Why was The World Games so exciting?
Luke asks why the World Games 2022 was so exciting, and what can be learned from the event and taken to WUCC and WUGC.
Hive Ultimate Feedback 2022
Hey everyone, we wanted to collect some feedback about the content we’ve made in the last year (ish). Your feedback will help us steer the ship over the next year so that we create the kind of content you want to see. It’ll take less than 5 minutes, and we’ll start looking at the response on Monday, August 29th.
https://forms.gle/hQVzSBzdrxuoz5Lc9
Thanks for taking the time,
Hive
4 Offensive Mistakes – Predictability (4/4)
Noah talks about the predictability of modern offences, and how opposition coaches should plan to exploit this predictability like they do in other sports.
Director’s Commentary on this episode with Noah and Felix: https://www.patreon.com/posts/70139468.
2 Most Common Mistakes in Hex Offence
As Hexagon Offence becomes more prevalent, Felix has noticed some recurring mistakes within teams who have implemented the principles, and in this video takes a look at Colombia’s recent World Games performance to explain what those mistakes are and how to solve them.
How Hex Won Worlds
Reflections on My First Season
The following article is a reflection written by hiveultimate patron Travis Norsen after his first season coaching his local high school ultimate team. Norsen is a long-time ultimate player who also had considerable prior coaching experience, but in football/soccer, where he has been influenced by, championed, and even written a book – Play With Your Brain – for youth players about the philosophy/style developed and implemented especially by Johan Cruyff and Pep Guardiola at Barcelona. Despite only stumbling onto hive ultimate around the beginning of his season, Norsen’s approach was heavily influenced by some of the same ideas (from the football world) that influenced Felix, so we thought his experiences would be of considerable interest to anybody interested in Hex and Flex, and get some interesting discussions going. Travis has also authored two training pieces: the Diamond Throwing Exercise and Keepaway.
As a football (or, as we Americans call it, soccer) player and fan for most of my life, I was delighted to volunteer to start coaching my kids, about a decade ago, when they became old enough to play and showed some interest in the sport. We had a good time and my kids both grew increasingly serious about the sport over the years. Coaching them also fanned the flames of my own passion: I started playing more; following professional football more closely; and reading books about football tactics, the history of the game, coaches and coaching, etc. I even wrote a book, aimed at young teen/preteen soccer players, attempting to explain in an accessible and compelling way some of the basic principles of the Cruyff/Guardiola philosophy that had significantly inspired my own playing and coaching.
But in the last year or two, my kids aged out of (and got too good for!) the local teams where I was able to coach them, and I jumped at the opportunity to redirect my love of coaching to the other sport I have played obsessively across the decades: ultimate frisbee. I had helped out with the middle school ultimate team that my kids played on (when they could squeeze it in between soccer practices) a few years ago, and then last year I joined the local high school girls ultimate team as an assistant JV coach about halfway through the season. But this spring I agreed to be the head coach for the whole girls high school program.
What follows is my attempt to summarize the season: what I did and why, how it went, what I learned from it, and finally how it all relates to Hex and Flex.
Travis Norsen’s Diamond Throwing Exercise
Travis Norsen talks through this bread-and-butter, everyday-at-the-beginning-of-practice, exercise that allows players to practice throws in somewhat more game-realistic ways compared to traditional partnered throwing. Full post available for Training Tier patrons.
How is Hex different to Horizontal?
A few people have been asking about the differences between Hex and Horizontal stack.
On paper they are:
(1) Shape / formation,
(2) No handler/cutter roles/distinctions,
(3) Flow is prioritised over yards, and
(4) Equal spacing across the field.
US World Games Scouting Report
Noah takes a look at how the US World Games team played in their warm up games at Poultry Days. Will anyone be able to take them down in Alabama?
Cotarica’s Flow vs Zone
Cotarica Grandes use excellent throw’n’go technique, movement and spacing to exploit weaknesses in Sieben Schwaben’s loose zone defence at Vienna Spring Break in 2022. Felix analyses what they did so well.