After the state tournament on April 25-26, the girls ultimate frisbee team finalized their place as third in the state, improving from their fourth place spot from last season. The team ended their season with a 10-5 loss against Academe of the Oaks, and two wins: 13-3 against Decatur and 11-3 against lakeside.
This season, the team had six senior players and many juniors who had been playing on the varsity team for multiple years. Head coach Hailey Cotton credits a large portion of the team’s success to this.
“I think this year, our biggest strength was the amount of veteran players we had,” Cotton said. “So I think that we had a lot of veteran experience on the field, people who have been playing frisbee for five or six years, which was definitely really unheard of for frisbee, and really helped us with our success this year.”
Senior captain Ryan Butler reflected on the atmosphere of the state tournament versus the regular season.
“I think the pressure of the games were not as intense,” Butler said. “ When we go up to Tennessee, it’s a little bit more pressure somewhere out of the state, but states with such an uplifting and joyful experience, because it was our last game of the season.”
Although the team achieved third in the state, players hoped to get the chance to prove their skill in the championship match.
“We wanted to have the chance to beat Paideia, which is the top team in the state, because we haven’t played them at all this season,” Junior Katharine Cardwell said.
Despite this setback, the Knights were proud of their accomplishment. Senior captain Natalie Johnson reflects on the team’s growth over the season.
“Our biggest strength is probably just our ability to learn and grow together,” Johnson said. “A lot of us started out not knowing how to play or not knowing how to play with each other, and I think with help from our coaches, we’ve really grown together and just made a large impact as a team.”
With many new players this season, Butler explained that the combination of first-time and returning made communication difficult at first, yet eventually, the team grew close, both on and off the field.
“I think we were able to become more connected this year,” Butler said. “ We had a lot of returners, but we also had a lot of new freshmen coming in and JV players, so from the first practice to now, we’ve definitely become a more tight knit team. We would always try to go get lunch, fro yo, or kava, after practice”
Johnson credits the initial difficulty with communication to the wide age range and numerous new players.
“Communication would probably be our biggest challenge, because we are a wide variety of age ranges, so it’s kind of hard to communicate with different people,” Johnson said. “15 year olds and 18 year olds don’t spend all that much time together so it was kind of awkward at first, but we grew through that by opening our minds. You have to communicate.”
Throughout the season, the team focused on a variety of technical training. Cardwell appreciated the focus on specific throwing drills.
“We do a lot of focus throwing, which is helpful to an extent,” Cardwell said. “Obviously, you’re not throwing to an open person during a game, but just practicing the different kinds of throws was super helpful to me. You can never have too much practice, but it was especially helpful to me.”
Additionally, the team spent many practices working on different defensive methods. Johnson explained the crucial role defensive focused training methods were to the season.
“I think focusing on specific defensive plays really helped us in our games against better teams,” Johnson said. “In our early games, a lot of players struggled with getting back on defence, but we have definitely improved over the course of the whole season. Doing these defense training sessions in practice made a big difference.”
The team used many zoning strategies that were distinctive of the Midtown team.
Since we had a lot of veteran players on the team, we kind of were able to shift our focus away from the basics and get a little bit more detailed in our strategy,” Cotton said. “And so we worked a lot on our zone offense and our defense in developing a strategy that not a lot of other teams in the Atlanta area play, and it became our signature.”
This year, the Knights also dedicated part of their sessions to reviewing game theory. This was important for new players, especially those who have not played ultimate frisbee before.
“We definitely spent a lot more time trying to understand all of the different plays and learning the different strategies this past season, so that was really helpful when it came down to states,” Butler said. “I think that a lot of the first time players benefitted a lot from doing this during our practices.”
