BIG Steppers
A tome reflecting on the steps taken coaching BIG Ultimate Club this year as well as a recap of the NZ mixed season series events for 2024; Manawatu Maelstrom and Tāmaki Throwdown
This year I have the privilege of coaching BIG Ultimate Club as a player-coach. The 2024 roster is a team who is so talented yet so open to change and that was something I wasn't going to waste.
Our first weeks were spent learning what style works for our team with some guiding principles weaved in amongst all our other learnings. The key principles that I wanted to introduce with were as follows; with the teams interpretations attached:
Stop the threat
i.e. doesn't matter if you shut down your assignment if the offence scores
Momentum is key
Maintaining the advantage of momentum and then manipulating the momentum of the offence and defence consciously can offer us great benefit
Prep and Cook
Having a holistic view of who is in the best position to make a threatening move and enabling that as best you can. Whether that be a continuation, a clear, or standing still etc.
Communication
All 7 players on the field (and the sideline) communicating as efficiently as possible
Trust/Honesty
That we are all here to better ourselves and that decisions are made with the best interests of the team at heart
We built up these foundations together and spoke a lot about defensive strategy as the next step in our journey. After our defence was honed it meant we could test offences against it. It was really important to me that we tried a lot of different offences and then refine whatever ones were a natural fit for us. As we had a lot of varied individual play styles I wanted to make sure the strengths of everyone were properly leveraged for our team. After trying many different looks there were two 'new' structures that we spent time on and two that everyone had played before that we continued refining. Details possibly to come after the season is done, don't want to give free handouts to the opposition now do we?
Going into the first event of the year, just two weeks after many of the roster returned from WUC 2024, we were in a good place with our interpersonal connections but we had yet to really delve deep into specifics of each structure we had decided to play. Manawatu Maelstrom, the central qualifier, for me was all about experimenting with line make ups, offensive structure and how to chorale the team to play the defense that we had been working on for an entire match.
Throughout day one we got some good footage to look back on thanks to Wellington Ultimate's Veo camera. Something that we were good at was getting broken first point of the game... This didn't end up costing us as we were always able to hop back on the right track but was something we have taken into account for our preparation going forward. The toughest match ups of the day were against Honeys (13-4), also hailing from Wellington, and Euphoria (13-6) - the northern region's wildcard spot into div one this year.
Reflecting on day one as a team that evening was a quick slide show covering tomorrows match ups, a reminder about the importance of being aware of that active space, and a chat about not going to sleep if you're the deep of a zone. I think at this point the team's energy was in a good place and the next day we were well set up to attack our competitive games head on.
Day two started with a 13-0 victory over Equilibrium, our last of pool play. We then moved straight into the semi finals. Our semi was against Hammertron, a team that has a lot of athleticism and experience is historically quite inconsistent with putting all the pieces together. To be fair to Hammertron they were missing some key players but in the windy, rainy weather BIG was going to be hard to take down. The game had a brief interlude just before halftime due to hailstones the size of marbles pelting us. Apart from that the game was relatively straight forward, a small run from Hammertron in the second half but the rest of the time we were able to maintain our competitive intensity and take the game, 11-8.
The next game was the final against MDC, the team the knocked us out of the semis at last years nationals. At this point the weather has really set in, it is windy and rainy yet those are the conditions that both of these teams are used to. We had a pretty loose gameplan heading into this one, really just wanted to be able to set the team loose and see what we could do. Focusing on building the right energy in warmup despite the horrific conditions really paid off for us. We hit our stride with a hold each and then we had 3 breaks in a row courtesy of Josh van Bergen to go up 4-1. At half it was 7-4. Then lightning struck and the game was called off, an anticlimactic way to end a final. But nevertheless I for one am happy to win on a technicality with the game making it to half.
The next event, the last one before nationals, is Tāmaki Throwdown. For this BIG had made the trek up the country to Auckland to test ourselves against what the rest of the north island had to offer. Day one started off by echoing day one of the first warm up, with the same result against Taranaki Thunder of 13-1. We then followed up with winning against Euphoric (13-1) and Llamanati (13-5). It had been a couple weeks since the last tourney and we had covered some new end zone plays as well as honing some offensive structures so we spent most of day one focused on these.
The end of day 1 was cut short due to rain so our Hammertron rematch was postponed until Sunday morning. Sunday morning the fields were closed for a police investigation so the tournament directors scrambled and did a great chance getting last minute fields (thanks Auckland University Ultimate Club and Te Papapa Ultimate). We ended up matching up against Hammertron Prime on Sunday in pretty pristine conditions really. This time against a full strength Hammertron side, and it showed. They had obviously taken some learnings from our last match up and slowed down our offence to begin with quite effectively. Our defense was able to generate enough turns to give us a comfortable lead into halftime and we maintained this momentum through to the end. Taking out the match 13-10 and giving us the 1 seed vs 4 seed semi final against OBSC.
My sister plays on OBSC so this was one I wanted badly. We ended up taking it relatively comfortably 13-5 but I for one am not taking OBSC for granted going into Nationals. Bonus gratification for this victory given the two blocks Emma admitted to getting from knowing our end zone sets. This put us into the final against Te Papapa Ultimate (TPU), they had just beaten Llamanati 13-7 - putting us on similar levels based on the maths.
We knew this game was going to be good from the start. Taking place on the Te Papapa Sports Club #1 field they had home turf advantage but that wasn't going to stop our mojo. After a compressed warmup hype up we take the field to play this new club with some great players across the whole roster. From the young but not necessarily new talent in the likes of Hugo Swinson and Zaria Ireland, the athletes of Holly Mace and Charles Paterson, the rest of the squad and the well respected brain of Li Yeoh at the helm this wasn't going to be easy.
We tested out all our looks, some new and unproven against this level of competition, and some that we were looking to polish. We were generating turnovers comfortably to begin with going up a few breaks to start the game. A great chase down block from Miriam Burke really set our tone for the match, showing that the 50/50 discs were going to be ours. Offensively we started off cruising but a few wayward decisions on our part let TPU back in the game. At half TPU lead 7-6. One highlight from this half was the disc getting blocked by Jackson Zhou, him starting to cut deep but the disc had gone so high that the disc started flying back in - towards the endzone. I just managed to layout to get the block again before Leo Poliko could score. Very hype. Anyway...
Second half is more of the same, we trade for a while and then it is 10-9; TPU up. We start mixing up our lines to bring some players over to defence and have figured out how to shut down the TPU 1-4-2 offence consistently. We put the disc away easily after a couple of soft turns from TPU. We are now up 11-10 coming out on defence. We send the pull up and then somehow we get a turn, I honestly don't remember how. But I do remember what happened next. I receive a swing and send a flick huck upwind to Tara O'Connor, full faith. But woops, the disc sails 10 meters out the back of the end zone. TPU end up scoring the downwind break to take it to universe.
Universe point, we receive the pull, we weave it between our handlers and finish with a couple of gives goes from downfield gainers. Goal. 12-11 dub.
Overall the combination of attending two tournaments with a pretty complete roster was huge benefit for me as a coach and also as a player getting more reps with everyone. With nationals in Christchurch this weekend the season is coming to a close. Looking back I am super proud of everyone on the team with how we have learnt so much together both strategically and also with how we all fit together as a unit. No matter what our results are this weekend, obviously shooting for the gold, super stoked with how the season has gone and can personally mark it off as a success already.
Catch you after nationals!
