The country's national teams in Ultimate (Frisbee) have been making a living out of pure grit. Of late, the Philippine Flying Disc Association (PFDA) has assembled consistently formidable squads with a winning track record even in the face of multifaceted limitations.
Speaking on behalf of the four Japan-bound PH contingents competing at the Asia-Oceanic Ultimate Championships (AOUC), squad captains Mai Dublin, Gelo Suarez, and Nina Javier, mixed team head coach Felix Angue, PFDA board member Ysa Chua, and program vice chair Ken De Guzman detail their training camp grind– from recalibrating old bearings to setting up new systems and securing buy-in– as they field an ultimate team ready to battle with the region’s best.
OVERCOMING HURDLES
The Philippine Ultimate team is on a tear, repping the flag sensationally with strong showings at major tilts in the past decade or so.
This, in spite of hurdles expected in a sport that does not have a ‘celebrity status’ to leverage, which would’ve been tantamount to generous funding, key sponsorships, and massive visibility.
Logistics is a major pain point for the national team, that is, bringing together athletes from all over the Philippines, getting them to train on the same field, and everything imperative in between. This issue, of course, stems from a more overarching hitch: limited funds.
“Since PFDA is a non-profit organization, mahirap talaga ang funds. We get them from sponsors and tournaments, pero maliit lang talaga. It affected us, since Japan siya, to sponsor the whole team. May help kami pero hindi enough, I guess,” said Ysa Chua, a national athlete and board member of the PFDA– the highest central governing body of all disc-related sports in the country.
“It affected the roster, I think yun yung pinaka-malaking challenge for the association, monetary,” Chua added.
PH team mainstay and program vice chair Ken De Guzman echoes a similar sentiment, saying that the national team had to have painful but necessary roster cuts for this year’s AOUC due to financial limitations.
“Yung mga players na initially nakuha namin, may mga nag-decline at the same time nahirapan sila mag-commit kasi ang laki talaga ng gastos from training to pagpunta mismo sa Japan,” shared De Guzman.
The training curriculum itself took a blow, which had to be “cut down in every division” in order to maximize onsite practices where everyone’s physically present.
“Hindi pare-pareho ang training program pero we maximized yung time na pwede yung provincial players makapunta dito sa Manila,” he added, noting that some athletes even had to shell out from their own pockets, “and hopefully, mag-pay off pagdating sa AOUC.”
The same can be said for the open men’s team roster, which according to Pilipinas Ultimate captain Gelo Suarez "kept changing" because it simply was not financially feasible to retain the winning roster that won gold in 2023.
“Naging madali sya back then kasi sa Philippines siya ginanap, so mas madali lang mag-travel for athletes, mas madali mag-ensayo. So nag-change kami ng focus, inisip namin yung next generation, kung paano namin ipapasa yung natutunan namin,” Suarez added.
As a result, both the open men’s team and the Binibinis (national all-women squad) decided to welcome younger recruits, mostly standouts from the Under-24 pool.
Beyond everything administrative, Pilipinas Ultimate also had to piece together many moving parts from a gameplay standpoint, one of which is player management.
“Of course, in a national team, you’d have the best players from each of the club teams coming together,” shared mixed masters team captain Nina Javier, “the first hurdle is to have one system where everyone buys into.”
Donning a Philippine jersey entails playing in sync with fellow bests in the game the country has to offer. This puts athletes in a position where collective effervescence and team play takes precedence– at all times– over individual skill, leadership, and ego.
“Imagine getting the superstars of each team and bringing them together. Yun yung initial hurdle,” Javier said, while also positively noting that most in the selection are former national athletes, so it was only “a matter of more training together to get used to that one system.”
As for Binibinis captain Mai Dublin, emotional resolve and the ability to withstand pressure were a separate matter altogether, which affected overall preparations necessary to combat exhaustion especially that many in their lineup have day jobs, while some have school.
“Sa division namin, physically and emotionally, kasi yung players namin may mga nasa U-24 na nag come up dito sa higher division. Emotionally challenging, kasi half of our lineup baka maculture-shock dun sa magiging pressure sa Japan,” said Dublin.
BATTLE-TESTED, READY FOR AOUC 2025
The good thing about all those hurdles? They are all in the national ultimate team’s rear-view mirror.
All four national contingents– Pilipinas Ultimate Open Men’s, Binibinis Ultimate, Pilipinas Ultimate Mixed Team, Alamat Ultimate (Mixed Masters)– have arrived today in Kamisu, Japan, stoked and battle-ready ahead of the 2025 Asia-Oceanic Ultimate Championships.
The entire PH team, with all their accolades and acclaim in recent history, will enter AOUC 2025 as some of, if not the clearcut favorites, bannered by the open men’s reigning back-to-back AOUC grass titles in 2019 and 2023.
The Philippine delegation were also the grand winners in the latest AOUC on a sand court. It was a trifecta of gold medals for Pilipinas Ultimate during the 2024 AO Beach Ultimate Championships in Japan, flexing clear dominance in all three divisions: open, women’s, and mixed.
As if that weren’t enough proof of caliber, both the open men’s and the Binibinis obliterated the competition at the 2025 Hongkong Ultimate Championships last June, bringing home two gold medals in the process.
The Mixed team, meanwhile, had been the standard in the Asia-Oceanic tilt in two consecutive editions (2015 and 2019) before falling short of a podium finish in the 2023 games. The Mixed Master’s, meanwhile, bagged bronze that year.
Needless to say, the Pilipinas Ultimate are a force to reckon with at the AOUC 2025. They mnust be on top of everyone’s to-beat list simply due to an undeniably stacked resume from recent outings.
Asked how confident they are of a podium finish for each of the four competing contingents, it was an immediate and resounding nod.
“Ten! Positive! I trust the coaches, na mabibigyan nila tayo ng gold, at syempre magagaling yung selection nila for this year. Nakaka-excite kasi idedefend ng Open team yung gold, and sana kami (women’s) makapag-podium din,” shared Binibinis’ Ysa Chua.
Felix Angue, the Mixed team’s head mentor, believes that the team is ripening at the right pace just in time for the Asia-Oceanic clash.
“We’ve managed to get everybody to buy into the system from Day 1, and I want to connect that with our goalpost,” Angue noted, speaking primarily for the Mixed squad, “the goalpost for this year is the inclusion of the flying disc in the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games.”
Angue pertains to the recent addition of the flying disc sport to the SEA Games– albeit as a demonstration event and only for the Mixed division– which is a momentous development in the sport’s history particularly on expanded recognition and increase in visibility.
“That’s one thing that allowed us to get athletes’ buy-in in our program, because there's that potential for us to finally make it ‘mainstream.’ We think that our inclusion in the SEA Games is one step towards [being a] mainstream sport. If we do very well, that will mean the opening of opportunities for our Pilipinas Ultimate athletes going forward,” said the former Pilipinas Ultimate champion athlete.
The 2025 Asia-Oceanic Ultimate Championship is more than just a major tilt for Pilipinas Ultimate. Winning is the objective, but podium finishes are a calculated likelihood, a welcome addition to an already stacked list of accolades.
Above all else, it will be yet another major undertaking for a low-key sport that has long been battle-tested for, and gearing towards their ultimate success.
