Mixed Nats Review Part 1

I had the great pleasure of captaining The Tribe Of Miniature Horse at AMUC last weekend and it was the most fun I have ever had at a tournament. The team vibe was awesome. Everyone gave 100% on the field while remaining relaxed and jovial between/during games.

Spirit Scoring

After having spent the last few weeks sharing spirit scores with the other team straight after the game it felt weird not to and I think that the practise should become mandatory for all leagues/tournament. How else are teams supposed to know that they are doing good/bad things and therefore continue/change their behaviour accordingly?? Spirit Captains are the future!! The only potential downside I see is teams inflating the spirit score to avoid having to have an awkward conversation with the other team.

MVP and Spirit Prize

Not to maliciously take anything away from the winners, but it seems that these prizes still go to strong players from weak teams and the to the most ‘fun‘ teams. The MVP system the used AOUC is still one of the best I have seen and I think it is perfect for a 3 day tournament (could be adjusted so you only vote for the teams you played against).  I don’t even know if there was a spirit score system (I didn’t see one) but WFDF needs to make a standard one and it needs to be easy to use but also reward spirit appropriately. I heard someone mention the other day that some league had a rule that a 7/7 couldn’t be given unless the other team had actually retracted a call –not a bad suggestion. For me, teams don’t get full scores for spirit unless the scores are really close and things like this happened - a player had a chance to abuse the self refereeing aspect of the game, but didn’t – a player told a team mate to retract a call and it was retracted – players actually discussed what happened rather than just yelling “foul” and “contest” – these things need to be rewarded in spirit scores, not that they laughed and joked as they got bagelled.

Different styles of play

I specifically recruited aL Don for this tournament because I wanted to go back to playing Ultimate how I learned to play it. In Brisbane I learnt to play with handlers like Jason Ray, Chris “Buzz” Burwell and aL. Every time, and I mean absolutely EVERY TIME, they had the disc as a handler, they would looked to huck it for a goal. And if no one was cutting for it they would get pissed, so you learnt very quickly that as soon as the disc was heading their way – go deep! In Melbourne the style of play seems to be much more based on handlers moving the disc around until it gets to an upfield cutter who then looks for the long option. What a waste of time. The whole point of Ultimate is to get the disc from one end to the other and if you can do it with one throw – DO IT! Now this view may be slightly biased on the fact that it takes players with exceptionally good throws for this type of play to work, but it is possible and it does work! This difference in offensive mindset was made very clear to me when I called a line and then told aL just to huck it to me for the goal. Someone then suggested that maybe aL should be the primary cutter in that case! aL and I just looked at each other and smiled. That’s not the way you play the game up there in QLD!

To be continued...

Worlds: New Division

A while back Owen posed the question to me of what the next division at Worlds would be. 

Currently the following Divisions are allowed at Worlds:

Open 

Women 

Mixed 

Master Open 

Master Women 

Master Mixed 

Junior Open 

Junior Women 

Junior Mixed

And in reality, only 6 of these (green) are actually at Worlds.

I think as the game progresses the other Divisions will slowly be brought in (especially as more players get older and move into the Masters bracket).

However what is left outside of those? Having now been to Worlds, I have the answer!

The Sub 6 Foot Open Division.

The way the game is going, tall players are now becoming much more versatile and dominate in this game. Talls used to be seen as great receivers and defenders but never seen as great throwers, but now there are tall people coming through who have the complete package. When a 6'4" guy with the wingspan of an albatross can throw the length of the field they are very hard to stop!

Lets give the sub six foot payers a chance to run around and show off their stuff without these "freaks of nature" stealing the lime light (and the disc) and making them look short! I know there are many great players who currently play and excel at the top level who are sub six foot, but their days are numbered! I have seen the future and for short people in Ultimate the future is bleak - the giants are coming to devour all of us human beans (afterall they are sick of eating snozzcumbers).

Maybe this sub 6 foot division won't ever make it to Worlds, maybe people actually want to see "the best" players strut there stuff at Worlds without the sideshow of a hobbit convention. But I think it could be a useful division to employ to make sure that elite competition isn't completely unattainable for the less vertically endowed player. 

Note: Any connection between the authors sub 6 foot height and his non selection for Worlds are purely coincidental :-)