Editor: Hazard (he/him)
And so, the eight top teams who will meet at Women's Nationals have been decided! Iceni, Bristol, SPICE and the cup-winners London Masters will be joined by SYC, SCRAM, Reading and SOUL in Nottingham. Thanks again to all our contributors, and thanks to you all for joining us for this coverage.
In this articles we have reports from the cup final, the playoff games, and also two additional friendlies - including a Nationals preview game of Iceni vs Spice!
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Other Coverage
The ShowGame are doing weekly podcasts every Friday/Saturday covering all the action
Hogi has been filming lots of games. You can see his watchalongs on Monday on Twitch, or watch the game footage on YouTube
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Structure
The overall championship is the UK National Series. Within it, teams compete for 8 spots at the National Championships.
We have 6 National League teams. Bristol and Iceni gained Nationals spots through this route.
We also have the National Cup. London Masters (winners) and SPICE (finalists) gained a further two spots here.
Now that the playoffs have been settled, SYC (4th place league), SCRAM (5th place league), and the two Cup semi-finalists (Reading, SOUL) have taken the final four spots.
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National Cup Final
London Masters 11 - 9 Spice
Location: London
Lily Huang (London Masters): Swirly wind, on-and-off rain, and Spice offering some preternatural heads up/poachy defence made for a frustrating start for LMU. It seemed that every LMU pass was straight into the hands of a Spice poach. Within the first few minutes, LMU found itself down 5-0.
The time out at 3-0 didn't seem to work, but the 5-0 time out saw the LMU handlers do a better job of engaging their defenders. The defence held up their end by playing some nice shut down with a few smart switches. Somehow we took it back to 6-5. To be honest, that bit of the game went by in a blur for me. We then traded to take half 8-7.
There was 2 minutes of halftime, then only 15min left to play. LMU started on offence, but Spice took the first point to tie 8-8. LMU then took the upwind to 9-8. The next point saw multiple turns from both teams. Spice called a time out with 30m to go to score. LMU sandwiched in the endzone with fierce handler marks to deny any resets. We got the turn and possibly a few turns later from both teams, converted to take the morale boosting downwind point 10-8. Spice then answered after a few more turns from both teams 10-9. Cap on.
More turns from both teams, Chesca Weddell has a target painted on her ankles--multiple discs die at her feet. We graft to get the D back. Stopped play on the sideline from about half pitch, LMU on offence. Jenna Thomson calls reverse chariot. Then says, "take a moment to think about what that might mean". The sideline echos it but has no idea what it might mean. Luckily, cutters all go deep, defenders all follow, leaving Catherine Gainey standing open in the middle of the pitch. Jenna tosses it to Gainey, who tosses it back to Jenna, who got eyes from Sophie Beavan and found her deep in the endzone. Game LMU 11-9. We all remember to breathe again. Lots of stand out moments from both teams!
Maya Israel (Spice): Our game against LMU was a tough loss, but perhaps a great lesson on mental toughness. We took a 5 point lead over LMU at the beginning of the game. Our defence was strong and I think perhaps LMU had a bit of a slow start. After our 5th point, however, and a couple of time outs, something in LMU switched. They had a great 6 point run comeback, taking the score to 6-5. After that, points were traded until half (8-7), which was scarily close to the end of the game. After half, LMU continued on their roll, taking two more points before the cap, which made it a game to 11. It was a hard fought final, with a lot of incredible layouts on both O and D, but ultimately, LMU took the title 11-9.
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National Playoffs
SYC 15 - 7 Uprising
Location: London
Rupal Ghelani (SYC): Firstly SYC want to shout out to Uprising to say thank you for helping us get this game organised. We were all concerned about travelling given the current COVID status however we are glad that together we managed to come to a solution and that wouldn't have been possible without Uprising's help!
The game was very wet and very soggy and practically took place in an ongoing cold jetwash. So credit to both teams for dealing with the conditions admirably! And shout out to Barnes Sports Centre for letting us continue to play despite questioning our sanity to do so.
SYC started out playing zone hoping to encourage Uprising to take one too many passes, however Uprising dealt with our zone handily with some really nice over head looks - perhaps one of the best offenses against our zone all season! We then had to switch to match defence and managed to get our offense going as well as capitalising on some unfortunate slippy drops by Uprising to break quickly and utilise the deep shots. SYC took half, but Uprising came out storming after the break and put a few of points on the board. SYC then managed to get our heads back into it before taking the game 15-7. A thoroughly enjoyable game despite the conditions! A HUGE shout out to Freya Lenton from Uprising for being a formidable cutter and bringing down lots of high discs!
Georgia Forder (Uprising): A massive thank you to SYC for organising the pitch and our games with themselves and Brixton. Before we started, we knew this game was going to be tough. The weather was not what you’d want for any game. I’d imagine I’m speaking for the majority of players when I say that we practise in all weather, but have never played in rain like we were experiencing that day.
Despite that, both teams came out hard. SYC had put out a zone and despite some fabulous handler movement and fantastic cutting and grabbing by Freya Lenton, we were unable to continue for a score. After 2 great scores by SYC, Uprising took a time out to relight our intensity. #fireitup We came back and scored off our time out and after a couple more points, the score was 4-2 to SYC. SYC took half but Uprising came back with a couple more points to boost the score. We had finally found our groove and the points started to become longer, with both teams revving up defence. With SYC’s slick offence and the rain easing up for some deep shots, SYC took the game 15-7. I’d like shout out a couple more Uprising players - Katie Barraclough for non-stop cutting, Han Booth for some excellent handling and Suzy Qu, who had some solid switched-on defence - me and Ola were still talking it about later that day!
Reading 14 - 2 SOUL
Location: Reading
Gemma Coleman (Reading): Knowing that we were through to Nationals due to Red’s forfeit, Reading came into our match against SOUL looking for an opportunity to simply play a bit more fun ultimate as a team before Nottingham.
The match started in speccy fashion, with the first point being scored off a full-stretch layout grab by Elspeth Newlin due to a fadey huck from yours truly (thanks Speth).
We alternated between zone and match defence, taking advantage of our tall, speedy players to cover the unders and back ourselves to hunt down long shots. It took most of the first quarter for both teams to get a handle on the breeze upwind, which was light compared to the forecast for the day, but wrecked havoc on a number of leading forehands. SOUL started to flow towards the end of the first half, but couldn’t quite connect in the endzone as Reading took half 8-0.
In the second half, SOUL’s handlers Hannah Pendlebury and Rebecca Lindsay helped run their structures from the back, whilst Abi Cohman provided some great options downfield. We managed to play through both match and zone looks from SOUL, with special credit on offence to Beth Jeffrey for always being a threat in the end zone, Izzie Collins for using pace and height to get free all over the pitch, and on defence to Cam Spearing for some sneaky run-through catch D’s.
Thanks to SOUL for battling floods and thunderstorms to make it to the match, and giving us one last hit out before the August long weekend!
Due to RED and Sheep, Birds, & Bees both forfeiting games, SCRAM and SOUL qualified automatically.
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Challenge League
Iceni 14 - 7 Spice
Hannah Brew (Iceni): We have been waiting to play Spice all season and were super excited that they'd conveniently arranged the cup final at Jenna's school, making it only small trip to see the final and then get the pleasure of playing Spice.
From the get go-we focussed on Spice's smooth down-the-line to lead-pass offence. We took around 3 or 4 defensive points to have an impact on this style of play really focussing on our handler defence. After adjusting slightly, it took Spice a few points to switch onto this, until they started taking on the swing options much quicker in order to attack the handler space laterally instead of forwards.
They then threw the same back at us with handler defence that made the throwing lanes seem tiny, which really made us be conscious of how much width we were using. This resulted in a time out of the classic "pull it together and just swing the disc" variety. I think Spice's success on D came down to energy and effort and that's exactly why we were looking forward to playing them!
Once they got a bit more slick at this we turned to a handler sag zone trying to separate the upfield from the handlers which resulted in some hard throws for Spice around and down the line. Iceni struggled to be consistent outside the endzone as Spice forced us to take countless passes and squished us into the not so fun places on pitch! All in all I think it was a well executed game from both sides with Iceni just pipping Spice to the post on those last few passes going upwind. Glad to be playing a great team in some wind and a bit of rain - perfectly recreating Nationals in August...
Maya Israel (SPICE): We’d been wanting to play Iceni before Nationals, so were grateful they travelled up to our Cup Final game against LMU. Coming into the game, we’d just lost the final. I think this had two effects. Obviously, we weren’t running on fresh legs and were feeling frustrated after the last game, so I think that led to more errors than we would have liked. But I think Spice players appreciated a less pressurised game after the last (even though we still wanted to win and give Iceni a good game). When Iceni got into the game, their offence was incredibly slick. They loved up-the-lines and used their long game really well. They took half at 8-4 and continued pushing on until the end of the game, winning 14-7.
SYC 15 - 2 Brixton
Rupal Ghelani (SYC): We love playing Brixton! And this time was no different! Thank you to Brixton for coming down and playing us and Uprising - and for bringing the good weather with you. Brixton's clinical offence meant we had to be hot on defence throughout, with the Brixton handlers making some really nice swing passes and up the line cuts. Brixton got us on the back foot and worked the disc up the pitch quickly on offence, but had some unfortunate drops closer to the endzone. SYC managed to generate some turn overs and had tidied up our endzone since the first game meaning we were able to work efficiently off a deep shot. Shout out to Emma Pickens and Alana Calne for taking control of the offence. And to Tessa Jalink for some tasty shots to break through Brixton's zone! From Brixton shout out to Georgia for huggggeeeee layout grabs and to Rose for tight shut down match defence
And, to finish, here are the Reading and SYC Instagram posts celebrating their wins this weekend.
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