The Grapevine - 30/11

The Grapevine - this week in UK Ultimate!

UTalkRaw returns from with a great interview of Brady Meisenhelder (from pulleddisc.com) about better coaching.

Understanding Ultimate begins looking at I/O turnovers with Part One.

UK Ultimate have almost got Ultimatum ready so remember to update your membership and address, you definitely want to read this edition. Plus give the Ultimatum quiz a go on FB to get the UKU page up to 1750 likes

UOIN was won by Cambridge last weekend, make sure to follow the Women at #UWIN this weekend!

Beau Kittredge responds in hilarious fashion to an internet commentator.  

Post by Beau Kittredge.

Happy St. Andrews Day and tomorrow is the first LWL of the season! Wrap up warm!

DP @ tSG

No Heroes

Sion "Brummie" Scone discusses what it takes to be a team player.

Here's a little experiment.  I want you to close your eyes (not yet, keep reading) and picture yourself playing ultimate in the future, playing at some event that you are going to be working hard for, playing in the "dream game" that defines your season, maybe your playing career.  It could be coaching your student team to the regional "Game to Go" match for the first time, maybe getting onto a big club or national team, maybe playing a big final. Allow yourself a good few minutes, play that over in your mind, allow the vision to develop.

Ok. Back in the room. What did you see?

UKU Uni Indoors BUCS Championship Review (Div 1)

Newly appointed University Coordinator Chris Bamford gives us his review of Uni Open Indoors Div 1 Nationals.

This weekend the Alan Higgs Centre in Coventry was the venue for the UKU University Indoor BUCS Championship. With 16 teams having fought their way through regional qualification all fancied their chances of making the top 8 and claiming BUCS points. The unpredictable nature of the tournament, with most teams having not played each other since nationals last year meant the 5 regional champions: Dundee, Manchester, Cambridge, Exeter and Sussex started as slight favourites with Dundee returning as defending champions.

The Grapevine - 22/11

The Grapevine the place to read about this week in Ultimate.

This weekend is University Open Indoor Nationals, schedule was out this week and the 16 teams will be converging on Coventry to crown the 2013/14 champion! Follow the action with the #UOIN13 hashtag. Also not forgetting Div 2 taking place in Dudley!! 

Tim Morrill has just passed through with his Performance workshops, Brummie and Colonel gave Ireland its first Elite Skills Clinic and now Brighton Ultimate are teaming up with a selection of current and ex-Mohawks to give a Skills Clinic aimed at University players! Join the event and get down there! 

SkyD have made the $12k target!! This means more great coverage from US and International Ultimate! Since they made it with time to spare there are even more perks, go see.

Understanding Ultimate discuss the Honesty Guy.

Ultimate Interviews have now official moved to Get Horizontal and this week interviews Kev Timoney from Ranelagh.

Finally Nice Bristols get interviewed on the Women's Sport in Bristol blog talking about their road to worlds next summer. 

Share, comment and follow! 

DP @ tSG.

Dublin Coaching & Skills Clinic

Sion "Brummie" Scone tells us about how the ESC in Dublin went down.

Recently, Daniel "Colonel" Furnell and I headed to Dublin to work with the next generation of Irish players and coaches. Following my interview with Mark Earley on Ultimate Interviews, I was approached by David Rickard, President of the Irish Flying Disc Association (IFDA), in March with the idea of running a version of the Elite Skills Clinic in Ireland at some point. 

Brummie coaching the GB World Games team in Cali. Photo courtesy of Isabela Vivas.

The Grapevine - 15/11

Ultimate News from around the country and beyond...

WFDF have revealed which nations will be granted the additional bids for WUCC 2014...

Benji updates us with his throwing mechanics project...

Whilst Ultimate Rob posts on forehand mechanics from a different but still technical point of view...

Push Pass coverage of all 36 games from xEUCF is now online - check out a sly callahan by Kapow in this clip...

Tim Morrill has completed his tour of the UK and is soon to release the latest in his Ultimate Fitness Products - F.U.T.U.R.E 1.0...

Things have been a little quiet over the past few weeks at tSG but rest assured we are hard at work! Keep an eye out for new content in the coming weeks... - JCK@tSG

The Grapevine - 08/11

The off season is in full swing, see what the Ultimate world here and afar is getting up to in this weeks The Grapevine. 

In breaking news, after an amazing season in the UK and Europe, Devon Ultimate have secured themselves an exclusive Ultimate marked field in Exeter (possibly the first in the UK?), amazing...See how it looks from one of the players' Twitter:

We now have our own pitch kindly supplied by Devon Council @devonultimate #swag pic.twitter.com/EIvRwXEWVF

— Piers (@pierslewis) November 7, 2013

Understanding Ultimate give us an update from the research being done in their throwing labratory.

Smatt tells us what he thought of the ongoing Tim Morrill Performance European tour as it passed through the UK this week. 

Happy 3rd Anniversary to SkyD and to celebrate SkyD are raising money to help develop Ultimate media further! We like this. Go give some cash (remember to add $15 for shipping of cool swag) to this great cause.

Our very lucky friend, Bommie from Get Horizontal interviews Ring of Fire player Roy Matthews at USAU Nationals last month with the help of Five Ultimate.

Want to contribute? Go visit our contributions page, email us, FB us, tweet us! DP @ tSG.

Midlands Uni Women Indoor Regionals

Harry Mason wrote this preview for the Midlands Women's Regionals on theStudentReview, he has kindly let us share it here too! 

Welcome to the Midlands. It’s a relatively nice place. Home to some good architecture. Some nice pubs. Friendly people to visit. Oh, and home to one of the most competitive regions in Ultimate, no matter what level/division you happen to find yourself playing in. And, if you’re like me, that makes it one of the best places in the world.

This weekend is women’s indoor regionals, and this proves to be no exception to the midlands rule. With 4 places up for grabs (that’s right, they get an extra spot because it’s *that* tough), the competition is certainly going to be intense. 12 teams are fighting it out in all (including 2 second teams), so here’s how they predicted themselves ending up:

1st Birmingham
2nd Nottingham
3rd Loughborough
4th Warwick
—
5th Cambridge
6th Oxford
7th UEA

Western Uni Womens Indoor Regionals

Kathryn Elsby from Southampton Skunks has provided us with the preview of Western Women's regionals.

With twelve teams descending on Cardiff this Saturday for WUWIR, here’s a preview of the teams fighting it out for one of the three elusive spots at Nationals. The West consistently proves to be an unpredictable region with seven first teams, three second teams and two third teams battling it out, all with many committed, talented women who are all passionate about Ultimate. With a developmental year last year for many teams, this led to the highest Western team finishing 13th at UWIN 2012. This means that many teams will feel they have a lot to prove this weekend, and with returning players from years abroad and many players reaching their final years of study, it looks set to be an exciting one... 

Scottish Uni Women's Indoor Regionals

With Open regionals over we move to Women's. The UU committee have surveyed the Women's captains and Rory Curran, Glasgow (FarFlung) captain has written the preview for Scotland from this resource.

Scottish women’s teams have a very strong history of success at women’s indoor university nationals. Since the 2007-8 season a Scottish team has placed on the podium every single year, more impressive still in the same time period they have provided seven of the ten finalists, and even more impressive than that is the fact that those honours have been shared amongst no less than four teams. Most impressive however is the fact they cleaned up last year taking three of the top four with only the Irish (excluded this year) from the podium clean sweep. Clearly this weekend’s tournament will be a closely contested and high quality affair.

Dundee women much like there male counterparts will start the tournament as strong favourites.

The Grapevine - 01/11

This week's Grapevine features pieces looking forward to next year, as well as the re-emergence of indoor ultimate...

From abroad - Skyd brings us an insight into the ever entertaining Seattle Sockeye's success this season...

An 'Ultimate Mom' gives a fresh perspective of our sport...

Ben Wiggins considers the importance of next year's WUCC...

From home soil - The University season is well under way, check out the indoor regional final footage from Scotland, South West, and North regions...

And finally - as if Ultimate players needed their egos inflated...

This week we reached 100 posts on the ShowGame! Thanks go out to all of our contributors!

Halcyon's Jake Aspin makes the grab. Thanks to LOVE ultimate for the action shot!

Keep tuned for more University coverage in the coming weeks on tSG... As always, if you've seen something interesting that we've missed, let us know! JCK @ tSG