Some goaltie tips
Strategies to use on the goaltimate field
As a follow-up to my earlier post KC Mahomies screen and roll, here are a few more tips for playing goaltimate. Most, if not all, of these tips are useful for ultimate, too.
I like the way goaltimate makes you think about how you'll go about generating an advantage. In goaltie, the defense only has a small area to guard1. If they want to play conservatively, they can just hunker down and protect the goal area (as long as they’re not goaltending of course). If you try to play "patient" offense without having a clear idea how you'll manufacture an opportunity (or at least make use of inherent opportunities), you may end up passing it back and forth in front of the goal forever. Many of the tips below will focus on noticing and generating those advantages.
Long distance attacks
Given the wind at (goaltie) Nationals, there aren't many long distance goals on the streamed games available on YouTube, but there are a few. Here was one by Austin against Boston in the championship game:
and one by Seattle against Boston in the semifinals. It wasn't even that far a throw, but it felt far given the wind:
It's hard to guess how frequently these high-level teams use long distance attacks when there's less wind. But in the group I play with, long distance attempts are under-used (even in lower wind). There's a few things I like about longer scoring attempts:
Scores from behind the clear line are worth two points. More points are good (see: 3-point shooting in the NBA). The expected value calculation says you should take any two-point attempt you have that's roughly half as good whatever you expect to get later in the possession.
It's one of the few times the goal area isn't clogged up. Long distance shots give you a trade-off: less accuracy because the throw is longer, but more open space for the receiver to work with.
It forces the defense to "stay honest"—if you burn them for a score when they overplay the short pass, they'll put less pressure on you 20+ yards from the goal next time.
Ultiworld's highlight video has a few more long-distance shots that highlight how open the goal is when the defense is trying to pressure the clear line:
As a cutter, you should learn to see these opportunities. At the moment your teammates clear the disc, ask yourself if you can get between your defender and the goal to seal them off and attack.
Goaltie is a great sport for practicing looking off the defense. I asked above how will the offense generate an advantage? Even when the defense knows exactly the one small area you want to attack?
One way to generate that advantage is to use your eyes to convince the defense you're not looking to score on this pass...and then throw it towards the goal anyway.
A great no-look from the men's final made it into the event's highlight video:
And throw what the defense doesn't know
Similarly, goaltie is a great game for throwing passes that take advantage of defensive ignorance. We saw a great example of this recently in ultimate, in the 2024 Men's college national championship game, where Jacques Nissen threw a goal right over the shoulder of a defender who had their head turned:
This play from the nationals highlight video is another example of a throw that uses a defender's ignorance to be effective:
Make "what does the cutter's defender know/see?" an instinctive part of your decision-making process. A cutter with a defender who's unaware of the disc's location is as good as wide open. And from the cutter's perspective, the tip here is be ready for your thrower to put the disc into open spaces—especially if they're leading you into the goal.
Cut before the thrower catches it...
Again—the defense knows you want to attack the goal area. They are ready for you to cut there. They are going to respond quickly when you start your attack. It's hard to get open on cuts to the goal because it's not like you can juke them away from the goal—the defender won't fall for it b/c they don't really care if you catch a pass going away from the goal.
So, what to do? One of the few advantages the defense has left is that it's really hard not to ball-watch. Defenders will be slightly less attentive when the disc is in the air. Make your cut at that moment so the thrower can catch and immediately throw you a score.
The flipside of that advice is what the thrower needs to do—catch and be ready to throw ASAP. Often your best chance to throw a goal is on stall zero. Don't squander it by taking your time. I make a mental game out of transitioning from "catch" to "ready to throw" as quickly as I possibly can. I dropped a few easy passes in the process of building this skill, but once you're consistently throwing quick-hitter goals no one will care that you once dropped some easy passes at pickup.
Yet another tip that's effective for both goaltie and ultimate. Again, we're taking advantage of inherent offensive advantages — the mark defender often isn't mentally ready to immediately transition into defending a cutter. They're often not physically ready, either—their balance/positioning are optimized to stop a pass, not to stop a cut.
There were a few give-and-gos for scores in the streamed games, the no-look pass I already highlighted above was thrown to a give-and-going cutter:
Boston had a great give-and-go score that was called back due to a travel:
And the tournament highlight video had a nice give-and-go-plus-screen play:
Which way do you force?
One area where I think there's opportunity to advance goaltie strategy is on the defensive side. There were a few plays from the Nationals games where a team scored because the mark defender was forcing to the same side that the cutter defender was giving up.
At 8:00 in the Sacramento/Madison vs. Texas semifinal , Texas (in black) scored on SacMad (in white) when the marker gave up a backhand to the same side that the cutter defenders weren't taking away:
At 22:34, it happened the other way around, with SacMad scoring on Texas in the same corner of the goal. This one is less egregious—the defender is pretty close—but it still looks like a situation where a more coherent defensive strategy had the potential to stop the goal:
I don't really have a proposed solution here. When I think about my own marking in goaltie, I'm not sure I have a coherent strategy myself. Perhaps my strategy is "try to take away as much of the goal as possible". But both markers seem to be doing that here, too—they're forcing slightly towards the sideline. Perhaps the real problem is that they just hadn't set tight enough marks.
So I don't have the answers here but I want to point out it's worth thinking about—what strategy has the most marker/cutter defender synergy in goaltie?
On a related topic, here's one marking strategy that's worth writing down for anyone who hasn't discovered it yet: when the disc is behind the goal, force middle. The offense can't throw backwards through the arch, so the arch is an extra defender, reducing the offense's options. The Texas team did a good job of this a number of times:
Where are the no-mark defenses?
This is theory-crafting and not a strategy I've tried extensively in real life, but I'd love to see a team attempt a no-mark defense. Since you can count the stall from anywhere, no-mark doesn't have the same drawback it does in ultimate, i.e. that the thrower can just hold on to the disc as long as they want. Three cutters only have five seconds to get open against four defenders—seems like a good deal for the defense to me. (Specifically, I'd try this when the offense is far from the goal and/or yet to clear. My intuition is having a mark is most useful when your defense needs to cut off angles for short scoring throws.)
Good fast break skills will earn you a few easy clears. I like fast breaks in goaltie as much as I do in ultimate.
Attack from weird angles
Another small advantage you can sometimes work for a goal is throwing from a spot where the defense isn't expecting an attempt on goal. The highlights video had one example of a goal thrown from slightly behind the goal:
Using the same techniques, it's even possible to throw a goal from much further behind the goal, with the combination of an OI shape on the pass and a cutter who'll jump and "cannonball" through the arch. But I'm not surprised we didn't see this at nationals given the wind.
Get good
Last but not least…reading an article on strategy won't help much if you don't have the throws, the speed, and the mental game to use those strategies on the field. The more throws and release points you have, the better. Work on that flick blade, and backhand blade, and lefty scoober, and... etc. Practice those "weird' throws more. Until you don't even think of them as weird anymore. You don't need to warm up your flat backhand for 10 minutes. Good throwers have shown these throws are viable in 7-on-7 ultimate, too.
Aside from the variety of throws you have: more accuracy will let you fit the disc into tight windows. And a faster throwing motion will allow you to take advantage of more opportunities before the defense has a chance to shut them down.
In ultimate, the end zone in 20 yards x 40 yards = 800 yards square. It's being defended by 7 people, so there's ~114 square yards per person. In goaltimate, the endzone is roughly 35 yards square(an arc that fits within a 7-1/3 yard x 6 yard box). It's defended by 4 people, so there's ~8 square yards per person.
Amazing article! Thanks for sharing the tips and tricks. Hawaii has a good goaltie community and we are always looking for ways to get better! See you at Nationals! Yeee-Hawww!