A new season of Saucy Nancy ultimate has begun!

Practice times are every Tuesday and Thursday 4:30-6:30 at Hubbard Park and

Sundays 3:30-5:30 at the Hawkeye Recreation Fields.

This year we have 17 returning players and have already seen a lot of new faces. In addition to all the new players we have also recruited 3 open players to coach us this year - Mike Lun, Steve Hanson, and Dan Kresowik. This is the first year the team has ever had coaches so we are very excited about the improvements they will bring to the team.

I've decided to write a little bit of a run-down on how the season and upcoming year will play out since I know when I first joined I didn't entirely know what the team was all about. Our first tournament of the fall season is in two weeks - September 17-18 in Grinnell, IA. This is a lot of girls favorite tournament, especially after 4 months of saucy withdrawal. How this tournament and most other tournaments work is we play 3-4 pool play games against other college teams on Saturday. After games on Saturday the teams go to a party hosted by the Grinnell teams. The tournament parties are one of my favorite aspects of ultimate when compared with other sports because it's always a lot of fun to party with the people you compete with all weekend. At this particular tournament we camp at the party location Saturday night, but at most of the other ones we either cram ourselves into a hotel or stay at someone's house. The next day we get up and play 2-4 games of bracket play to determine the tournament placings. Grinnell is a really great tournament for new players because it's early in the season and this year everyone will be getting a lot of playing time since we'll be going with two teams. A lot of girls get hooked to the sport and the team after the Grinnell tournament because it's a really a good time.

In addition to Grinnell we are also going to 3 other tournaments this fall:

Exit 69 - October 2-3 - Northfield, MN

No Wisconsequences - October 16-17 - Delafield, WI

Missouri Loves Company - November 13-14 - Columbus, MO

We will likely wrap up our fall season the week before Thanksgiving Break and finish the rest of the semester with some workouts and possibly some indoor drills. Our spring season starts right when we get back for second semester. We practice inside the Bubble on turf 2-3 teams a week and do team track workouts up until we move back outside to Hubbard after spring break. In the spring we generally go to 4 regular season tournaments; last year we went to tournaments in Baton Rouge, LA; Chicago, IL; St. Louis, MO; and Lawrence, KS. Overall the spring season is the more important season of the two because every game impacts how the series works out. The series consists of three tournaments - sectionals, regionals, and national championships. Every team gets the chance to play at sectionals and then certain teams move on to regionals. From regionals 2-4 teams from each region move on to nationals where 20 college teams compete. Last year Saucy Nancy placed 4th at regionals which we were pretty happy with but we're hoping to see an improvement this year and ultimately make it to the national tournament.