what separates the great teams

So one of the things I wanted to consciously look for at worlds was what separates the great teams from the not-so-great teams (otherwise known as most of the teams I've played on). Since I'm a guy, I mostly looked at Open and Mixed games. I'm also playing mixed for the club season, so I wanted to see what the best mixed teams did. I've come up with a few things, and I'd like to see if people on the great teams agree.

1. Sidelines - every high performing team at WUGC had sidelines that were very involved in the play. Having active sidelines is something that is kinda mentioned off-hand on most teams. On some low-level teams this is limited to loud, obnoxious cheers.

All the great teams do the obnoxious cheers, and then actually help the players on the field. Every great team I watched made sure that the sidelines knew the D and O strategy before each point. They generally had special names or hand signals to communicate. The sidelines also had players specifically talking to players on the field, actively helping on defense. I think the most influential of these is talking to the mark, in any defense. Yelling "inside! inside! inside! around! around! around!" seems to really help the mark stop some break throws. Also, yelling "Under!" and "Out!" to a defender on a cutter is sometimes helpful. "Last Back" is a common call from the sideline, as well as counting throws for transitions.

Another interesting thing I heard from the Sockeye sideline was "Touch him, Touch him." I got the impression that the touching was more to keep the defender in position within arm's reach of the cutter, and not solely to instigate physical play. Although, close positioning and physical play generally go together quite well.

I know as a player it is tough to stay completely involved when you are on the sideline, but if you have a communication job to do, I think it would be easier. Perhaps there should be "sideline captains" that assign specific talking tasks to people standing on the sides.

2. Physical play - at a high level, physical play is much more common and generally more accepted, at least in the men's game. Throwers will play through a lot more fouling on the mark, presumably because they don't want to stop the offensive flow. This is something I think I will need to get used to rather quickly as I go to playing in the club series. How do players/team determine what is "acceptable?"

3. Different international strategies - Here in the US, I haven't seen very many new strategies since I started playing. It's always vertical or horizontal stack on offense. Very rarely I see some split-stacks or side-stacks. On defense, it's nearly always man or 3 or 4-man cup. Sometimes a junky 1-3 type zone, but not as often. International play shows a lot more strategic differences between countries and regions.

Australia (and I think GB) use a very aggressive puppy-fence (1-3-2-1) zone defense and hardly ever use 3-man cup. Japan uses a very loose 2 person in front zone. I saw the US and Canada with a 3 man cup, but I think the 3-man cup is useless without trapping.

The German teams use a lot of space throws and isolation set-ups. The Brits and other euro teams threw blades a lot more often as zone-breakers than other countries, which I assume they acquire from playing indoors a lot. On vertical stack, most teams I've seen in the US use only 2 handlers back, but a lot of other countries use three handlers across for vertical stack.

4. Hammers - Not sure why, but I didn't see as many hammers as I expected. For the most part the conditions were light wind, and I thought all the high level players would be able to throw them fairly easily.



Strategies I'd like to see implemented more
1. Changing direction of attack on O - I didn't see very much of this. I saw a lot of swing-swing-continue cut, but the continue cut would be shut down by D that expects it. It leaves the far side of the field open, but very rarely did I see anyone cutting to the newly created space. As a handler, I often look for that throw because the mark will over commit. An O that consciously tries to change directions immediately on each catch could be effective.

2. Different zones - In mixed, the puppy-fence zone is very effective, because even at worlds it is possible to identify weak throwers (stereotypically women) to trap. With a gangly guy on the mark, it is hard to throw around. I think teams that use the puppy-fence a lot should have a method for the mark to switch with one of the fence players, to keep the legs rotating on the mark. Penn State tried to do that when we ran junk zone, but there was no specific method.

post worlds - volunteer review

So I went to worlds to volunteer and watch some really high quality ultimate. Also, I was there cheering for the australians that I had known from studying abroad.

First the volunteering - I quite enjoyed it. It is really a worthwhile way to go, because you can get free food and housing for volunteering at least 1 shift per day. There were a ton of volunteers, which was definitely a good thing. It made for a nice community. The volunteer central area was very nice, with food/coffee/massages. I think it's a sign of a good event that they take care of the volunteers well.

My job was general field services. I also did the line painting for the end zones and brick marks at the main field site. It was interesting to see that every team that was warming up would watch me as I went across the field, and inspect the straightness of the line. Jim Parinella did say the lines were getting fairly worn by the end of the week. Not sure what field site he was referring to, but I think we did pretty well at the main site. I repainted those lines at the beginning of each day of play. I don't think it's very reasonable to repaint them more often than that, considering the time and resource constraints. My criteria for repainting was whether the line was solidly visible from one sideline to the other when standing at one sideline. Crowd control lines were painted less often. I also had other glorious jobs such as making sure the porta-potties were fully stocked with toilet paper, and making sure field tents didn't blow over.

The port-a-fields were definitely a great thing to use. They were made of slightly stretchy poly/plastic material, with rings for stakes at each corner. Pull the sides tight and, presto, instant field outline! And fairly consistent too because each field used the same system. They also had marks on each side for the end zone and the brick marks. They have a big advantage in flexibility over painted lines, if you need to move a field a few meters one way. Only one broke during the week, during the Australia-USA open showcase game. Others were showing signs of wear such as holes and fraying, but I patched them with duct tape, and I like to think that made a difference in preventing more breakages.