2008 Labor Day Championships

Riot

from Kath Ratcliff:

A repeat of the previous weekend at ECC, where Riot and Zeitgeist played twice, with one game going each way (Saturday's game in nice weather going to Zeitgeist and Sunday's torrential downpour going to Riot). This weekend, however, Riot came to play. They're still missing Miranda Roth to a long-term back injury, but their offense ran a lot more smoothly this time. They, like Ozone, have a number of talented receivers, clearing the middle of the field in order to run their offense through (from what I saw) Shannon O'Malley, Surge, and Val Dion as primary cutters. They love to look deep, which leads to some pretty outstanding catches in the endzone. More importantly, once the other team starts to worry about the deep cut, they get a lot of really really open under cuts.

They also run a very effective zone defense: a four-person cup, frequently consisting of 4 people seemingly 5'10" and taller, with some smaller, quicker defenders on the wings to take away anything that goes through or over the cup. They also (as if that's not bad enough) will trap both sidelines, putting a big mark on forcing upfield to take away the dump throw, with the rest of the cup taking away all the lanes, and getting as close as possible to the thrower without double teaming. While it may seem like the easiest thing to do as a thrower is to move the disc around the field, that's what they want so they can set up the trap.

This game saw Riot come out much harder than Zeitgeist, and never really look back. They cut down on their unforced errors, and capitalized very effectively on Zeitgeist's by pushing the fast break. We started to get back into it in the end, but way too late with Zeitgeist taking the last two points in the cap to lose 11-6.