USA Ultimate

Women's Division Northwest Regionals Preview

It’s a funny little region up here in the Northwest corner of the continent.  There are so few teams that we could only muster a single Conference and after a couple of declined bids, not even 8 teams are playing at Regionals.  And yet, three of those teams, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, are contenders for the National Title.  Two questions swirl around the events to take place this weekend just north of Seattle: Who will win? Can Western Washington pull off the upset and qualify for its first Nationals?

The top three teams are all separated by a hairsbreadth.  In match-ups, Washington has the edge over UBC 2-0 this season.  Oregon has the edge over Washington 2-1.  UBC and Oregon are even at 2-2.  Each of these teams features a very different style of ultimate.  UBC plays the most conventional ultimate featuring a ho-stack.  Give them the middle of the field and they’ll chew comeback cuts; give them the sideline and they’ll kill you with mid-range up-line cuts.  They mix three defenses very successfully: force-forehand, 3-person-cup zone and a transition zone for numbers.  Washington runs a throwback offense that combines the glory years of DoG and the Condors.  It is a short, tight vert-stack (Dog) and lots of running that emphasizes quantity of cuts over quality (Condors.)  At their best, they are stingy with the disc, resetting with swings off both the front and the back of the stack.  Similar to last year, Oregon plays a wide open, up-tempo game featuring lots of turnovers.  They rely heavily on their defense to give them multiple opportunities to score. 

Who will win?  Whoever plays well over the last five points of the game.  All these teams are so even, it is just a question of who gets in the last hit.  

Western Washington coach Alyssa Weatherford acknowledged that her team was the “fourth-best team and would be in the game-to-go.”  At Conference, they beat the 5-seed, Victoria, 15-1.  The format is an interesting one featuring a full round robin into two brackets: a finals and a third place bracket.  The oddity of Western’s schedule is that Saturday doesn’t matter much.  They finish pool play Sunday morning with Whitman and Oregon.  If pool play goes chalk, they will see Whitman again in the back door semi and then one of the Big Three in the game-to-go.  How will coach Weatherford choose to marshal her resources?  With a team heavily reliant on three very talented ex-juniors (Mah, Miller and Gilluly) Western will want to conserve where they can. 

Victoria, Washington-B and Whitman round out the tournament.  Victoria brought a very small squad to Conference where they lost the 5-6 game to OSU (who declined their bid) and beat Washington-B 14-10.   As the only B-team in the region, Washington-B played with the big girls at conference.  They will definitely be looking forward to their rematch with Victoria which is the first game of the tournament for each team.  Like Western, Whitman’s game will depend on their ex-junior’s players.  They have had a nice season winning PLU-Barbeque and the Conference tourney and they look to continue it in Burlington.

Good luck to all.

##

Questions/Comments?  Discuss in this event discussion thread. 

preview

preview

preview

preview

preview

preview

preview

preview

preview

preview

O

W

O

W

O

W

O

W

O

W

O

W

O

W

O

W

O

W

O

W

recap

recap

recap

recap

recap

recap

recap

recap

recap

recap

O

W

O

W

O

W

O

W

O

W

O

W

O

W

O

W

O

W

O

W