In 2004, I purchased some videos of previous Mixed Finals as 6TM was just forming and there was interest among the leadership in what prior teams had done in terms of organizing their offenses. After watching a bunch of film, we ended up using a variation on a scheme that Donner Party had came up with, and we had great success with it that year. In 2005, a decision was made to focus on a spread offense ("Pairs"), and I must admit that I was disappointed that we moved away from what had been quite effective for us.
The scheme is based on a T-stack. For those that have not read my previous post, the T-stack is 3 horizontal handlers and 4 vertical cutters downfield. In a sense, it just takes the handler in the front of the stack and flares them out to the break side to roughly where they would have received the swing pass.
In the case of Donner Party, they ran this O with four women. They would put two male handlers out on the outside, and they had very strong women handlers that could run the show as the pivot. This left three women cutters downfield with one male cutter. Obviously, this creates a very difficult 1 on 1 matchup downfield for the sole male defender.
6TM ran this in 04 with 4 men (a male handler at the pivot) most of the time. I am a bit surprised that more Mixed teams have not incorporated this look.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
The Best Mixed O Scheme So Far?
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6 comments:
Firstly - it would be fruitless to try to identify the one true great offense for mixed. All good offenses are well-adapted for the players who play in them.
Briefly, I think the 3 handler, 4 cutters, center stack O works well if you have a few things:
1) At least two handlers who can consistently shred the mark. You need to be able to swing the disc into space against the mark, without trouble, to run this O.
2) A clear and effective plan for how you will handle every permutation of players poaching off of the handlers into the lanes. If you don't harshly punish teams for this, then they will be able to constrict your passing lanes.
3) Cutters with good timing who know how to make continuation cuts when the handlers get active.
Of course, it helps to have long great hucks, a superathletic receiver, and so on. But those things help all the time, so they don't distinguish this O. If I were planning on using this O, I would start by assessing whether we could satisfy those three requirements.
Personally, I think that a standard straight stack is usually a better offense. Increasing the number of cutters in the stack from 4 to 5 is a fairly marginal change, but reducing the number of off-disc defenders in the handler space from 2 to 1 is an enormous change.
Adam,
Godd comments. I didn't really delve into the particular skill sets needed for this O, so thanks for bringing that up.
A couple of things:
-I think the T is best when adhered to coming off of a turn. By taking the second male defender and putting them on the outside (break side), it does diminsh poaching opportunities.
-Once the disc is in motion, we used to bring the "off handler" toward the stack almost to the point at which it would be considered "normal". This opened up the break side and created space for the swing pass.
-G
Rival does a great job of running a 3-1-3 offensive set (dubbed german at 98 coed worlds). They have a few excellent female players (holly/lisa from ozone) so they use 4 women on offense. They have 3 men back as handlers, iso holly in the middle, and have 3 females cutting (dominator-style). Since Holly can hit anything and Lisa can get open on most any player - along with some of their other women receivers -- this is quite effective for them.
BRU's offense from a number of years ago seemed vary solid and was an interesting blend of the "german" and the "spread".
Often they used 2 male handlers and a woman as the iso.
The other 4 positions could be rotated between either gender ratio given their personnel (2M/2W or 1M/3W).
Did we really 'get away' from it on both O and D? I'd say we got away from it on D, but I would actually argue that the D side never really ran it, especially in 04.
-a
I agree that the focus for the O was the spread as oppossed to the T.
-G
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