Women's Varsity 2020

Women's Outdoors: 3 - 4 loss

The difficult conditions at Varsity this year were foreshadowed by the frantic organisational reshuffle which happened the day before due to the original pitches being completely waterlogged. Storm Jorge provided intermittent sun, rain, hail, and eye-watering gusts of wind. Despite this, both teams ended up on universe point with 2 downwind scores and 1 upwind score each. There was excellent perseverance from all SB women, who, despite the relatively low score line, enforced a variety of defensive and offensive strategies which we have been working on all year. Unfortunately, universe point was upwind for us, and after fighting against a brutal cup zone and a huck-and-d strategy for over 10 minutes, Oxford scored to take the win. If only we didn't lose the disc flip... The spirit and the fight that we brought to the game was more important to the captains than the scoreline, and we are immensely proud of everyone for toughing it out and coming together as a team.

Indoor Firsts: 7 - 9 loss

Most of the team had not played indoor ultimate since cuppers or even indoor regionals in Michelmas term, so it took us the first few points to gel again in the smaller space. We started out with a 3-handler-2-cutter horizontal layout, but Oxford knew too well how to poach off our handlers, so we found significantly more success with a vertical stack and a few more deep looks. On defence, we struggled to thoroughly stop Oxford's handler weave with a few too many around breaks. Both teams held offensive points comfortably and traded points to 7-all. Unfortunately, Oxford kept up their edge and pulled away in the last few minutes for the win. Most importantly, the vibes were great and the team was happy to be on the pitch together again.

Indoor Seconds: 3 - 5 loss

The seconds, on the other hand, had a very strong defensive game, completely shutting down the Oxford handler weave, but at times struggled to get the flow going on offense. We stuck closely to the horizontal setup, with some great intiating cuts coming in for huge yard gains, and a really well drilled endzone offence. While some of the points went on for over 10 minutes and could have gone either way, we also scored from a one-pass possession. It was great to see the pure grit shown on defence, and some amazing plays made by new players to the team. One of the highlights of this game was seeing new contenders stepping up to be handlers for the team, and having some amazing looks coupled with stunning break throws. Kasia and Noss are very proud parents of the next generation of SB women coming up the ranks!! :)