our story
Vardan Kabra introduces Ultimate in Surat to some Fountainhead School staff and a few friends, of which one of them was Meeta Shah, who runs the educational NGO Jumbish.
Trailblazers and Strikers play at AUO 2012 and have a great learning experience.
Introduced by Meeta Shah at Shala no. 3, Umra to the Grade 6-7 students as an extracurricular activity.
In the meanwhile some students at Fountainhead also started playing the game.
Trailblazers, Strikers travel to Delhi along with some Fountainhead Students to attend the largest tournaments at Jawaharlel Nehru Stadium; everyone is awestruck by Brodie Smith and fascinated by Stray Dogs in Sweaters and Sexy Cats.
Jumbish kids picked up the game quickly and Meeta then brought them to see their first tournament at AUO 2013; they didn't play the tournament but impressed everyone in a practice game.
Jumbish kids played well as a first time team - getting appreciation from Delhi & Mumbai teams; while Trailblazers and Strikers continued to play.
Lots of exposure for Surat Ultimate teams including Jumbish which caught the eye of Disc-o-Deewane (DOD)
Jumbish team's first major achievement: Winning the Silver Pool at Gheun Tak @ Goregaon Sports Club, beating their mentor team from Surat - Trailblazers.
Manix & Chiai played with and guided the team.
Our first and last beach experience as a team (as on Jan 2023); travelling all the way to Chennai to play in the October HEAT; found it tough but was an awesome experience.
With many Trailblazers players retiring, Hardik, Vardan, Siddhant & a few adults combine with the kids to make a Jumbish-Trailblazers team and then winning the silver pool (9th position).
Vardan goes to Dubai WCBU in Mar 2015 to play in the Masters division; bringing back International exposure.
Jumbish travelled to as many tournaments as possible from 2014 to 2019 - when most of the players were still in school, allowing us the opportunity to learn through experience.
Kamlesh goes for WU23 to London opening the possibilities for rest of Surat Ultimate. He's the youngest player on the squad.
Jumbish won the first ever U20 tournament beating Flying Spirits in the finals organized in India with more than 8 teams participating.
BUO 2015: Our first big win against a top team: beating L2F 11-9; 7th - but after a very close loss to SDIS earlier
But we remember this tournament for a rather inspid performance against Airbenders - it was a post-lunch match wherever becauser we hadn't seen the schedule properly, we ate just 20 min before the match; and not just ate but stuffed ourselves; Most of us could barely run in that match; we came back strongly in the 2nd half but enough.
Now in every tournament, we remember this match for any post-lunch match and make sure that no one stuffs themselves (especially those who are experts at this).
Surat Ultimate has mostly comprised of youngsters from schools; this was one of the many such events that we conducted to give exposure to our youth players;
It was a Open (gender) Tournament where Jumbish was SOTG winner. As a young team, spirit was something we were finding tough to deal with - but we started working on it...
To ensure regular professional coaching, Surat Ultimate brought on Coach Box and Nimisha for about an year; they worked regularly with the club teams and players on Ultimate and mental aspects.
The tournament itself was a wash-out because it rained heavily in the last 3 days and the masters matches were not held. The camps were intense and aided a lot of Surat Ultimate learning.
Krishna, Kamlesh, Sagar, Rrutvik, Jagdish, Manav, Akshay (Gajju) were all selected to the team. Jagdish couldn't make it due to VISA issues but this was the first international trip for Surat Ultimae boys to play at U20 International level.
Now that our boys and girls had grown up, and with the international exposure, we got into the top 8 finally beating DOD, the team that Jumbish started playing against in 2013!
Jumbish was runners up of SUO 2016. Big learning on how small tweak can bring big results.
From our learnings of SUO 2016, for next 2 months we just did only 2 drills.
- 4 sessions a week and no game just that 2 drills.
As Surat Ultimate we didn't realy have a goal to win AUO 2017 - we just wanted to be in the top 4. But not only did we win, but we did so by beating an international team called the Jet Lag Squad from New York in the finals and Fly Wild before that in the semi-finals.
With the AUO 2017 win, we expected to do well; however we came up against heavy wind against Stall 7 at Priyadarshini Park - we just didn't know how to play in a one-sided wind and lost the semis and ended 4th place.
As a group we continued to not just play but also continued to build a strong community...
While Jumbish has been Surat Ultimate's flagship team, other club teams also thrived; Zero Gravity and Chak Mak were two teams that played multiple tournaments over 3-4 years...
This was a good tournament for Jumbish although we lost to DOD in the semis; but only because DOD was outside the top 8 seeds and played a strong Canadian player who made the difference.
Jumbish played well and only lost to the India U24 Mixed team (missing three of our key players - Krishna, Tisha and Rrutvik).
Thanks to our consistent top 4 performance through the 4 tournaments (AUO, MUO, BUO & SUO), Jumbish won the first ever national tour conducted by UPAI.