Sunday, June 29, 2008

It's Started!

It's Holly here, one of the TYUL Committee members. Just wanted to congratulate everyone on a successful start to the very first Youth Ultimate league in the area! Yesterday started our *official* games!

Middle School Red V Green
I spend much of the day in Raleigh with the Middle School division. I got a chance to help out with the Green Machine's practice and thoroughly enjoyed it. I showed many of them how to follow through on their backhand throws to make them go further... Then they played the Red team, whose name may or may not be Mast of the Red Terror (MORT) Phoenix. There was dispute about that among the players. Haha. The teams decided to play 3 games to 5 to allow for lots of water breaks. The second two games to 5 were slightly modified. One game mixed up the players for both teams and played each other. This was a great idea since the green machine had several players with at least a full year of experience (several under one of our very own Jen Waldrup) and the red team is still very new to everything. So I was happy to see them mix it up. This, to me, is exactly what the league is about. Especially at the middle school level where we have a greater range in sizes and ages. And I have to applaud the more experienced players for having patience and helping out the other kids! The other game actually included one coach on the field for each team (back in green and red squads)... I also really liked the outcome of this game because it allowed for the coaches to help direct traffic. And often, at the beginning level, turnovers happen simply because no one is open. The coaches gave the kids something to throw to in many instances, so the movement on the field greatly improved in this last game.

Congrats to MORT Phoenix and Green Machine for an awesome day! And I especially think the coaches did a great job running everything!

I didn't watch much of the Blue V Black game, had to leave before it started, so I don't have any update on that. Perhaps I can get one of the coaches to send me some kind of write up to post... More on that later...

Middle School Blue V Black
Coach Aaron Frye (MS Blue team) has this to say about the Blue V Black games from 6/28...
"We played 2 games to 5 (coaches) where the blue team fought hard to overcome their taller, more experienced opponents. Experience prevailed in the first game, with blue losing 2-5, but playing much better than the score demonstrated. With 2 subs, blue rotated and tired out black. The second game to 5 was down to the wire, with black putting in a huck for a 4-5 win. Then, blue went 4v4 without coaches and used sheer numbers and middle-school energy to win the last game 2-1 (in a game to 2)."

2 comments:

BP said...

Thanks for the game recaps.

Anonymous said...

Way to go coaches! Thanks for all the fun.