USA Ultimate

The Huddle, Issue #22: Set Plays

• Selecting Plays For Your Team
  
  
  
  • The trick to a good set play package is selecting the right plays for your team. Here are some basic guidelines:
    
    1. Make it worth your time. There is only so much your team can learn, so you want to make sure you are getting the most out of what you are practicing. If you are playing elite club ultimate, over half of your possessions are going to be off of the pull, so learn more pull plays. If you are playing college ultimate, only a third of your possessions are coming off the pull, so put more energy into transition plays (dead disc plays and fast breaks.) For example, Sockeye typically runs about 15 pull plays (40 in the play book) and 2 or 3 dead disc plays. This year, Oregon ran 3 pull plays and 2 dead disc plays.
    
    2. Keep it simple. The-best-play-of-all-time is also the simplest. Stand five guys on one side of the field and let your best player get open on the other. Who runs this play? Jam? Ironside? Sockeye? Carleton? Burning Skirts? Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. I'm not a big believer in trickery. Learn a few simple plays, get really damn good at them and shove them down the other team's throat.
    
    3. Space. The-best-play-of-all-time is also a classic example of managing space. Using the set circumstance of a pull, the offensive team can open up an entire sideline and the deep space for a single cutter, making it very difficult for the defender to cover all the options. It is also possible to organize the players on the field to take advantage of other kinds of space. The two commonly used formations are the German and the flat stack. I like the German because I think it gives the main cutter some nice side-to-side space that leads to some great downfield options. I don't like flat stack plays very much because the lanes are too crowded and you have to move several cutters out of the way in order to make space for the intended target. Why not just start with them moved out of the way? Admittedly, things are a little different at the elite level because of the sophistication of the defenders, but the basic plan is the still to make space for a single cutter. An elite pull play might put three guys in motion, two of whom are making space and one of whom is the cutter using that space. I don't think this is necessary at the college level; I have yet to see a college team consistently pull off the three-way switch necessary to shut down a pull play.
    
    4. Practice. And more practice.
    
    Good luck.
     
  • LOU BURRUSS
• Simplicity, Creatvity
  
  
  
  • What makes a great play great is simplicity and creativity. It should be designed to have a main cut, but also a bail out. It should be taught on paper, on a whiteboard, with walk-throughs and at full speed. In the past, we have relied more on designing our own plays. My women's club team has minimal to no plays, but the college team I coach has a playbook that they rely on probably 20% of the time off a dead disc situation. They are usually called by the handler picking up the disc or by a coach from the sideline. Personally, I would love to use them more, but there are only so many hours in the day.
    
    One play that I have found to work at the women's college level pretty successfully over and over again is a 'double or single with cheese'. Vertical stack, player with disc being forced a direction (or they can be forced straight up). Player on front of stack curls break and takes off deep. Last person back or last two players back cut in hard open side. Huck goes to streaking deep player. Now, if it is a straight up mark, the player with the disc will yell out the play and the side they want to throw to. So, let's say the play call is "Worthy" and the player loves their flick huck against a straight up mark. Flick huck would go to the home side. So, the player with the disc would yell out "Worthy, home!"
     
  • LINDSEY HACK
• The Double Flat Stack
  
  
  
  • It was late 2007, and Western Washington University was fielding an alumni team at the Sundodger Invitational. It was early on Saturday—round one or two, and I believe we were playing Simon Fraser University. A nice group of lads if ever I'd seen. They had just put a goal in, and I was trotting back to line with Dave Bestock, Ben Wiggins, and Aly Lenon, among others.
    
    When we arrived to the line, Aly tells me to call a line. Now, I've called hundreds, if not thousands of lines in my time. Calling the 1, the 2, the 3; flat or vertical; defense on the turn—it has become an intuitive discipline. That morning it was cloudy, yet bright. I looked to the sky above, and it struck me like inspiration from the Gods.
    
    "Alright boys, let's run the double flat stack."
    
    Now, no one on the line had ever run, let alone heard of, the double flat stack, including myself. I received confused looks and guffaws of incredulity.
    
    Like Motzart's pen to sheet music, the words from my lips were a seemingly divine revelation. Here's how I remember it best:
    
    "I'm the one, Ben you're the two. Dave you're the three. You and Reid are the deep stack. Start 50 yards deep. Aly you're the four. You, Brian, and Jack are the short stack; start 25 yards out. You guys are the wickets. You have to stand completely still—we don't want a Berkeley Pick Machine here. Dave, you gotta come screaming through those wickets—sprint as hard as you can—and as soon as you and your defender have cleared the wickets, make a sharp left turn and come across flat for the pass.
    
    "Reid you clear under to open up the endzone. Aly, as soon as Dave clears those wickets, your running a post route to the back right corner of the endzone. Outside-in flick huck from Dave. Score. Got it? Backhand on a turn."
    
    More confusion and incredulity.
    
    We signaled for the pull. My team sets up. It looks beautiful—a 2-3-2 formation. I bring down the pull, center it to Ben. Dave takes his man out and then comes in, busting through the wickets, and curls flat for the pass. Aly takes off and gets a good jump on his man who looks pretty confused. Dave laces a floaty huck out in front of Aly, which gives him an easy catch to run on to in the endzone. Boom, boom, boom. Score.
    
    If only that's how it actually turned out. Alas, I had centered the disc to Ben who had (somewhat predictably) jammed the pass to Dave as he was just arriving at the wickets, not after he had curled. Dave's defender got a hand on the disc, and we were on D. We ended up getting the disc back and scoring that point, but the double flat stack had failed.
    
    So what can we learn from this story? Well, first, never call Ben Wiggins as the 2. Second, creativity and experimentation should be embraced, whether in offensives sets or plays. We've all been running the same stacks and defenses for twenty years. Mix it up a little. You could have good idea, which might turn into a great idea, which could potentially turn into a championship idea. Hey, it worked for Furious George and the "single" flat stack. Three UPA Club Championships later, it's looking like one of the best ideas yet.
     
  • ANDY LOVSETH
• Great Play(er)s
  
  
  
  • What makes a great play is if it works on the field with the players you have. No matter the nomenclature, strategic genius, or underlying theory: what happens on paper matters little.
    
    In general, I would say most team's playbooks (and plays) are too complicated. Go simple. And a few simple rules are:
    
    1. Does the play work? (Not, "it would have worked if...")
    
    2. What is option B if the first pass doesn't go as designed? Assuming first pass works, options for second and third passes get tricky. Be careful with being too prescriptive.
    
    3. What do you do when the opponent defends the play perfectly?
    
    Often it is dealing with number three that is player dependent. Your best handler or your smart role player whose been at every practice may bail things out if no one else recognizes what is happening, but that often puts you in a defensive position, re-grouping to get your O cranked up again. How well (and how quickly) you go from the plan not working out at all to something that puts pressure on the opposition is something you hope to get to with a set play, and your O in general. To practice that, just tell the D what's coming.
    
    All this said, commit to a few plays and get them down as a team. Run them over and over at some tourney. If later they don;t work as well they will at the very least help you probe out how another team plays you or give you a framework from which to adjust.
     
  • TED MUNTER
• Secrecy & Spying In Ultimate
  
  
  
  • In the summer of 2006 Sub Zero cut a player then accidentally left him on our email list. This guy later played for our competition. He forwarded to them our "playbook." But before we uncovered the leak, Zero and this team played in finals of Sectionals. Early in the game we got our first defensive possession, near our opponent's endzone. Mark "Paco" Enright picked up the disc and called the audible for me to cut for an immediate swing. My defender switched his positioning to overplay the swing (knowing the audible). I switched my cut and caught a goal. Paco and I had four years of playing together, making the adjustment easy. The audible call was just a starting point for us. By the way, Sub Zero won finals. Perhaps our opponents relied too heavily on their inside information, and forgot they had to play the game. I have twice had access to—but never used—the playbook of a top ten club team whom we played at Club Nationals. In both cases these playbooks were obtainable because they were in a digital format, easily forwarded by email.
    
    At Labor Day 2006 Sub played an opponent from another region. As I set up the d-line (I always do so with my back turned to our opponents so they can't hear) I reminded the team of the audible for a handler weave after a turn. Then I noticed the captain of the opposing team standing in the back of our endzone listening to my play call. We didn't use our weave audible for that game. Many times as a coach I hear the other team openly discussing (for example) the zone they are about to throw. What do I do? I tell my team to prepare for a zone. I don't actively eavesdrop, but if the other team announces their strategy, I respond. As a coach, I consciously decide how much secrecy is required in making play calls, assuming other teams are listening. On occasion I feel that clarity of strategy is more important than secrecy. In those cases you might hear me yelling the force, or calling the transition to "Man D!" from the sideline. Other times I place a premium on surprise and secrecy.
    
    I do not consider any of the examples above cheating, or even unspirited. I give the above examples to illustrate two themes. First, as the sport evolves and elaborates, maintaining secrecy will become more important. I suggest all teams consciously protect their plays and audibles, especially digital documents that are easily copied and forwarded. Second, players win and lose a game, not plays. The best play is one that works even if your opponents know it. If your play self destructs as soon as your opponents decode it, it is not a play, it is a trap.
     
  • CHARLIE REZNIKOFF
• Improvise
  
  
  
  • In game two of this year's Eastern Conference Finals against the Orlando Magic, LeBron and the Cavs had a set play. They were down by 2 with seconds left and needed a quick bucket. LeBron was to cut hard to the hoop for an alley-oop. Magic forward Hedo Turkoglu had an idea what would happen and positioned himself between LeBron and the basket. As the play unfolded, LeBron took a few steps towards the rim, and Turkoglu sags off him. So LeBron changes course, v-cuts back to the arch, and drains a (ridiculous) game-ending three pointer.
    
    Winston Churchill once said: "Planning is essential, plans are useless." LeBron had a good plan, but he noticed instinctually that his odds of succeeding would be better if he changed course. In Ultimate, like basketball & other sports, set plays are useful to designate a cutting order and give the thrower a good idea of how the field will unfold. I find them especially useful near the endzone, where the offense only needs to complete one short pass and individual cutters do not have much space to improvise in. At the same time, plays are guidelines, and smart players will always throw out the plan and capitalize when the defense presents them with good opportunities.
     
  • ADAM SIGELMAN
• "Point Guard" Options
  
  
  
  • When I play, I often pick up the disc after a turnover. When I coach, my teams are in this situation often (as Lou noted, college teams have dead-disc situations much more frequently than in club Ultimate). Given the inherent confusion of the moment, I value a simple communication system in order to create positive and coordinated disc movement in a chaotic environment.
    
    I really don't care if everyone on the team can call plays. How many players are really going to be picking up the disc after a turnover anyway? 2-3 on your team, total? 4? What I do value, however, is a system where those few players can simply and clearly tell the rest of the team what they want to happen. As a coach, I like to be able to call out a sequence to beat a specific poach or matchup. I like running very few plays, but having an extra level of communication ready to describe individual moves.
    
    One system I've used: Every player on the team is assigned a letter. Unless they are a play-caller, they really only need to remember that single letter (which is great for the majority of the team that is rarely going to be encoding the information). We then use either a number or a letter for 4-5 different kinds of cuts. 1 = deep, 2 = in, 3= break, etc. This means that I can walk to a disc, and see that the defense is planning an in-out bracket of two cutters. If those cutters are 'R' and 'S'. I can call R2 S3, telling both cutters to come underneath to different sides of the field. It doesn't matter that neither cutter can see the bracket; they'll give me bracket-beating options naturally.
    
    You can cook this system up by adding in numbers for dump-swings, give-go moves, and continuation (for example, R2 S2 might be simultaneous cuts, but saying ''R3 and S1'' could give me an open R cutting for a break throw and then looking for a huck to S.
    
    When I played basketball, my team ran 6-8 plays during the course of a game. Each play, however, gave me different options that I could use. If we had a nice size mismatch at small forward, there was a play that (even if not the first option) would send our SF into the post. Running a (relatively) simple system to give your on-field 'point guards' (or at least your coach) these kind of flexible options might be worth your time.
    
    Obviously, this is useless for pull-plays and sacrifices the timing/precision of well-practiced set plays. I've had the privilege of playing with excellent and intelligent defenders (two of whom are writing in this Issue) on my team who, in scrimmages, would tear apart set plays after seeing them just a few times. To me, the ability to react to dynamic situations with simple play-calls is more important than a really smooth team play.
     
  • BEN WIGGINS
• The Benefits Of Theft
  
  
  
  • Steal, steal, steal. If you are the smartest play to have ever played the game, you may have reason to rely on your own originality. If not, find out who is—be it player, team, or just a better division—and how they position themselves to be successful. Any stoppage of play, between points, after timeouts, after violations, will allow you to see what they want to do, given the context on the field. Pay attention during your games. Scout opponents during your bye round. Watch film. Stealing from others may seem unoriginal, but ignoring available information about successful strategies makes your team worse than what it could be. Watch and learn, but remember what you're looking for. Effectiveness in Ultimate is the combination of strategy and athletic ability; enough of one often makes up for a lack in the other. Unless you realistically plan on doing the same, ignore strategy that aims to out-muscle other teams—look for teams and plays that are successful even against superior athletes. Then use it like you drew it up yourself.
    
    An example of a stolen play is one that comes (I believe, but who knows or cares?) from Vancouver's Furious George. It can be run with any formation downfield, but it starts with the disc near the middle of the field, and two players on the sideline—one even with the disc, and one downfield. To start the play, the cutter even with the disc makes an up-line cut towards the middle of the field, and then goes deep. The cutter downfield near the side line then sprints parallel with the sideline back to the disc. Thrower gets the disc to the sideline to the downfield cutter, who then looks up to the handler cutter either continuing his cut deep, or coming underneath.
    
    This play is currently run by most teams in the Northwest. We've all seen it many times, but it continues to work again and again. The reason for its continued success is what you should be looking for in a well designed set play: Its ability to force a defense to concede what the offense wants. When the defense knows this play is coming, it can adjust in a number of ways, but none of them (at least that I've seen or tried) could consistently provide a better outcome then what the offense wanted in the first place. The downfield cutter's defender could come all the way around to stop the first cut under, but this would give the thrower, usually the offense's best, a deep shot to a receiver with space. Deep help could come, but would also free their cutter to get an open look in the middle of the field. The mark could adjust to take away the sideline, but this gives up a dangerous downfield break opportunity. Zone defenses, full of holes themselves, lead to dangerous match-up problems later in the point. The defense is stuck—and forced to give the offense what it wants. Think as hard as you can how your plays can do the same—but if a different team or opponent is doing a better job, be smart enough to recognize as well as benefit from their work.
     
  • SETH WIGGINS