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The Wham!
by Jaime Arambula
2001 in Sarasota was crazy. Hurricane Michelle was causing major havoc for most of the Mixed division's offenses. The wind started mild on Thursday and picked up through the week. One of my teammates on Trigger Hippy, Scott "the Kid" Runkel (who played for Boston back when they were Big Brother, and, as far as I know, was the original "the Kid" of the three that I know), along with Mike "the Wizard" Faris, came up with a zone to man to zone to man, etc. D called the Wham!, made specifically for Sarasota.
In a nutshell, Wham! stands for Woman-Clam. A fluctuating D that changes from a lane-cluttering Clam, to a Man-to-Man depending on what gender has the disc and whether it's on the force sideline, or not.
Sexist? Maybe. Effective? Absolutely! Everyone on the team needed to have some upper-level field awareness, and the sideline had to be loud, and quick to holler, "Man, Man, Man" then, "Wham, Wham, Wham" when a woman cutter (who was also not a strong handler) received the disc trapped on the sideline. A hard, trapping mark would rotatie to a 'no around' position (forcing sideline). A deep poacher and a pinching handler defender would usually force the thrower to make a difficult I/O throw upwind, or fire one down field to a deep poacher.
Turnover, jailbreak, score. Repeat.
It is very arguable that the skillset and talent has increased exponentially since 2001. However, for a team of cagey and wily veterans from the mountains, this was a veritable 'fatality' to the offense of teams running a vertical stack in 2001 with the wind howling and swirling in their face. Obviously, we still had to have the skills to score up and downwind.
Would this be as effective now as it was then? Maybe: with a fast, athletic defense that has a great supporting sideline. It could be effective as a tempo changing defense to throw the offense out of their comfort zone.
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Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 |
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