Hi there, that’s the second time I’m covering an ultimate game and don’t get it wrong, it’s not that I’m the only one that can do it. It’s just that I’m so talented (not).
Last Monday, December the 13th 2004, there was a competitive match between The Lions of Zion (Jerusalem) and The Holylanders (Tel Aviv). The match was held in a new AMAZING field in Ra’anana.
From the moment I stepped on the grass I simply couldn’t stop smiling. Fresh short green grass, strong spotlights illuminating the entire field - a dream come true. That field begged us to layout on it, and believe you me, we did.
A bunch of people arrived from both teams and even quite a few spectators were there. Ten players from the TA team came plus Oren who watched for a wile and David who couldn’t play due to an injury and came to cheer, document the game with a video camera and help on the sidelines (I’ve always told him he has the body of a cheerleader or as Miki puts it: “little girl”. My bad, that’s Dan. lol). Eleven players and about 10 (!) spectators drove all the way from Jerusalem. Respect.
Everyone got settled in and we spread the field lines (Thank you Moshe for bringing them for every game and of course for driving me twice a week to practices). Just before the game we found time to light the HANUKIA.
Anyway, The clock showed 20:30 and we were about to start. Oh! The excitement! Even David was excided [translator’s note: ‘no I wasn’t. I was shaking cause it was freezing!’]. I’ve got to say that standing there on the line looking around made me appreciate even more the beauty of the field. All clean and tidy. NEW! That was the first time I was able to see the real size of an Ultimate field and truly appreciate it.
Game time. The Lions got to play on O and the Holylanders made the pull. After a couple of passes the Lions turned it over and the TA team managed to score. Spirits might have been high with the Holylanders after scoring another goal afterwards but the Lions quickly managed to score twice and draw the game at 2:2. At some point of the game the Holylanders were surprised to see that on every point the Lions scored they managed to answer back with two points. When the Score was 8:4 for the TA team we went into a 3 minutes long halftime. In the second half the Holylanders managed to capitalize on the Jerusalem team’s turnovers and won the game 15 to 4. I had the honor of scoring the game point.
During the game it was obvious that both teams worked and improved since our last meeting that was held in Jerusalem a couple of months ago. I can only write details about my team, the Holylanders.
We worked with two of the basic defensive strategies. The first is known as man-to-man D. What this means is that every defensive player is assigned to guard one of the opponents. When the man-to-man is used it is popular to use a “force”. When a defender is marking the man with the disc he stands close to him and stretches his arms to the sides to make the thrower’s job more difficult. By doing that the marker is “forcing” the thrower to throw to a particular half of the field. The force could go sidewise or straight up. When the defense is using the force the defender that is guarding the receiver positions himself in a way that he is preventing the receiver from catching the disc in the force side, where the easier throws will be made, but allowing him to get to the “closed”, or “break”, side where the low percentage throws will be going.
Another way to play D is a Zone defense. In the game we used a zone defense that we have been practicing in the last couple of weeks known as “Cup”. In the cup one defender is marking the man with the disc and forcing him to one side wile two other defenders are standing close to the thrower on the forced side and try to block any pass that will go there. The triangle that these three players form is called the cup. 2 more defender stand behind the cup and mark man-to-man any offensive player that gets near the cup. The last two defenders go deep and stay there to block any long throw. The zone defense leaves open players downfield but makes the throwers job extremely difficult. One of the advantages of the zone-D is that in case of a turnover there’s confusion in the defense (was offense before turnover) and the offense has a chance to make a quick score and not allow the defense to get set up. We managed to score a few D points that way.
After the game was over everyone shook hands and in the name of the Spirit of The Game, all were pretty satisfied but it was way too early to stop. We mixed the teams up and started a second game immediately.
Later we moved on to the cheers. The Lions started with a great cheer they made by themselves. It was a very funny song and it showed that they put a lot of work into it [translator’s note: “I’ve seen some cool cheers in Paganello but I’ve gotta hand it to them. That was awesome!”]. The Holylanders cheer was something we brought from Paga which could be described as a “layout simulator”.
So until next time,
Koren out.
Translation by David the garlic man aka gimp.
