The European Beach Ultimate Club Championships is thrilled to have a veteran crew of commentators for this year’s competition in Castelldefels, Spain!
Commentators in ultimate are paired into two roles; color and play by play, which keeps us up to date on the immediate while color adds stories to the game.
Play by play (PbP) is more nuanced than it sounds, as keeping up with each change of possession of the disc can be very fast paced and difficult to follow. If a viewer or listener just hears possession changes from one player’s number (or name) to another, it can become too much to process. Picking and choosing specific plays to report on and allowing others to go unannounced is a better experience and you might hear our PbP commentators discussing defensive formations, offensive tactics or weather conditions when they’re not commenting on the exact location of the disc.
Color commentators add the !picante! to the game and you can trust our color commentators to dig hard and find things you might not know about the teams matching up or their athletes! They will do a great job learning about the team history and player backgrounds and tell stories to connect our viewers more deeply to the game. From discovering a long history between two teams to hearing about an epic journey one or more players has taken in Ultimate, there is nothing more fun than interviewing players or captains of upcoming matches and cleverly weaving the knowledge back in during the game commentary!
When you listen to an ultimate broadcast, try to guess which commentator is in which role!
Now, without further ado, let’s meet our commentators!
Stefan
Stefan has been involved in ultimate for 22 years, as a player, administrator, captain, coach, and eventually as a commentator. He’s lived between Canada, South Korea, Australia, Nicaragua and France, and has been very immersed in the ultimate community throughout his relocations. As a commentator, he began in Australia when Mike Palmer started ulti.TV and covered AUC-2011. Stefan’s dulcet tones drove the play by play and he covered every major tournament final in Australia for the next 5 years. He covered WUGC2012 in Japan with Ulti.TV doing games in every time slot. He has done coverage at WUCC 2014 in Lecco, and on a field mic at the Nicaraguan Nationals ’16/’17.
Benjy
Benjy first appeared on an Ultimate microphone at the World Under 23 Ultimate Championships in London and debut using prolific live-tweeting attracted so much attention that he got a guest commentary spot. After being bitten by the commentary bug, he made sporadic appearances through 2015 and 2016 before a last minute round trip to Tom’s Tourney in 2017 started a much busier commentary calendar, which has since included EYUC, UKU Nationals and Tour events, two visits to Windmill and EUCF earlier this month, among others. Benjy is over the moon to be on the team for EBUCC, and can’t wait to see everyone on the beach.
Konstantin
Although Konstantin has only recently been introduced to the commentating scene, he is overflowing with enthusiasm. After getting his first taste of the international ultimate experience playing with Seattle Voodoo in 2011, he craved for more, and mainly focused on beach tournaments such as ECBU 2013, WCBU 2015 (pick up for Qatar Open), and WCBU 2017. While taking a break from playing he was given an opportunity to comment during EUCR-N, where he was very fortunate to work with amazing cameramen from Ulti.tv (Will Foster and Felix Shardlow). Konstantin enjoyed it greatly and now is looking forward to contribute his best to the awesome EBUCC commentating team!
Charlie
Charlie is a former GB u20, u23 and Iceni player. She was a regular contributor to The Showgame since its inception in 2013 and attended both u23 World Championships 2015 and WCBU 2017 as part of the writing team. During this time Charlie took a break from competitive frisbee while living abroad. After returning to London, she was encouraged to make the leap into commentating and spent an amazing three weeks doing an excellent job commentating and following the success of the 2018 Eurostars Tour.
Hilary
Hilary began commentating Ultimate tournaments in Australia after taking a step back from playing on the women’s and mixed scenes. Armed with her newfound passion, she’s traveled thousands of miles away from her origins to comment at tournaments such as Australian Nationals, UK Tours, Windmill and EUCF.
