Scobel Wiggins Photography

Another strong weekend for Zeitgeist, who is one of my favorite teams to watch in Women's Ultimate.

Between Kath Rathcliff and Jamie Nuwer, there is a lot of lanky in Zeitgeist's handler core. They can throw forehands around a backhand mark to a flatter cut, enabling that dump to then throw more upfield to dead-side continuation.

Zeitgeist runs a long side-stack that allows them to make almost hilariously dedicated out-in cuts. These gals run hard, and run all the way through their cuts every time. Their cutters, of whom I noticed Anna Nazarov and Maggie mostly, go all out deep for upwards of 30 yards before turning and coming in. This gives their handlers a bit of extra time to set up the mark and throw confident longer throws to these incuts, eating up yards quickly. In their Saturday game against Riot, which Zeitgeist won 13-9 I believe, it seemed at times like the only difference between the two offensive units was that Riot caught incuts of 10-15 yards, where Zeitgeist caught incuts of 20+ yards frequently.

My criticism of Zeitgeist: this is the only team of the six that I don't feel like they know how they plan to get blocks. They play good individual D and have some very smart team defenders...but I don't get the sense that they are 'scheming' for D's. Riot is going to try to force you to come back to the disc hard, over and over. Slackjaw wants you to huck it so that they can sky you. Schwa wants to put you on a sideline and work together. On game point, what kind of block is Zeitgeist expecting to get?

As talented as they are, and as skilled as their unit is, my bet is that when they break through at Regionals to beat Riot or Fury it will be because they have been training to get a certain kind of block. Either running a person D with a focus on creating high stall counts, or a zone with an opportunity for handblocks or, well, something. I don't get the sense yet that they know where this block is coming from, but they will.