2015 Youth Club Championships - Day 1 Girls' Recap
Kelly Schiro
Posted: August 7, 2015 11:53 PM
By: Kelly Schiro
It was a beautiful day for ultimate, with blue skies and a light wind. Earlier in the second round, teams put on zones, challenging some teams to play against them. It was a long day for most teams with three games and good competition. Unlike last year, there will be two days of pool play before bracket play on Sunday.
Pool A
The favored team, Seattle Seattlesaurus, came out strong in the game against Maine’s Rip Tide with a final score of 13-4. Rip Tide lost to Seattle by one point last year, the Seattle girls’ team’s closest game to date, and played a junk zone that threw the Seattle players off. Seattle coach Alyssa Weatherford said that while their defense was playing at a high level, the offense had to spend time figuring out zone O. Seattle handlers Frances Gellert, Hallie Dunham and Josie Gillett have played together before and worked well with each other.
Rip Tide started out really strong against Seattle, scoring the first four points of the game. Maine put up a fight against the perennial champions and a swirling wind. There were a lot of turns both ways, but throughout the game, Bridget Bailey opened up the game or Maine by forcing turns and putting it deep. They ended the day 1-2 in their pool, with losses to the Triangle Area Warhawks and Seattle. Look for them tomorrow against Neuqua Valley Nightmare.
Neuqua Valley had a slow start to the day. Captain Kelly Crowley said they had some issues working through catches and drops in their first game. Nightmare was able to contend with Seattle with some veterans having played them before, going to 6-13 and scoring the most points of any team against Seattle on the day. Neuqua Valley was also getting used to playing with each other as they had just met some of their teammates from Indiana. After getting their footing, they had a good six-point run against Glory and took half and ultimately won 10-7, their first win of the weekend.
This is Oregon’s Glory debut year at YCC. While they only won one game on the first day, they fought hard in their other two games against the Triangle Area Warhawks and Neuqua Valley Nightmare; they gave the Warhawks their toughest game of the day. It was a long day for Glory, but their coach said they had a great start. Be on the lookout for their match up against Rip Tide tomorrow afternoon.
The Warhawks had a great day, going 3-0. Having experience and chemistry as a team helped. While they lost to Paideia and Neuqua Valley at Paideia Cup earlier this year, they were able to win today’s game against Nightmare 10-3, Neuqua Valley comprises a lot of Nightmare. Their game to watch tomorrow is against Seattle, the team standing in the way of winning the pool.
cATLanta had a tough day going 0-3. The pool as a whole is very strong with Seattle, Rip Tide and the Warhawks. Their coach said the team had members from all over the Atlanta area and hadn’t played with each other very long. Their zone defense looked solid with Lulu Graham and Carmen Tappero and Sloan Hodges using her height to block a lot of throws. Tomorrow gives cATLanta more chances to get better at working together.
Pool B
Pool B went more or less to seed. Having seven teams in the pool meant that some teams played three games and some played four today, likely making a difference in how tired they were at the end of the day.
Cincinnati Belle went 4-0 on the day and remains the leader in the pool. Their first two games were spirited and gave them a chance to play their small roster of 13 evenly throughout the games. Their coach believed they had good chemistry in the first couple games. Be on the lookout for their game against Boston BUDA tomorrow.
BUDA is looking to do better than last year, where they lost in pre-quarters. In their first two games, they were able spread their playing time amongst their large roster. While they won all three of their games by good margins, they said all their games were spirited and fun.
Texas Tango was a standout in this pool going 2-2 and breaking seed. This is their first year at YCC, and they were excited to make a good showing at the tournament against great competition. Their first game against BUDA was tough, but they got better and used their momentum to beat Colorado Cutthroat in a close game. Texas had a tough loss against Belle; they were up 8-7 and then lost 8-11. It will be interesting to see them against DEVYL tomorrow.
New Jersey DEVYL said their first two games against Minnesota Superior and Pittsburgh Moxie were spirited and intense and overall fun games to play. As a result of the wind in the second game, DEVYL had to play zone and did well. They went 2-1 on the day, losing a close game against Belle.
Colorado Cutthroat showed a lot of spunk according to their coach. There wasn’t much turnover from last year, but they’re still learning a lot on the fly and learning everything the coaches throw at them. Their defense was putting up a good fight during the day.
Moxie is also a young team. For some of the players, it was their first major tournament with high-level competition. They learned a lot during the first day and had a fun game against Cutthroat, trading points back and forth.
Minnesota Superior had a tough day but Coach Brittany Boyd said they got better throughout the day. They were also getting to know each other as a team, with 10 schools being represented on their roster. So far, the competition has been good, and the teams have had fun.
U-16 Girls' Division
Nearly 100 girls from eight under-16 teams from around the country came together on Friday to participate in the Girls’ Ultimate Movement (GUM) Day at the 2015 Youth Club Championships. National Girls’ Outreach Director Heather Ann Brauer led the clinic. The morning was filled with four GUM stations focused on defensive positioning, communication, dishy passes, huck and decision-making drills and goaltimate. The enthusiastic under-16 coaches made the "regular" drills fun, exciting and collaborative.
The girls were divided, regardless of their original teams, into five different groups, so they could head into the skills and drills stations with new friends from across the country. The stations sought to challenge the girls and improve their game, while teaching them new skills they could try out during their games throughout the rest of the weekend. In the stations, the girls were challenged to be bold, take risks and use their voices. They bonded made through lots of high fives, spirit circles and competing in a handshake challenge with a new buddy.
At the goaltimate station, girls learned blade, scoober and hammer throws. They went on to use these creative and fun new throws in a short goaltimate game. The goaltimate coaches stressed the importance of not saying, "I’m sorry" when a mistake was made. Instead, the girls did a star jump and yelled, "I’m a star!" The rest of the girls responded back with, "Yes, you are!" in order to inspire girls to push themselves and try new things, even if it meant making some mistakes.
Girls took part in breakout sessions in the afternoon to develop ideas for GUM recruitment practices, media engagement and future posts on the upcoming GUM blog. They were excited about the future of girls’ ultimate and how they could contribute to its growth. One group practiced elevator speeches on selling GUM to new girls in an actual elevator and wrote down personal pledges on how they were going to continue to foster girls’ ultimate. Examples including being supportive of girls on competing teams and introducing the sport in their schools and communities. Ultimate gives girls a chance to come together with other athletes their own age for a sport they all believe in, and they were thrilled to generate recruitment ideas for expanding the community of girls’ ultimate.
The girls really want to see more female ultimate players featured in the media, so they can support women’s ultimate and see role models that are a reflection of themselves. They saw the blog as a perfect place to feature highlights of women ultimate players and a schedule of when women’s ultimate will be live streaming or broadcast on TV. The girls were looking forward to a blog that would have content about girls and their passion for the same sport.
Before ending the day with a scrimmage, Brauer challenged the girls to dream big and come up with ideas on what they would do to grow girls’ ultimate if they had infinite resources. Elite women's ultimate jerseys, GUM tshirt cannons, a GUM blimp dropping flyers and information about girls' ultimate, and a GUM-branded plane traveling the country were all among the dreams. All the girls involved in GUM day chose a spirit award winner for each team, while they were huddled in a spirit circle.
By the end of the day, everyone felt like they were part of a larger community and movement, the Girls’ Ultimate Movement.
_________
Competition in the U-16 girls' division begins tomorrow with a record eight teams competing this year!
Girls' Ultimate Movement (GUM) Day social media:
Have any questions or comments? We welcome community feedback and discussion made in a respectful manner. Please refrain from profanity or personal attacks, as such public comments negatively reflect on our sport and community.