Hannah Quinn (she/her), co-captain and playing coach of SMOG, co-captain of GBWu24 and multiple GB representative talks about her journey from first time captain to experienced leader with her local club team and learnings tips and tricks along the way.
Hannah in action with SMOG Women
Bio and playing / coaching history
My name is Hannah and I am a captain and coach for SMOG women for the 2026 season! I’ve played with SMOG for the past 4 years. I started playing in school with Airbadgers, and have since played for Leeds Uni, SMOG, two GBU24 cycles and GB Women on beach, grass and indoors.
I’ve been part of SMOGs leadership group for 3 years. I started as a D-line vice captain in 2024 and then became club captain in 2025. My previous coaching experience was with the University of Leeds, as a beginners and mixed captain. I’ve been fortunate to be supported by coaches in past seasons, however this year we have had changes to how we coach the team. We have established a new leadership group (myself, Em Hill and Geegee Morrison) who are stepping up to do the coaching ourselves!!
In previous years our coaches led and planned all our training sessions. We would input ideas, but all the planning, structural organisation and delivery came from them. Our coaches were also a big source of information during tournaments. Although they didn’t call lines, but did provide a calmer and external view of how we could improve within games.
This year myself, Em and Geegee are taking on the coaching and captaining roles. We’re still working out how best to split the workload, but currently all three of us plan our training sessions, with Em and myself doing most of the delivery. We all give feedback to the team and put our heads together to problem solve as a group. Geegee is invaluable to Em and I as a non-playing coach especially at tournaments. A non-playing perspective is really helpful for providing a broader overview about how we can improve within games.
Hannah playing beach ultimate with GBW at WBUC 2025.
📷: Graham Shellswell
What is your motivation behind captaining SMOG?
I love SMOG, frisbee and being competitive.
SMOG have spent time developing me, and now I’d like to help develop the club as well. At the end of the day if you want clubs to continue and thrive, I think it’s important to give some of your time back.
I also really enjoy the strategic aspect of frisbee, and like being involved in the decision making. There’s more than one way to win a game, and having strategic influence and getting to plan for and react to what other teams throw at you is really exciting! My skill set lies more in on-pitch decision making and strategy, rather than admin, so I feel captain is a good role for me.
I also think it's really rewarding to take a group of women and end up with a really close knit team, and being able to help create and influence that is really special.
What have you learnt on your captaining journey?
I’ve been very lucky to have had lots of help from SMOG’s previous coach and captain, Max and Lizzie. It would have been much harder doing it without them. When I first started captaining, I was quite inexperienced and quite impatient. Max and Lizzie gave me a lot of different perspectives and I learnt to think about captaining more holistically, rather than just based on performance. Their support has set me up well to lead a team without more experienced coaches and allowed me to gradually take on more responsibility. I learnt a lot about trusting my own judgement, being able to listen to those around me, and being able to communicate productively during stressful situations.
I’ve also learnt a lot from being involved in other teams and being exposed to lots of different coaching and managerial styles. This has let me identify which things I like, and want to implement in SMOG, and things I don’t like, and want to avoid. For example with GB Women in 2024, Nads and Brew were really transparent with me, and set my expectations really well, both for my role and how the team would work overall. This is something I’ve then tried to implement with SMOG: being really clear, setting expectations early, and asking the team to tell us what they're expecting as well, so that coaches and players goals are aligned.
Captaining GB U24 Women last year was also a really good experience. We had four captains, split between two lines, and we allocated individual roles for each person, meaning it was much clearer on who was delivering what. For example, on my line, Rosie Coward was more focused on our line's strategic playing side, whereas my role was to motivate and support individual players. Splitting the roles made being a captain much more manageable alongside playing. Four captains and coaches at the tournament resulted in the sharing of different perspectives from different areas of responsibility, which meant when we put them together we had a much more complete picture of how the team was doing.
Celebrating with GBWu24s.
📷: ultimatepaparazzo
How do you balance supporting development and wanting to compete at the highest level as a club? And has SMOG moving to competing in single gender divisions impacted that?
I think this can be difficult to strike. For the last two years we have sent out a form at the start of the season and let the team tell us what they think the right balance is. This involves polling them on goals, line calling, aims for finishing positions and preferences on equal play time vs line calling to win games. This really helps inform us on how the team would like to be run, and means that we’re not making decisions in isolation that the general team might not want. I also think, there’s no reason you can’t be doing both! It’s a long season so there's plenty of time to be focusing on growth and development in the early half, and then transition to a more performance based mindset come the end of season.
Although I wasn’t involved in general planning that year, the really exciting thing was a completely new playing field for us. There were no expectations which allowed everyone to grow into the new division. I think mentality is really significant in the women’s division, so being able to see ourselves as a “new team” with a fresh start was really exciting. It also allowed new people, such as myself, to step into leadership roles, which I think is great for growth and was a really fun season.
How do you manage your own development alongside captaining?
This is something I’m spending a lot of time considering this year as our leadership group mostly consists of players. While in previous years, our non-playing coaches ran our training sessions, so I could play without thinking about delivery of the training or providing wider feedback. My coaching style involves watching and giving lots of immediate feedback, which makes it difficult to focus on my own development. Currently, myself, Em and Geegee will take ownership of different elements of each session, meaning two of us can train for the sections we aren't leading. I think it’s something that we will continue to adapt over the season, but it seems to be working for now! I also train with LeedsLeedsLeeds, so I still have a protected space to continue with my own development.
What have you learned performing on the international stage that has benefitted your club?
Loads!! The phrase “imitation is the best form of flattery” probably best sums it up, in that I borrow so many drills and training ideas from the other sessions I’ve gone to. There’s generally no reason why they can’t be adapted to broader experience groups, particularly if your focuses are similar. I think being exposed to lots of different coaching styles and ideas is really helpful to add more variety to your sessions, as you can pick and choose what is relevant and useful for your team.
Similarly, I also love to steal structures that I see other teams playing. I think it's very difficult to generate something completely new, but there are lots of fun strategies being played by other teams at the moment, both in the UK and abroad. Sometimes I just take principles from the structure to try and challenge the team, or sometimes implement the whole structure if it fits our playing style well.
📷: Graham Shellswell
Any changes you're making between last year and this year on SMOG
We’ve had quite a lot of changeover this year, but we’re still taking the key learnings from last year to apply them to the new team. The main new thing we’re going to try are some directional lines, rather than the traditional O and D. This is something the U24 team did with a lot of success in a performance setting, but I think this will be really beneficial for us to improve our versatility. After all, O lines need to be good at D and D lines need to be good at O, so I’m hoping this allows the team to get comfortable at doing both in high pressure environments.
This year we’re also putting a focus on having fun. That’s not to say it wasn’t a focus last year, but at Euros our primary goals were to have fun and be proud of our performance, and it made it the most fun tournament of the year. I would like to continue those goals this season for every tournament, particularly as there's no one point in the season where we really need to perform. I think this will help to get the most out of the team, both in confidence and performance, and make the season really enjoyable overall.
Our 3 goals this year are: to enjoy ourselves, to be confident, and to be proud of how we performed. For the last goal, this isn’t dependent on the game result, but rather do we think we played in a way that was representative of SMOG and ourselves and that we can be proud of. This has moved our metric for success to be more focused on our own team and how we feel about the game rather than the other team and scorelines.
I think all three goals link together! We play better when we are enjoying ourselves and we play better when we are being confident (and generally enjoy games more). It's not fun at the expense of performance, I know what we are capable of and I expect us to play at that level. I think if performance is all you focus on, fun and enjoyment can slip. It's important to remember that we give up our time and money to do this, so making sure it's something everyone is enjoying feels just as important as results.
📷: Graham Shellswell
Any resources or things you feel passionate about sharing?
I get a lot of drills from instagram from non-frisbee sports: tag rugby, hockey, netball, tennis etc. They’re mostly for non-disc based skills, but are transferable for agility, cutting, and defence. It’s a different, new thing to try, that focuses a specific skill in a new way, helping to keep training fun! Recently I’ve been using a lot of @jay_ulti cutting drills, but otherwise it’s a variety of performance academies for other sports!
What to read next...
In this article, Ali Smith (She / her) shares her professional tips and personal playing experiences on preparing for week-long tournaments with your team. Brew and Nads have shared some tips on how they approached some of these topics during their ‘23 and ‘24 EUC and WUC campaigns. These tips are intended as sharing experiences and not specific guidance (unlike Ali, they are not professionals!), you can find some links to resources they used, throughout the article.