University Mixed Indoor Regionals 2016 Review

Harry Mason had a group chat with the University Contributors after UXIR. Read it in full below. 

Welcome to the UXIR (University Mixed Indoor Regional) 2016/17 discussion thread! My name is Harry, I’m the University Co-ordinator for the Show Game. This will be a fun new experiment, so let us know any thoughts, and whether you liked it. We’ll be communicating by our slack names, which in most cases line up with our twitter usernames.
 We have writers from many different regions, so we’re going to walk through region by region and talk about what happened. I asked the writers to make some predictions before the weekend, so there’ll be a little pre-weekend chat first, before we get onto the post-weekend analysis. A small disclaimer here that by coincidence, the indoor regions of South West/East & London aren’t represented. If this feature proves popular in future (and people volunteer to help our discussion) we’ll ensure they are included in extra discussions. We can only cover what we have writers for, after all!

Here are the qualifying spots and regions for UXIR in 2016/17 (with relation to the 2015/16 season)

Scotland & Northern Ireland: 4+2 (gained one Div 1 spot)

North East & North West: 2+3

Yorkshire & East Midlands: 5+2

East & London 2+2

South East 2+3 (lost 2 div 1 spots, gained one in Div 2)

South West: 2+2

West Midlands & Wales: 3+2 (gained a spot in Div 1, lost a spot in Div 2)

The discussion was open to all, so expect to see @theshowgame (an account for the editors) show up from time to time as well.

We started off by making some predictions before the weekend. The discussion then skips to post-weekend analysis, which you can skip to here. Enjoy!

 Links to all schedules/scores are:

Final Standings + Spirit https://goo.gl/2icN9W

Scotland https://goo.gl/2N8xuF

NE & NW https://goo.gl/l3jN18

Yorks & East Mids https://goo.gl/djMmRh

West Mids & Wales https://goo.gl/0AQNyv

East & London https://goo.gl/QLWuJ9

SE https://goo.gl/11FjOz

SW https://goo.gl/TGVxVx

*A small note here to promote that UKU are looking for a new university co-ordinator, and some other things. Link for interested. http://www.ukultimate.com/story/uku_university_committee_vacancies?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

 

Pre-weekend Chat.



South East


Relevant Contributors:
 hazard (Oxford) 
jonnyarthur95 (Sussex)
 geegee (Surrey)


hazard


My prediction for the South East region:

1. Oxford
2. Sussex

__

3. Portsmouth
4. Chichester
5. Oxford 2

jonnyarthur95  

1. Sussex
2. Oxford

———-

3. Portsmouth
4. Chichester
5. Surrey

You know from experience that Sussex will get that sudden death win over Oxford right Harry?

hazard

I’d forgotten you’d been out for a year Jonny. So in 2014/15, I think both mixed/open indoor finals, *and* the Men’s outdoor region final were all sudden death wins for Sussex over Oxford. Not that I’m bitter.

In 2015/16, the Mixed final was Oxford vs Chichester, and Men’s was Oxford vs Portsmouth (Women’s was Oxford vs UCL in the bigger region). If you do manage make it to the final though, the odds of a sudden death Sussex win go up big time.

jonnyarthur95  

For some of us year old banter is all we have, I did check last year’s results and I sticking to my guns.

jonnyarthur95

Had a few players drop out for Sussex this weekend so gonna edit my predictions slightly

Fresh SE predictions.

1. Oxford
2. Portsmouth

——–

3. Sussex
4. Chichester
5. Surrey

hazard

I’m going to take that to mean Ashley Yeo dropped out?

jonnyarthur95  

No comment

geegee

Right SE… this is difficult to predict because Oxford have their usual strong contingency who have been together for years, but Mohawks are also consistently strong. The addition of Yeo makes them even tougher to take down but with or without him they will fight for Div 1 all the way.

Portsmouth take a knock losing Will Rowledge to injury and having two key girls from last year Sarah Jeffery and Ilona Livarski graduate puts a lot of pressure on the rest of the undeniably talented team.  Whether it’s enough for a Div 1 Nationals spot I don’t know.

Surrey lost out to a Nationals spot last year after having a near complete recycle of the team, but training with them (and being on S1) I feel we have a good shot at Div 2.

1. Oxford
2. Sussex

———–

3. Portsmouth
4. Chichester (not sure could be Oxford 2 as well)
5. Surrey

hazard  

Having seen Chichester at Sublime warm-up, I can confirm that they are looking strong. Still the same strong contingent of girls they had last year.

I also marked up against an ‘injured’ Will Rowledge. I’m not saying he isn’t injured, I am saying that wont stop him playing. If nothing else, I’m really looking forward to seeing a Rowledge vs Yeo match up at some point in the season.

geegee  

He’s told me that he won’t be playing for a few months to completely recuperate so as far as I know, Rowledge won’t be playing this weekend.

hazard (retroactively) – geegee was right.

Scotland


Relevant Contributors:
 h.christou (Dundee) 
areyoushaw (Strathclyde)


h.christou

Scotland.

1) Glasgow

2) Edinburgh

3) Strathclyde

4) Dundee

———————

5) St. Andrews

6) Heriot-Watt

areyoushaw

1 St Andrews

2 Edinburgh

3 Glasgow

4 Strathclyde

——————-

5 Dundee

6 Heriot-Watt

——————-

7 Aberdeen

North East and North West


Relevant Contributors:
 tomdaly1990 (UCLan, NUXIR TD)



tomdaly1990

Predictions for T’ North

1) Durham

2) Manchester

———————

3) Newcastle

4) UCLan

5) Liverpool

tomdaly1990

Also, a number of captains gave their predictions for the tournament;

UCLan –

1 Durham

2 Manchester

3 UCLan

4 Newcastle

5 Liverpool

Newcastle –

1 Durham

2 Newcastle

3 UCLan

4 Liverpool

5 Lancaster

Durham –

1 Durham

2 Newcastle

3 Manchester

4 Liverpool

5 UCLan

Lancaster –

1 Newcastle

2 Lancaster

3 UCLan

4 Manchester

5 Liverpool

Liverpool and Manchester didn’t give actual predictions but both were confident they would qualify.

Wales and West Midlands

Relevant Contributors: andrew (Swansea), ali (Warwick)

andrew  

Okay here’s my rather uninformed prediction about mixed regionals. Not a single team in the indoor region, bar my own, is in my outdoor regional preview, haha.

1. Birmingham 1
2. Bangor 1
3. Warwick 1

——————-

4. Birmingham 2
5. Keele 1

ali  

My predictions.

Wildly optimistic, I’ll admit.

1) Birmingham 1

2) Warwick 1

3) Bangor 1

—–

4) Birmingham 2

5) Warwick 2




Yorkshire and East Midlands


Relevant Contributors:

hillmaniaa (Loughborough), weorgegebb (Loughborough),
giulia (Leicester)

hillmaniaa

(Appreciate there’s a couple other people with opinions from my region but I’ll just post mine now):

1) Loughborough 1

2) Leeds 1

3) York 1

4) Nottingham 1

5) Loughborough 2

———————-

6) Hallam 1

7) Sheffield 1

weorgegebb  

I pretty much agree with Hillmaniaa but not quite!

1) Loughborough 1

2) Leeds 1

3) Nottingham 1

4) York 1

5) Loughborough 2

——————

6) Sheffield 1

7) Hallam 1

hazard

I feel that at this point I should mention the historical context of second teams within the current regional structure (which has been going for 2 years)

In the first year, two second teams qualified: Leeds 2 (for Div 1) and Oxford 2 (for Div 2).

Last year, no second teams qualified, although both Birmingham 2 and Oxford 2 lost the game-to-go (I believe in sudden death both times).

Consider this a pre-emptive ‘I told you so’, although I fully admit that I predicted my second team through first. Best of luck to all of them, I look forward to being proven wrong!

hazard (retroactively) – I was proven wrong

giulia  

Generally I agree with current predictions mentioned above, bar a couple of places. I still think it’ll be a tough throw up for the first five spots!

1) Loughborough 1

2) Leeds 1

3) Nottingham 1

4) York 1

5) Sheffield

—————–

6) Hallam 1

7) Leicester 1

Post tournament


hazard


Let’s start with Yorkshire and East Midlands!

Final Results from the region:

1) Loughborough 1

2) Leeds 1

3) Loughborough 2

4) Sheffield 1

5) Huddersfield 1

——-

6) Leicester 1

7) Nottingham 1

——-

8) Leeds 2

Takeaway headlines:

Loughborough dominate the region, getting 2 teams to Div 1.

Nottingham (last year’s UMON winners) only just scrape into Div 2.

@giulia, any first thoughts to take away? Well done on nationals with Leicester!

giulia  

I was surprised at how well Huddersfield did, considering they weren’t in the top 7 predictions

Also very surprised with Nottingham, although Leicester played them twice and came out on top only marginally with a 6-5 win in both games. I don’t think they had the edge they usually do.

hazard

Nottingham have lost Ben Poole this year, might be a big one.

Did you see Sheffield Hallam at all? All you guys predicted them making nationals, and they only ended up 10th.

giulia

Hallam finished 10th I’m pretty sure

hazard (retroactively) – we had no further comment here, so here’s Hallam scoring a callahan instead – https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1134930013269970

hazard

@hillmaniaa, any comment on the dominant Loughborough performance?

I should preface by saying he actually predicted Loughborough 2s to come 3rd, but I suggested to put them a bit lower in his prediction. I was clearly wrong, and you have my apologies.

hillmaniaa

We were pretty confident since we only lost Ruth Nicholson to injury this year; other than that we had nothing to change apart from our tactics. Our 1s and 2s had different styles, but both were immensely effective. The 1s and 2s were so hard to choose teams for, looking forward to matching up against my own 2nd team at nationals if it happens.

We picked up Ben Davies, a New Zealand u23 on a PhD at lboro, who was relatively untested and was incredible for our 2s.

Yeah my confidence in the 2s to come 3rd was mostly because of the hard work our whole club has put in. We haven’t had a competitive tournament or game until indoor regionals and considering our 3rds finished 11th it gives me a lot of faith in the way we are running things here. Plus Alex Walsh dabbed when he won MVP for the final, it was outrageous.

theshowgame

Oh walshy

giulia  

That was very funny!

hillmaniaa

We were nervous matching up against Leeds simply because our region was so zone-heavy, playing man in the final against Leeds meant we had to step up quickly. We relied on our fantastic women and it worked. Can’t give them enough credit; our success was thanks to our girls.

ali

How many first teams did your thirds beat??

hillmaniaa  

Bear with me, it’s on our public Facebook

hazard

Loughborough 3 finished 11/22. A very strong performance.

hillmaniaa  

Our 3s beat Trent 2s, Hallam 2 (by a bigger margin that our 1s did, beat them 9-0?!?!) lost 6-8 to Hallam 1 and beat York 1 6-2. Y+em is looking very purple.

Also drew 5-5 with Trent 1 on Saturday

hazard (retroactive) Loughborough 1 vs Hallam 2 was 10-1. Loughborough 3 vs Hallam 2 was 9-0, so still very impressive!

hazard

Very well done man! You should be proud. Let’s finish this region with some advice for other captains regarding second/third teams.

hillmaniaa  

Play mixed. Trust your girls. Our teams relied heavily on our women and it worked for us, and we have an incredible foundation for a massive club for years to come. Make your tactics transferable through teams because you can simply teach by playing. And get drunk like twice a week because frisbee isn’t a real sport.

hazard

Alright, onto the other region to completely defy convention wisdom. Wales and West Midlands. @ali, care to give us a run down?

ali

So no surprises about the winners (Birmingham – UBU) however the 1v2 did go to universe, and their game against Cardiff wasn’t exactly comfortable either.

Big news obviously of the battle of the seconds, Warwick 2 vs UBU 2.

In other news, Coventry, after not having enough girls to field even a single mixed team last year, had two teams this year, and their first team didn’t do too badly either.

hazard

Results for the region:

1. Birmingham 1
2. Warwick 1
3. Cardiff 1

—

4. Warwick 2
5. Bangor 1

—

6. Birmingham 2

What made the Warwick 2 vs Birmingham 2 game so good then?

ali

Birmingham 2 were 5-1 up, it went to 6-2 and then Warwick 2 scored 5 in a row, one of which was a Callahan

One of the most stressful games I’ve ever watched

hazard  

Ouch.

ali

https://youtu.be/rRU3LMoecXE the comeback train starts around 12 minutes in

Warwick 2 vs. Birmingham 2 – WWUXIR 2016 4v5

hazard

This was the game to guarantee a spot at nationals right?

ali

Yes

So what was interesting was that if Warwick 2 had won the 2v3 against Warwick 1, both teams would have been in div 1

hazard

Well, good work Warwick for resisting the temptation to throw a game. Not that it would have looked at all suspicious

Northern Regionals

tomdaly1990

Results:

1)    Manchester

2)    UCLan

——

3)    Newcastle

4)    Durham

5)    Lancaster

——-

6)    Liverpool

tomdaly1990

Top 2 go to Div 1, next 3 go to Div 2

hazard  

Seems like the same six teams were circling the predictions constantly there. Liverpool being the one to miss out.

tomdaly1990

No-one particularly gave UCLan a chance to losing so many players and not having a great recruitment in the last few years, but having Kim Wardell certainly helped them reach Division 1 for the second year in a row. They went down to three women due to their women’s captain, Mel Thompson, getting injured in their 1st match but battled on and picked up wins over Newcastle twice and a big win over Manchester on the Saturday to really aid them. They should be delighted with the final standings.

Manchester had Steve Dixon on the Sunday which made them practically unbeatable. They went on to beat top seed Durham in the 1 vs 4 match, putting them in the driving seat for the rest of the tournament. Durham were heavy favourites for this one, so there will be no surprise if they are disappointed with a 4th place finish. 


One result that some considered an upset was Durham losing to Newcastle on universe point 6-5 to consign them to 4th place and Division 2. That being said, Newcastle, led by captain, Ivan Mladjenovic, deserved their win and place at Nationals and easily could have hit division 1 had other results gone their way. Newcastle 2 almost caused a couple of upsets and really pushed some first teams very closely.

Finally, Lancaster take up the last division 2 space after making life a little more difficult for themselves but did look a lot more convincing in their 5/6 match against Liverpool. They will definitely look to improve and gel quicker than they did this weekend before Nationals.

Snapshot headlines – Durham were big favourites to finish 1st again, Manchester sprung a surprise on Sunday, UCLan defied odds and expectations to hit 2nd, Lancaster were a little unconvincing as I feel they could have been a little more emphatic – maybe a testament to their players, Liverpool will be disappointed to go out in the same way as last year – at least it wasn’t on Universe Point, Newcastle will be happy and still look better all the time

hazard

Not only universe point, but a point block callahan on universe point, as the Manchester Uni twitter feed delighted in tweeting again before the tournament

https://twitter.com/umultimate/status/790924433460461569

Also, here is the NUXIR final for anyone interested https://www.periscope.tv/w/1BdGYdVwvPYKX

tomdaly1990

Yeah, it was pretty amazing. It’s a shame there wasn’t such drama caught on camera this year

But the Durham Newcastle 3/4 crossover was intense

Newcastle won that on Universe point to end Div 1 hopes for Durham

Lancaster had Declan Cartwright and James Borley, so I think people, including themselves judging by predictions, thought they’d finish higher

hazard  

That region is going to look so different when Steve Dixon and Kim Wardell finally graduate. Both teams have depth, but it looks like those two players may have pushed their teams to Div 1.

tomdaly1990  

Sadly, I worry about UCLan after this year. A number of them will be graduating and they will pay for lack of recruitment from last year and this year

hazard  

I know Dec Cartwright as a big player too. He played for Chevron Action Flash at nationals, helping them come 2nd in the UK! That’s a huge pick-up.

Alright, thanks Tom, that’s fantastic. If you have any takeaways, now’s the time.

tomdaly1990  

Manchester will always be okay with their depth, they always recruit well. UCLan’s model is unfortunately dwindling unless they do something drastic, although they have the resources and GB U24 mixed manager Callum Spiers coaching them is a help. Lancaster are lucky to have Dec, but some of their other players are still improving, including Alex Hole after a year playing in Germany

hazard  

Sweet. I declare the discussion on Scotland open!

areyoushaw

Results

1. Glasgow,  
2. Flatball,  
3. Edinburgh,  
4. Strathclyde   

—–

5.Aberdeen,

6.Heriot Watt,  

—–

7. Dundee 1

Dundee went from second in UK to 7th in Scotland.

I guess @h.christou will have more to say on that!

h.christou  

Only main headline is that Dundee failed to finish in top 6. This was due to a lot of key players unavailable for the guys, also we have suffered badly on female recruitment. Tiffany Thomas, Aisling Barton and Chloe Tupper (along with current Denitsa Moralieva) led the line last year and those three have graduated. We had 3 girls on the 1sts, 2 were freshers and Deni was basically injured.

areyoushaw

Glasgow won, even though they lost the well known Rory Curran and side kick Amina Malik

h.christou

Glasgow look strong, Flatball surprised many and got to the final, Aberdeen probably should have qualified for div 1, they were one of the more surprising.

hazard

I also want to give Glasgow 6 a shout out. For one, they had a 6th team. For two, they won spirit and came 16/24. That’s so good I’m getting a little suspicious about it being a 6th team.

h.christou

Yeah, Glasgow seem to be too good at training freshers how to play indoors.

areyoushaw

Benji has commented on our Scottish university ultimate page that there were many incorrect spirit results

A few submissions below 6 and above 14. All very dubious imo.

hazard

Aberdeen’s only BUCS result so far is a 15-4 loss to Strathclyde. I for one am very interested to see their Women’s and Men’s results indoors.

h.christou  

the men’s team have limited depth, maybe suited to indoors more, but their girls are pretty good too

areyoushaw

Interestingly Aberdeen played Strathclyde twice.  In the first game It was very close. (I think Aberdeen won on universe) but in the second Strathclyde beat Aberdeen 9-2 to go to Div 1. Only difference is Ab lost one player, Aaron Roberts to injury.

hazard  

Wow, strong! That’s fairly conclusive.

areyoushaw  

Yes apparently it was the girls and Aaron doing the majority.

hazard  

Right, I’ll leave the final thought on Scotland to the Dundee Ultimate twitter feed. https://twitter.com/DundeeUltimate/status/792714640497180672

Discussion on South East is open!

geegee

SE I feel is always an exciting region and there’s probably loads to say so just to summarise. Div 1: Oxford dominated in usual fashion playing true mixed playing through every single one of their players and with great spirit it seems (they won). Chichester are a sneaky and athletic team really clawing their way to Div 1 taking down Mohawks in an incredible 2v3 to universe point.

Div 2: Mohawks had a shock drop into Div 2 despite having some intense games against champions Oxford and second place Chichester. They really utilised their height and athleticism to their advantage against their opponents making them tough to beat. Portsmouth came with only three girls, but proved that they were not a team to mess with. Their men are very experienced and consist of mostly A Tour players. Finally, Surrey reclaimed a spot for nationals after losing out last year. The highlight was most definitely beating Mohawks for the first time in years (video will be uploaded to TSU Youtube channel soon), in a very tight game.

hazard  

https://www.youtube.com/user/TeamSurreyUltimate

hazard

Full SE results

1. Oxford 1
2. Chichester 1 (Cobras)

—-

3. Sussex 1 (Mohawks)
4. Portsmouth 1 (Sublime)
5. Surrey 1

—

6. Reading 1 (Knights)

jonnyarthur95

I thought Oxford were deserved winners, played the most consistent level and were easily the best organised team at the tournament. I think Mohawks were very unfortunate to drop into div 2 having beaten Chichester fairly comfortably earlier in the day they just couldn’t seem to find the same gear the had in that game and against Oxford in the final. Losing Vicky James (to injury in the 2vs3) was huge there as she was shredding teams with quick breaks all weekend.

geegee

Yeah Mohawks are a team I really admire because of their consistency from year to year. They manage to have great retention of new and upcoming players, really making them such a solid squad through all divisions.

jonnyarthur95

That’s not to say Chichester were undeserving, they played at high level all weekend and their women consistently helped them over teams who had stronger men

hazard

Yeah. I don’t think it’s any coincidence they beat Sublime twice, given how well they did mixed.  They’ll lose a lot of players after this year, but they showed that they earned their spot in Div 1 last year with a good nationals performance, and then added a former GB U17 player (Connor Dodds) this year.  Expect them to be putting everything in.

geegee

Reading were always a team to watch out for throughout the weekend; their club level players are all very experienced with mixed ultimate what with Reading being European champions this year in Frankfurt.

hazard  

I think they missed Ben Peppiatt on the final day. He played DED open with me in A Tour a couple years ago, and he’s just joined as a fresher. They’ll get Ryan Coons back from placement next year too. I’m not looking forward to how strong they’ll be in the future.

jonnyarthur95

I think Reading are slowly becoming a really dangerous mixed team and if they can get more if those players working with the Reading club then they could do big things in the next year

jonnyarthur95

Surrey were the up and down team all weekend for me. Having only just escaped with a draw against Mo 2 on Saturday they then came out with the game of their lives to beat Mo 1 on Sunday only to then lose against reading. When they got it together though definitely deserve that nationals spot

hazard  

South East guys, let’s wrap up this discussion.

jonnyarthur95  

Well I think Oxford will be a threat to anyone in Div 1, it’s not often you see a team come that well prepared to a tournament and I think that organisation will be too much for a lot of teams

Div 2 wise I think it’s up to Mohawks to go out and prove that the South East deserves a third slot in Div 1 next year.

Also like to point out I was 100% with my pre tournament predictions #mysticjonny

hazard

Alright, finishing on an actually correct prediction for the South East is a beautiful way to end that one. Sean Colfer watch your back, tSG has a new top mystic!

[Ed note – Sean is as far from mystic as it gets, evidenced by his dreadful Mixed Tour predictions.]

hazard

Finally, as mentioned, we didn’t recruit for the East & London region or the South West region. But here are the results and some takeaways.

East & London

1. UEA 1 (Aye-Aye)
2. Imperial 1 (Disc Doctors)

—-

3. Hertfordshire 1 (Hornets)
4. Cambridge 1 (Strange-Blue)

Takeaways:

Cambridge used to reign supreme in this region, but appear to have faltered a bit in recent years.

UEA haven’t qualified for Div 1 for years, so them taking both the title and the spot at nationals is big news.

The absence of UCL from nationals is shocking, hasn’t happened for a while.

theshowgame

Yeaaahh dD! Picking up Rolo Turnell-Ritson and Dave Ray might have helped

hazard

From what I saw of Gui Shuen Tong at Ka-Pow! (before he got injured for the season) he looked promising too. But Rolo (Cambridge Mixed captain last year) and Dave (Skyceratops captain) are definitely good additions. They’re going to be strong in Men’s.

South West

1. Exeter 1 (Uriel)
2. Bristol 1 (Mythago)

—-

3. Falmouth 1 (FXU)

4th Bath 1

—-

5th Plymouth 1

I saw the Uriel girls at sublime warm-up actually, and they looked very strong (taking 2nd). Considering they got silver at UWON last year, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Exeter earned their place to nationals with some good mixed. Isaiah Stavchansky (an American import for Exeter) won male MVP of the final.

FXU beating Bath seems like a bit of an upset for the region. This also marks the first time that Falmouth has qualified for mixed nationals. Add that to their promotion into the top leagues from last year, and you’ve got an exciting year ahead for this team.

Unfortunately their online schedule hasn’t been updated (hint hint), so we can’t really know how close it was. Otherwise this seems fairly standard for the region.

With thanks to Jess Taylor of Uriel for confirming these for me. I’m going to point out here (mostly unprompted) that she got female MVP of the final.

 

Featured image used with permission from the Montreal Gazette