Part 5 | Ultimate Leaders: Scotland's Lulu Boyd & Cameron Agnew
Last week we talked with leaders of Boston Wildcard and this week we have reached out to some captains from Scotlands elite club teams. Scram's Lulu Boyd, and Alba's Cameron Agnew.
1. How are you communicating with your team, and what has the general message been?
Lulu: Our team is very good at communicating across various social media platforms. We have a Facebook page where we discuss all of our main business, i.e., up-and-coming training sessions and kit orders from BE ;) We also use Facebook Messenger and Snapchat to update each other on our fitness, our pets, and to generally egg each other on.
Our general message has been to continue our season as normal as “distance” players. Obviously we are unable to train together in person, but we are able to train together across platforms like Zoom. We have training sessions planned that will challenge our players’ fitness, problem-solving abilities, and frisbee knowledge. Our intention is to continue our season to the best of our abilities and provide coaching to our players in a different capacity.
Cameron: Our main message has been that this break will end and that we need to be ready to go when it does, at whatever time that actually is. It might suddenly end with time for only one training session before Nationals. We’ve been chatting a lot about what fitness activities to do and helping each other with workout ideas, form checks, and good old-fashioned encouragement. We generally communicate via a Facebook chat.
2. How are you/the team staying in shape? Any specific activities/exercises?
Lulu: We have a weekly fitness challenge that has been really fun for the girls. For example, we had a plank sequence that gets progressively more difficult as the days go by. We are also working out as a team during our training sessions. The players are posting their fitness updates on Snapchat and Facebook Messenger, which is great motivation. My gym coach has been sending me home WODs, which have been fantastic, and I’ve been trying to get in some running around Glasgow’s West End.
Cameron: We are staying fairly well in shape and are aiming to help each other out with encouragement and tips. We’ve promoted functional, ultimate-specific training rather than telling everyone to simply “keep fit.” We have asked everyone to set an individual challenge for each month that is ultimate-specific, ranging from a better 400m time to the GPP three30 shuttle.
3. Are you watching film? Any recommendations?
Lulu: As a team we’ve done video analysis together, which was a great activity. We went through the Molly Brown vs Revolution game from WUCC 2018. It’s such an interesting game, as both teams play very different styles of offense. I love Revolution’s tiki-taka style in that they never hold for longer than a few seconds, but as a player I can relate to Molly Brown’s structures more. This week we are focusing on individual players and aspects of their game that we’d like to bring into our own. I chose Fury veteran Alex Snyder because her throws are fantastic.
Cameron: I think a few of us have, but we haven’t been focusing on it. We’ve been looking at some old games for zone play—a few on CUSB about a zone that worked well for them last year. We recently found out that our game to go to Euros last year against Devon was filmed and is on YouTube, so we’ve been dissecting that a bit and found a few things we can work on.
4. Anything you want to voice or share?
Lulu: I’m really proud of all our ladies for their patience and positivity during these uncertain times. I’m especially proud of all our frontline workers and service staff who are working hard to keep us safe!
Cameron: This situation sucks, but there isn’t any benefit to moaning about it. The best thing we can do for ourselves and for the sport is to train hard, so when we do play we are at a better level than last year. We still have our sights firmly set on WUCC qualifications next year.