USA Ultimate

What To Do When The Field Shrinks

by Peri Kurshan

The field shrinks when you reach the endzone. 

Your defender no longer has to worry about your deep cuts, and so can front you by a larger margin. The pressure builds- a turnover here in the "red zone" seems particularly disheartening. All of a sudden, everyone is cutting at once, forgetting about rules and technique, just anxious to get the disc and finish the point. 

However, it is precisely here in the red zone that it becomes all the more important to remember your team's strategies and offense. Does your team like to cut from the back of the stack in the endzone? Don't cut off other cutters by flaring out laterally from the front. Does your team look to score from a handler cutting up the line? Don't make a cut from the stack that leaves you hanging out in the front corner. 

It's important that teams have a clear idea of how they want to score in the endzone. For some teams, patient resetting by the handlers will allow star cutters the time they need to set up their cuts. For other teams, the aim might be to get the disc into the hands of their star handler in the middle of the field, and then rely on them to break the mark to whoever is there. Whichever the case, it's important for the cutters to know their responsibility, the cutting patterns they should be running, and most importantly, how they should be clearing! 

One way of establishing an effective cutting system in the endzone is by having it be position-based: for example, perhaps whoever is at the back of the stack has the priority and responsibility to cut. Everyone else knows not to cut off the cuts coming from the back of the stack. Another way to maintain order in what might otherwise be chaos is to have a player-based system: have a designated scorer whose role is to make cuts in the endzone. This latter technique has several advantages, one being that you can figure out which of your cutters is best at getting open in tight spots (or has the best ability to grab errant throws), and give them priority in the endzone. Another advantage is that you can separate the roles of your cutters such that the designated endzone scorer is not your go-to yardage cutter, and might have fresher legs than the other cutters on the field. 

Whenever people are cutting in smaller spaces, errors are harder to correct for, since the disc is in the air for less time, and there are more defenders in the area. So it's important that your cutting technique leave you as much ability to correct for throwing error as possible. 

For example, to hit a receiver cutting laterally across the front of the endzone (i.e. when the path of the disc will be roughly perpendicular to the path of the cutter), the thrower needs to place the disc at exactly the right spot- too far in front of them, and the disc will be out of reach, too far behind and the defender will snatch it up. For a receiver coming from the back of the stack, or for a handler cutting up the line to receive a short away pass, the path of the disc is more similar to the path of the cutter, and so that cutter can make small adjustments of their trajectory to compensate for a disc thrown a bit more towards one side or the other. So, once you know that you're the cutter whose role it is to make the cut, it's important to set yourself up in a good position, so that you can make a cut that maximizes your ability to complete the play. 

Lastly, a good endzone offense probably either swings the disc back and forth to allow cutters to time their cuts off of a swing, or works on getting the disc into the middle of the field and then trying to keep it there. Try to avoid having the disc stuck on the sideline for too long, as then the usable space for your cutters is even smaller...unless your endzone strategy is to score off of hammers to the opposite corner.