Prince George was represented on the world stage in ultimate frisbee last month.
Sean Bernard of Prince George played in the World Flying Disc Federation’s World Masters Ultimate Club Championships in Limerick, Ireland.
Bernard was playing with FIGJAM, a team based out of Calgary, Alberta during the tournament.
“Year’s ago I played with Prince George just in a lot of tournaments, and [FIGJAM] saw me playing and they asked me if I’d like to come to kind of a tryout tournament with them one year,” Bernard explained.
“From then on, every time they had a major tournament they took me onto their team, I kind of made the team as an outsider, and worked my way up into the starting seven on the team.”
Bernard said he’s been playing off and on with the team since 2012.
FIGJAM started the tournament seeded 12th out of 15 teams, and one their first game, which was against the first overall seed.
“We kept playing pretty well, lost a couple of close games,” Bernard said.
“[We] made it to the quarterfinal, won that against an American team, made it to the semifinal and won against another American team.”
In the final, FIGJAM was matched up against Surly GM, based out of Minnesota.
FIGJAM started the game strong, darting out to a 3-2 lead but it was all Surly GM after that.
Surly GM went on a 13-0 run to finish off the tournament.
The full final match can be viewed here.
“We were pretty excited to break our seed by so high and end up with a silver,” Bernard said.
“Second best in the world, so it was pretty cool.”
Throughout the tournament, Bernard had 3 goals and 15 assists through nine games in the tournament.
Bernard, originally from Sedgewick, Alberta, started playing the sport when he was at the University of Alberta.
Since he moved to Prince George in 2004, he’s been involved with the sport locally.
“We had quite a bit going before COVID, this year we brought back an adult league, and had four teams playing this year,” Bernard explained.
“I also run the youth league, this year we had, I think about 40 youth players, ranging from about grade five to grade 11.”
More information about disc sports in Prince George can be found here.