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The SE Uni Ladder League, 2004-2005
28.06.05
Finito!
Today marks the end of the first South East University Ladder League season. Thanks to everyone for contributing to make it successful, it's been a good season for South East Ultimate as a whole, and a sign of things to come next year.
Winners of the 2004-2005 SE Ladder League were Brunel - congratulations due for winning not only the league, but both the indoor and outdoor qualifiers this year, completing the triple - truly a great year for Brunel's club led by Dan Squibb and Malcolm Cannon. The full table of results can be seen here, although nothing changed since my last news post (below). A few interesting stats:
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Biggest difference in scoreline: | Disc Doctors vs Thrown (17 - 0) |
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Closest game: | Strange Blue vs Aye-Aye (10 - 9) |
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Highest placed second team: | Aye-Aye 2 (1089) |
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Most active team: | Equilibrium (4) |
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Best win/loss ratio: | Strange Blue (3:0) |
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Best points difference: | Brunel (+17) |
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Closest finishers: | 3rd: Disc Doctors (1508), 4th: Holloway Hammers (1507) |
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Total games played: | 18 |
Plans are already underway for SE Ladder League 2005-2006, I'll be running some polls so everyone can vote on any changes from this season's structure they want. I'm hoping next season will see even more clubs hosting events at their universities, getting more 2nd teams involved whilst improving the performance of their 1st teams in the run-up to regionals and nationals. I'd like to see every club play at least one game every three weeks, and host at least one event in the year, even if it's just for a handful of teams.
Things to consider which will be voted upon: Should indoor matches be counted? Should the season end after the Spring term? Should one non-student 'guest' per club be permitted? Should there be any changes to the scoring system? Should games be a 5/2 co-ed split unless agreed otherwise?
Other suggestions and feedback are, as always, welcome.
See you next year!
Felix
Brunel, South East Uni Ladder League 2004-2005 Winners
get down and dirty at UCL Beginners' 2004
14.04.05
A new term is upon us, and with it comes new motivation for intra-university matches. The decision has been made not to include Regionals results in the Ladder League, so every team still has a chance to win, and improve their seeding for Ladder League 05/06. The current LL season will end on 28th June 2005, when all the results will be finalised and the winners of the first Ladder League, 04/05, will be made official.
At the moment, Brunel are on for the SE 'triple', to complete their domination of the region this season. So far in 04/05 we've seen;
Indoor Regionals
1. Brunel
2. Strange Blue
3. Sublime
4. Aye-Aye
5. Holloway Hammers
6. Surrey Scorpions
Outdoor Regionals
1. Brunel
2. Disc Doctors
3. Strange Blue
4. Aye Aye
5. Sublime
6. Holloway Hammers
Ladder League 04/05 as it stands
1. Brunel
2. Strange Blue
3. Disc Doctors
4. Holloway Hammers
5. Aye Aye
6. Surrey Scorpions
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1554
1546
1508
1507
1432
1400
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As you can see, the league is far from won for Brunel. Strange Blue are a mere 8 points behind, and having just lost out to Brunel in the two qualifier events. Needless to say the battle for 3rd place is rather a close call too, and an effort from LSE/UCL/Thrown/Mohawks could see a new team arrive in the top 6...
So get out there and play! Finish this season off by playing those grudge matches, by getting your now addicted freshers out there showing us what they got - give them games to dream about during the summer holidays so you can come back next season and righteously lay the smack down.
Enough reading! Email some teams!
21.03.05
The SE Uni Outdoor Regionals happened at Royal Holloway this weekend, and saw much close competition between the best university teams in the south-east to get a place at Nationals or Not The Nationals. League leaders Brunel took the top spot, Strange Blue were defeated by Disc Doctors for second place, but went on to fend off Aye-Aye in the all-important 3rd/4th game and secure the final place at the Nationals. Sublime fell from the 1st/2nd playoff to eventually finish 5th, and Holloway Hammers had a resounding victory against UCL / LSE to secure the final spot at Not The Nationals. Mohawks were the proud Plate winners with 9th place, and Aye-Aye 2 took home the spoon.
I managed to get a whole load of footage which I'll set about uploading as soon as I can, however I'm off to Rimini for the World Beach Championships on Wednesday so don't expect anything to appear until April. All the results from every first and second teams' games will count towards their positions in the ladder table, just as soon as I can get my hands on a full results list and set about the task of running them all through the algorithms. Remember this is the first year running this league, so it might be decided not to do these regionals calculations next year, depending.
The tournament also saw the SE Uni AGM take place, where we decided this season of the Ladder League would conclude at the end of the summer term (July), and start again in September/October. By being in place from the start of the year, hopefully this will mean more teams sending first and second teams to other universities for an afternoon to get their freshers into the game, and heightening the competition within our region. This will make regionals and winter league / kickoff type events all the more exciting (and easier to seed, natch).
That's all for now, hope you all had a great weekend, and keep looking into the event-hosting posibilities near you for this upcoming summer term!
Felix
08.03.05
Disc Doctors have brought themselves back up into the competition for table leadership, by means of a resounding 17-0 win against Thrown, which amazingly has put them a single point ahead of Holloway Hammers, 1508 to 1507. Above those two teams are Strange Blue on 1546, and Brunel on 1554, with Aye-Aye putting the pressure on 4th place with their 1432 points.
There's now a regionals section to seultimate.org, run by TD Josh, which will keep you up to date with news about the upcoming qualifiers tournament in Holloway on 19th/20th March. Josh has also uploaded a highlights video of Aye-Aye vs Sublime at last year's outdoor regionals, which you can either find on the regionals website or on seultimate.org's videos page.
My final Kickoff Event video release is also up on the videos page, a three minute, action packed highlights feature, played along with some music, which makes for entertaining viewing even if you've never played Ultimate before. I recommend giving it a try. Hopefully I'll be able to do some similar things for the upcoming regionals event.
21.02.05
Strange Blue were victorious this weekend when Aye-Aye came to visit them in Cambridge. Both their first and second teams improved on their past performances and racked up many points for themselves, enough to create a tight battle between the best second teams in the table - Strange Blue 2 just four points behind Aye-Aye 2, with Disc Doctors 2 hot on both their heels.
Strange Blue came tantalisingly close to taking the #1 spot above Brunel, a mere 8 points separates the two teams at the top. I'd love to see a match between those two, as well as dD2 battling it out with the aforementioned leading second teams. Perhaps the Outdoor Regionals on March 19th/20th will treat us to such games.
Aye-Aye also did themselves favours by playing some away games - fighting up into 4th place above Disc Doctors, who will have a good opportunity to really threaten the top few positions when they play LSE and UCL on Wednesday.
More videos have been added to the videos section, this time footage from Mohawks vs Surrey Scorpions, Brunel vs Holloway Hammers, and Disc Doctors vs Under Cover Lovers. Enjoy!
15.02.05
There's been an exciting development in the South East of our South East region - a new team have made their presence known!
I received an email from Mike the other day - apparently the Kent University team, from Canterbury, has been dormant for the last couple of years but was jump-started last term, and is now rapidly expanding and improving. Consisting of 90% new players they are looking to enter their first tournaments next year, but I expect they wouldn't be averse to a friendly ladder league game, so any teams out there wanting to give their freshers a good runaround - send them to Canterbury!
As with every team, their contact details can be found on the teams page.
Another video has been added to the videos section, this time it's 5.5 minutes from Brunel vs Disc Doctors on 2nd February at the Mohawks' "Kickoff" event. There's some good footage there - a layout, a handful of hucks and nice grabs, a couple of nice D's and even a slow motion replay of a D & foul call that was retracted after some discussion.
There're going to be some interesting results tomorrow, from Under Cover Lovers, Disc Doctors and Equilibrium, whose activity may see them overtake Aye-Aye, Strange Blue, and possibly even Surrey Scorpions in the league table. Disc Doctors have their best shot so far at taking the #1 spot from Brunel, but they will have to win both their games to make sure of it. More soon...
10.02.05
The games played at Equilibrium's home ground yesterday have caused much shuffling of places at the top of the table. Holloway Hammers made a massive gain by winning both their games convincingly, launching them from 9th right up to 2nd place, within 50 points of table leaders Brunel. Surrey Scorpions also profited by their activity, beating Equilibrium and moving from 7th up to a respectable 4th in the table, leaving Sublime behind and squeezing 7 points ahead of Strange Blue (who themselves are in a strong position having only played 1 game so far, with other fixtures coming up soon). Equilibrium showed once again they are impossible to walk over, getting plenty of points in the games they lost, helping them overtake Aye-Aye for the time being and putting them right on the heels of regional champions, the as-yet inactive Sublime.
The South-East Uni Outdoor Regional Qualifiers are coming up soon - March 19th/20th will see teams from across the south east meet at Holloway's pitches for an intense weekend of hard fought ultimate to decide who the strongest universities in the region are, and settle some old scores between rivals. All going to plan I shall be there recording some of the games with an eye to expanding the videos section. Will Brunel prove themselves to be the strongest SE team this year? Are Sublime going to surprise a few people by successfully defending the title? Will Equilibrium's recent flurry of activity pay off? Do Aye-Aye want to show the rest of the region what can be accomplished by their massive yet distant team? How will the new Ham&Sam coached Thrown fare against the long established Mohawks?
It's all to play for...
09.02.05
I've added a video of Mohawks vs UCL to the new videos section, which also contains a couple of highlights videos from previous years' South-East Student Indoor Regional Qualifiers held in Brighton. Worth a look if you've enough bandwidth and facilities to view them.
Strange Blue 1 & 2 have invited Aye-Aye 1 & 2 over for a few games on the 20th Feb, and there should be a handful of results from Surrey Scorpions, Holloway Hammers and Equilibrium coming in today, which could see all three teams gaining some valuable points in the table.
03.02.05
The Mohawks' "Kickoff" event was attended by 6 eager clubs yesterday, and has caused massive shifts in control of the table. Surrey Scorpions and Holloway Hammers suffered from transport difficulties which resulted in them only being able to play one game, as the fully updated table reflects; now Surrey Scorpions, Holloway Hammers, Equilibrium and Under Cover Lovers are all within ten points of each other, making the upcoming fixtures between the former three teams in London next Wednesday crucial to how they assert their positions in the table. UCL would be crazy not to attend the event (hosted by LSE) and let the others gain an advantage over them.
At the top of the table, Brunel got two convincing wins against Disc Doctors and Holloway Hammers, which have helped them past Sublime and Strange Blue into the #1 spot. It'll take some serious competing to take that place back off them now they have that lead- all eyes on regional champions Sublime to start getting involved with defending their reputation.
Disc Doctors' win against a 6-man UCL has taken them well away from Equilibrium and up into the #2 spot, just 20 points ahead of Strange Blue.
A thrilling, couldn't-be-closer win by Surrey Scorpions over Mohawks denied the 'hawks revenge for a sudden death indoor regionals match, and has chucked Surrey firmly into the mixer, 4 points below LSE and 4 points above UCL. The valuable scores Mohawks picked up has placed them above Reading Dragons, and fixed their sights on Thrown, who are but 44 points infront at #10 in the table.
31.01.05
This weekend saw the first games for Cambridge's Strange Blue, and Aye-Aye from Norwich. SB sent their first and second teams up to Norwich for two rather evenly matched games - their first teams were seeded 3rd (SB) and 5th (Aye-Aye), meaning it was always going to be a tough match at the top of the table. Strange Blue showed their experience and proved their seeding by narrowly winning the match 10-9.
Aye-Aye 2 were seeded top of the lower half of the table, and displayed their power in numbers by getting revenge for their first team and beating SB2 10-6.
These results put Strange Blue top of the table for the time being - but that is likely to change when Brunel play away at Brighton this Wednesday. With both Strange Blue and Aye-Aye clearly showing their potential for being league champions, Brunel will be looking to use their upcoming matches to give themselves a comfortable lead at the top. It's not going to be that easy though, because the Disc Doctors - riled up after Equilibrium overtook them by beating dD2 - will have similar ideas of their own.
27.01.05
The first results are up!
Equilibrium from the London School of Economics came out top after playing a three-way round-robin against Thrown (Kings) and dD2 (Imperial) on their home turf. This means they shoot way up the table into 4th place, just two ranking points ahead of dD1.
dD2 did well from the games, taking several points from higher ranked teams and launching themselves out of the bottom half of the table into 12th place, just behind the Reading Dragons, whilst Thrown's win has helped them overtake Surrey Scorpions for the time being - although Surrey will be kicking off their campaign in Brighton next week and are looking all set to leave Thrown eating their dust, their sights fixed on a top four position. No doubt dD1 will have something to say about that.
The battles are commencing and there's everything to play for...
26.01.05
Will from Aye-Aye announced yesterday a series of local derbies starting up in the north-east of the region, the first match from which is set to happen this weekend. Strange Blue from Cambridge are going up to Norwich, and could be joined by other teams who can get a team together in time.
This must be reassuring news for Essex University's team from Colchester, The Victims, who now have opportunities to play local teams inside and outside of London - lets hope they make plans for some fixtures soon.
In other news, Portsmouth's Sublime are being bogged down by exams at the moment so aren't planning any fixtures for a few weeks – which could leave them lagging behind on the table, Thrown are busy rallying their troops, and nobody has heard anything from the Reading Dragons, Greenwich, or Canterbury Uni's teams.
Everyone else, however, has up to four games planned over the next few weeks, so much shuffling around the ladder is set to happen, starting today when the Surrey Scorpions and Disc Doctors visit LSE for a three-way round-robin set of games.
24.01.05
A proposed scoring system has been uploaded, for people to raise comments, observations and suggestions about. Hopefully we can finalise something before the first games are played on the 26th.
I've also uploaded a whole bunch of scoring system examples which go through a number of different scenarios and provide a bit of extra information about why the system is how it is, what balance it draws between points being an accurate representation of skill and a reward for active participating clubs.
20.01.05
The "Kickoff" event at Sussex University is now set to happen on Wednesday 2nd Feburary. Teams signed up already are Brunel, UCL, Disc Doctors, Surrey Scorpions, and of course the Mohawks. The cost for each team to pay for the pitches will be £5, and will also get you an @seultimate.org team email address which can forward incoming emails to wherever you wish.
More teams are welcome to come down to Brighton on the 2nd Feb, just drop me an email when you know you'll have enough players and I'll write you in. If you can't make it all the way here for an afternoon, send out a few proposals/invitations to teams within your reach so as to make sure you don't fall behind in the league table!
The final touches are being made to the scoring system, which will be opened to public scrutiny very soon.
19.01.05
Many games have been planned; LSE in particular are looking to be very active over the next few weeks which will no doubt result in their progression up the league table. Surrey Scorpions, Disc Doctors, Mohawks, Kings, UCL and Brunel are also going to be playing matches in the near future, with Holloway look set to join that list at any moment, and murmurs of curiosity coming from the Strange Blue, Aye-Aye, and Sublime camps.
A scoring system is being worked on as I type, which will be run past the participating captains in a couple of days for feedback and suggestions before being fully implemented. A page will appear on here which will explain the scoring system in full - it is rather complicated as it is designed to take into account the percentage difference in rank between competing teams, the number of points each team scored, and whether the game was played at home or away. Ultimately it shouldn't give too much reward to highly ranked teams who beat much lower ranked teams easily, but should reward those lower ranked teams for scoring tough points against the higher ranked teams. A lot of emphasis is also put on being an active team, so those who play get plenty of away scores will rack up many ranking points, even if they don't win their games.
Keep watching this space, results will start pouring in soon.
15.01.05
Kickoff event on 26th January 2005 or 2nd Febuary 2005
Hosted by the Mohawks at Stanmer Park next to Sussex University's Falmer campus
Start time at 14:00 or 14:30
Express interest
Interested so far:
Disc Doctors, Surrey Scorpions, Holloway Hammers
Confirmed so far:
Mohawks, Brunel, UnderCoverLovers
More info coming soon...
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