Captains Reports

This thread is for all previous womens captains and tournament reports. No matter how old, or messy they might be, post them here, so we can re-learn about who's done what where, when, how and remember some great weekends!

Check this shit out!

This is the first captain's report I wrote, back in feb 2005...that's 4 years ago now, jaysus!
Those who were there will remember the madness of indoor women Uni nationals, 2005.
hey ladies!

this is really long, but i felt it was important to write.

so it actually happened!!!! after much heartbreak and emotion,frantic
fone calls, and then jubilation,(all this was on thursday while
drunk,and friday while hungover) 6 wonderful irish ladies, myself,
fiona, sparky, sarah jane, catriona and mary, travelled across the
irish sea under the name of UCD though representing three different
dublin colleges to compete in the women's indoor national in
nottingham. and what a weekend it was! after rushing to the airport,
our arrival in nottingham was a joyous occasion, greatly improved
with the prospect of club money to partly fund the whole shebang. a
yummy dinner at chutney jacks followed by drinking in the three
wheatsheaves (though we swore with the hangovers we had it wouldn't
happen)and seranading the whole bar (twice. faith and fernando).

an early game meant a 7.45 wake up and pretending we only had 5
people in our taxi, and we stepped out against our first competitors,
a little wary from our lack of experience playing together as a team
and noting our seeding of 20th (that'd be last). first off we met the
conglomeration of northern lights and durham (might have this wrong)
known as angels of the north. a greatly spirited game with some
lovely ladies who became one of our favourtie teams of the weekend.
and we won the game!! a nice feeling.not sure of the exact score, but
have a feeling there wasn't much in it. this would be a recurring
theme of the weekend as we found oursleves matched up with highly
cmpetive and skilled teams.

next up saw us against brunel, ladies we had seen before in norwich
and knew had a lot of skill, especially in the long game. i think
final score ended up 9-4 to them, though i feel this doesn't reflect
how evenly matched the teams were. and we brought out our long game
aswell, with cluiche peile proving to be a play not only boys can do,
with sparky hucking it long each time.

third was phat eds, a match that we generally dominated in, with
chilled o and sexy d proving to be very profitable (though honestly,
when isn't it?). we won this game by a pretty large margin, and felt
pretty confident for our last group game against warwick bears
knowing that phat eds had beaten them. however, a frustrating game
left us the losers by one point, and we all felt a little cheated.
however, we still managed to come 2nd in our group on points
difference. yipee!

our crossover game, for top 8, saw us face off against cardiff
angels, with some rivalry already established from mixed nationals
(though cardiff might not actually be aware of this!). this game was
the hardest of the day, with two very evenly matched teams really
fighting it out. we went 3-0 up and were pretty confident of our
chances, but they pulled a line trap out on us that we really had no
chance against and we all got a bit flustered, leaving them with a 6-
4 victory and us pretty gutted. but as always, calls help ease the
pain and we planned to meet up with them at the party later for a
game of penis. they were then afraid of us.

the party itself was rocking, with us being 'classy' drinking xenius
("not quite genius") champagne and carlsberg with the brunel girls.
they put up a good fight, but we drank them under the table. much
like the cans we smuggled in. after much hilarity peeing on the road
and doin our call with cardiff, it was time to roll up the trousers
and do the hucklebuck. and then shout at everyone else to do it "cos
it's cool". phat eds and angels gladly obliged, aswell as the awesome
jane from brunel. bras worn on the outside, pointing finger dancing
and table dancing soon led to us being the last people to leave, and
then abusing lovely host craigeycup (why do you build me up,
craigeycup baby just to let me down)to get us taxis as he sprinted
down the road, and fiona got a double crutching up to the handrests
from chef of finger 6 (who loves alisha!). some of us made it home,
but me, fiona and craigey went to a random house party, abused people
and got abused ("you've got a jiblet!") then got home and ate
everything we could find, except podge's bowtie...

another early start, with a few dodgy stomaches, though first game
saw us facing off against phat eds, where we were happy to have a
level palying field due to them being just as drunk as we were. we
came back from 2-0 down to a comfortable victory, with D being our
main advantage.

our second game with haze saw us battling with the longest point ever
(about 10 mins) and everyone losing the chilled head. we went from
2-2 to about 7-2 down in the last five minutes as everything kind of
fell apart, with us looking to put it long all the time, but loosing
the head. this left us unable to play for plate, which was slightly
disheartening.

third came bath, where the game was very evenly matched,in skill and
spirit, and we all felt extremely happy with our performance in that
one, especially on D, though they were equally as good, putting on a
zone we found hard to break. their point scored in the last minute
was enought to leave them victors at 6-5 but us still happy with our
efforts. and we brought out the legendary "hero" play to a shocked
silence, so decided we better not do it again. though it did get
bigged up later in the day!

last game was against bears, a game we really wanted to win after our
previous game against them. however, disaster struck when sj pulled
her hamstring and was unable to play the whole game, leaving us 5
women team. though, in fairness, bears were in the same boat. again
this was an tiring and long fought out game, and unfortunately they
beat us again by 2 points.

we finished 16th, quite happy to beat our seeding, though
disappointed with what could have been. still, it was obvious that
the standard at this tournament was very high, where no team could be
seen to be of any less of a standard than another. i was inspired by
the amount of effort put in by all the ladies there, especially
eventual winners positive mojo who won playing iron lady all weekend.
it just proves that there is so much potential in ladies ultimate,
and there should be no reason for us not to aspire to be of the same
level as those in the uk. afterwards we noted how much ladies has
come on, with each of us able to pick up the faults we had made.
obviously not a positive thing to do, but think back to the games
you've had where you can't pick out single faults cos there are so
many.

mvp for the weekend was sarah jane. it was obvious in our last game
that with her we would have been kicking ass. all her cuts were true
and she never fails to bid on anything.

msp went to big red (though close with little red caitriona ;-) who
kept everyone's spirits high all weekend with her encouragement and
ability, especially myself when i'd get a little over-heated during
the games (that being in, ooh, every single one!)and her "artistic"
fotos from sat night will be priceless in a couple of years.

thanks for all involved in getting us there, and sj,
sparky,caitriona, mary and fiona for a brilliant weekend and for
putting up with me when i lost my rag. a special congrats to
caitriona for playing her heart out with dodgy knees and improved in
leaps and bounds over the weekend, and having the guts to go as one
of the only beginners there.

next year will prob bring regionals aswell as nationals....bring it
on!!!

Should maybe mention that we had lost our place in this tournament cos our deposit wasn't sent, but had still all booked flights. we then were told the thurs night before tournie (at the first ever frisbee ball) that we had a spot. so it was hectic.

'hero' play is when you're against a zone D in indoors, on the endzone line. One player slides in on their back on ground, player on disc throws it on to their stomach. Beats the defence every time...

Mary here was the infamous "Scary Mary" from DIT. She was indeed scary.

this is the report for the Deadly Buzz team at Brugges 2008. Just to give ye a taste of the wonders that await us all for this year!

At the beginning of the season, entry of the national Irish Womens team to compete in WUGC 2008 was decided on the condition that the continued growth and development of Irish womens ultimate did not suffer, and was, on the contrary, fostered. Along with open training sessions and the organisation of hat tournaments, one of the main aims
was to bring a team of inexperienced players to a tournament abroad-in the essence of MaC's Tour 4 experience in 2005, which undoubtedly spurred many new women players onto greater things.

With that, from May1st to 3rd, Deadly Buzz competed in Tom's Tourny in
Bruges, Belgium, consisting of
Brona (captain)
Alex (TCD)
Courtney (TCD)
Fiona Mernagh (DCU)
Maebh Boylan
Mo Fitz-Nagel
Rose Glancy
Shiv
Tasha (UCC)

A small squad for a three day tournament-rendered even smaller by Bróna's twisted knee from Friday morning, leaving just 8 players to play 5 (out of a total of 9) games.

Thursday saw three games-starting against some very high seeds! Wonderful Copenhagen (2007 finalists) and oXXYgirls (finalists) brought two bagels (the latter with questionable fairness of play, opting to tap the disc in with Courtney stranded on the other side of a wee river. Yes, it wasn't unspiritied,but was it nice?!), but first point of the tournament was scored against Primavera Olandese (winners) on Thursday evening, indicative of the initial improvement
and gelling of the team.

Friday morning, saw a very tight game against Boobeezz (Belgian juniors). DB fought hard, but with just one sub against in-fatigable 17year-olds, lost a very tight game, with calls and (SCORE?ANYONE?). The next game was against MissB-another Beligan ladies team, I can't remember the final score-but the main point is, there were definitely
scores involved!

Third game on Friday, was against Gentle Ladies, and was again very close-final score was 8-9, with DB players refusing to give up,despite the sun and lack of subs. Though, by the final game versus GoHo Girls (Bab's team!) exhaustion had taken over, and the day ended like Thursdays games had begun.

Final day of play, opened up against Boobez once more. They knew we were fighting for it given the closeness of the first game. This game was long and hard-with points lasting for over 20 minutes. DB had great flow in offence, played storming defence, but unforced errors brought turnovers. Final score was 3-2 to Boobeez. Last game of the
weekend, was versus SpongeBabes, DB put all into it.

Overall, although no games were won, there were certainly many achievements; the team gelled really well; improvements were clear in every individual by the end of the weekend; and most importantly, getting two Irish womens teams to a European tournament, is a huge feat and should be captialised on, and shows the hard work of all the team, and dedication of the current leaders of Irish Womens Ultimate to fostering the growth and expansion of this sport.

Muchos Kiitos

Bróna

Might as well include this here for posterity! Video highlights of the first ever Women's Outdoor Intervarsities, won by DCU earlier this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gOMAofsAhQ

Reports for the Irish Women's team 2008 were posted throughout the season at:

http://wugc2008.blogspot.com/

This blog includes a write up of the Irish Women at Tom's Tourney 2008, getting to the final of Windmill Windup 2008 (both as Biddy Murphy) and lots of commentry from the World Ultimate and Guts Championships 2008 in Vancouver, Canada. Also links to photos, ridiculous videos of us rapping and boring stuff about the open team.