The "fake clear" cut
Getting open is fun
I've really enjoyed watching Levke Walczak play ultimate over the past few weeks at the 2022 World Games and WUCC tournaments. She's got explosiveness, endurance, and smarts. A play caught my eye watching the WUCC final that exemplifies some of the cutting techniques I've been writing about: first, using a change of speed and second, playing with your defender's mental assumptions.
Watch the play below, as she passes the disc and then eventually gets it back:
I'll call this a "fake clear" cut. After throwing, she starts jogging upfield as if she's getting back in the stack. But, her defender is clearly assuming the exact same thing. I think the defender's brain turns off just a little bit, and instead of carefully paying attention to what's happening, she's just assuming the play will meet her mental expectation: that the player jogging towards the stack will jog all the way back into the stack.
But Walczak realizes the opportunity, and simply breaks off her jog and is suddenly wide open in the lane. She's so wide open that it takes a few beats until the thrower even notices her there!
This is a great heads-up play that more people need to learn how to take advantage of. In my experience, it takes a few little techniques to get right:
First, you need to know that no one else is cutting into that space that you're about to jump into. In this case, it's relatively easy: when Walczak had the disc, she could see the whole field in front of her, so she knows where all the other players are. While jogging towards the stack, all the other players are still in her field of vision, so she just needs to confirm that no one (at the back of the stack, for example) is trying to cut into that space.
And second, you need to read your defender's body language. Walczak felt her defender dropping off, and this created the opportunity to pop back into the lane. If the defender tried to take away the under, the fake-clear cut would've been much harder and instead a deep cut might've been called for.
It's hard to tell without a closer shot, but it looks like Walczak also cuts at the exact moment the defender is looking away to check that their path is safe to run into. So Walczak does an excellent job of reading the situation in multiple ways and adapting to it. (Also, check back soon for a longer post on noticing when your defender is looking away from you).
This cut was not a "one off" thing from Walczak, either. Earlier in the game, she made the same cut... twice in a row! Watch here:
The first cut she makes (where she doesn't get the disc) is a great example of what I wrote about in Accelerate as fast as you possibly can. She's side-by-side with her defender, and then by doing nothing more than stopping really, really quickly, she suddenly creates three yards of separation.
In my article on feigning boredom, I wrote about the tradeoff between being in a ready position (but the downside is your defender can see that you're ready, and they turn their intensity up, too) and being in a body position that seems suboptimal (but the upside is your defender not expecting your cut):
In my experience, it's a worthwhile trade-off: the advantage I give up by not being in the best possible body position to start my cut, I make up for by causing the defender to be even less ready.
Walczak is doing something like that, here: she's facing downfield, and turns and cuts into the space that's literally behind her back. The downside is that she could've made the cut a little bit quicker if she had been already facing the space that she was about to cut into. The upside is that because she's facing downfield, her defender wasn't expecting her to make a hard cut into a space that was completely behind her.
The combination of doing something unexpected and doing it really fast gets her wide open for easy yards.
Edit: I previously had Levke’s last name spelled incorrectly. I wrote this article right after WUCC and so I used the WUCC roster to double-check how to spell her name. Unfortunately for me, it’s misspelled “Walzak” on that site—but spelled “Walczak” everywhere else! Sorry for the mistake.