Strange Blue Tournament Report

University Women's Outdoor Nationals

Hi

So, slightly depleted in numbers due to silly engineer exams, we had 6 girls go from Cambridge up to Newcastle. Me, Jassy, Laura F, Rachael, Laura W, Abby, playing for the first time in the new strip crafted by Jassy and under the SB ARU women combined name 'Dolly Mixtures.' Because of special women's rules we also had some help from Alice from Aye Aye and 3 and a half DUF girls, taking our squad to 11 for Sat. and 10 for Sun.

DM 3 - 7 Skunks

Having been up since 4 am we were a little slow to get going in our first game, and didn't connect a lot of O and were a little switched off on D. It kinda showed we hadn't really played much together.... Anyhow we started to get to know each other, and had a fair bit of success switchinig to 3-4 from vertical and also a bit of zone D. Pulled it back to 5-3 at the cap, before loosing 7 -3. In all not a bad start though.

DM 5 - 1 Flaze

[we got a little confused by the capping system and probably should have played to 7, but oh well]
We actually had time for a proper warm up for this game which was good. We started to connect a lot and everyone had woken up a bit. We played really hard man D and they really struggled to score. beating the no 1 seeds in our group made all v. happy.

DM 1 - 10 Bears

Hmm. So the scoreline makes this look like a bit of a mullering. That would be a little unfair. It was much closer that that, we just turned over by our endzone way too much and they had some really good players. We did a really good job of making them work really hard for their points. They went on to win the group.

DM 8 - 3 Phat'eds

Our last pool game, straight on the back of that tiring game vs. Bears. By now we really didn't resemble the mish mash of players we had started the day as. We got an iso play working really well, and our zone became super effective. We spontaneously seemed to morph from a 3 man cup into a line trap of death, with a little help from the wind and Phat'eds couldn't cope. An excellent game to finish the day.

We had ended up in a 3 way tie for second in our group, and so had 5th seed going into day 2, and improvement of 2. Sweet stuff.

DM 2 - 9 Squaws

So in typical SB women style (I think they had a negative effect on the rest of the party) people were inevitably not ready to leave on time so only arrived at the pitches 5 minutes before our cross over..... the lack of warm up really didn't help. I threw some real shit. They had a v. good junk zone we couldn't do anything about. For some reason they took it off for 2 points and went man. We scored both . They went back to zone and won the match. While they only had 8 players they were all v. quick and we really struggled to keep up.

We took our 5th seed into a mini pool (of 3) to play off for 5-10. [there was another mini pool of 3 incase you are confused...]

DM 11 - 1 Leeds Jedi

We totally owned these guys. Our zone of death was mightily effective, and they didn't seem to be able to cope with some sweet 3 -4. I threw less speculative shit which helped decrease our negative turnovers. Awesome game enjoyed by all.

DM 9 - 3 Halcyonne

We went 3 nill up, then they came back to 3-2 and we were a little worried. Alice (Aye Aye) they found loads of energy from somewhere and telepathically pumped everyone up. wierd. amazing. We really stepped it up. kept thing simple, killed them on the line with the help of a cross wind and our zone. Ran away with the game.

So as a result we were plate winners - woopie, won spirit (boys take note), and had an awesome time doing it.

Individual highlights

Jassy - came into her own as a handler, awesome decisions, rock solid hands and throwing, kept me from throwing shit. almost pulled off an upwind hammer to score.

Laura F - tireless cutting and cupping for 2 days. some awesome endzone bids. Even did a bit of handling.

Laura W - 100% effort the whole time, even when playing unfamaillar roles. Handled well on the sunday and got the assist for the winning point of the last game to seal the plate.

Abby - despite a lack of ultimate in the last few months, ran tirelessly on d and cutted with vigour on O. had really cracked running through all her catches by the end of sunday, just as she set out to do.

Rachael - Did excellent work in the zone, forming part of the killer line trap team getting endless turnovers. Also did a stirling job cutting breakside in particuar to get the O flowing.

Alex - got most number of Ds I have ever had in a tournament. although admittedly none were run through ones....

In short Dolly Mixtures were Totally Sweet.