Seth Wiggins
You’re downfield, the disc has stopped, and you’re defending a cutter in the
middle of a flat stack. You’ll need all the speed, agility, and strength you
have—long before the point begins you can better your odds by improving your
physical ability. Chances are if you are reading this you know how.
Although Ultimate is a team game, the flat stack does a good job at isolating
one-on-one matchups. While switching and poaching can work against weaker
offensive teams, intelligent ones will be able to change the position of both
the disc and their cutters quicker than you can react, and will beat your
defense without much effort.
You aren’t reading this to figure out how to guard a one dimensional
player—the tall, fast runner who can’t throw should be backed (defender closer
to the endzone then the disc), and the slow lilliputian thrower should be
fronted (defender closer to the disc than the endzone). What you should be
worried about are the athletes that can be effective either with the disc in
their hands or catching longer throws.
So how do you defend them? Frankly, I don’t know. After 4 years of club
ultimate, I have been beat one way or another by almost every single offensive
player. More will get their chance. I have however been taught a few basic
tips:
Understand probabilities: A good team will complete all throws to open
cutters coming to the disc. These cuts average 10-15 yards, so 5-7 open cuts
will mean a goal. Throws to cutters going away from the disc bring a lower
completion percentage. Even though one long throw can equal the value of 7
short ones, the chance of a turnover is infinitely better than none. The trick
is determining what chance of completion a long throw has, and acting
accordingly.
Understand cutter’s goals: A cutter with one step separation from their
defender coming to the disc is open, however the same cutter with three steps
going away is covered. The cutter’s differing definition of success should be
met with appropriate defensive goals of stopping cuts coming to the disc by
more that those going away.
Watch and match hips: Your cutter’s hips will tell you where they are
running, and yours should be positioned the same as theirs. When defending
your cutter, you need only react to changes of direction by the hips, and not
to arm, shoulder, or head fakes.
Know the location of the disc: Your position relative to your defender’s
should also be relative to the location of the disc. You have three
choices—watch both your defender and the disc, rely on sideline help to tell
you where it is, or (lightly) touch your defender and watch the disc.
Use your body: It is possible at times to position your body in the path
of your cutter before they get there in order to prevent their desired
movement. This is particularly effective against cutters coming back to the
disc after running away. This is risky, as any cutter can use a overly close
defender to their advantage when expected. Never initiate contact.
These might help. Remember, perfect offense beats perfect defense. The point
is to get as many blocks as possible, which is not the same as stopping every
play.
Bryn Martyna
If I was teaching a young player to learn to cut from the “hot” or iso’ed
positions in the middle of a horizontal stack, I would emphasize a few keys
points, which are generally applicable to getting open on a stopped disc
within any offensive structure, but are particularly important for a
horizontal offense. The points I make are assuming that the defense is not
poaching, as cutting against a poaching defense would require a more in-depth
discussion of how to run a horizontal offense in general.
Things to think about when cutting from the iso’ed spot of a horizontal
offense on a stopped disc:
The 45 angle: Position yourself strategically before you start your cut.
The success of your cut may be pre-determined just by the way you position
yourself. On Fury we talk a lot about using the 45 degree angle (and by “we,”
I mostly mean Sprout [Nicole Beck]). If you set up at 45 degrees from the
thrower on the open side, you leave yourself a nice window on the break side
to work with. You also put your defender in a tricky positionmdash;if you
create enough of a window, your thrower has a pretty easy break option, but
obviously your defender can’t come all the way over to take it away without
giving you the open side. At that point, you have put your defender in a
position of having to worry about a number of different possible cuts at once
before you have even started moving. The Japanese do an excellent job of using
this angle in their cuts and it is very challenging to cover.
What do you want to achieve? Know your role.
If you are being put in the iso’ed position in a horizontal offense, it is
probably for a reason and you should know from your captains or coach what you
are expected to achieve. You should also obviously have a sense of your own
unique strengths.
If you are generally a lot faster than your defender and you are expected to
be a deep threat, make sure that you are setting up nice and close to your
thrower. A great deep cut can come from setting up on the 45, cutting to the
break side, then turning and going deep. Generally if you are iso’ed, you
should even have enough time to turn and cut under for a gainer if you are
covered deep.
If you are expected to get the disc and look deep to another isolated cutter,
you obviously may want to set up your cut to get the disc underneath. You
always want to be flexible as you make your cut (see point #5) but you also
want to have an idea as you start your cut of where you want to get the disc.
You are on offense and in control.
What is available? Know your thrower.
Knowing your thrower and their strengths and weaknesses will help you set up
the best possible cut. Even if you are an excellent deep cutter, if your
thrower is just not comfortable making a deep throw from a standstill, you
won’t get the disc. In that situation, if you are truly open deep, you won’t
be in a good position to make an under-cut. At that point, you should clear
within the structure of your offense and create space for another cutter.
Another common example is that you may know that your thrower absolutely loves
her inside out. This will allow you to set up at an even more extreme angle on
the open side to set up that inside out cut. As a general matter, the more
experienced your throwers are, the more places you will realistically be able
to get the disc which will allow you more flexibility/creativity in your
cutting.
If you are cutting for a thrower who doen’t have every throw in her arsenal,
you (and your defender) may know that you need to work extra hard to get open
coming in on the open side. At that point, you may want to think about trying
to set up “poor man’s break” situations by having the thrower dump to another
handler on the break side and then look upfield to get it to you.
Finally, I would strongly encourage you to talk to your throwers and find out
what they prefer; don’t assume that you already know. I have gotten so much
out of having these discussions with my teammates and it has directly
translated into better connections on the field.
Who is guarding you? Know your defender.
At any level, it is only to your advantage to watch your opponents and study
how they play. If it’s a team you play a lot, you may recognize that certain
players tend to cover you, and you can study how they play defense. Do they
typically over-pursue on hard cuts? Do they poach? Do they make lay out bids?
Are they strong in the air? You can also play off your defenders’ expectations
of you if you know they have seen you play. If they have seen you generally
catching the disc to set up underneath, it’s great to make a serious deep cut
early in the game (hopefully coupled with a great deep throw!) to keep them
guessing. You can often get at least one free deep or underneath look just
based on your defender’s expectation of what you normally do.
If you’re a deep cutter, you may find yourself being backed all the time. I
think there are two schools of thought on this situation, and it really
depends on the offensive structure within which you are working. On the one
hand, you may still want to set up as close to the thrower as possible and cut
deep to find out if they are really covering you or just standing there. On
the other hand, you may be able to drive your defender quite deep just by
backing up (back to the importance of positioning before you start your cut)
and get a very easy 20 yard gainer right away. Knowing the structure of your
offense and your other cutters should help you make this decision, and it’s
always good to mix it up.
Be flexible.
Hopefully flexibility is built into your offense. Horizontal offenses can be
very creative and dynamic, thus unpredictable, and very difficult to cover.
However, on any given cut you will only have a certain amount of time to work.
Know within the structure of your offense how long the thrower will be looking
at you. Make the most of that time, then get out. Which leads to my final
point…
If you don’t get the disc, create space for good things to happen.
Your clear can help make the next person’s cut successful. Everything you’re
doing on the field should be intentional.
Dusty Becker
1st: Narrow the gap between you and your defender and engage him. If you
get him on his heels then you can cut where ever you please.
2nd: Clear Out! It is much easier to cut from the side positions in the
horizontal, as long as the middle is vacated. Make room for your teammates to
get open.
3rd: Become a side cutter. Observe the field see who is going to get the
disc, get your self out of the way and be aware of where your defender is. A
good opportunity to begin a second cut is when your defender tries to poach.
4th: Become a middle cutter again. Do this by sprinting directly
horizontal; ideally you are running directly at your defender. This will put
your defender on his heels more so than from the middle of the horizontal.
5th: Just look down and run!!! When you cut run!!! Run !!! Don’t think
about the “correct way to cut.” The correct way to cut is different in every
situation, let your feel guide you, no mind is required.
Lou Burruss
The most important piece to an effective initiation cut is the thrower. To get
open, you need to be able to challenge the defender into at least two
different places. In the typical flat-stack set, there are three spaces open
to the interior cutters: open-side, break-side, and deep. If the thrower can
hit all of those spots, getting open is no problem. Fake to one of them, cut
to another. Throw, catch.
The biggest mistake I see young teams and players make is settling for the
open side, come-back cut. This cut is worthless. It gets five yards and a mark
on. Why not just leave it in the hands of the initial thrower? Yes, this cut
works great against bad teams. It even works great against the freshmen at
practice. So what? You need something that works against good defenders.
How do you get there? Begin by throwing. Move to drills. Finally, challenge
your thrower to break the mark in a scrimmage. Challenge them to huck. They
will be terrible at it at first. But through demanding they do it, they will
learn. When they have these tools, you have the tools you need to challenge a
defender.
Mike Caldwell
Cutting from the middle in a horizontal stack is a blessing and a curse. On
the one hand, you have the freedom to cut in any direction, your defender is
on an island with no deep help, and the offense is looking to you to make a
play. Awesome.
On the other hand, the flat stack presents some unique challenges for cutters.
I’m going to focus on the unpredictability of the flat stack as a cutting
problem, and explain a couple simple adjustments that address this issue.
Most downfield cutting happens in flow, off of a moving disc, and not from a
stopped position. In a flat stack, cutting opportunities off of disc movement
can be sudden and difficult to predict, even for flat stack veterans. In a
flat stack, the disc may be thrown downfield from any lateral position on the
field, and in many systems the middle cutter(s) will always be the priority
target(s). A good opportunity can arise at any time—as soon as a thrower gets
the disc with his mark trailing, it’s on! There is no easy-to-predict, side-
to-side rhythm (like a vert stack dump-swing) that precedes a good cutting
opportunity. Additionally, many flat stack offenses operate at a higher tempo
than their vert stack counterparts, focusing on rapid disc movement and “team
offense” rather than isolating cutters for extended periods of time. This
makes cutting opportunities even more rapid and unpredictable, and also puts
more pressure on the cutter to hit the cutting window on-time. If the cutter
is open but late, the thrower is already looking to the next option.
So, what to do?
1. Keep your eyes up
Without a sure-fire way to predict good opportunities, you have to make sure
you see them when they happen. Always be aware of the disc—keep an eye on it
much more than you’re used to. It’s tempting, especially when cutting deep, to
put your head down and just churn for a couple seconds—don’t do it! Practice
cutting deep while you look over your shoulder. This way, you’ll be aware when
one opportunity ends and where the next begins, and you’ll get there on time
and before your defender. Cutters who are aware of the disc in a fast-paced
offense put enormous pressure on the defense, simply by being the first to see
and react to the changing disc position.
2. Always be preparing
When opportunities are hard to predict, you often won’t have time to see a
cut, set up and shake your defender, and still get to the cutting window
before the thrower is looking elsewhere. The best way to deal with this is to
always be preparing to cut. Make short fakes, move evasively so your defender
can’t get a body on you, make him constantly think about adjusting his
position. But do all of this while staying basically in the same place—don’t
sacrifice your position by committing to one direction on a fake. You need to
be ready to cut in any direction, while still keeping your defender off-
balance. This takes practice, but it’s not hard to learn. Train for quickness
and footwork.
3. Hone your deep game
This doesn’t really have anything to do with tempo or predicting cutting
opportunities, but it needs to be said. The big idea behind the flat stack is
the deep threat—it gives all four cutters direct access to the end zone and
spreads them out so “help” defense is harder. If you can’t go deep
effectively, you’re a liability as a cutter. On the other hand, the end zone
is always a good place to cut. If you don’t know where else to go, go to the
house!
Chelsea Putnam
I can think of three main points that will help you when you are trying to get
open in the middle of a horizontal stack. The first is that your team needs to
put the right type of player in that position. In my opinion, this is a player
who is confident with the disc, is a threat as a deep thrower, and understands
how to get open both going deep and coming under. Having a player who is a
“threat” as a cutter and a thrower will make the defense have to decide what
they are going to take away and in doing so will leave more openings for you.
Secondly, a player’s job as a cutter in the middle of the horizontal stack is
to engage the defender. This is not a footrace, it is a matter of driving the
defender in one direction (my personal favorite is running directly at the
defender to get them on their heels and then exploding 90 degrees in either
direction). By getting your defender on their heels, even if they are faster
than you, you will have a momentary advantage. Also, you will create a better
cutting lane for yourself and make it easier to receive the disc. One of the
best pieces of advice I ever received is “the best in cut is an out cut” and
vise versa. By driving your defender in one direction it will open up a lane
for you in a different direction.
The third point is that you need to remember the “shoulders square” rule. This
is the mentality that while cutting, you should have your shoulders facing
either directly at your thrower or the thrower should be seeing the back of
your jersey. By cutting in with your shoulders square, the width of your body
will be in front of your defender, which makes it hard to get a D, and you
will be able to move laterally to get to the disc. When cutting out, run in a
straight line out (you are fastest that way), check over your shoulder around
8-10 steps (to see if your thrower is still engaged with you), and then decide
where you need to go depending on the throw. Typically you will be at least
one step in front of your defender (because you knew where you were cutting
and they didn’t), so after the disc is up you can adjust your position to make
the catch. Hopefully those points were helpful because one thing is for
sure—horizontal stack is here to stay.
Greg Husak
As a defender this is one of the most uncomfortable positions to defend if the
stack is well-spaced and with just the right depth to make both the deep cut
and the underneath cut a viable option. If the disc is in the middle of the
field (say at the brickmark), and your cutter is on the open side of the
horizontal stack, there is a lot of space to cover. Unlike with a vertical
stack, where two of the four diagonal direction cuts take the cutter behind
the mark, in this situation even the cuts towards the closed side of the field
are on the open side early in the cut. This forces the defender to have
prioritize between all four diagonals, knowing that the mark doesn’t have
responsibility for any of them.
In this situation, well-coordinated movement between the stack positions will
inevitably leave a defender vulnerable to a not-too-challenging pass. In this
situation the defender has to prioritize the cuts to stop based on his own
strengths, the receiver’s strengths, wind, team defensive priorities.
My priorities, given that I’m a bit above average in height, would usually
focus on stopping the underneath pass with my positioning, while knowing that
I have to go hard if my guy commits to the deep cut and I have to hope that
the pass isn’t on the money or that I can get some help on a deep throw. This
strategy might change if I know that the receiver is a big target for the
other team, or has relatively weaker throws, or if our team has been beat by
the long ball repeatedly in the game.
Even though this is an especially vulnerable position for the defense to be
in, it also requires some coordinated movement and excellent spacing from the
offense to make all options viable. After the first movement it will be come
more clear where the hotspots of the offense are, and where my receiver is
trying to go. Recognizing these positions early can help you defend more
effectively. Also, having defenders in different positions focus on defending
different cuts (for instance, the outsides help deep, the insides front) can
give the defender some priorities where his help is more defined and his
positioning pre-determined.
Gwen Ambler
Cutting from the middle of the flat stack requires good field sense. In my
mind, good field sense involves the ability to accurately read three things
simultaneously: reading the defense, reading the thrower, and reading the
spaces on the field.
I’m sure everyone has heard the phrase “take what the defense gives you.” This
important concept necessitates knowing what your defender is trying to take
away at any given moment. At its most basic level, you have to recognize the
force and figure out which direction your D is trying to push your cut (e.g.
towards or away from the disc). The next level is understanding whether your
defender is really taking away what her positioning indicates she is. If a
defender is caught flat-footed, you can blow by her in a direction, even if
she has an initial “headstart” by positioning herself with a buffer in that
direction. Good cutters have developed a series of jukes or moves to help
freeze their defenders into the dreaded flat-footed position. An especially
easy one to master is driving directly towards your defense to close the
distance between you two, making her have to react to small movements like a
shoulder fake or stutter step. If you can’t get a defender on her heels, you
have to get her to commit her hips and momentum in one direction so that you
can change directions and gain separtion.
Against even the best defenders, it is important to remember that from any
position in the middle of the field there are always at least three different
directions to cut and get the disc. To be positioned correctly, there will
always be space for in-cuts to both the open and break side as well as deep.
Mediocre defenders may take away one of these options and good to great
defenders can take away two, but no one can take away everything. Your job as
a cutter is to recognize which of your three options is open, position
yourself and set-up your cut to maximize the throwing window in that space,
and then attack.
Reading the thrower involves both knowing your teammates’ comfort level with
various throws and recognizing the clues from your thrower that communicate
when to change direction. Knowing that your thrower doesn’t have a long
forehand doesn’t mean that you can’t cut to that space, but it does mean that
you have to consciously sell that cut (possibly by starting out closer to the
disc to make the deep space seem more dangerous) in order to set up another
cut underneath. If you are able to set up cuts for the pass the thrower most
wants to throw, you are instantly increasing the odds you’ll get hit as soon
as you are open.
At some point or another, everyone has probably seen a thrower point to a
direction she wants her receiver to cut to. That’s one way for a thrower to
communicate with a cutter, although not the most effective. I am a big
proponent of using disc fakes to simultaneously move the mark and communicate
for a cutter to change direction. As a cutter in the middle of the horizontal
stack, if I’m cutting in one direction and see the thrower fake that throw, I
know she wants me to change direction and she will hit me on my new cut. A
cutter needs to work hard to get open on her cuts, but ultimately you are at
the mercy of the thrower and if she doesn’t want to hit you on a certain cut,
you need to change direction to offer up a new angle. Note that some people
are not in favor of backhand fakes that require you to pivot. A thrower can
still communicate to her cutter with shoulder fakes and wrist snaps without
fully pivoting.
Last, but not least, a cutter needs to read the spaces available on the field
based on where her teammates and their defenders are positioned and/or moving.
Often the best cut a primary middle cutter can make is to clear space for her
teammate to get the disc uncontested. Additionally, often the worse cut
someone can make is one where she’s gotten open on her defender right into the
space where her teammate is also open–rendering neither of them hit-able. I
think that cutting in a vertical stack offense puts a premimum on timing while
cutting in a horizontal offense puts a premium on spacing. Know what space you
are expected to use for your cuts (likely the middle lane on the field) and
know which of your teammates is also expecting to be cutting in to empty parts
of that lane as well.
The horizontal stack offense allows for a lot of improvisation and creativity
on the part of the downfield cutters. Just like in theatrical improv, to be
good at it you have to be able to use the cues available to you. On the
ultimate field, that includes clues from your defender, the thrower, and your
fellow cutters.