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The Huddle: Where (in what positions or roles) are your best male players most effective?

Kamasue Seigel: I think if you have an excellent all-around male player, you need to keep him on the field as much as possible. Someone like Tyler [Grant] from Mischief—who was just unstoppable because he could throw, he was fast, and he was also a great receiver—is a classic example. I think another aspect of a strong male player is that he likes to throw to/receive from another strong male player (it's just the nature of the gender), and if you can get that kind of chemistry going within a team, without sacrificing or pissing off your female players, it's invaluable.

The Huddle: Where are your best female players effective?

Kamasue Seigel: This may have changed since I retired, but there was always a serious lack of women handlers. Anytime we could have our women handle seemed to be a really big advantage, because that often meant that we had women throwing for big gains to male cutters. Many of the teams we played seemed to use their men and women in roles reversed to what I just outlined, meaning whenever they faced us they generally weren't used to having to defend that type of offense.

As a side note, we always had our women poach on D whenever we played teams that were obviously not using their women.

The Huddle: What skills are more important for either gender in the Mixed game (as compared to Women's/Open)?

Kamasue Seigel: Do you count patience as a skill? Most men (particularly those who come to the mixed game from the open game) need to adjust to slower and smaller targets. I remember a guy who came to tryouts one year who was really hesitant to throw to any woman who got open deep, simply because he was afraid he would overthrow her or not be accurate enough. Additionally, a cutter who would be considered open in the men's game quite often doesn't look open to someone who has played mainly with women.

Basically, I believe that you need the exact same skills in the mixed game that you would use in the women's and open game, only you have to be able to adapt them to people who have different skills than you're used to.

The Huddle: What do you take into account when you decide whether or not to go 4:3 or 3:4?

Kamasue Seigel: We women always lobbied to play 4:3 whenever the opposing team's women were clearly out-skilled by ours. However, we also occasionally did it against teams like the Flycoons, for example, who had very strong women, but who were often able to put in a lineup of men that would be stronger than ours. We did it to keep a smaller number of their men on the field. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. It's definitely a riskier move than the simple our-women-are-better-than-yours reasoning. And our men didn't like it.

The Huddle: Do you have a favorite offensive play that you like to use in Mixed? What is it? Why does it work well in mixed specifically?

Kamasue Seigel: As I kind of alluded to before, a woman hucking to a man in the mixed game is still unusual enough that it works well. Lauren Casey from Brass Monkey is a good example of this. They loved putting her in the handler position and running plays specifically so that she could throw whatever she wanted. I imagine that with the increase in skill that you're probably seeing in the mixed game, that won't be such a big advantage.

The Huddle: Defensively, how do you change your strategies against good Mixed teams?

Kamasue Seigel: We always loved pulling out the tall women cup. My first year on Whor$hack, we were lucky enough to have four women who were 5'9" or taller. When we could put them in a 3-person cup, that typically meant our men would be covered by women downfield. We didn't usually keep it on all that long (just long enough to confuse the other team's handlers).

The Huddle: Are there strategies you like to use to combat teams with a particularly strong female player?

Kamasue Seigel: Here I'm thinking of Skyla from the Flycoons; no one who ever covered her really enjoyed it. She played professional basketball, before Ultimate. We knew they were going to throw it to her, and we stuck to her like glue, but she just has that extra level of athleticism that makes your defensive effort look like you're not trying. We typically forced her to cut to the disc, because she wasn't particularly comfortable throwing it. I don't think that's really unusual, though—everyone does that on D no matter what division they're playing.

I guess the short answer is no, we didn't really single out any one woman in an unusual (mixed-exclusive) manner.

The Huddle: Are there strategies you like to use to combat teams with a particularly strong male player?

Kamasue Seigel: Again, I've got Tyler in mind. We often tried to take away all of the people around him, rather than playing typical shut-down D on him along with the rest of his teammates. Our reasoning was that if we could eliminate all of his outs, he would be less of a threat. However, he often had so many threats around him (Mischief did, after all, win the National Championship in 2006) that it didn't work as well as it did in our heads.

Kama Seigel is currently retired from the game after a dozen years of being a speedster on O and D for various women's teams, including creating and captaining Fever, and helping lead Whore$hack to a National Final appearance. Kama lives in Portland, Oregon.