit the 2023 edition here:
Ulti.tv: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzREfPIXZzdavf3QAPIE_I0MPGYmw0Aew
EUF - Veo Streams: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk2oa3ilT9AuF5HuIV5vogS46NtUK7esF
Full list of participants:
Mixed
Deep Space* GBR
Reading Ultimate** GBR
Leamington Lemmings GBR
Nullacht! Ultimate GER
Sesquidistus FRA
DISConnection GER
Tartu Turbulence EST
Manchots FRA
Women
JetSet LUV BEL
Iceni GBR
East Block CZE
box vienna AUT
YAKA** FRA
jinX Midnight GER
Mooncup BEL
BFD Shout* ITA
Open
JetSet Open BEL
Wall City GER
Gentle BEL
Chevron Action Flash GBR
Alba GBR
Mooncatchers** BEL
BFD LaFotta ITA
Clapham* GBR
* Winner EUCF 2023
** Winner Elite Invite 2023
Mixed
In the mixed division, we saw a shift from several powerhouses to other divisions. This year, teams like GRUT, Catchup, SMOG, Monkey, and KFUM Örebro won’t compete for the mixed title, so seeing who will rise to the occasion during EUCF will be interesting. Reigning champions Deep Space from the UK have had a challenging start to the season. The team from London, with players like Alvaro Iturmendi, Ian Tait and Leila Denniston, were present at the Spring Tour in Padova but lost twice in pool play. First against the new super team from Munich, Tiefseetaucher, but also the Austrian Mosquitos, before handily winning their ranking pool, finishing 7th overall. The other team that was playing at a Spring Tour was Nullacht! Ultimate. The young German squad from Münster that turned heads last year wasn’t quite up to that challenge. They also lost two times in the pool, against home team Malmö Ultimate Club (SWE) and Sky This from Warsaw, before they lost their quarter vs Pelt from Ireland, finally ranking 5th. But at least both teams got their first international games in, and the extra chemistry they won in these matches could help them do better during the Elite Invite.
Besides Deep Space, Pool A consists of DISConnection, Tartu Turbulence and Sesquidistus. DISConnection, the German squad from Freiburg with Olli Jung, Annika Hambrecht and Miriam Förster, should be a threat for the top spot, especially when Deep Space can’t pick themselves up. But they will get an early rematch against the team from Tartu, who beat them in last year’s EUCF for 5th place. The Estonians bring Helen Tera, one of Europe’s best female-matching-players, and Jacob Tamm, one of the best indoor male-matching-players. And don’t count out the French team Sesquidistus from Strasbourg. With Justine Bru, Tifaine Latchy and Gaël Ancelin, they bring their stars and will try to forget their 2023 campaign (after missing the EUCF) with good results in Leuven. Ultimately, it feels like this pool has the most parity of all.
Apart from Nullacht! Pool B sees British teams Reading and Leamington Lemmings, besides Manchots. Reading finished 3rd last year at EUCF, but they have been at the European top before. With their archrival, GRUT gone to the single-gender divisions, the team with Conor Hogan, Hannah Whitehead and Fiona Rae surely wants to get the wild card to prepare on their terms for EUCF. Leamington Lemmings beat them during last year’s UKU Nationals, so this pool is not yet a done deal. Manchots, the team from Le Mans, plays without Maëlle Barentin (Sesqui), Ulysse Brouillard (Izno) and Dutch cutter Johan van der Woude, so it will be very interesting to see where the typically young team around Lyla Petitbon stands. If they bring that same level to Leuven, Pool B is in for a treat.
Women
From the Women’s division, we also saw the first glimpses of several teams competing during the Spring Tour. BFD Shout from Bologna took care of business in Grenoble. Europe’s champions, with top players Irene Scazzieri, Ava Müller, Gaia Pancotti, Anna Ceschi and Susanna Casarini, won that tournament easily, winning twice over GRUT from Amsterdam. Still, the windy conditions in Grenoble surely favoured their famous zone defence. Elite Invite’s home team, JetSet LUV, also went to Grenoble. The Belgian squad, with players like Silke Delafortrie, Charlotte Peeters, Esther Vanwijk and Ella Cromheecke, lost in their pool against Tequila Boom Boom from Rimini but initially won over Catchup (AUT). On Sunday, they lost the rematch vs the team from Graz, finishing 4th overall. We have already seen the other Belgian team, Mooncup, at the Spring Tour in London. The team from Brussels, with Lison Bornot, Eva Maxson, and mainstay Perrine Haspe, lost in pool play from English champion Bristol and also a crossover game in the universe against Iceni (GBR), ending third in the tournament. It will be interesting to see these two Belgian squads meet each other in an early outing of the Belgian championships. The fourth team in Pool A is East Block. Last weekend, the Czech team, around offensive player of the year Kristýna Tlustá went to Vienna Spring Break, winning against all competition before falling hard in a one-sided final vs fellow Czechs 3SB. But rumour has it that this was a developmental EB, and they did not count this tournament towards their EUCS season, so we haven’t seen the real deal yet. This pool is Shout’s to lose, but the battle for second place should be fierce.
From Pool B, we already saw Iceni. The Londoners, with many players from last year’s EUC runners-up GB National Team on their roster, dispatched all opponents during the Spring Tour, including that crossover against Mooncup and winning the tournament over Bristol (GBR), albeit with 12-11. In this pool, Iceni will have a nice rematch against box vienna ultimate (AUT), who they beat for the seventh spot last year in Wroclaw during the Championships Final. But the real threat for the English lies in the other two pool adversaries. JinX Midnight from Berlin and YAKA from Noisy-le-Sec, Paris, were last year’s number two and three at EUCF. The team from Germany will bring a lot of talent. Top players like Anna Gerner, Annika Prien, Frederike Wagener, and Levke Walczak, besides international imports Oda Homlong (SWE), Sarah Melvin (IRL), Paulina Lewandowska (POL) and the list goes on. They will have their eyes on a revenge match vs BFD Shout, where they lost for second place in the EUCF 2023. But don’t count out YAKA. The always loud team from Noisy-le-Sec led by Aline Mondiot, Caroline Tisson, Anne le Borgne, Clara Mathias and Paula Baas is joined by Irene Goicolea Rodriguez (ESP), Amane Babikian, Rikke Kjear Knudsen had and many more stellar athletes. After finishing 3rd in Wroclaw, where many thought their semifinal against BFD Shout was the best game of the EUCF 2023, YAKA plans to bounce back and return to gold. This pool seems like a toss-up between these three teams.
Open
We’ll start with Pool B in the Open division because we’ve seen both top teams from that pool already compete at the Spring Tour in Padova. Mooncatchers from Brussels with Daan de Marrée, Arvids Karklins, and this year's new players Ben Oort and Tom Blasman (both Dutch from GRUT), had no problem with most opponents, but they played two good games against La Fotta. The Bologna squad brought most of their top end, like Simone Gasperini, Luca Tognetti and Sebastian Rossi, but were still missing several standouts like David Barzasi and Giovanni Santucci. On Saturday, the Belgians won a crossover match 13-11, and on Sunday the Italians made it even more interesting with a second-half comeback that brought the game to universe point, Mooncatchers prevailing 13-12. This pool further consists of two British teams, coming in 6th and 7th place last year at EUCF. Chevron Action Flash from Birmingham, with top players Andrew Sweetnam, Rhodri Williams and Samual Criddle, and Scottish team Alba with players like Cam Agnew and Andrew Dick, will try to surprise one of the above two teams to advance to an easier quarter-final. And didn’t Chevron surprise a certain team from London at the 2023 UKU Nationals too?
In Pool A, we find perennial powerhouse Clapham Ultimate leading the dance. After Tom’s Tourney, it will be the first time this team faces off against the Top 8 of Europe, but mainstays like Justin Foord, Tom Abrahams and Ashley Yeo won’t be cleating up in Leuven. Clapham’s success should come from the likes of Connor McHale, Andrew Hillman and Conrad Wilson, but without some of their ‘old’ stars, the European champions could be vulnerable. Wall City from Berlin, reigning German champions, with defensive standout Conrad Schlör and further players like David Metzger, Philip Kaye and Ferdia Roger (IRL), will try to take advantage of the reduced Clapham squad. Still, they cannot write off both Belgian pool opponents. Gentle from Ghent, number 4 in Wroclaw, will have to play without star player Tobe Decraene, who just had a breakout weekend in the UFA for Montreal Royal. But with handlers Aaron and Arthur VandeWeghe, cutter PJ de Meulenare and Lander Decraene the Belgians still have enough firepower to stir things up. And finally, the home team JetSet Open. They will surely want to show their spectators that they still belong at this stage but will need the best players like Kristof Phillips, Brecht Heymans and Arnout Vanderroost to stay afloat. This pool should be for Clapham, but they might see heavier competition than anticipated.
The current ranking can be seen here: https://ranking.ultimatefederation.eu
Join In or Out to see the ranking update live:
May 6th: Vienna Spring Break, Tom’s Tourney and Elite Invite Preview
May 13th: Elite Invite
Format
Three divisions with eight teams divided over two pools. All teams in the Mixed and Open divisions have two pool games on Friday, and only the Women’s teams finish their whole pool on day 1. Then, on Saturday, Mixed and Open first have their third pool game, with every team continuing to the 1-8 bracket. On day 2, Women’s and Open will play out quarters and semis, making it a busy day for the teams in the Open division. After finishing the pools, Mixed will only have the quarter-finals on Saturday, and their semis will be held on Sunday morning. This day 3, has placement games in all divisions, with three finals where the golden ticket to the EUCF will be decided. Women’s at 11:10, Open at 12:50 and Mixed at 14:30.
Media and coverage
The EUCS events are widely covered, with live scores and streaming services provided through dedicated platforms (https://eucs-schedule.ultimatefederation.eu for live scores and https://live.ultimatefederation.eu for streams).
The temporary access pass gives you access to all the games currently available, and you can watch all Elite Invite games live and on demand.
Read more about the various access passes on the platform https://live.ultimatefederation.eu/ultimatefederation/access
Discounted temporary access pass available from May 1st to May 10th 12:00 - €12,- instead of €15,-
