Strange Blue Tournament Report

Hey SB,

We took 2 strong teams to UWIR, where we stormed through the competition to take 1st and 8th, earning us a spot at nationals. Both teams carried themselves extremely well, with our seconds really stepping up and into roles that they soon made their own. I'll leave Emily and Megan to give you the details.

Valentijn won the Lookfly sponsored MVP of the final, and Suzanna won Defensive MVP, earning her the coveted D-bag o' goodies.

The 1st team came in ranked 2nd, but quickly ascended to 1st as the Warwick bears dropped out of the tournament (they were the only team to do so... they were also the closest team to Oxford aside from the hosts and Oxford Brookes). 1st was a position that we decided we liked and didn't want to give up.

Pool play saw us demolish UBU2, Aye Aye, UBU1, Brookes, and Leicester (?). In elimination, we played SB2 (who knows how far they would've risen otherwise), Aye-aye (who came 3rd), and then Fling (Jassy's team). Our 3-man FM cup w Pri commanding the deep space was utterly unstoppable and managed to shut down pretty much every woman's team's offense in the region. I think we won all our games w a margin of at least 5 (8-3 in the finals). Some highlights.

Alicia ("space cadet") Schep shredded UBU's and every other wall endzone defense we met through her profound mastery of the fast break, her extreme chilliness, and a number of very very well placed overheads and io's. Her motto of the weekend: don't bother cutting to the open side, I only throw break.

Brookes (the 2nd ranked team in our pool) looked like they were getting a handle on our cup when Valentijn and alicia got 2 soul-withering hand blocks on 2 consecutive possessions, completely sapping their confidence. We walked over them the rest of the game.

We shifted strategy slightly in the game against aye aye. Hannah played man on (and shut down) their star player from the short-deep position while the rest of the zone made it extremely hard to throw to everyone else. Pri dutifully adjusted to covering the rest of the backfield (often 2, if not 3 players).

The final against Fling saw the whole team switch into a great roam defense (1 chase, 3 wall, 1 deep) that teased them with the coveted up the line space while having a defender lurking and ready to pounce should they be so foolish as to throw a disc there.

Our O was so beautiful as to be indescribable. The perfect balance of structure and creativity. The flow was beautiful and quick. Innumerable points of everyone touching the disc (with the 5th person scoring). That was the main difference between other teams and us. While they relied on 1-2 key players, every single player our team was a threat. We played a team d that shut down those stars and then an O that exploited their weak links. SO SO WELL OILED!

Ladies, you have no idea how proud I am. We worked hard at practices and outside of them, and this is the fruition of our labors. So many teams commented on how well we knew each other. This is just the beginning. Let's go show them what we are at nationals. (and thanks so much for helping out and bearing with me as I ran around like a headless chicken... I was barely coherent at the beginning of the day).

Get pumped!

Lily