The women’s ultimate frisbee team won big at the recent Liverbirds tournament, including a major 11-0 win against Liverpudlian side, Birds.
The tournament saw a series of successes for the team throughout the day, despite bringing mostly beginners with them.
Starting the day playing against Leeds, the team quickly found themselves on the backfoot as the West Yorkshire side had already played a game before they arrived.
After losing that game, they regrouped and discussed what went wrong and what needed to be better against their next opponents, Liver, the other team from Liverpool.
This yielded immediate results, as team captain Vicky Hole said: “Having had a break, we recollected ourselves, discussing any questions, and improvements to go into the next game with.
“This time the teams were much more even, with both supporting mostly beginners within each team. We came in hard and brought the intensity straight away.”
That game finished with an impressive 8-0 win.
Up next was Warwick, who proved a much tougher challenge as they were much better at adapting their style to counter Uni of’s tactics.
Vicky said: “They began with using man-D against us, however they changed it to zone after witnessing our ability to get free.
“This change to zone shut down our offence in working the disc to the cutters, forcing us to use a handler weave to gain distance up the pitch. However, this was slow in gaining yards.
“We then started to stretch our offence further along the pitch, creating more deep cuts.
“With the weather worsening and fingers becoming numb, both teams started to struggle but we learnt their strategy and shut it down.
“The game ended in 7-3, however, had the game continued it would’ve presented a much closer result.”
As the torrential rain poured down and the field became increasingly muddy, the team were up against Birds in the last game of the day.
Since this was nearing the end of the day, they had had plenty of time to gel and were now playing some of their best ultimate frisbee.
Vicky said: “Due to the field containing more mud than grass, quick cuts were becoming difficult, however we quickly adapted to this, stretching the team down the pitch.
“Everyone had successfully placed themselves in areas of which they could create continuation cuts within, moving the disc before the opposing team could keep up.
“This equated in a win of 11-0, successfully capping Birds, and being an amazing end to our day.
“Every single team member improved significantly throughout the day, whereby we became a family of which I am extremely proud of.”
Even though they won by impressive scorelines, Vicky said that the day was more aimed at having fun rather than returning home with the win.
Team captain Vicky Hole said: “As BUCS is a lot more serious, for Liverbirds I definitely set the target for the day as simply enjoying themselves rather than putting pressure on winning.
“This definitely helped the team as they developed so much throughout the day, with high energy and hype throughout the day”.
Women in Sports: Ultimate frisbee team wins big at Liverbirds tournament
