Day 1 at Worlds!!

Hey all,

Apologies for the delay in posting, just got internet access!

Heres a quick update on whats been happening so far!

Day 1:
LMS played the mighty UNO, a japanese womens team seeded 2nd at the tournament. This was a great first game to the tournament and the japanese came out fighting with a high intensity game, quick passes and lots of speed. They took the first few points comfortably but after a beautiful cross field huck from Mernagh to Sinead who hucked a perfect backhand to Laura we got our first score in the endzone!! Woop woop!! With the heat soaring at 30degrees LMS struggled to put any more points on the board before half time. We failed to stop the japanese offence and were not as confident with our own offence with layout blocks from the UNO defense.
We came out after half time with a new game plan, to look for our deep option and huck it alot! This was the one weakness we felt we could exploit with UNO. Using this tactic we managed another 3 points in the second half against the current world champions, this game finished 17-4 to UNO. They were inspiring to play against and the game was well spirited, we took all their tactics with us so watch out for LMS next year UNO :)

MVP of the Day Fiona Mernagh who had a savage game!!!

Celebrate with LMS :)

To celebrate our last session before Worlds LMS would like to invite those who have helped us by playing against us or with us over the last few months. We hope you will challenge us with a final game from 8-9pm in St. Annes park and you will be rewarded with cake, goodies and fizzy drinks. We really do appreciate everyone who helped out, it will make a huge difference for us at worlds!!

LMS finish 5th at Tour

8 LMS players Sparky, Sinead, Jen, Claire, Deirdre, Laura, Liz and Sj, plus 3 lovely pickups Claire, Bex and Sarah took on the teams at Tour 2 on June 19th, 20th. LMS started with 6th seed putting us in a power pool of seeds 5-8th. We kicked off on Saturday morning at 9.30am against Iso. After suffering a bad start with 2 points down LMS called a time out and decided it was time to "screw the noodle on". We played alot better and began converting our points and made less mistakes on offense. This resulted in our first win of the day! This gave us the start we needed and we continued in the same fashion to beat Brighton in sudden death, Swift and Crown Jewles. The day was gusty and it gave us a chance to practice our man and zone D's, both of which needed attention. After a long day with 4 tough games we finished top of our pool and gained the 5th place position.

We had a crazy evening of eating glorious mega sudaes with icecream, brownie, profiterole, flakes, chocolate sauce and cream while watching Denmark beat Camaroon. This was followed by a bedtime movie - Cruel intentions which finished at the late hour of 11.30pm!! After a great sleep had by some and a not so great sleep had by others we awoke at 7am to eat as much free breakfast as possible before heading to the pitches for our toughest and most important game so far.

To get into the top 4 we had to beat Nice Bristols which consisted of a team similar in standard to our own. A mix of experienced solid handlers and throwers with inexperienced but fast athletic recievors. Unfortunately it wasnt to be for LMS. Early in the game they got a lead due to break throws and some luck which they managed to retain for the rest of the game. It was the game we had be looking for, tough but good for LMS. We took alot from it and look forward to playing them again with our full squad.

This left us fighting to retain our 5th place position which meant playing Swift and Brighton again. LMS won these games fairly well to retain 5th which it seems is our lucky number this season, 5th at Worlds perhaps??

MVP: Laura
MSP: Our pickup Sarah who was great all weekend
A-game: Sparky (represented by apple core :) )

Schedule Up!!

First 2 days of worlds are scheduled:

Sunday: LMS Vrs UNO 2.30pm (2nd seeds, japanese ladies!)

Monday: LMS Vrs Storm 10.30am (15th Seeds, Canadian)
               LMS Vrs Hot Beaches 2.30pm (18th Seeds, CZ)

Looks like a tough but hugely exciting start to this tournament, cannot wait for us to play the japanese ladies!!

Training Weekend Success!!

14 happy little miss sunshine ladies kicked off our first training weeked May 29th/30th. We arrived at St. Annes to be greeted by gusty winds and light rain, perfect weather for practising our Zone defence which we dissected and spent the day going over. By the time mid day had come around the wind and rain had died, the day turned into a beautiful sunny blissful day. No so good for practising our zone D against the Juniors! In spite of the weather we persevered and played our, at this stage, well rehersed zone. Suprisingly it worked! It achieved what we wanted it to achieve and encouraged lots of throws which led to a few mistakes. Because of this we gained possession of the disc. However having spent most of the day on defence we were not as clued in to offence as we should have been and made lots of individual errors. This resulted in a score line heavily in favour of the very fast, athletic and tall juniors!! To recover from this some of us gathered together for the evening to eat home made pizza, icecream and watch, sing and dance along to the eurovision which we all agreed (including Sinead) was a great visual experience this year...belgian "puppy dog eyes" boy...greece....skaat man...Woppa!!
On Sunday we focused on our 3 offensive plays in 3-4 and again took them apart before piecing them back together. We finished with a game using all of the plays practised and finished on a high after what was a very productive weekend!

June 5/6th provided us with our second training weekend and we had a smaller but still very happy 10 little miss sunshiners. We used our Saturday to go over our plays and practise our stack mark before playing the u23 ladies from 2.30-4.30pm. The game worked in our favour as our week of ultimate was providing us with the calmer offense and better decision making which we had been lacking in previous weeks. We had finally gotten to a stage where we weren't forcing the play to happen, we waited and were patient which resulted in better ultimate from us. The u23 ladies as always worked hard on defence making our job more difficult. As well as that they have started figuring out our defensive strutures which will make future games more difficult for us. I am really looking forward to more games between the 2 teams as I know that both teams will improve with each game. This game was followed by a layout session with a "slip and slide". It was fantastic to see everyone from both teams bite the bullet and give it a go. There were some specatular layouts from Mernagh, Megan and Jen as well as alot of learning the technique from everybody which resulted in less knees knocking the ground first!
Day 2 for LMS was a little less enjoyable with torrential rain from our early 9am start to our early 12pm finish. We did however get a chance to practice our dump and swing and endzone play, both of which are works in progress and will be tested at our next game!
Looking forward to Wednesday already with the possibility of training and a game!! Counting the days to Tour 2....

LMS looking for Zone Defence

LMS are currently looking for a team/group of players to play Zone Defence against them on Thursday evenings from 7.30-8.30 in St.Annes Park.

If your interested come out and play against us!

Little Miss Sunshine at Toms Tourney 2010

 Sparky also part of the TT team!

Last weekend saw 11 LMS players travel and compete at Toms Tourney in Brugge. This was one of 2 warm up tourneys in prep for Prague. Being a completely new team, LMS were seeded a very respectable 8th out of 16 womens teams. After a glorious day on Thursday with Belgiun beer, waffles and chocolate LMS woke up to rain and cold weather on Friday. We still rejoiced about the fact that we were not staying in tents (ahem, broc..) and agreed that the ground suited us better after rain :)

We started the Friday by talking about team goals and personal goals. Captain and vice captain for the tournament were Laura and Sparky respectively.

Our first game was against Tramuntana, a team from Girona. LMS started with determination and competitiveness which continued throughout the weekend. Our first competitive game as a club was won 14-2 much to our delight. Our second game was against Copenhagen, a team we had seen reach the final the previous year. Needless to say we were more anxious about playing this team. However we took the attitude from the 1st game right into the second game and played our best. This was a really tough but enjoyable game and as the buzzer went for time they took possession and scored the last point 8-7. We were so close to beating them!! But you learn more from a loss than a win and we are taking this with us to Prague!! Our last game of the day was against BXL-R. After a slow start and an adjustment to playing zone offense for the first time we took the win 8-4 meaning to finish second in our group, qualifying us to one of 2 upper groups on Saturday. Friday night consisted of lots of kebabs, a juggling act in the big tent and some belgiun beer. Think we all crashed pretty early that night!

Saturday was to be a tougher day. Our pool had Tequila boom boom (finalists in Paga), Hot beaches and Creme Catalana. Our first game did not go so well against a strong squad of czech ladies. We tried every type of defense but our offense could just not compete with their zone defence and when they got the turns they moved the disc quickly hucking and breaking us along the way. This game has given us a huge amount to focus on in the coming months, it was definitely an experience! We were beaten 15-4. Second game was Tequila boom boom. The weather decided to throw a spanner in the works and it lashed rain. With a squad of similar size to ours we believed we had a good shot at beating the italian ladies. They however had different ideas, they shut down our offense by fronting the handlers, poaching the open lanes and marking the cutters under, their throws were very good and sailed through our zone and man D. It was disapointing not to do better in this game and they beat us 9-6. Our thrid game became a bit of a joke after we were moved to a "pitch" which was full of ankle trapping rabbit holes. Because of this the pitch width had to be reduced in size by half! Playing 7-a-side of a 20m wide pitch was very difficult and made finding the space very hard. Creme Catalan challenged us with a zone while we forced them middle. Points were swapped by we managed to take the lead while they were always catching up. With one spectacular grab from Sj by a crazy disc from someone in a cap we won the game 9-7. This meant we didnt have to play a challenge match, woohoo!! It was probably the best thing about winning that game! Our quarter final was on at 16.45 against Copengahen. After 3 games and a couple of injuries we were starting to feel tired as a team. For the second time in 2 days we battled with Copenhagen. Both teams wanted it and it showed on the pitch. We ran them around on offense and played hard man defense but in the end their legs won out over ours. The kept the intensity up throughout the game, ours waned towards the end. Copenhagen won 9-6. After copious amounts of chocolate during the day our bellys were not satisfied and it was off to the kebabery for some and foody type bar for others. Showered , fed and beautified we headed for the party which was 20mins away. 40mins later we arrived! The broc lads were hammered by the time we arrived having started drinking at 4ish which led to some having to be brought home! The party was good with good dancy music and even a male striper which most would rather have not seen! 

Sunday morning brought with it the fight for 5th place. Our first game was against Miss B and we played against former Irish captain Linda!! This was a great game and a definite battle. The pitches were mucky, the wind picked up and we were challenged with man D and then Zone. As our man offense was the better of the 2 over the weekend we took the lead early on and kept 1 point ahead for most of the game. Luckily for us they challenged us with zone towards the end of the game. Time went and we won the game 10-9. Absolutely thrilled as we had now beaten our seeding, the lowest we could finish was 6th, and with injuries looming that looked quite likely. That was until we got on the pitch for our final game against Primevara. The weather decided it hadnt been bad enough to us over the weekend, it lashed rain along with there being thunder and lightening. The ground was like a mucky soup. Throws and catches became really difficult and hucking was near impossible. We took an early lead while the weather was still okay. This was followed by some horrible ultimate with long points and lots of turnovers. But this was still a fight for 5th and we didn't forget that, in fact we notched up 13 points to 3 in the end for an impresive victory and 5th place!

Not only that but Little Miss Sunshine were awarded with the Spirit Prize!!!! This is such a huge achievement and I am thrilled to bits. The team played so well and fought hard for everything, winning spirit is definitely the cheery on the icing on the cake :)

From my perspective I want to congratulate everyone on the team for pushing themselves

Liz was the experienced handler and kept a level head while providing safe options time and time again

Sandra took down discs in the air like I've never seen before!!

Mandy kept her cool under pressure, especially with technically difficult role of a handler, showing far more experience and knowledge than expected

Sj got D's, caught crazy discs and never stopped cutting, she fought for everything this weekend

Sinead caught everything that came withing sight of the endzone and was always an option deep

Fi handled, initiated, recieved as well as getting down and dirty in the final 2 games, a great experienced all rounder all weekend

Fiona was a fantastic initiator and provided clever options under while hucking it long and breaking her mark

Sparky threw her flick huck like the professional she is while also remaining a calm voice on the line 

Lisa fit into the team perfectly with great throws and a knowledge of the game, we Irish love her and look forward to the connections she will build in the coming months with each of us

Cliodhna, like Sandra, caught any high disc, even with a defender on her shoulder and was cutting continuosly

I, Laura, feel I have finally figured out this laying out thing, now I need to start catching the disc!

Team MVP: Laura

Team MSP: Fi (Boxer)