What Went Down At: UXON 2018/19

Editor/Chair: hazard (Oxford)

Contributors: Becky Greenwood (Loughborough), Clackers (Lancaster), geegee (Birmingham), Alice Hanton (Leeds), Axel (UCL)
Additional Contributions*: Amy Niven and Alex Thompson (Newcastle Captains)
*These quotes were generously provided externally to the chat

UXON Video playlist

Spirit Scores

Full Results
1. UCL
2. Birmingham 1
=3. Newcastle 1
=3. Oxford
=5. Aberdeen
=5. Sheffield
=5. St. Andrews
=5. Strathclyde
=9. Birmingham 2
=9. Durham 1
=9. Edinburgh
=9. Leeds 1

UCL celebrate being Mixed Outdoor National champions!
Photo Credit: UCL

hazard
Firstly, how did we feel about not having Swiss draw? Did we prefer the tournament format? And did it do a better job of sorting teams and finding a winner?

Becky Greenwood

Yeah I preferred it without Swiss draw

Clackers

I really didn't like having bracket instead of Swiss, it kind of ruins things for the teams lower down the seedings. We only had one close match the entire weekend, and it wasn't either of them on the Sunday.

Having 9 unseeded teams in the tournament meant that there was a serious chance of teams finding themselves bottom of their group through no fault of their own, and unable to climb out of it, coupled with the fact that the teams that came 4th in a group of 4 were destined to only play each other, and unable to play teams that came 3rd in a group of 3.

For the top 16 the tournament may have been a fair reflection of skill on the weekend, for the bottom 13 I am unsure if any of the final placings were accurate.

hazard

I have to say I missed swiss draw. The seedings did their best, but I think there’s always a situation where two good teams end up facing off early in a tournament, with no way to recover (this weekend Edinburgh were guaranteed to face UCL or Strathclyde in the pre-quarters, which is tough in anyone’s books). With that said, I did enjoy the quarters-semis-final run in. A lot of tournaments do a hybrid system of swiss initially, knockout at the end. I think that could be good going forward.

geegee

Swiss draw with a knockout stage is pretty good, it's pretty effective. I'm not sure how the results would've been affected if at all between a standard system or Swiss draw, but the seedings this weekend was a little bizarre. We had Aberdeen and Glasgow in our pool, which was super daunting and tough because they're such good teams, and there were definitely other teams put in odd seedings too.

The weather did also affect results, moreso because a lot of games got cancelled so some teams couldn't challenge the upper rankings. UKU did a really good job overall in getting games running, and communicating to players what was happening though.

hazard

Totally agreed with UKU managing a tough situation well (both the swiss draw system not working and the weather rendering some pitches unusable). I left it up to my captains, but communication seemed good and it felt like we were kept informed promptly of developments.

Axel

Swiss draw is useful for seeding the tournament considering its at a time (and now with it being the only not-BUCS nationals) when teams may not be at full strength or it may not be the season focus. However, I've always lamented the lack of bracket play. I still think the top teams ended up at the top and Nationals is there to find the top team accurately, not the top 16. But I do like Swiss Draw's excitement.

But UKU did pretty well, especially at cramming the games in and managing to make the final full length, even though it cost others some game time. As I say, Nationals is there to find the best team, I don't even feel that there is a need play games once eliminated (though I understand why people do).

Alice Hanton

Think we (Leeds) would have preferred swiss- weren't too happy with our 4v13 crossover against Aberdeen...

Felt sorry for the TDs though with the website, weather, pitches etc 😂

geegee

It was interesting looking back at overall game results and wondering whether a different schedule and/or different conditions could have made a drastic change. Teams like Leeds and Durham had a very tough time outside of the pools. As Alice said, Leeds had to face a strong Aberdeen team in the pre-quarters which pushed them all the way down, with not much wiggle room to climb back up. The weather was very much out of UKU's hands, and absolute credit for getting a schedule out in such short notice. I can't help but feel a little confused about the seeding choices however.

hazard

I'd like to jump on that and talk about one of the other main talking points of the weekend. For the first time in a long time, there were no Scottish teams in the top four! It is a testament to Scotland's strength that having 3 teams in the top 8 still counts as a bad weekend. However, particularly considering it was a Scottish venue, and a few teams (Loughborough, Bath) chose not to make the trip up, this felt like a result that we wouldn't have predicted beforehand. Was it a case of Scottish teams underperforming? Or English teams stepping up for once?

Axel

Birmingham are a long standing good performer, Newcastle over-performed and Oxford lucked out no the draw. UCL have a freak pick-up year.  Glasgow didn't have all their best players and have a down year on the Women's side, Edinburgh got unlucky in their cross, Strathclyde underperformed, St Andrew's probably placed about right. Its slightly worse than normal, I don't think it should be panic stations for Scottish Uni Ultimate, but the region (bar Strath, arguably Glasgow men) isn't as strong as in previous years. They are still the deepest region by a mile, but they may be being matched at the top end by a few teams who have risen a bit. Birmingham and UCL still haven't beaten Strath. Them two, the two Glasgow sides and Bath are the best 5 teams this year on the Men’s side and I believe I am correct in saying that only UCL has beaten one of those two Scottish teams this year (of the teams outside Scotland).

Basically, at mixed it was a mix of reasons, but there is no reason to over-analyse one set of results and define the region by that.

They are still the best region, but maybe the top end is being challenged a bit more than in the last few years.

hazard

I would agree Strathclyde underperformed, but I’ll add a bit of specificity - I think they underperformed in one game, and not by much. Newcastle are a good side this year, and Strathclyde (who came out the positive side of a lot of sudden deaths at Mixed Indoors) finally seemed to feel the pressure a bit in their quarter final. A bit of a crowd was there, it was sudden death, and both teams had possessions, but I think Strathclyde were a bit too eager to force something which wasn’t there.

Amy Niven and Alex Thompson 

The Strathclyde game against us (Newcastle) was brilliant fun. Our Women’s indoor team had had a really great game against them in Nottingham and we were excited to come up against them at outdoors. We like to harp on about the strength of our women and winning the Strath game has filled us with anticipation for how they do at Women’s Nationals. The weather had calmed down considerably by the time we came to play them on Sunday but the wind changed the game entirely. Strath’s early break into the 15km/h upwind really put us on our heels, but we managed to keep fighting and eventually break back to take the game on the flip’s outcome.

hazard

Moving around Scotland, I’ll also say Aberdeen were very good too - as Alice and geegee said. Ellie Taylor is one of the best players on the club circuit, so at uni level she’s kind of overpowered. The rest of the squad is also great, if small in number (I was thinking the short game time would help them most of any team). And Andrew Hunter had some really great and safe bids to pressure all our shots.

Oxford beat them in our quarter final partly due to sheer outrunning them (our numbers + S&C training helped), and knowledge from our previous game against Imperial, where a team also relied on a dominant female player with strong hucks (Katie Flight).

(I know Ellie is a great cutter too, but we forced her under as we were more able to deal with the throws than her just getting mega yards deep)

Axel

Aberdeen are good, but they just don't have the depth of good players on either gender to challenge the best teams. Their guys are good but not excellent and after Ellie there is a severe drop off. They are a top 8 mixed team, but not top 4 and that’s where they ended up. The bigger surprises (to me) are Glasgow and Strathclyde not finishing higher and Edinburgh. But we can see that Glasgow and Edinburgh suffered at the hands of the seeding. Then that sends me back in a loop to say again that Nationals is there to find the best team, not place the rest of them correctly, though it is ideal when that can happen as well.

hazard

Let's move on to the team that did finish well then. UCL claimed their first ever Mixed outdoors title, beating Birmingham 10-8 in the final. Axel, care to give us a run down of UCL's weekend?

Axel

UCL's weekend was an interesting mix. Our first game against Strath was a bit of a limp one. We both knew it didn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. It was about bedding in and not getting injured. The first half was alright from both sides. The second half wasn't great and Strath scrapped out almost all the points to take it. From there we always talk about developing with every game and we managed to do that. We grew a lot against Edinburgh taking a big win in a tough prequarter. Then we had Sheffield who was a bit of a lucky draw, as well as Oxford in the semi. We started both games a bit slowly before dominating.

The final was an interesting one, there may have even been a few nerves at the start from our inexperienced lot. Then our D started rolling and it wasn't really ever in question what the result was gonna be.

No team other than Strathclyde managed to play good offence against our female triangle, with Oxford guessing about 6 different looks and never guessing right (to my hearing). Birmingham swung it a lot with their women which is what we wanted.

We got told after the game that we didn't play great mixed, which I completely disagree with. We may not have used our women on offence a great deal as we played to the conditions and our women are really strong on D and not as strong on O. But I think we could say the opposite of Birmingham. Its crazy how they didn't use their guys at all (what terrible mixed.. jk jk). Thats just a line no one will say, our guys were stronger than theirs so we played offence through the best match ups available to us. But overall the final itself was really fun, despite Birmingham seeming to have some misgivings about the way we played. Best game was against Birmingham cos in the end they managed to pressure our tactic, unfortunately we were going to do it anyways cos of the wind, so the final wasn't the best watch.

Overall it was a successful tournament for a team that doesn't ever train together. We grew as a team and came out with everyone smiling with medals around their necks. The weather even gave us some sun at the end. People stayed over in Scotland for Monday cos we never get to come up there. Maybe the next one can be in Aberdeen so that we can see some more of the country?

geegee

Playing against UCL was interesting, but the final was very fun. UBU as a team were very happy with how we played together. On defence UCL women had a really effective poach system that made it difficult to generate flow. They were very male-dominant on offence, so whilst our male defenders did everything they could, working really hard and we sometimes used a female deep poach, the shot from Axel to Colicchio was often too difficult to take down. It's a structure that works for them.

Some elements of spirit were called into question during the final, but those few incidences definitely does not represent the whole squad. The UCL sideline was very good at communicating, and the squad was for the most part very respectful and great banter.  Would like to add an overall kudos to the Southern teams that made the effort to make the journey up to St Andrews; it was hard enough from the Midlands! Particular shout out to Southampton who drove all the way up - that is commitment.

hazard

I think I'd agree with you geegee. Our semi-final against them ended up 10-5, but I think a cleaner way to write it would be that UCL got two upwind breaks to our zero. Axel to CJ Collichio was near unstoppable, but not 100%. We did have a few chances to try to work upfield against it, and credit to UCL from stopping us from ever clawing one back. Considering UCL have come 2nd and 1st at the last Women's Outdoor Nationals, it is nice to see some of that glory finally spread to the guys in the mixed division. Although I think they will have been glad not to see Strathclyde in the final.

hazard

It's nice to see Birmingham still fighting right at the top of the tournament as well. They're always close, but I believe it might have been the first final for a couple years?

geegee

It is the first time in a while yes, I believe the last time Birmingham were in a mixed final was the 2015-2016 season, so some of our longer standing players (Adam Vaslet, James Firth, Lucy Graves, Melodie Zehnder for example) who have been with the team for a while were ecstatic to have come this far again finally.

hazard

We've already mentioned the final, but you guys had a tough route (and certainly pool) to get there did you not?

geegee

Yeah we had a tough pool with back to back games. Aberdeen to start off with and our offence took a while to warm up, their defence capitalised very well and they got a few up on us. We came back with a lot more clinical O and took the win, going into a universe point win against Glasgow who were up by at least 3 at some point. Glasgow worked the disc well, got some crucial blocks where we ran out of steam. Both very very talented teams, and a pleasure to play against.

From there we played Southampton to go into quarters on Sunday against the home team St Andrews. Semi against Newcastle was great fun - they have developed a lot of depth over the years and it has paid dividends. It was a close game and we had to fight for it because they did not make it easy. Fantastic spirit as well, they've always been very spirited in all three divisions so to have that continue into closely contested games is brilliant.

Our second team finished 10th as well, having a mix of experienced players and some playing outdoors for the first time competitively!

hazard

Yeah, 10th is really impressive. Ok, let’s get some quick summaries from joint third-place Newcastle and Oxford to finish.

Amy Niven and Alex Thompson
It was a really difficult weekend conditions wise but the Newcastle team that we brought was not only physically strong but mentally strong as well. We were exceptionally proud of the efforts of our team. I think a few people suspected that we could obtain the position that we did and it felt really great to show everyone the success of our hard work this academic year. As captains we really switched up the way that our team trained this year and it's exciting to see that its been getting results.

We are really proud of our position but want to make a request on behalf of ourselves and Birmingham (and Oxford)… 2nd and 3rd should get medals too!

Otherwise, shout outs to who Alex Monaghan really killed it in the Birmingham game in particular. Skying folk left, right and centre. Sam Griffiths also did a great job of catching the winning disc against Strathclyde. Big ups to Yasmin Gill who is a 2nd year who was doing a shitload of upwind handling; and also Rio Hamilton - she did some critical offensive work in the Birmingham game which was so crucial considering how tired and cold we all were. Also everyone they all did big work for us this weekend. #nobignames #allbignames.

And our second team were so great this weekend and they were really good for giving some hype on the sidelines with the famous “how many pies? Too many pies” chant that we all know and love.

Amy Niven
I do genuinely wanna shout out my co-captain Alex too (we were joking about it so need him to know it's serious). He's done really great work with the men for this tournament and has been has really stressed the importance of 'proper mixed' to the men on our squad which i think is often overlooked.

hazard

Mind if I ask what you’ve switched up for training this year? It really has been impressive seeing you emerge to challenge the top teams this season.

Amy Niven and Alex Thompson
We've brought a lot of new drills to out sessions and we've really been pushing fitness which was something we've never really done before. We've always relied on people working on their own fitness outside of trainings but this year we've discovered that finding time for it is worthwhile.

View this post on Instagram

An amazing weekend! THE 3rd BEST TEAM IN THE COUNTRY 🥉🥉🥉🥉🥉🥉🥉🥉 and I almost kissed Jake Hawkyard... 😍 I love this team. I LOVE THIS TEAM

A post shared by Amy Niven (@niven_amyrm) on Mar 17, 2019 at 2:38pm PDT

hazard

Moving onto Oxford, we felt overall our weekend went fairly well, as you might expect. We do a lot of mixed trainings, and we would count ourselves as Mixed specialists (our results in Men's and Women's might stand as testament to that...). While I think we did well in avoiding Birmingham or UCL until the semis, I think that victories against Durham, Imperial and Aberdeen give a not unfair route to the top 4 (although I would have loved a game against St. Andrews, who also beat Durham and Imperial - both of us winning in sudden death against Durham).

Kiyomi Ran and Steph Jordan did some really solid handling for us (and Jeff Sload had some great puts, despite the double foot block). And I'm also going to shout out co-captain Phili Kent for some fantastic cuts and for bailing me out by catching a scooba I probably shouldn't have thrown.

We felt like indoors came too fast, and that we didn't have time to prepare. Here, our whole team was so much more solid this weekend than it has been before. Worth the ten hour trip, and I don't say that lightly. Also, 50% of the southern teams came top 4 #southerndominance

hazard

Expanding on a point in the chat, Axel and myself had a discussion about what Nationals is for. I came up with the following reasons, and Axel had his responses of whether he agreed. I’ve combined them for brevity, but I think it’s a good set of closing thoughts and I’d love to hear what any readers think about this (either my list of potential reasons of Axel's responses).

hazard + Axel

Nationals should provide a showcase of great University Ultimate

Yes, if possible, and this point would be more prevalent if there were spectators or streaming to more people who don't follow Ultimate (or UK Ultimate). Though this showcase should come from the quality of the teams playing, not necessarily the format of Nationals.

Nationals should also provide a ranking of team strength, beyond just which team is at the top

If possible yes, but if there was a good algorithm in place, we would know this ranking before Nationals and it wouldn't have to be decided there. All we need to do is play more cross regional matches once they are worth playing.

Nationals should provide as many close games as it can

This point is not on the UKU at all, or the organisers of Nationals. Close games come from teams training hard and trying to be the best. For example it isn't the organisers fault that Strath women blew everyone out of the water at UWIN. Close games are entertaining and good for the sport and will develop teams more in the long run. But that is down to the teams to provide that through their strengths and skills, not the organisers.

Nationals is a chance for development (i.e. a team might have no chance of winning, but be in a better position to win next year by giving players experience against other good teams)

This is true for teams who go and compete to have the experience of playing. But it isn't a priority for Nationals. The tournament is an end goal of the uni season. If there were more teams and more tournaments, development would happen earlier and Nationals would just be the best 16 or 20 teams fighting it out to win. Im sure every team currently brings some dev players (if not a whole dev squad) to prepare for future years, but that is on the teams to do, not for the organisers to provide. Div 2 and 3 are chances for development realistically.

Nationals should be a showcase of high-level spirit

Shouldn't every game be. Though spirit at uni level is so messed up already that I don't know if uni nationals can be this showcase in the near future.

Nationals should make extra effort to ensure the journey was worth the effort for all teams, in order to ensure all the best teams are present

If the best teams are discouraged from going, it won't really be Nationals. But I think the best teams want to win and play at the best venues (or I'd hope so). So the organisers should ensure the best venues possible. The journeys in the UK are short in general, if teams decide not to go, it’s a shame, but if they are potential winners they don't have much of an excuse if they don't go and try to win. If that makes sense. The organisers can't put the event near Team X cos this year they are good and if the venue is too far, they won't turn up. And the other 15 teams are more likely to travel.

Nationals should give each region an equal chance to claim a title (à la Men’s Outdoors)

No, bring all the top teams to Nationals ranked through an algorithm. If a region is terrible one year then their programmes have to sort it out. Let's say that the Midlands had the 16 best teams, then surely you want to see them compete and not throw in a South team to get battered every game if they were ranked 50th in the country, but best in their region.

Nationals should only feature the top teams, regardless of region

Agreed, similar to the above point really.