Finding That Edge

I have been thinking a lot lately on some of the small things a team could do in a tournement to gain tactical advantage over an oppenent. One huge advantage I think to a team would be familiarity with the field being played on. If we intend to compete in tournements, one big obstacle we will run up against, especially in the woods ball scenario is trying to coordinate and be effective on unfamiliar terrain. So, I've come up with a solution to the dilema. It doesn't really solve the problem entirely, but I think this system if practiced, and put into play by a team could give a team a big advantage that they would have normally gone without.



My idea is to mentally picture any field you come upon sectioned up into six sectors. You can see my illustration of what I mean below.









You don't get to play on a perfectly rectangular field usually, so I drew a randomely shaped field to show what the sectors might end up looking like typically. Sectors one and two would always be the nearest to your teams home base. In this case the blue box, represents the home base. You start on your left and begin numbering left to right.



I think using this, a team could arrive on a field they've never been on before, and still be able to somewhat communicate to each other more accurately of what's going on out there. Imagine your forward man or sniper is somewhere in sector three, and spots an enemy patrol moving in his direction from the other side. He can simply guestimate the sectors and give decenty accurate info over the radio of enemy movements without having to be expertly familiar with the terrain. As long as he's pretty sure of about where mid field is he will be pretty accurate. i.e. "Lima, Juliette I've got four bogies sector six moving slowly towards sector 5, copy?" Just one quick sentence, and the whole team can now visualize pretty clearly what he sees and react accordingly. This would be much better than, " Johnny this George. I can see like four guys. They're about one hundred hards to the front and right of me, and they're moving kinda diagonal across the field. Kinda by the middle."



I would like to give this a try. It will take some dedication and practice to get it down, but I think the advantage to learning this would be well worth it. In fact, If the team gets it down pretty good, then I would like to take it one step further by dividing each sector into quadrants. So you'd have Sector Two Alpha, or Sector five Bravo, etc, and be even more accurate while communicating on the radio.



It might be too much and too complicated to learn though. But, it might be worth a try. I know we use nicknames for a bunch of spots on the field we play on now, and it really works well to our advantage to call out on the radio, " Ambush at Arnold's trap!" Why give up that kind of advantage just cause you happen to be on the road?