Ultimate frisbee is a team game, of course. Sometimes, though, cutters on the team can make the game a three v seven, leaving your handlers to try and pick up the slack and make strike cuts down the entire field. Hopefully, you can pick up these tips to try and make your handlers' lives a little easier on the field.
1. Banana cuts
To put it simply, banana cuts obviously look like a banana in shape. Cuts should be shaped like a "v" or a check mark. As a cutter, you need to be able to make sharp, hard cuts and turns, because if you make a banana cut and run on a curve, your defender can just run in front of you and run a straight line to cut off any throw you might get.
2. Clogging
Whenever you leave a stack to make a cut (whether it's vert or ho stack), you should be running as hard as you can, making a sharp cut and then running just as hard to clear out the stack. My coach always told me, "You should think of clearing out as a second cut to a different area." A lot of the time, hard cuts made back to the stack can receive a throw from their handler. Otherwise, this clears out the open cutting space for the next cutter to get the disc.
3. Lazy one-handed catches
I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone get a perfect throw to them and they drop it because they reached out to grab it with one hand instead of running onto the disc and pancaking it. PLEASE. I can't repeat this enough. PANCAKE.
4. Starting cuts too late
Whenever there's a turnover and your team starts up on offense, you should start your cuts when your handler is reaching down to pick up the disc. I usually call out a loud "three, two, one, disc in" before I pick up the disc. Whenever my coach plays, he walks in a wide semicircle around the disc before he goes to pick it up to give a visual on when people should start their cuts. This way, the first cut is happening before the stall, instead of when the disc is on stall two or three. Every second counts when you have the disc in your hand.
5. Not cutting at all
Again, I cannot state this enough. When I'm literally yelling "cuts" on the field while frantically waving the disc in the air, you'd think you would start a cut. This doesn't happen as often as the late cuts, but after clogging occurs in the disc space (especially towards the end zone), it gets insanely difficult to try to make a good cut. Your handlers need you to make your cuts and clear out the space, otherwise we'll have to resort to throwing a hammer at the back corner of the end zone, and we all know how that usually turns out.
Spread this around, send it in your group chats. Captains, send the link to this article in your team email once the season starts up again in a few weeks. This information is vital to the success of the ultimate frisbee team. And remember, please. Pancake.
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