Windmill Recap

First ever Windmill for East Block is in the bag! The team clicked amazingly well, we had a lot of fun, and secured the 5th spot overall.

We came in missing a few players including our captain Kristýna Tlustá, who played for the Tokay SuperTeam (and - spoiler alert - won the gold medal in the mixed divion). Knowing the circumstances, we decided not to play for the EUCS ranking and rather collect experience, polish our new system of motion offense, let everyone play equal minutes and make the team better as a whole. It was also time for our second coach, Lukas Barborik, to try leading the team for a full tournament.

Windmill is a very specific tournament. Friday’s four games are tough: there’s barely enough time to move from one field to another let alone have a tactical meeting and make adjustments for next opponents. We knew we had to fight for every point and came in strong with the first match against Germany Masters that pushed us high enough into the swiss draw ranking to give us a nice starting position. We continued with a closer game with MUC which put us against GRUT.

A match with GRUT was exciting for multiple reasons: we have not played against them yet and they have been projected to get into Windmill finals (which they ultimately did). Unfortunately, we started the game with a multitude of unforced errors and could not get over the wind that was picking up significantly. Even though still enjoyable, we lost to them 15:6 and needed to move on for the next game. The system put us against Jinx, another highly exciting game and a first time for East Block. We started the game as a very different team. The offence was flowing and we managed to get into the rhythm. Even though we lost this one as well, it was probably the best match we played in the tournament. (If you have ultiworld.com subscription, you can watch the game here.)

Saturday’s first game got delayed due to bad weather conditions and even though it stopped raining, the wind stayed strong. Our shortened game against FABulous saw us keeping offensive possesions through huck-and-D and ended at a 6:6 draw as no one was able to score a break. Swiss draw put us at the 7th spot in the ranking coming into the power-play which meant a quaterfinal game against the GB national team. The game felt like a repetition of the game against GRUT, GB went all in punishing our mistakes, playing on much faster legs than we could. Tough loss 15:4 sent us to the lower semifinals against BOX. In the end, we secured a win in the universe point and got ready for the party.

The last game of Windmill got to be a rematch with FABulous. The wind got quietter this time and we managed to keep our cool, securing a 5th place overall - higher than many of us had anticipated.

Final results

Ranking update

Not many teams came to Windmill to play for ranking. Still, there are some changes. We are staying at the 6th place with only a small drop of rating points. The table itself stays mostly the same as in May after Elite Invite. We’ll see if the next tournaments mix up things a little or a lot.

• 2024
• european-team