Kaleigh’s Team
Saturday at 10 and Lucy, Sam, Marty, Jamie, Nick, and Rich take the line for their first competitive game of ultimate, which turns out to be against 7 psychotic frenchmen called the apocalyptic cows. The game consisted of relatively quick points and rather frantic throws as the inexperience of both sets of players showed. Unfortunately in spite of all the hard running put in by the team thrown’s lack of organisation meant we only gained one point in return for our efforts. Final score, 8-1 to the apocalyptic cows. After surviving the cows’ call described by TJ as looking like ’some weird initiation rite,’ involving bumping into eachother and mooing, Thrown legend Spike to give and a quick chat about play and tactics.
Before long though Thrown once again took to the field, this time against arch-rivals LSE. The team talk between matches helped us a lot as this time Thrown dominated the play. with Sam setting the pace the whole team played hard, out running their opposition despite LSE having twice as many players as us. What’s more LSE’s women were no match for Lucy and Marty, who not only manage to lose their mark every time, but completely cut them out on defense as well. We had some excellent work from the rest of the men, all of them managing to hold on to whatever swill I was throwing at them.
Third match: Brunel. Brunel always put out a strong team, but they were clearly out-played. By this time the freshers were starting to get the hang of things with our stack becoming ever more cohesive. We had excellent cuts by Lucy and Jamie, and perfect flow between Jamie, Nick, and Rich as well as some good defence by Sam. This game really illustrated how much we had inproved as a team since the start of the day. Not only did we win the match and achieve our target of scoring 4 points but we did it with the freshers playing Iron man (no subs) for half of it. Highlight of the day: Rich’s Dorset bum wrestling skills while wearing a women’s shirt against a considerably bigger dude. Way to represent. Final score 6-3 to Thrown.
Our final match against Thrown(Fred) really showed the high level of intensity we’d been playing at that day. Tired and sore, yet with constant hard work, especially from Jamie, Nick, Sam and Rich. For the Freshers this last game was played iron man, and the tired legs started to tell by the end as we lost a close game after trading the first several points.
Overall an awesome day, I saw some real improvement throughout, and lots of fun.
Fred’s Team
Heres the report for my Thrown team, really sorry if there are any
errors like names wrong, or if I miss a really great grab you made,
but my memory’s a little bit hazy in me old age! Also sorry its a bit
slower, but I’m a responsible graduate!!
We started of the day with a first game against Brunel, who we knew
would be strong as they are a big sporting uni, with great facilities
and ultra-fit students, and the nerves of a freshers weren’t helped by
our team being iron-man-tastic going into their first ever competitive
game, and when we lost our first couple of points I was worried it was
all going to go a bit pear shaped, but our team really pulled together
and with some really competitive spirit and great first cuts from
Katie, some good D’s on their speedy longs from Matt, and some great
cuts from Jess, playing her first ever game having not even been to a
practice before, we managed to get back into the game and pull it back
to set up a close finish. My memory of the end is a bit hazy but I
think eventually the quality of Brunels handlers hucking, and the
sheer fitness of their longs payed off for them and they won it by a
couple of points, but against the eventual winners of the whole
tournament this was a really encouraging performance. We then had two
games off to chill out and put some money in Nicks tampon box.
After everyone had got nice and stiff we were back for our next game
against Subime, and with Sanna recovered from her hangover, we were
armed with subs!! Even so Sublimes very high intensity play led to us
dropping two early points to go 2-0 down, but we were still playing
some good frisbee, and just lacked a killer edge infront of the zone.
After some impromptu endzone coaching from TJ, in a mamoth and crucial
third point, both teams played some really sweet flow, but ours really
stood out, esspecially the improvement in cutting from Louis and
Taddie, now cutting good lines, getting free all over the place and
seeing loads of the disc, allowing us to win this point, and the next
two to snatch the game 3-2 on the last point.
After a lunch break and more tampaxpokery with Nick we were back
against the wonderfully spirited (and brilliant named!) Kent touch
this, ahhhhhhhh happy hammer memories. But enough of the MC our team
were looking like a real frisbee team now, playing really hard D and
very structured O with everyone making really good cuts (no need to
pick out individuals here, because everyone made perfect cuts and
found space to get the disc), pushing Kent to resort to a risky long
game and helping us to a good win (followed by some knee killing mini
frisbee, and the kevlar padding really didn’t help!!)
Finally we made it to the 9v10 game, against another thrown team. We
knew it would be tough, especially with Flembo looking like a strange
nordic pixie, but the play that had served us well all day still did
the job, with great first cuts from Katie, giving and option every
time, brilliant second cuts and flow down the pitch from Taddie,
Louis, Sanna and Jess and great long D’s and O’s from Matt and Ed we
just managed to hold on for 5-3 (I think!). We had a great days
ultimate and everyone improved immensely, going from a set of players
who for the most part had barely played a game before to looking like
a proper ultimate team in a day, and thats the highest accolade I can
pay.
Now, the only people that will be at practice on Saturday are Craig
Melson and his Ferret, because you beginners have the chance to do it
all over again at Plymouth, just you get to do it for two days and you
get a massive party in between, even I’m going it’s so good!! So
e-mail Kaliegh right now and say your going to!!
DO IT!!!
Fred
Kyle’s Team
Thrown US as we became known throughout the day (because of my bad memory) did amazing! We were 3rd overall which was really good, but even more importantly we all learnt loads and had great fun. It was really tough on the fresher’s who did not have any subs, which makes the results even more impressive. What was also really good is the way everyone could play with the different handlers, as we changed through 4 of them during the course of day: Kyle, John (amazing hammer), Adnan and Harry.
Our first game was against Kent. Really fun and well spirited as it always is with Kent. The game came really close and ended up with thrown ahead at 4-3 and the final point bringing the scores to 4 -4. A DRAW!
THE DANCE OFF… the Brent dance, seen twice through out the day started us off. Then Ben strutted his crazy stuff. Kent reply then Kyle’s worm sealed the deal. A DRAW AGAIN. Midget Frisbee, a killer on the knees but fun none the less, another DRAW. Down the Rock Paper Scissors! Kings won first, then Kent. It all came down to the final hand. KINGS WON! We were through! Good times! Cheers Kent that was an amazing game.
UCL! A very fun game quite competitive which was good for getting the fitness levels up. I think the score was 6-0 or something. A Bagel! It just shows how well we played that we pulled that off, against a big rival club. There were a few foul discussions in the match which were played through. Maybe playing that competitively for a beginner’s tournament was not necessary, but despite that it was a good learning experience for everyone and we came out strong. Ed showed that he could handle well and keep calm under pressure. Knowing the lowest place we could be was 4th, boosted morale and lead us on to our next match… the toughest of the day…
Brunel (who later went on to play in the finals). The only game of the day we lost but it was still very close. 4 -3 to them. Amazing huck by Adam (I think here). We played some long points here and everyone’s fitness and dedication held strong so we held on and pulled in a close game despite playing the best team there. Injury to Ben meant that we had to take a sub, but in the last point of the game, having played iron man showed that we were going well. Shaun had some great fakes and break side cuts which opened up the play and showed off his speed. Good times.
The final game of the day was against Canterbury a predominately French team, meant that it was difficult to discuss fouls. They had quite a few tall players so we thought we might stretch them and see how our long game could play out. We had some amazing hucks and catches. Matt had joined our team and helped us with some great D’s and catches. Our cuts were amazing, with someone being free at most points. Jessie was very good at getting into space. The handlers used the up the line play to kings advantage a lot but more experienced teams may have recognised this play and shut it down. Enjoyable and meant that we came third overall and really good place to start off that year.
Just a quick word about Plymouth; everyone was really amazing so it would be great to build on this weekends play, learn even more stuff and have a really good time as well! Hope to see you all there!
Cheers to all the handlers and people who made it such a great day!