From hermes.cam.ac.uk!ms223 Wed Jan 29 09:54:55 1997 To: frisbee@mrao.cam.ac.uk From: ms223@cam.ac.uk (Mindy Sobota) Subject: Birmingham women's report! Dear all SB, This year's national women's tourney in Birmingham was so fantastic (and taxing) that it has taken me two day's rest to summon the energy to write the report! Five SB, or Strange Bird, women went, including myself, Sylvie, Verity, Amy and Dora. Yup, that's right: we played iron woman, except for times on Saturday when Dora allowed for a sub b/c she had a migraine--what a trooper! What was most impressive was how cohesively we played as a team, having only tried that at one (embarassing) Wednesday session. Everyone handled (but not all at once!), which rapidly sharpened up the disk skills of our relative beginners, Amy and Sylvie, as well as our recent comeback recruit, Verity. It was astonishing how well we worked the disk up the court, all five players touching the disk, handling solidly, going for shorter, percentage throws over risky long ones. Both Sylvie and Amy left the tourney on Sunday with massively improved disk skills, it was stunning to watch the transformation! Now that didn't mean that we didn't sometimes go for the crazy exciting hucks, no sireee... Let me just mention Amy's beauty of a huck from well behind midcourt into the zone for a (literally) last-second score against the Sharks' No Frills. Or perhaps Dora's hammer, released just as the buzzer went off, which Verity brought down in the zone to tie us with Sneekys. Our tie meant that we got to advance past Sneeky's (because we had won more games that day) and advance to the game playing for 7th/8th places. In the end we finished 8th out of 12, which was well beyond our expectations for the only team playing iron woman with beginner. Our final, against the Sharks again, was hard-fought, and the final score of 10-2 doesn't reflect the fact that we held it at 2-2 until half-way through the game when their experience,disk skills and extra legs got the better of us. Final results: Saturday: won 5-4 against the Bears (with help from Yusi on Mohawks/HIP, who warned us that we were ahead by one at 20 secs...) won 7-1 against RED lost 0-9 against HIP (who came in 3rd overall with Diana's stunning break force inside outs all the way down the line to the zone) lost 1-10 to Elle (and we played up to them, one of our hardest games) lost 4-5 to Chevron (I think we would have won if the game and advanced to the top pool had the game been a few minutes longer; we stormed up from behind) Sunday: won 6-0 against Tara & Jonathan's Headington Horrors (incredible kids!) lost 10-2 to Sharks (they were good) tied 3-3 with Sneeky's (incredible) lost 10-2 to Sharks (but held them off and played until we were ragged) Most importantly, we all walked (or hobbled) away from the tournament absolutely fired up to continue to work on our new skills within our club in Cambridge. Speaking for myself, it was definitely the best tournament I've been to---loads of fun and hard work and reward; it confirms the place for women's alongside mixed and coed ultimate. Besides giving some slower-running women a chance to compete, the game focused more on sharp, accurate and often beautiful passes and good fakes, which I think can enhance any game. Finally, the tournament wouldn't have been complete without the hired minivan experience (complete with Mindy careening down Cambridge roads, on the left side though), which fostered exactly the right environment to brainstorm about 5 songs for calls for SB. It's a good way to travel to tournaments if you have people pay upfront for their spot (thereby guaranteeing the van hire). frisbee & fun, Mindy. >-`o_ o~~~ Only Connect.