Frisbee seminar: pump fakes and clearing
"In ultimate, possession is 10 tenths of the law." - Calvin Lin, head coach of the University of Texas men's ultimate team
Offense in ultimate is possession-oriented. If your team turns the disc over less often than the other team, you are basically guaranteed to win the game—so much so that a substantial number of offensive tactics in ultimate are centered around preventing turnovers rather than advancing the disc towards the endzone.
So this week, we're going to practice a couple of the simple things that good ultimate teams do in order to prevent turnovers: pump faking and clearing out.
The basic idea here is really simple. Say you have the disc, and one of your teammates is running to try and get open while being covered by a defender. Their defender is behind them, so it's hard for them to tell how close they are. You decide that the potential gain on an upfield throw is not worth the risk of a turnover—so you make a throwing motion upfield with the disc towards them. This throwing motion is called the "pump fake."
Basically, the pump fake is universal frisbee language for "I do not want to throw you the disc right now because it might cause a turnover, so get out of the way!" The "getting out of the way" part is what's called clearing out.
Pump Fake / Clear #1
Here's a clip of a pump fake and clear in action (from the 2016 women's national championship game):
We can break this down piece by piece. Boston (in black) is forcing flick (towards the bottom of the screen). So the throwing lane (and thus the best spot on the field to get open) is on the bottom of the field. The blue-circled cutter is trying to take advantage by cutting into this space:
However, her defender is too close, so the Seattle thrower (in white) makes a pump fake to let her know that she won't be thrown to. And the Seattle cutter responds to the signal: she immediately runs out of the open throwing lane as fast as she can. This is clearing out. The Seattle cutter's goal here is not to get the disc, but to open up space for her teammate.
Here's the point of this: the open side of the field is still the easiest side to throw to. So, if you're in that space and not succeeding in getting open, the best thing to do is to leave it as quickly as possible in the hopes that your teammate will be able to take advantage of it. And that's exactly what happens here:
The blue Seattle player sees that there is space opening up on the open side because the green Seattle player is clearing out. Notice how the green player is running hard to create this space—she's putting just as much effort into it as she did when she tried to get open! That's because her effort actually helps her teammate get open—since she's getting out of the open space so quickly, her defender (in red) is forced to follow her. This is what allows the blue cutter to get the disc.
Pump fake / Clear #2
Here are some more clips of pump fakes, in slightly different situations:
In this clip, the Boston thrower makes three pump fakes. The first two are to cutters downfield, to signal to them that they are not open. Again, watch the cutters respond to the pump fakes and clear out of the open side throwing lane as soon as they happen.
Here, the cutter in blue (again in the open side lane) is being pump faked. Watch the clip to see her react to the fake and clear out.
It's hard to tell from the still image that the player in blue isn't actually open, so go back to the clip and watch. The cutter is jogging away from the thrower, while her defender is accelerating towards her—so the defender has a good chance to run through and get a block if the thrower decides to throw.
This is exactly why pump fakes are so important! The blue cutter is looking at the disc, and might not realize that her defender is accelerating to close the distance. But the thrower can see this, and can use the pump fake to tell her to give another player a chance to use that space to get open.
Here's the next pump fake. Same situation: the cutter in the open side lane isn't open enough, so the thrower signals and she clears out.
The third pump fake is a little different. This time, the Boston thrower isn't looking to throw downfield—instead, since the stall count is getting high at this point, she's running the dump swing play that we've worked on at practice. In the clip, watch the thrower turn her whole body towards the dump, to initiate the play.
Here's the pump fake. The dump (circled in blue) has started making one of the cuts we've been working on at practice. The thrower sees that the dump isn't open, so she uses her pump fake to signal the dump to do something else. The dump sees the pump fake, and plants and goes up the line (again, just like we practiced). This is a different kind of clearing out, but it accomplishes basically the same purpose: the cutter frees up space for a nice big swing pass to move the disc to the other side of the field:
Pump fake / clear #3
One last example. This time, the Seattle cutter who gets pump faked is going deep:
Like the other examples, this pump fake also tells the cutter (in blue below) that her current cut will not be thrown to. (This time, the cutter is pretty open, but there are still several reasons the thrower might not want to throw to her—maybe she thought the defender was really good, or that the mark was making it hard to throw a good deep throw, or that there just wasn't enough space to throw into.)
Again, watch the clip to see the blue cutter's reaction to the pump fake. She recognizes that she isn't going to get the disc, so she changes direction to leave the space she was previously occupying open. This is yet another kind of "clearing out."
Just like in the first example, since she clears out immediately, another cutter can go deep.