Women's Regionals is on its way!

That's right, history is going to be made, as the first ever Southern Women's University Indoor Regionals is going to be held on 28/29th January at Sussex University, Falmer, Brighton. We're hoping to have at least 16 teams in attendance, women from as far west as Plymouth to as far east as Norwich will all be congregating in Brighton for two days of all-female intense Ultimate and awesome partying with each other & their hosts the Mohawks.

I intend to keep updating this website with all the info I have, a completely transparent process, so your anticipation can steadily grow as everything starts falling into place for the biggest women's tournament the south has ever seen. If this isn't enough, in a few days I'll be uploading a video of Brunel Women's Ultimate made by Gemma - it'll make you laugh and cry, and leave you wanting more.
For now, here's an email sent to all the teams in the south, encouraging them to work out their numbers now to ensure the maximum number of women possible get to play at regionals. If your club only has a few women, you can team up with another university to help them field a full team. So, book those minibuses, get those names onto lists for the 28/29th January, and get emailing me!

Now the Uni Indoor Regionals is out of the way (I hope you enjoyed it), it's time to focus on Women's Regionals. You may or may not know that history is being made - this year sees the first ever qualifiers for a national Women's event in the UK. With the massive growth of women's ultimate, this development is crucial and a huge step forwards for the women's game.

We really need to make sure that all uni female players get a chance to play in the southern regionals on 28/29 January in Brighton. By now you probably have a good idea about who on your team will be up for it, so I'd like you to tell me whether you'll definitely be entering a team of your own, whether you *might* struggle for players (say you only have 4-6 definites), or whether you'll definitely need to join forces with another club to make up the numbers.

If it looks like you'll have to join up, then let me know if there's any team which you know particularly well, or you got on with well at Ladder League, who would be your first choice to team up with. After your response I'll gather the others together and team people up to make everyone happy, & give everyone the chance to play.

Please please PLEASE reply to this email prompty, maybe after a little communication to your teammates if you're not sure on their commitments, and let me know so we can get this all sorted early, and give players who'll be picking up for teams they don't know the chance to arrange a Ladder League event so they can meet them before the (awesome) tournament kicks off.

Look forward to hearing from you soon!

Felix
SE Uni Coord & Southern Women's Uni Indoor Regionals co-TD

And for anyone who is as excited as I am, enough to read down this far, here's a treat: Jen from Sublime tells us how she has run the women's club in the first term to be able to enter two women's teams into regionals;

Overall we recruited (including returning players) 139 people this season...so quite a lot! Mostly guys...but if my memory serves me correctly, we recruited about 20 odd fresher girls initially. But as always we lost loads from the beginning..as indoors was crowded and it was wet and windy for the 1st 4/5 Wednesday afternoon trainings!

So I've actually only got 6/7 freshers that i think are now def gonna stay and experienced wise only a coupla peeps left last season so still got about 11/12..of these 15/16 I see 10/11 very regulary...and then the others come a bit more randomly and for socials!

So yeh..at freshers fayre all the experienced players came down to recruit, we had players chucking around outside, we had a slot on the radio for 10 mins where the president talked about the club and we demonstrated some drills, we had people who talked all day to people wandering past about the game, we had a video playing of worlds I think, or a roadie film (can't remember exactly)..we had a massive poster behind us with some piccys on it and our club name, we were all in kit and as it was one of the cheapest clubs to join we just attracted loads of peeps!
We are a very social club and go out every Wednesday at least...we have a pub who basically put food on for us if we get a big group down for free, which is cool..we also have traditional pubcrawls (freshers and halloween) and our xmas meal coming up. We've had a couple of separate girls socials as well which are always popular!
We also train lots which encourages a lot of people as they can just turn up to what they can (2 indoor and 2 outdoor every week plus separate sprint training)..the trainings are mixed but on the outdoor session I always take the girls separately for a drill or 2 just so the team can bond more..and sometimes we play as a team in the games at the end of trgs..
As we couldnt get into Damme Slamme this weekend I organised a girls outdoor training weekend, there were 10 of us and we went through all the plays, did forcing etc...did lots of drills and games which benefited us loads..we've also booked a coupla of indoor sessions before regionals so we can practice together, with some of the guys helping us. All the girls are really keen tho, and play/party hard..
Its hard sometimes to play separately and with the guys, esp as I want to train the girls for our own competitons but don't want to alienate them either as there's a few of us who want to push for the 1st/2nd open teams this year...I think we've got the balance right so far..