Scottish Club Season 2024: GUX

By Elise Camilleri-Brennan and Kevin Lakritz

Our season began on a cold winter afternoon in February for open trials. With over 70 people in attendance at trials, it wasn’t an easy task to select the team. But by mid-March, we had selected our squad just in time for our first tournament in April. A crash-course in offensive structure, defensive schemes and some team bonding up in Aviemore put us in a good position ahead of Spring Tour in Malmö, Sweden. Having lots of players return to GUX after taking a break from mixed ultimate, we were excited to see what was in store for us.

With the complications of the new EUCF qualification process, involving each game’s score counting towards an algorithm, we embarked on our journey by travelling to Sweden where we were met by windy and cold conditions. We picked up relatively comfortable wins against Pelt, Savage Ultimate, Weiner Mischung, Malmö Ultimate and DTU.

While we would like the readership of The Release Point to think it was clean, crisp, high level ultimate that brought us our victories, it was far from it. There were sloppy points and a lot of unforced turnovers. What got us through was our ability to handle the wind better than our opponents on offense and to keep up defensive pressure during the marathon points by utilising our full roster. In the final, a rematch against Pelt, we were forced to universe point. Time stood still as Sam Finlay hit Johnny Tofalis with a perfect huck against the Irish zone. Johnny called a critical time-out and threw the goal for the tournament win.

Whilst we knew we would be able to do well, we didn’t fully expect to win the whole thing. But, having done so, we were all riding high. The algorithm told us we were the third best team in Europe, although we knew that wouldn’t last long…the quality of our play had been subpar and we were capable of playing much better than we had. The challenge of realising our potential was only beginning.

Next up, we headed for UK Regionals where we would get our first preview of our local competition. After winning our pool, we matched up against the new Edinburgh mixed club, Heck, for the first time in a competitive setting. After beating them on universe in a friendly not long before, we knew it would be a tense game. We fell down a couple early breaks, but managed to slowly claw our way back to even. The game finished with a long universe point before Heck eventually scored the winning goal, 11-10. The team’s struggles with mental game started to become clear at this point, with the subconscious pressure of having to prove something over our new rivals working against us. Disappointed with the result, we then faced Lemmings in the semi-final on Sunday morning in some less-than-ideal weather conditions. After doing well in the first half, Lemmings ran away with the game, winning 15-7. Feeling down (but not out) we went on to collect ourselves and take care of business, finishing with a solid 3rd place to qualify for Nationals by taking down Flyght (10-7) and Newcastle (11-7). 

Happy to have qualified for Nationals, but facing some frustrations after the losses to Heck and Lemmings, GUX headed to Amsterdam for Windmill the very next weekend. Due to a lot of GUXers not able to attend (special shout to XYZers Connie Hodge and Rob Avontuur for joining us), we decided to abstain from using Windmill as a ranking tournament and instead, focused on developing chemistry and having some good old-fashioned clean frisbee fun in Amsterdam. 

Another rainy and wet weekend was no barrier to us having a good time. After a rocky start losing to Tika Taka Dubai, our play improved and we had lots of hard fought and close games against teams from all over the world. Whilst our finishing position wasn’t exactly what we’d expected (although not that much worse than current European Champs, Deep Space), important lessons were learned – it turns out that having the attitude that we should be winning games doesn’t always help with mental game. Who knew? 

After returning from Windmill, we began to take preparations for Nationals more seriously. Unfortunately, we were plagued by the injury bug and had several players who would be unable to boot up. To make matters worse, the squad was faced with a distressing road incident on the way down to the tournament, resulting in an understandably altered atmosphere. These regrettable factors meant that our earlier decision not to count UK Nationals as a ranking tournament paid off. We instead used the tournament to focus on developing our play, chemistry, and team culture ahead of Summer Tour.

The result? Well, the score lines at Nationals were not pretty. We opened with a universe point loss to Thundering Herd and proceeded to yet again get thrashed by Lemmings. Out of contention, we then got badly beaten by Reading and again on Sunday morning by Brighton. Our only victory came in the 7th place consolation against The Brown. It was a tough weekend in terms of results but we’d made good progress in terms of reestablishing systems, defining roles, and building a more resilient and positively-minded team culture.

With one additional tournament to go to determine European qualifications, all focus was on Summer Tour in Birmingham. We made some better-late-than-never changes to our O-line, switching over some female handlers and male cutters, in the hope that it would help us find the synergy we’d been looking for all season (spoiler – it was the right decision).

In an unusual and unfortunate turn of events, the tournament featured only 5 teams – reigning European and UK champions Deep Space, plus Reading, Lemmings and Brighton (BN1). Our first game against Deep Space was a great test for us, and we did well to play close to them, losing 10-7. Our next game against Lemmings (for the third time this year) was also a great game, coming down to universe point. Unfortunately for GUX, Lemmings punched in the winning goal. After losing handily to Reading, (again, loss number 2 for those keeping count) we faced BN1 in a game to make the 4 team “bracket”. After going up several breaks, they tightened things up and played a tricky zone defense which frustrated our handlers and made some great plays on hammers and jump discs to win the game.

Like the tournament that came before it, this was in some ways, a failed weekend in terms of results. Despite close scorelines against most teams, we had lost all our games. However, the tournament marked a turning point for the squad; we’d undoubtedly played our best ultimate of the season in spite of losing, reigniting our team spirit. From a captaincy viewpoint, had our season ended there, knowing that we 1) gave some strong teams a good scare, and 2) found our mojo again, might have made the underwhelming end a bit easier to handle. Thankfully, the algorithm favoured our scorelines, and our early season wins in Sweden. This put us at 10th in the rankings and we’d earned a hard fought place at EUCS in Belgium!

We approached Euros with the attitude that we were capable of doing well and winning games, but didn’t want to pile on more pressure by saying we wanted a specific placement. Although we did want to win at least one game. In our pool, we drew Mosquitos, Padova and, you guessed it, Lemmings. And we faced the latter team first up on day 1, to our delight. To set the scene, a steady driving rain poured along with gale force winds on a day where no-one, aside from an extremely devoted ultimate player, would consider throwing a disc to be something worthwhile. Most of the team arrived late to the pitches, leaving us 30 minutes to prepare for the game. The few spectators who were there shivered on the sideline. But, for the first time since Regionals 2022, GUX beat Lemmings (10-7)! In those playing conditions, anything was possible, and we made sure to capitalise on it in ways we hadn’t been able to earlier in the season. We were reaping the rewards of Summer Tour – we trusted each other, enjoyed ourselves, and put it all out on the pitch. An easy highlight of the season.

Unfortunately, we were unable to carry the momentum forward, losing to both Mosquitos and Padova and finishing third in the pool, earning us a spot in pre-quarters. And of all the teams to draw in pre-quarters? Reading! For the third time of the year, Reading was able to prove they were the more skilled team, beating us thoroughly to move on to quarter-finals. Most of the time, losing in bracket play at Euros would mark the end of meaningful play for a team. However, this loss meant we were due to match up with Scottish rivals Heck just a few hours later. We channeled our frustrations from being eliminated and played well to beat them 15-9, avenging our universe point loss from Regionals.

The tournament ended with a painful loss to PUC. Despite doing our best to fight back, some excruciatingly long points and unfortunate turnovers led us to eventually losing steam, and with it, the game. And so, we left Euros as the 12th best mixed team in Europe, 1st best in Scotland, and technically 3rd best in the UK.

Whilst the 2024 season wasn’t all peaches and roses for GUX (are things ever?), we showed Europe, and the UK, that we’re a team to be reckoned with. Not only did we convincingly earn our spot at Euros, but we were a real competitor once we got there. Overall, 2024 was a fantastic year for GUX, and under the new captaincy of Becca Hardman Carter and Aina Zaid, along with a committed coaching committee, we’re certain there’s lots more success in store for the team in 2025. 

Special shoutout to not just the entire squad, but especially our season MIPs, Ronan Kelly and Ailsa Cameron, and MVPs, Beth Dimitrova (3rd year running) and Phil Webb. Very well deserved accolades.

If you’re interested in playing some competitive mixed ultimate this year, sign up to GUX trials now! You really won’t regret it.

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A great read, thank you Elise and Kevin! If you liked this article, why not check out previous ones from GUXYZ, Alba and Heck!

Featured photo by Ellis Stabler.