Saturday Training

Turned up on Saturday to blazing sunshine (the hottest day of the year so far) and started to train. We had a good turnout which was really useful the weekend before nationals. We started with some throwing and a cone demo of the new zone (our third different zone) which we will be using next weekend. We then walked it through to show people how the movement of the various positions would look and what to do if the offence tried to break it in different ways. After this we ran a full warm up and went into an a new offensive structure.Without giving anything away this was an interesting adaptation to one of our structures using a similar principle and similar roles, and it was based around the idea of getting the disc moving quickly after a D. We then went into a game to 8 using the new zone and offense that we had just learned.
Either side of our lunch break we did some practice on the sideline and end zone offence which we have been focussing on heavily. We know that to be successful at Nationals we will have to have these fundamentals working for us.

After working on our end zone offense after lunch we went into another game to 8. This would be our warm up for a pre-nationals friendy game against Clapham Ultimate.
Clapham had started showing up at around 1 and had been playing some 3 v 3 when they found that the ultimate pitches were occupied by us, SYC (London women's team) and a sunday league football match.
We had a few people leave during the day so at the start of the Clapham game we had 13 or 14 players and Clapham had 11/12. We knew neither team was at full strength but knew this would be a great test of, firstly our new zone and offensive structure, and secondly our readiness to face the top opposition in the UK next week at nationals.
First point in the game and our defense steps up and gets a block and converts it to go up 1-0 for the first break of the game.
Up until half both teams' offense held apart from one more break for us and one break for Clapham, so Kapow would go into half time leading 8-7 (the same half time scoreline from regionals).
We would go on to convert our offense to start the second half and held the 2 point lead for a while, until 13-11. The game had been predetermined to be first to 15 points and clapham, like at regionals, would not go down quietly taking two breaks and and offensive score to our one offensive score to tie it at 14-14 with Kapow on defense going into sudden death.
Already this was a better position than at regionals when we had lost by two points. We had a chance to take this game and, with it, a huge boost of confidence going into nationals next weekend.
We were tired, they were tired, we pulled and chased down the pull aiming to play man defense and earn a block.
I don't remember the turnover by Clapham but it happened and all of a sudden our quick turn offense was starting to move the disc down the field.
A huck went up (a pretty bad one) and there were 3 Clapham players and one Kapow player underneath it with one Kapow player behind the pile to back it up. Mentally I prepared myself for more defense to grind the win but we came down with it to take the win.

Throughout this season, Kapow has built an identity. We have the flashiest kit on tour, and we have developed an offensive gameplan that is different to the vast majority of what is in the UK at the moment. We have zone defenses that we have learned (read: stolen) from watching top European clubs and top national teams. We have brought together players from all over the top of the UK Tour, from a lot of different clubs who have come together, put in the hard work and progressed as a team under this awesome new brand that has been created this year.

Kapow is already a success story after our undefeated Tour 3 and I have no doubt that trials next year will be super competitive and it won't before Kapow becomes a well known entity in European and maybe World Ultimate club championships.

But the real test comes next weekend. It's time to step up and grind out a bid to Europeans like we know we can, we know we want and we know we deserve.