I love watching game tape. Being a mostly defensive coach my goal is almost always to see what offenses a team runs, what they do with their dumps, who their main cutters are (and how they cut) and how they respond to a zone.
This weekend at regionals we will be watching tape on saturday night in preparation for sunday play. I was wondering what other things people have found useful to focus on while watching tape. I feel that game tape us under utilized in ultimate, not only because there isn't as much of it, but more because people either aren't looking for the right things, or aren't translating what they see into coaching points for their players well. Ideas?
Thursday, April 26, 2007
On subbing
I wonder if other coaches think about the psychological aspect of their subbing players when they call subs. We currently have a situation that I am waffling on and the reason why is because it is a situation where I think we should not play one of our best players on offense (reference Idris' post from a while ago?).
I have a player that is very good on both sides of the disc. She is a fast cutter who doesn't tire easily and she plays intelligent D. She is easily amongst our top seven players, however I find myself wanting to take her off of the starting O line because she is somewhat prone to drops. At the same time she also makes great catches at key moments.
My raionale is that she will be much more effective as a defensive starter who is expected to jump start the offense and move the disc on a turn that she would be as an offensive cutter. The team has plenty of offensive cutters, so she would be a tertiary target at best, but aside from that I wonder if her dropping the disc would have a lesser impact if we had already gotten a D.
On offense her drops can seem catastrophic since there is so much more pressure to score without a turnover. This leads to a stressful situation which I think increases her likeliness to drop the disc. On defense, while her drops may be costly, they shouldn't have the enormous impact they do on the other side of the disc because of the idea that defense doesn't have to be perfect. This should reduce the stress she feels and probably improve her catching.
So I guess the discussion I'm trying to start is whether or not anyone pays attention to their players generic mental state when scheming for that player or if people focus on putting their best players in at the most important times? Hell, if any discussion starts on this blog it would be a miracle.
I have a player that is very good on both sides of the disc. She is a fast cutter who doesn't tire easily and she plays intelligent D. She is easily amongst our top seven players, however I find myself wanting to take her off of the starting O line because she is somewhat prone to drops. At the same time she also makes great catches at key moments.
My raionale is that she will be much more effective as a defensive starter who is expected to jump start the offense and move the disc on a turn that she would be as an offensive cutter. The team has plenty of offensive cutters, so she would be a tertiary target at best, but aside from that I wonder if her dropping the disc would have a lesser impact if we had already gotten a D.
On offense her drops can seem catastrophic since there is so much more pressure to score without a turnover. This leads to a stressful situation which I think increases her likeliness to drop the disc. On defense, while her drops may be costly, they shouldn't have the enormous impact they do on the other side of the disc because of the idea that defense doesn't have to be perfect. This should reduce the stress she feels and probably improve her catching.
So I guess the discussion I'm trying to start is whether or not anyone pays attention to their players generic mental state when scheming for that player or if people focus on putting their best players in at the most important times? Hell, if any discussion starts on this blog it would be a miracle.
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