Day 3 at Worlds- washout!

Today at 1pm we were scheduled to play Vimma, a Finnish ladies team. Unfortunately as we started warming up a giant thunder storm rolled in. All games that were being played had to be stopped and everyone retreated to the local club house to get in from the lashing rain and  lightening. This was totally unexpected so needless to say staff werent too sure about what was going to happen next. While we were waiting for the storm to move on we were told we would be playing straight away, this then changed to a later time to not actually being allowed to play on the pitch at all as there was too much water logging on it!

This was not what we wanted to hear but there wasnt much we could do about so we made the most of our time together as a team and had a big sing song with hits such as Living on a Prayer, Total eclipse of the Heart, Bohemian Rhapsody, I got chills, Faith and Too good to be True. It was the lift we all needed after what had been a pretty miserable start to the day.

LMS gathered for an hour of throwing and some drills instead and we now expect there to be 3 games tomorrow...heres hoping!!

Day 2 at Worlds

Day 2

Game 1: Storm vrs LMS

Unfortunately this day didnt start out as planned as there was a freak accident during our warm up which resulted in Liz having to go to the hospital to get stitches in her hand after slipping on a badly placed piece of wood :(

Trying to put this aside we got into the game and started trading points with Storm, a canadian womens team. It was the start we were looking for. We had seen the team using their hucks alot and decided to front them which worked really well for a few points. As soon as they realised we liked the same they also adjusted their defence which led to errors on our part. We started making mistakes under pressure and they gained a lead and took the half. This trend continued into the second half and much to the frustration of LMS the game finished 17-7 to Storm. It was a game that we didnt play our best in due to our own mistakes under pressure. This was not a trend we wanted to continue so we took our break, drank lots of water and ate maple syrup biscuits to recouperate.

MVP of the game went to Sparky who always managed to get free and used her flick huck to our advantage throughout this game!

Game 2: LMS vrs Hot Beaches, the home team

Having played and seen hot beaches play before we had an idea of their best throwers and cutters and knew what they liked to do. Before the game we pumped ourselves up with a song "Im walking on sunshine" with an aggressive L..M...S HUGH at the end! From the very beginning we fronted them. This team had some serious huckers who loved to throw it deep, we decided we weren't going to let them in this game. Our defence was working really well with lots of pressure on the handlers and cutters. On offence we played 3-4 or 4 back when they put on their zone defence which they have used to their advantage on other teams. I am happy to say that we destroyed their zone with chilly offence and lots of passes meaning they we forced to change their defence. As we are a fast athletic team they decided to use poaches and switches on defence instead on challenging us for speed. This threw us for a bit as they cut off our open throws by poaching in the lanes while putting a strong mark on the handler. Offensively they put a few score aways throwing break throws, mainly IO's. This game felt tight the whole way through and I think their experience beat us in the end. The score at 17-9 doesnt reflect how the game felt and it was definitely our best performance to date. The next time we play them I imagine the score will be alot closer!

MVP of the game was Laura

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....