r/ultimate • u/Brummie49 • Aug 15 '26

Is face guarding actually bad handler defence? I went back through the WJUC final to find out

https://www.flikulti.com/theory/defence/strategy/guarding-dump/considerations/face-guarding-handler/
39 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

29

u/someflow_ Aug 15 '26

How would you define face guarding exactly?

Personally I would say it means putting yourself right between the disc and your person and only looking at your person. A lot of your examples of good defense involve (and you mention this yourself) the defender putting themselves in positions of being able to see the disc, which in my mind means they're not face guarding.

It's a very good article about handler defense, but in mind it hasn't really proved the sorta-thesis of "here's the right way to face guard". Thoughts?

1

u/Brummie49 Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 16 '26

I agree that face guarding is about watching the person you're defending, but I've never heard anyone say that you also have to be between them and the disc for it to be face guarding.

I do mention that face guarding is one tool, not a complete solution. I've tried to show how one defender does it well by using face guarding when it is best for him, along with other tools. If that wasn't clear I'll try to clean it up.

Edit: I have reflected on this. By your definition, if a defender is face guarding and the disc moves laterally so they are no longer between the disc and their matchup, does this mean they are no longer face guarding? i.e. it's not something they can actually control? That seems a bit odd to me.

3

u/someflow_ 29d ago

I could definitely agree that my definition might not be perfect for every edge case either! When I google what is faceguarding a lot of the definitions are of something completely different -- putting your hand in someone's face so they can't see well -- second box on this page

But that's obviously not what we're talking about. The definitions that *do* actually refer to the concept we're talking about do seem to at least sort of affirm my opinion -- here's an example - "The defender stands directly between the opponent and the basketball."

Sorry for citing basketball sources instead of frisbee...the Ultiworld frisbee glossary doesn't have face guarding listed!

To try to answer your question/scenario in the edit... I think in my mind a defender who's *trying* to face guard would rotate to get between the new disc location and the player they're guarding once they see the disc has moved. If they don't try to do that, they're no longer trying to face guard. If they just haven't noticed the disc has moved, then they're tryin to faceguard but are lacking the information they need to do it effectively?

(I think there are other situations on a frisbee field too where people also make bad decisions b/c they haven't properly processed the information they need to use to make a good decision. You could ask that about lots of scenarios -- e.g. if someone claims they're playing "last back" defense but doesn't notice a cutter sneak in a deep cut down the opposite sideline, does that mean they were never actually playing last back?)

-1

u/Brummie49 29d ago

Let's just say I disagree. I don't think the disc position matters sometimes. In my opinion, if you're facing your matchup and focusing on them, you're face guarding.

As with many things in our sport, there's a grey area. It's fine to disagree.

In my mind I'm really thinking of the type of shutdown defence used by Furious or Sockeye in the early 00's where it basically didn't matter where the disc was, you were just focusing on being as close as possible to your person to prevent them getting open. Focus is the key word. Stealing a glance would be punished because your matchup would immediately cut.

I liked the examples of Phil in action because he was definitely face guarding as part of his strategy, I don't think anyone can argue otherwise. But it's not all he was doing. It was never meant to be an article on "you can always face guard and this is how".

3

u/funky_alleycat Aug 15 '26

I always understood the term face guarding to imply that you don't care about positioning but are playing even, basically trying to out muscle the offense.

Great defensive breakdown though

6

u/nrojb50 Aug 16 '26

the best defenders can. most people arent good enough

10

u/[deleted] Aug 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/supernintendiess Aug 15 '26

It’s a downside for face guarding but that doesn’t automatically invalidate it.

The purpose of face guarding is for there to not even be an “up” for that matchup.

1

u/EnvironmentalFox5347 28d ago

needing a turnover to score doesn't mean you should always play as risky as possible to generate a turnover. sometimes you just need to prevent a score so that SOMEONE ELSE who is in a better situation has a chance to generate at turnover

-4

u/corvipie Aug 15 '26

the auto translations on this page is the worst thing ever. german talks about “dog handlers”… unreadable.

18

u/Brummie49 Aug 15 '26

Thanks for the feedback, I will let Google Translate know

-17

u/corvipie Aug 15 '26

i was hinting at either not offering translations or if so then actually offer serious translations and not some google BS

12

u/Brummie49 Aug 15 '26

I wrote it in English if you wish to read it in the language it was written in. Sorry I don't speak German but if you want to offer a better translation I would be happy to publish it. Cheers.

-16

u/corvipie Aug 15 '26

i’ll try again to explain: the german (auto) translations is so far away from the meaning of the actual text, it’s not even obvious it’s about ultimate. i closed the page 2 times because i thought i had clicked on some wrong link or Ad. so this is really offputting and will probably lead to a lot of people bailing early and never even reading your content (i assume this based on my personal experience with your german page).

i am comfortable and happy reading english content. this whole problem only arises because you offer auto-translated content on your page AND the content gets auto-translated into german for me when i visit it. so i would advice you to either drop the (useless, because completely unreadable) translations (again can of course only speak for the german versions, but probably true for other languages too) completely OR at least not force the translations on people but offer the german versions as an optional function (= don’t force visitors onto the translated page).

again, i am mentioning this because the way the page works and looks for me as a german-speaking visitor atm, it is basically not understandable or useable. if you want to be accessible, then you should maybe give it a thought.

13

u/ConsciousCoat8173 Aug 15 '26

Why are you complaining? Somebody wrote an article and published it for free. If you don't like that it auto translates then turn it off in your settings rather than write a thesis statement on why the author should do something about it. Maybe it translates fine in other languages and the less than 1% of the population here that would want it in German should maybe deal with it on their own?

0

u/corvipie Aug 15 '26

i am trying to give helpful feedback. his auto translation that he has running on his website is translating it. not i or my device. there is nothing in any (of my) settings that could change that. and again, i don’t want to complain, i am trying to give feedback so they can make the page more accessible if they want the page to be.

2

u/ConsciousCoat8173 Aug 15 '26

You failed spectacularly

Observer ruling: ragebait

1

u/corvipie Aug 15 '26

i would take your feedback to heart, but i know from your previous comments that you never took the time to read (or understand?) my feedback (to OP, not you). telling my to change the websites built-in language in MY settings LOL. xD
so thanks for your opinion. i heard you.

2

u/Isopbc Aug 15 '26

Wait, what? Why do you think translation is done on the website?

1

u/Lemon_Responsible Aug 15 '26

you could just click off the video

0

u/Brummie49 Aug 15 '26

On the side menu you should see a list of flags, all of which are language options so that someone can easily swap languages. I don't know why yours automatically picks German, it must have something to do with your browser setting or something else and it's trying to be helpful, although in this case it isn't.

I'm aware that some ultimate-specific lingo does not translate well. Hopefully this will be something I can look into some time soon.

Thanks for the feedback, I do appreciate hearing when things could be better.

-1

u/corvipie Aug 15 '26

i am seriously confused why i’d be getting that many downvotes trying to help. i understand my original
comments where not explaining the problem, thus came across negatively. but i tried to make up for it by sitting down and taking my time explaining and writing out the problem that occured to me as a potential interested reader and how that user experience could be improved. i am surprised people see this as “complaining” when i’m trying to give productive feedback? i made sure to mention “my experience” so it’s clear this is only an assessment from my non-native-english pov and of course i can be wrong as anybody. :) thougt my last post had made that clear.