Two tournaments. One vision. For the past two years, Midwest Throwdown has been an important part of the college women's ultimate season in the South and Midwest. Throwdown was founded by Michelle and the University of Texas Women's Ultimate program in 2008, as a way to provide women's teams in the South and Midwest with more opportunities to play against quality competition and to promote the growth of women's ultimate. Last year, Michelle helped the Washington University Women's Ultimate program run the tournament as a fundraiser which enabled the team to attend its first regular-season flying tournament. Ultimate in the South and Midwest has been on a slow path of growth and development, but all of the pieces for major change are in place and all that is needed are opportunities. After talking amongst ourselves and enduring a little bit of prodding from friends, we decided to team up to throw two awesome college women's tournaments in St. Louis this year. The first, Midwest Warmup, will be a fall tournament dedicated to getting rookies hooked on this amazing sport of ours. The field site is amazing. Crowned fields, lush grass, concessions, real bathrooms... The weekend will be a luxurious introduction to ultimate for your rookies. We can host up to 32 teams and we hope to draw interest from teams all over the nation. Midwest Throwdown, our spring tournament, has been a successful, competitive event for the past two seasons, and this year, we have something even bigger planned. The big idea is to have a Roundup Division that will be part-tournament, part-skills clinic. We have invited some of the top women's club players from around North America to guest coach teams for the weekend. These teams will be young and/or developing programs in the area who would benefit greatly from a weekend of intense teaching and mentoring. Teams will play 4-6 games over the course of the weekend, but will also have scheduled bye rounds where their guest coaches will be able to go over drills and skills with them, review strategy, and generally give them tools that they can take back to practice. In addition, there will be "regular" Division I and Division II competition, so there is a place at this tournament for teams of all skill levels. We want to increase both the breadth and the depth of the college women's division. It is our hope that this model will be replicated across the country, and we invite you to join us for the ride. |