University Mixed Outdoor Nationals 2017
UXON 2017 was once again a Swiss Draw format, this year with 44 teams in the mix. Disaster struck before the tournament even began when half of the pitch bookings in Leicester were cancelled following heavy rain. Fortunately the UKU organisers made one hell of a swing to reformat the whole tournament, meaning that despite this set-back we were still able to play 3 x 50 minute games each day. We also got space in a scout hut out of the situation, so it worked out pretty well for us overall. The weather was chilly but sunny all weekend, with wind significance building throughout the morning each day.
Alex Jones, Humaira Bhadman, Tejas Guruswamy, Katie Tidd, Will Peach, Jo Starkie, Jonny Slaughter; Tasha Smith, Perry Hong, Charlie Daffern, Louis Davies, Becca Harwin, JR Richardson
Saturday
SB vs. Loughborough 2 (10 – 6)
As first game of the tournament, this gave us a good chance to start settling into our groove. Loughborough 2 were a good team, who played an isolation-based offense that generated some standout deep shots to their guys. We did a strong job of putting pressure on their options, with some effective poaches to allow the iso defender to focus on taking away the under cuts and force difficult resets. When on defence, Loughborough 2 benefitted from strong support from their first team players on the sideline, but we were able to win individual match-ups and work the disc around. Most turnovers were our own mistakes, and we identified fairly early on in the match the need to better utilise early resets and smooth dump-swing play. This was a theme for the weekend. I threw the final assist to JR around his 6-foot-something defender who was being cheeky and poaching. Overall a really fun game against a well-spirited bunch of players.
SB vs. Strathclyde (6 – 11)
These guys were good – they finished in 3rd place overall for the tournament. There were a number of familiar faces from the Glasgow club, on what was clearly a very experienced team. We had some nicely flowing offense at times during this game, but also some pretty rogue deep shots that didn’t often complete due to some hot defence from the Strathclyde guys (who were really tall). They also scored twice with hammers, despite the wind, so kudos to them for that.
SB vs. Surrey (7 – 9)
Ah, Surrey. This was one of those mixed classics where they played ~90% through their guys, and won the game anyway. The guys were athletic and played really well together, and we unfortunately couldn’t keep up. Whilst we definitely had the edge on the women, we weren’t able to use this effectively enough to make a difference to the outcome of the game. Also Tejas dropped the first pull (oops).
Saturday night saw some of the team return to Cambridge, and the joys of sleeping in beds (+ Tejas playing Zelda, no doubt), whilst most of us camped out in a scout hut. We had amazing Turkish food for dinner – I have seriously never eaten such delicious rice before – followed by a trip across the street to an amazing specialist dessert place. Such happiness.
Sunday
SB vs. Brunel (9 – 4)
This was a really fun game. We’re pretty familiar with Brunel since they’re in our region, and we like them a lot. They are such chill, fun people. Our offense came together nicely in this one, with some good reset movements and better continuation cuts upfield. Jonny did a good job of putting pressure on their main guy, limiting his options, with some help from a switched on sideline.
SB vs. Oxford (1 – 8)
Headline news! Katie got a great layout back-up grab from the middle of the stack. And I got a point-block, thanks to some on-point sidelining from Jonny. But we only scored one point in the whole game. C’est la vie. Oxford played an iso-based offense for a lot of the game, with decent success. Their defence was strong, smothering our offensive options, and we were unable to convert on the few scoring opportunities that we did get thanks to a variety of crippling execution errors. Credit to Oxford, they were pretty great, and went on to win the plate for the tournament. As per usual, they were one of the teams who made the best use of their women – whilst we’d been calling four women throughout many of our previous matches, it was Oxford calling four women against us. Their guys also came up with sweet plays, including multiple layout grabs and some smooth leading IO resets. I’ve talked much more about them than us in this match review, because I don’t want to think too much about the way that we were playing.
SB vs. Imperial (5 – 7)
Jonny foot-blocked Rolo. Imagine the smuggest, cheekiest grin imaginable, and that was the look Jonny had on his face after the fact. We pulled out a zone for the first time over the weekend in this game, and it was pretty effective – although the Imperial lot worked up the field fairly well, they’d then get a little ahead of themselves and take silly options into the endzone, where Jonny was able to take down whatever swill they tried to throw past him. Unfortunately we couldn’t convert well enough on offense to consolidate on these turnovers. Some really tight man-defence on our handlers stifled the resets, whilst the upfield cutting was slower and less expansive than we’d been managing earlier in the weekend.
~~~
Jo and Perry share the exciting experience of trying their first ever Cadbury Creme Eggs together. Jo was not convinced, and is expected to continuing choosing Mini Eggs instead.
~~~
We finished the weekend in 20th place in the Swiss Draw system. Full results are here:
https://www.leaguevine.com/tournaments/20452/uku-uni-mixed-nationals-2017/swiss/standings/
We didn’t vote in an MVP, but we did take some time to reminisce on some of the cool shit we did over the weekend. Some highlights included Tasha’s sticky hands, Tejas’ three-quarters layout block, the bro-team of receivers that Will and Humaira became, Katie’s layout back-up in the Oxford game, JR’s sweet aerial layout block in the endzone, and Jonny’s foot block on Rolo (obviously).
Finally, we got a sweet spirit score! 11.17! This was joint second overall, and only 0.03 behind the spirit-winners Oxford. Rocking it. We scored at least 2 in every category, achieving joint highest scores at the tournament in fouls and communication. I’m really proud of the team for this.
~~~
“General Joy”
~~~
I’ve had a great time captaining SB Mixed over the past three years, thanks to everybody who’s been a part of it. Charlie out.
