Wow. I can’t believe this is my first post of 2006 – it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long since I’ve blogged. My absence is mostly attributable to two factors: 1) I haven’t had much to say 2) I’ve been insanely busy. I do have a few ideas for some new posts though, and Wood is probably getting pumped about some sort of silly coed nonsense, so hopefully it won’t be another five months before the next post. Alright, onto the obligatory regionals write-up…
Coming into regionals I thought that Florida and Georgia were clearly a step ahead of the rest of the region. The format definitely favored the Ho-Dawgs because Florida’s long bench becomes less of an advantage when the finals are the first game of the day. I expected that we (Emory) would be battling with UNC on Sunday for the third bid to nationals. I thought that NC State, Wake Forest and UVA would all be fighting to be alive on Sunday, but probably weren’t strong enough to finish in the top 3. As it turned out, I had definitely underestimated both Wake and State – both teams are very gritty – playing tough D and embracing the power of the long ball.
On Saturday we came out and took care of Davidson pretty quickly setting up a quarterfinals match-up with UVA. UVA is the one strong team in the AC region I have no career wins over and I was a little nervous when we only took half 8-7. We made a couple of defensive adjustments in the second half and were able to finish them off 15-9. Andrea Duran is huge for them and would definitely be on my all region ballot (if I got to vote).
That meant we were matched up with Florida in the Semis. Both teams were relatively clean offensively and the game only lasted 85 minutes – Florida 15 Emory 10. I actually thought we played pretty well in the game, but they were just too good. Florida doesn’t have the superstars that UGA does, but they are a lot more consistent. I could see UGA finding a way to lose in pre-quarters at natties or getting hot and making a run to finals. On the other hand, I think Florida is a very solid quarters team that could make semis with the right quarters match-up.
The biggest news from Saturday was definitely the earlier UNC elimination. Troy posted on RSD about the surprising UNC losses here. I was able to watch a decent chunk of both games, and I don’t really have much to add. I can’t say that I agree that UNC has the regions strongest starting 7, but I do agree that Hack is the scariest all around player in the region. UNC definitely didn’t look to be playing as well as I had seen them play earlier in the season, but you’ve got to give a lot of credit to both Wake and NC State. Both teams did a great job of gumming up UNC’s throwing lanes and then coming down with big huck after big huck. In any event, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t pulling for NC State to take down UNC in the last game of the day on Saturday.
The format on Sunday basically requires you to go 3-1 to claim the third bid to the show. There’s not much advantage to losing in one round over another because you’re going to have 4 games regardless. So, our plan for Sunday was to go with a really open rotation until we lost a game and then tighten things up. NC State jumped out on us early in the first round and put us away fairly easily. We did have a small late game run that helped our confidence for the rest of the day. As it turned out, losing that game ended up being a big advantage. We basically, didn’t have to run much in the first game against NC State, and our penalty for that was playing zone loving UVA rather than hard running (and still fresh) Wake. We were able to get up quickly on UVA and open up the rotation for the whole game again saving our legs. After we finished off UVA, I jogged over to find Wake and NCST embroiled in a classic Carolina style bloodbath, 11-10 game to 13. I found myself pumping my fist with every punt that sailed too long.
Wake ended up pulling it out and so we had a tired NC State next. They went up 2-0, but after a time-out we went on an 8-2 run to take half and never looked back. That meant we had to play Wake in the game to go. We came out playing well and started off 5-1 and I was thinking we were going to run away with it. Next thing I know we’re down 10-8 and we’re kind of scratching our heads trying to figure out what went wrong. I think the hardest time to be a coach is when you’re losing because you’re making unforced errors. It’s just so difficult to know what to say to your team. When you’re losing because the other team is doing something strategically, at least you can tell your team how to adjust to stop what they’re doing. But you can’t really come into the huddle and say, “stop dropping the disc.” Anyway, I’d love to say that I made some brilliant strategic adjustment that gave us the win, but basically we just cleaned it up and pulled it out 15-13. I really can’t say enough about how impressed I was with how much heart Wake showed. I honestly believe we have better athletes and better throwers than they do, but they were able to hang with us the whole time based on just a complete refusal to give up. It was pretty inspiring to watch.
Anyway, so we’re off to natties and I’m pretty pumped. Realistically, we can’t win nationals, so I’m just going to approach it like a two day practice – it will be a great learning experience for my young team.
Random notes/thoughts from the weekend
1) The triple elimination format creates some interesting decisions for coaches.
2) If there’s anything more annoying than unobservant observers, I can’t think of what it is at the moment.
3) I’m not usually one to hype my players, but Celine Sledge has got to be the AC Rookie of the Year.
4) You don’t get 25 out of 26 rosters in on time by accident – so nice work Lindsey Hack and her sectional coordinators (Julia Echterhoff et. al.)
5) AC South strongest (mixed) section in the country this year? All 5 AC bids to natties go to AC South
Monday, May 01, 2006
Monday, December 19, 2005
One Coach's Plan for a Semester
Idris talked about why frisbee blogs are a good source of information (at the very least, I seem to be getting all my post ideas from Idris, whether that's good or bad), and I agree. I actually think it's a good first step in developing a solid base of knowledge that our sport needs before making the next step.
So...this weekend I laid out the plan for this semester for the college team I coach. I figured I'd post the general outline here, realizing that this is not the best plan for every team (or possibly even my team), but maybe there is a good idea in there somewhere that you can take, or maybe you can use it as a starting point. If anyone has any suggestions for changes/additions, I'd be interested in those as well.
Basics: We have 3 (3 hour) practices a week. Mondays and Thursdays are normal practice, on Tuesdays we scrimmage a local pickup team. We have a pretty small team, with 7-10 guys at practices, so the plan reflects that limitation.
Topics: A list of strategy/tactical points to cover, in the order I plan on teaching. The idea is to give at least one week's practice to each topic. In the past I've laid out how many weeks to spend on particular topics, but this year I've just got a list, if we need more than a week to cover it, we'll take it. Once I feel we've covered it enough, we'll move on to the next topic. The topics are pretty basic. It would be helpful to someday post specific discussion points and drills for each topic. One day hopefully. (Jim and Zaz's book is a good place to look for info on all these topics).
Dump-Swing/Dump Defense
Trap Dump/Dump Defense
Straight stack offense/Man Defense
Brick and set plays/Man Defense
Redzone offense/Man Defense
Redzone set plays/Man Defense
Zone offense/2-3-2
Zone offense/alternate zone defenses
If we get through all that we'll probably just review what we've done so far, or possibly look to add some new topics if need be (H-stack, more zone d's, more redzone setplays, etc.)
Practice Templates: A basic outline that we'll follow at every practice.
Monday:
Warmup
Speedwork (1-5 sprints/shuttles/starts/etc.)
10 Throw (10 flat backhands/forehands, 10 invert backhands/forehands, 10 outvert backhands/forehands, and 10 hammers)
1 Regular Drill (Not necessarily specific to the weekly topic, just working on general skills. ie 3 person marking drill, mushroom drill, throwing drill, etc.)
Discuss Weekly Topic (diagram on the whiteboard, hand out review material, answer questions)
Walk-through Weekly Topic
Weekly Topic Drills/Games
Intervals
Tuesday:
Warmup
10 Throw
Warmup Drill (whatever you prefer, I see a lot of mushroom, but we use a goto drill)
Weekly Topic reminder/team discussion
Scrimmage
Game/Weekly Topic Review and Questions
Intervals
Thursday:
Warmup
10 Throw
1 Regular Drill
Discuss Weekly Topic - answer questions
1-2 Weekly Topic Drills
2-3 Regular Drills
Game (ideally 7 on 7, more likely 3 on 3, hotbox, etc.)
Intervals
So...this weekend I laid out the plan for this semester for the college team I coach. I figured I'd post the general outline here, realizing that this is not the best plan for every team (or possibly even my team), but maybe there is a good idea in there somewhere that you can take, or maybe you can use it as a starting point. If anyone has any suggestions for changes/additions, I'd be interested in those as well.
Basics: We have 3 (3 hour) practices a week. Mondays and Thursdays are normal practice, on Tuesdays we scrimmage a local pickup team. We have a pretty small team, with 7-10 guys at practices, so the plan reflects that limitation.
Topics: A list of strategy/tactical points to cover, in the order I plan on teaching. The idea is to give at least one week's practice to each topic. In the past I've laid out how many weeks to spend on particular topics, but this year I've just got a list, if we need more than a week to cover it, we'll take it. Once I feel we've covered it enough, we'll move on to the next topic. The topics are pretty basic. It would be helpful to someday post specific discussion points and drills for each topic. One day hopefully. (Jim and Zaz's book is a good place to look for info on all these topics).
Dump-Swing/Dump Defense
Trap Dump/Dump Defense
Straight stack offense/Man Defense
Brick and set plays/Man Defense
Redzone offense/Man Defense
Redzone set plays/Man Defense
Zone offense/2-3-2
Zone offense/alternate zone defenses
If we get through all that we'll probably just review what we've done so far, or possibly look to add some new topics if need be (H-stack, more zone d's, more redzone setplays, etc.)
Practice Templates: A basic outline that we'll follow at every practice.
Monday:
Warmup
Speedwork (1-5 sprints/shuttles/starts/etc.)
10 Throw (10 flat backhands/forehands, 10 invert backhands/forehands, 10 outvert backhands/forehands, and 10 hammers)
1 Regular Drill (Not necessarily specific to the weekly topic, just working on general skills. ie 3 person marking drill, mushroom drill, throwing drill, etc.)
Discuss Weekly Topic (diagram on the whiteboard, hand out review material, answer questions)
Walk-through Weekly Topic
Weekly Topic Drills/Games
Intervals
Tuesday:
Warmup
10 Throw
Warmup Drill (whatever you prefer, I see a lot of mushroom, but we use a goto drill)
Weekly Topic reminder/team discussion
Scrimmage
Game/Weekly Topic Review and Questions
Intervals
Thursday:
Warmup
10 Throw
1 Regular Drill
Discuss Weekly Topic - answer questions
1-2 Weekly Topic Drills
2-3 Regular Drills
Game (ideally 7 on 7, more likely 3 on 3, hotbox, etc.)
Intervals
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
What strategy?
I read this post by Idris, and it got me thinking about the low level of strategy in our sport. Take the idea that it is truly better (and I actually agree with this) to let a team learn how to flow and adjust on it's own, with little structure. This, to me, is a horrible indictment of the place our sport is at currently. In other, more established sports, you learn the fundamentals, how to make the x different cuts required in your sport, the right way to throw a ball.
Maybe I place football on too high a pedestal, but I'd love to have just a fraction of the strategy from football in Ultimate. How hard would it be to have a standard set of cuts, have players run the cuts, perhaps changing them based on a defensive 'hot read'? Is it simply a physics question? Does the disc move too slowly in the air to run a curl or post? I'd like to think we could just add on to the progression idea. I know player x is going to make cut y. I see how the defense is playing him, and know that he is going to switch to cut z. I can then make the throw to z before the player has even turned.
I know this happens, to a degree, at higher levels, but I don't think it's actual codified in the offense. There is so little consensus in our sport about the best way to do things, that we actually teach new players to try different (probably incorrect) things out because we're worried that we're wrong or we simply know that the next team a player is on will likely have a completely different philosophy. I'm not talking about the difference between the west coast offense and the run and shoot. At their core, those offenses are much more similar than what we do team to team, even if we're running the 'same offense.'
Teaching players to play dynamically makes your team better right now, and probably makes your players better over the next few years. But until we get to the point where we can teach players the right way to play, we're going to be stuck teaching them to play 15 different (non-optimal) ways and we're never going to have real strategy.
Strategy in our sport right now is limited to "create 2 on 1's", "get a step on your guy and jack it", "break the mark to get the defense on the wrong side of the field," etc. Maybe I'm silly to think that we can or should move to, "the defense is in an X coverage so I went to the Y hotroute to beat it."
What is the most advanced Ultimate offense out there? Does it work? and how 'advanced' is it really? What are the limitations in our sport that keep us from having more precise strategy?
Maybe I place football on too high a pedestal, but I'd love to have just a fraction of the strategy from football in Ultimate. How hard would it be to have a standard set of cuts, have players run the cuts, perhaps changing them based on a defensive 'hot read'? Is it simply a physics question? Does the disc move too slowly in the air to run a curl or post? I'd like to think we could just add on to the progression idea. I know player x is going to make cut y. I see how the defense is playing him, and know that he is going to switch to cut z. I can then make the throw to z before the player has even turned.
I know this happens, to a degree, at higher levels, but I don't think it's actual codified in the offense. There is so little consensus in our sport about the best way to do things, that we actually teach new players to try different (probably incorrect) things out because we're worried that we're wrong or we simply know that the next team a player is on will likely have a completely different philosophy. I'm not talking about the difference between the west coast offense and the run and shoot. At their core, those offenses are much more similar than what we do team to team, even if we're running the 'same offense.'
Teaching players to play dynamically makes your team better right now, and probably makes your players better over the next few years. But until we get to the point where we can teach players the right way to play, we're going to be stuck teaching them to play 15 different (non-optimal) ways and we're never going to have real strategy.
Strategy in our sport right now is limited to "create 2 on 1's", "get a step on your guy and jack it", "break the mark to get the defense on the wrong side of the field," etc. Maybe I'm silly to think that we can or should move to, "the defense is in an X coverage so I went to the Y hotroute to beat it."
What is the most advanced Ultimate offense out there? Does it work? and how 'advanced' is it really? What are the limitations in our sport that keep us from having more precise strategy?
Monday, December 12, 2005
Know what you want – Progression of Reads
So you’ve spent hours going over the game film of your team, carefully noting every possible strength and weakness. You’ve come up with the perfectly tailored game plan that highlights each area of strength while hiding all potential weak spots. You are a titan of strategy; it’s just a matter of time before your true genius is recognized and you replace Parinella on ultimatetalk. So why in the hell does your team keep screwing it up?
It’s important for players to understand the real world implications of a certain strategy. It’s one thing for a player to sit in a class room and understand the ideal version of your evil plan when you draw it on the chalkboard. Being able to implement the plan on the field is another thing altogether. When drawn on the chalkboard, all the available options can be viewed pretty much simultaneously. In the real world, seeing the whole field in an instant is not a possibility (as an aside…I find the longer I play the more of the field I can “see” – it’s conceivable to me that some of the old-timers are able to see multiple options developing at the same time and are able to make choices based on that – in any event, I can pretty much guarantee that none of the players you coach can do this). As the designer of the offense, it’s your job to focus your player’s attention in the right place. A progression of reads is simply setting the order in which a player should look at a particular cut. For instance, in the Evil Plan Offense, upon receiving the disc a player should (1) look to hit the deep cutter, if that’s not there (2)look to hit the underneath continuation, if that’s not there (3) look to hit the break, if that’s not there (4) dump the frisbee. Of course, the progression of reads in your offense could look very different depending on what you’re trying to do.
The main point is this – you know what spaces your offense is best at attacking - prioritizing throw options leads to more shots into the spaces that you attack well and that is a good thing.
It’s important for players to understand the real world implications of a certain strategy. It’s one thing for a player to sit in a class room and understand the ideal version of your evil plan when you draw it on the chalkboard. Being able to implement the plan on the field is another thing altogether. When drawn on the chalkboard, all the available options can be viewed pretty much simultaneously. In the real world, seeing the whole field in an instant is not a possibility (as an aside…I find the longer I play the more of the field I can “see” – it’s conceivable to me that some of the old-timers are able to see multiple options developing at the same time and are able to make choices based on that – in any event, I can pretty much guarantee that none of the players you coach can do this). As the designer of the offense, it’s your job to focus your player’s attention in the right place. A progression of reads is simply setting the order in which a player should look at a particular cut. For instance, in the Evil Plan Offense, upon receiving the disc a player should (1) look to hit the deep cutter, if that’s not there (2)look to hit the underneath continuation, if that’s not there (3) look to hit the break, if that’s not there (4) dump the frisbee. Of course, the progression of reads in your offense could look very different depending on what you’re trying to do.
The main point is this – you know what spaces your offense is best at attacking - prioritizing throw options leads to more shots into the spaces that you attack well and that is a good thing.
Monday, December 05, 2005
How much is a yard worth?
I was reading through a bunch of the old stuff on my blog recently. It’s fun to see how some of my ideas have changed even in the short time (1 year) that I’ve been blogging. Anyway, in one of my first posts I said I was going to go through all of Billy Berrou’s stuff and pick out the good stuff. Jim beat me to the punch with this post. In Frank’s response to Jim he says something that’s interesting to me “First, take yardage completely out of the equation. It does not belong. Yardage is irrelevant…It's always about position.” In a sense, this is totally insane – you have to move forward (gain yardage) in order to score. However, it is true that it is oftentimes worthwhile to trade yardage to maintain possession and improve field position.
Anyway – here a couple of things I’m pretty sure I think about the value of a yard (relative to the value of field position and maintaining possession) –
1) The value of yardage decreases as the level of play increases.
2) The value of yardage decreases as conditions improve.
3) The value of yardage increases when a team is going downwind.
Here’s something I think I think about the value of yardage.
1) The value of yardage decreases the closer a team gets to the end zone.
Here’s something I’ll claim I think if people think it makes sense – otherwise I definitely don’t think it.
1) The value of yardage decreases when a team is going upwind.
Anyway – here a couple of things I’m pretty sure I think about the value of a yard (relative to the value of field position and maintaining possession) –
1) The value of yardage decreases as the level of play increases.
2) The value of yardage decreases as conditions improve.
3) The value of yardage increases when a team is going downwind.
Here’s something I think I think about the value of yardage.
1) The value of yardage decreases the closer a team gets to the end zone.
Here’s something I’ll claim I think if people think it makes sense – otherwise I definitely don’t think it.
1) The value of yardage decreases when a team is going upwind.
Monday, November 21, 2005
CCC - Women's
I’m officially out of new things to talk about, so I’m pretty much relegated to doing tournament write-ups. At least they haven’t started calling for my head (yet) over on ultimatetalk. When it inevitably does happen, I plan to take the road of seppuku, blocking the rss feed on my site before Idris can pull the plug. I’m currently printing, “Keep Luke on Ultimatetalk” stickers. If you email me your credit card number I’ll send you some.
Pretty much all of the AC region contenders were at CCC this weekend, and things are considerably more wide open than they have been in the past. Florida is for real and is the early frontrunner with their win this weekend, but I think seven teams have a chance of grabbing the AC’s bids to natties. UNC is probably the most athletic team in the region and will be very tough down the stretch. Emory is improving despite poor coaching. Wake Forest rolled over teams on Saturday before losing to a very smart Tufts team in the quarters. UGA’s record this weekend is not indicative of their strength. They basically played their rookies a whole bunch. They still have two Ozone players and will likely be adding a third in the spring. NCST and UVA both lost several key players from last year but both have strong young players. In general the region is very young this year. At this point, I’d say none of these teams are as strong as last year’s big four, and any number of teams could realistically come out on top in the end. Should be a fun spring in the AC.
I’d expect all of the out of region teams to be among the better teams in their respective regions as well. Tufts brought a fairly small squad down but did a good job of taking care of the frisbee. Their low numbers caught up with them late in the day on both Saturday and Sunday. Penn State has some really good top end players – Erin Crider made several big time plays. I’m sure they’ll be battling it out with Cornell for the ME title. I was impressed by Michigan’s handlers and with the Purdue losing everyone, they have to be the frontrunners in the GL. Texas A&M has some big athletes and likes hanging it up to them.
Last year I watched Iowa playing at CCC and thought, “this is a team that could easily make the semi-finals of nationals.” I didn’t really see a team like that at CCC this year. The teams were very good, but none of these teams is a truly elite team yet. Of course, it’s only November so there’s plenty of time for teams to take their games to the next level.
Pretty much all of the AC region contenders were at CCC this weekend, and things are considerably more wide open than they have been in the past. Florida is for real and is the early frontrunner with their win this weekend, but I think seven teams have a chance of grabbing the AC’s bids to natties. UNC is probably the most athletic team in the region and will be very tough down the stretch. Emory is improving despite poor coaching. Wake Forest rolled over teams on Saturday before losing to a very smart Tufts team in the quarters. UGA’s record this weekend is not indicative of their strength. They basically played their rookies a whole bunch. They still have two Ozone players and will likely be adding a third in the spring. NCST and UVA both lost several key players from last year but both have strong young players. In general the region is very young this year. At this point, I’d say none of these teams are as strong as last year’s big four, and any number of teams could realistically come out on top in the end. Should be a fun spring in the AC.
I’d expect all of the out of region teams to be among the better teams in their respective regions as well. Tufts brought a fairly small squad down but did a good job of taking care of the frisbee. Their low numbers caught up with them late in the day on both Saturday and Sunday. Penn State has some really good top end players – Erin Crider made several big time plays. I’m sure they’ll be battling it out with Cornell for the ME title. I was impressed by Michigan’s handlers and with the Purdue losing everyone, they have to be the frontrunners in the GL. Texas A&M has some big athletes and likes hanging it up to them.
Last year I watched Iowa playing at CCC and thought, “this is a team that could easily make the semi-finals of nationals.” I didn’t really see a team like that at CCC this year. The teams were very good, but none of these teams is a truly elite team yet. Of course, it’s only November so there’s plenty of time for teams to take their games to the next level.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
What can I say - they cheated us.
Coming into Nationals if you had told me that we would be playing Ring in our second game on Saturday I would have been pretty pleased. I certainly wouldn’t have expected it to be the 13/14 game – more on that game in a bit.
I’m an obsessive weather.com checker the week of a tournament. I always like seeing how much wind is predicted. Usually I find myself hoping for just a little wind, but going into nationals I was praying for BIG wind. We had lost two of our main offensive cutters in the weeks prior to nationals – leaving us with a lot of handlers with no one to throw to. This isn’t exactly the ideal situation when your plan is to go BIG. In retrospect, it’s fairly obvious that we should have adjusted our game plan much earlier than we did.
Our first game was against Furious and it started off pretty well. We scored our first 4 offensive goals without a turnover. The Junkyard Dogs had generated two turnovers but were unable to convert. The offense got broken on the next point, and then they broke us again to take half 8-6. They scored their offensive point to make it 9-6, and we really weren’t able to get it going after that.
We put the FG loss behind us pretty quickly. I think everyone understood that DoG was the team we really needed to beat. The craziness over in C pool meant that the loser of our game against DoG would likely have the Condors in the lower bracket while the winner would have Twisted Metal in the upper bracket. The Junkyard Dogs came out on fire and we went up 4-1. We actually got the block with a chance to go up 5-1, but gave it up and they scored to make it 4-2. DoG battled back to 4-4 as we decided to hang it to our handlers with Colin (6’7ish) on them. I know Jim and Al always say that you shouldn’t be throwing to match-ups when you throw deep, but I don’t think this is exactly what they had in mind. We trade out and we take half 8-7 on serve. We continue to trade until 10-10 and then they break us 3 of the next 4 points and finish us off 15-12. Ziperstein was really outstanding in this game. He had three blocks against us, including getting one on me going deep. I think he tweaked his hamstring on Friday and wasn’t able to play many points on Saturday against Sockeye. Clearly he would have been a big help.
We squeaked by PBR in our final round of pool play to set up a match-up against Condors first thing on Friday morning.
Again, we started the day playing pretty well. We trade with Condors to 5-5 before breaking them. We trade to 7-6 and then they break us back to back times to take half 8-7 on serve. We trade to 9-9 and then have our third second half collapse of the weekend and get broken 5 times in a row. They close us out 15-10. Occasionally, you’re going to get broken and that’s ok. But it’s imperative that you don’t get broken multiple times in a row. All weekend long we really struggled to stop the bleeding. It’s easy to say “well we would have been fine if we had Dylan or make some similar excuse” but the truth is in all three games we lost we had really good opportunities to put our opponents in tough spots and we let them out too easily. That’s not to say that we should have won those games – I just mean we could have really forced our opponents to play as well as they were capable of playing if they wanted to win and we didn’t make teams do that.
After our loss to the condors we needed to beat Doublewide by 9 points in order to advance to pre-quarters. If we beat DW by less than 9 Condors would advance, if we lost to DW then DW would advance. Once Doublewide got to 7 we were officially eliminated, and they basically ran away with it.
If you’ve ever been to Tune-Up, you know that the farther you move away from the main tent, the worse the weekend has been. That’s kind of how I felt on Saturday morning as I started at the pavilion and walked past team after team warming up for progressively less meaningful games until I arrived at the LAST field in the complex, the home of the 13-16 bracket. The walk of shame – perhaps deserved, but definitely depressing. We had Vicious Cycle. Highlights from this game include me catching my first and most likely only Callahan goal at Natties. That’s really about all I remember.
All season long we’ve attempted to perfect the art of lulling our opponents to sleep. We have become fairly confident in our abilities believing that it would be impossible to lull us. After all you can’t really expect to lull a luller. In the end perhaps our hubris caught up with us as Ring undoubtedly lulled us in the battle for 13th place. While we were cheering on the Ozone ladies in their quarterfinals match-up, a Ring player came up to us and asked if we’d like to boat race for the coveted 13th spot. Like fools we immediately accepted. We should have known that no one would be crazy enough to challenge a team led by the Kid to a boat race for anything meaningful. Needless to say, when we returned to our field to retrieve our stuff, Ring was on the line assessing – the scoreboard read Ring 5 Chain 0.
I’m an obsessive weather.com checker the week of a tournament. I always like seeing how much wind is predicted. Usually I find myself hoping for just a little wind, but going into nationals I was praying for BIG wind. We had lost two of our main offensive cutters in the weeks prior to nationals – leaving us with a lot of handlers with no one to throw to. This isn’t exactly the ideal situation when your plan is to go BIG. In retrospect, it’s fairly obvious that we should have adjusted our game plan much earlier than we did.
Our first game was against Furious and it started off pretty well. We scored our first 4 offensive goals without a turnover. The Junkyard Dogs had generated two turnovers but were unable to convert. The offense got broken on the next point, and then they broke us again to take half 8-6. They scored their offensive point to make it 9-6, and we really weren’t able to get it going after that.
We put the FG loss behind us pretty quickly. I think everyone understood that DoG was the team we really needed to beat. The craziness over in C pool meant that the loser of our game against DoG would likely have the Condors in the lower bracket while the winner would have Twisted Metal in the upper bracket. The Junkyard Dogs came out on fire and we went up 4-1. We actually got the block with a chance to go up 5-1, but gave it up and they scored to make it 4-2. DoG battled back to 4-4 as we decided to hang it to our handlers with Colin (6’7ish) on them. I know Jim and Al always say that you shouldn’t be throwing to match-ups when you throw deep, but I don’t think this is exactly what they had in mind. We trade out and we take half 8-7 on serve. We continue to trade until 10-10 and then they break us 3 of the next 4 points and finish us off 15-12. Ziperstein was really outstanding in this game. He had three blocks against us, including getting one on me going deep. I think he tweaked his hamstring on Friday and wasn’t able to play many points on Saturday against Sockeye. Clearly he would have been a big help.
We squeaked by PBR in our final round of pool play to set up a match-up against Condors first thing on Friday morning.
Again, we started the day playing pretty well. We trade with Condors to 5-5 before breaking them. We trade to 7-6 and then they break us back to back times to take half 8-7 on serve. We trade to 9-9 and then have our third second half collapse of the weekend and get broken 5 times in a row. They close us out 15-10. Occasionally, you’re going to get broken and that’s ok. But it’s imperative that you don’t get broken multiple times in a row. All weekend long we really struggled to stop the bleeding. It’s easy to say “well we would have been fine if we had Dylan or make some similar excuse” but the truth is in all three games we lost we had really good opportunities to put our opponents in tough spots and we let them out too easily. That’s not to say that we should have won those games – I just mean we could have really forced our opponents to play as well as they were capable of playing if they wanted to win and we didn’t make teams do that.
After our loss to the condors we needed to beat Doublewide by 9 points in order to advance to pre-quarters. If we beat DW by less than 9 Condors would advance, if we lost to DW then DW would advance. Once Doublewide got to 7 we were officially eliminated, and they basically ran away with it.
If you’ve ever been to Tune-Up, you know that the farther you move away from the main tent, the worse the weekend has been. That’s kind of how I felt on Saturday morning as I started at the pavilion and walked past team after team warming up for progressively less meaningful games until I arrived at the LAST field in the complex, the home of the 13-16 bracket. The walk of shame – perhaps deserved, but definitely depressing. We had Vicious Cycle. Highlights from this game include me catching my first and most likely only Callahan goal at Natties. That’s really about all I remember.
All season long we’ve attempted to perfect the art of lulling our opponents to sleep. We have become fairly confident in our abilities believing that it would be impossible to lull us. After all you can’t really expect to lull a luller. In the end perhaps our hubris caught up with us as Ring undoubtedly lulled us in the battle for 13th place. While we were cheering on the Ozone ladies in their quarterfinals match-up, a Ring player came up to us and asked if we’d like to boat race for the coveted 13th spot. Like fools we immediately accepted. We should have known that no one would be crazy enough to challenge a team led by the Kid to a boat race for anything meaningful. Needless to say, when we returned to our field to retrieve our stuff, Ring was on the line assessing – the scoreboard read Ring 5 Chain 0.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Seeding Rules
Is it time to get rid of the requirement that the team that finishes higher at regionals has to be seeded higher at nationals? It seems like this rule consistently forces seeding that doesn’t gel with the common sense perception of strength. I think it’s particularly silly in the scenario where the 2 and 3 seed don’t even play. In open this year, I don’t think there were any huge surprises at regionals, but it sounds like their might have been some craziness in coed. Anyway, there are examples of other sports that don’t force this requirement – The NCAA Basketball Tourney for instance – I was just wondering what people thought about this rule.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Post Tournament Depression (PTD)
For a few years now, I've noticed an emotional change in the days following a tournament. I've spoken to a few others who about it and they've noticed similar things. Usually, the Monday after a physically and mentally taxing tournament, I'll exhibit several (generally mild) symptoms of clinical depression. Now, I may be overly sensitive to the subject since I have a psychology degree and since I've suffered through bouts of clinical depression in my life (ironically, Ultimate has been the best cure for me). I am not suggesting that Ultimate in general, or tournaments in particular cause clinical depression. Rather I have experienced what I describe as "Post Tournament Depression (PTD)" which is a mild, short duration (2-3 days) form of depression.
Here are a few of the symptoms I've noticed:
I've failed to find any studies on physical exhaustion causing temporary depression, so perhaps it's all in my head. It makes sense to me though, that a physically draining event could cause a person to feel depressed for a few days, while the body recovers. I do not mean to ignore the mentally exhausting aspect of the problem. I do think that a mentally taxing tournament can increase PTD symptoms, but I think physical exhaustion is the main cause.
So, does anyone else notice symptoms of depression in the days following a tournament? Do you just wait it out or have you come up with a way to bring yourself out of it?
Here are a few of the symptoms I've noticed:
- lack of energy
- sad or withdrawn
- irritable
- difficulty completing simple tasks
- difficulty focusing
I've failed to find any studies on physical exhaustion causing temporary depression, so perhaps it's all in my head. It makes sense to me though, that a physically draining event could cause a person to feel depressed for a few days, while the body recovers. I do not mean to ignore the mentally exhausting aspect of the problem. I do think that a mentally taxing tournament can increase PTD symptoms, but I think physical exhaustion is the main cause.
So, does anyone else notice symptoms of depression in the days following a tournament? Do you just wait it out or have you come up with a way to bring yourself out of it?
Friday, October 07, 2005
Southern Regionals
Tim writes, “The blogworld is silent.” I’m not sure why everyone’s stopped posting. Honestly, ultimatetalk.com is kind of in my head. It seems like ultimatetalk is geared toward serious discussions and I’ve been hesitant to clutter up that board with my pointless ramblings. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to block the RSS feed on individual posts so I can prevent my goofy posts from being syndicated, while still letting ultimatetalk pick up the “serious” ones (any ideas?). I think I could probably categorize all of my posts and then provide a separate RSS feed for each category, but blogger doesn’t support categories, and I don’t feel like moving the blog. Anyway, if you’re looking for some frisbee posts you should check out Tim’s blog, it’s a lot like the early days on The Count’s blog. The only other stuff that’s really going on is over in the comments of Zaz’s latest post (I used to think I was a nerd, but after reading a few comments, I realize I didn’t even understand the meaning of the word). That’s about enough of that - onto to the regionals write-up.
Last Tuesday, the score reporter was only showing 15 teams as going to regionals, and I was afraid were going to have the ugly 15 team format. Basically we would have had to play 3 games on Sunday instead of 1, so I was really hoping we could secure a 16th team. Thankfully we were able to grab a 16th so the modified triple elimination bracket was on.
Our first round was against Crude of Dallas United. Dallas has two teams and they apparently have a very good relationship. Crude calls themselves Grit’s B team. I’m not sure if they practice/have tryouts together, but I think it’s an interesting idea. I think maybe they did something similar in the Toronto area this year? I think it’s great to see the top team in an area working to develop the players on the second team. It’s going to guarantee that the top team always has the best players, but it seems like it can go a long way towards improving the depth of good players in an area. It will be interesting to see how things turn out in those areas in a few years. Crude had some good athletes but was a bit short on throwers and we were able to take care of business
Next up was Miami. In 2002 we actually lost in the second round to Miami and had to fight through the LONG road to natties. They still have some of the old Florida Combo guys and traditionally it hasn’t been pretty when we’ve played them. I was hoping they would lose in the game prior to this one because I wasn’t really excited about arguing for two hours. As it turned out it was pretty clean uneventful game.
Our final game of Saturday was against Vicious Cycle while Doublewide played Bulge in the other semifinal. Vicious Cycle has a couple of old-timers, but for the most part they’re super-young. Their studs are the studs of the University of Florida men’s team. The Junkyard Dogs pretty much dominated this game as we took half 8-2. In the second half we mostly traded to finish it off. There were no real highlights.
Thankfully the game was short and we got to watch the DW-Bulge game. This game was pretty contentious. Bulge got up by a couple of breaks and looked like they were going to take it, but DW went on a big run at the end. In the later stages a DW guy and a Bulge guy were jawing back and forth and the DW guy shoves the Bulge guy. The Bulge guy shouts “I will knock you out!” The consensus among the Chain sideline was that the Bulge guy would in fact have knocked the DW guy out had it not been broken up. In further proof that God loves the fans, Doublewide decides to immediately throw the big hanger to the two guys that had just been fighting. In an attempt to dispel the rumor that the disc never lies, the DW instigator comes down with the hanger over the Bulge guy.
Sunday morning brings a swirling, gusty wind for our finals game against Doublewide. The Junk Yard Dogs continue their impressive play breaking 3 times to Doublewide’s 1 and we take half 8-5. Highlights include Kid pimping the bejesus out of Max. I really felt bad for Max, as he read the disc perfectly and really did everything he could. Here’s a picture of me getting pimped to ease the pain.
After half, the O team goes into shut-down mode and we get broken 4 of our next 5 possessions and we’re down 11-9.We finally score to make it 11-10, and then the Junk Yard Dogs come out and break twice in a row to put us back up 12-11. We trade to 13-12 and then the JYD finish it 14-12. All and all a pretty ugly game, but we won so that’s good.
I skipped the VC-Doublewide game and went and watched the coed finals. Hang Time and Hot and Sweaty are both very strong. I would be pretty surprised if both teams didn’t make at least quarterfinals.
I was back at the open fields for the Bulge-VC game to go. It was a very fun game. The crowd was just about evenly divided between loud Bulge fans and loud VC fans. I had to leave at half-time to catch my flight, so I missed the bottle throwing. There were only 4-5 Chainiacs remaining at the fields when I left, and it was mostly GA Tech kids. Bottle throwing is more of a Dawg thing, so I’m gonna guess Chain didn’t throw the second bottle. I guess I’ll find out for sure at practice tomorrow.
Last Tuesday, the score reporter was only showing 15 teams as going to regionals, and I was afraid were going to have the ugly 15 team format. Basically we would have had to play 3 games on Sunday instead of 1, so I was really hoping we could secure a 16th team. Thankfully we were able to grab a 16th so the modified triple elimination bracket was on.
Our first round was against Crude of Dallas United. Dallas has two teams and they apparently have a very good relationship. Crude calls themselves Grit’s B team. I’m not sure if they practice/have tryouts together, but I think it’s an interesting idea. I think maybe they did something similar in the Toronto area this year? I think it’s great to see the top team in an area working to develop the players on the second team. It’s going to guarantee that the top team always has the best players, but it seems like it can go a long way towards improving the depth of good players in an area. It will be interesting to see how things turn out in those areas in a few years. Crude had some good athletes but was a bit short on throwers and we were able to take care of business
Next up was Miami. In 2002 we actually lost in the second round to Miami and had to fight through the LONG road to natties. They still have some of the old Florida Combo guys and traditionally it hasn’t been pretty when we’ve played them. I was hoping they would lose in the game prior to this one because I wasn’t really excited about arguing for two hours. As it turned out it was pretty clean uneventful game.
Our final game of Saturday was against Vicious Cycle while Doublewide played Bulge in the other semifinal. Vicious Cycle has a couple of old-timers, but for the most part they’re super-young. Their studs are the studs of the University of Florida men’s team. The Junkyard Dogs pretty much dominated this game as we took half 8-2. In the second half we mostly traded to finish it off. There were no real highlights.
Thankfully the game was short and we got to watch the DW-Bulge game. This game was pretty contentious. Bulge got up by a couple of breaks and looked like they were going to take it, but DW went on a big run at the end. In the later stages a DW guy and a Bulge guy were jawing back and forth and the DW guy shoves the Bulge guy. The Bulge guy shouts “I will knock you out!” The consensus among the Chain sideline was that the Bulge guy would in fact have knocked the DW guy out had it not been broken up. In further proof that God loves the fans, Doublewide decides to immediately throw the big hanger to the two guys that had just been fighting. In an attempt to dispel the rumor that the disc never lies, the DW instigator comes down with the hanger over the Bulge guy.
Sunday morning brings a swirling, gusty wind for our finals game against Doublewide. The Junk Yard Dogs continue their impressive play breaking 3 times to Doublewide’s 1 and we take half 8-5. Highlights include Kid pimping the bejesus out of Max. I really felt bad for Max, as he read the disc perfectly and really did everything he could. Here’s a picture of me getting pimped to ease the pain.
After half, the O team goes into shut-down mode and we get broken 4 of our next 5 possessions and we’re down 11-9.We finally score to make it 11-10, and then the Junk Yard Dogs come out and break twice in a row to put us back up 12-11. We trade to 13-12 and then the JYD finish it 14-12. All and all a pretty ugly game, but we won so that’s good.
I skipped the VC-Doublewide game and went and watched the coed finals. Hang Time and Hot and Sweaty are both very strong. I would be pretty surprised if both teams didn’t make at least quarterfinals.
I was back at the open fields for the Bulge-VC game to go. It was a very fun game. The crowd was just about evenly divided between loud Bulge fans and loud VC fans. I had to leave at half-time to catch my flight, so I missed the bottle throwing. There were only 4-5 Chainiacs remaining at the fields when I left, and it was mostly GA Tech kids. Bottle throwing is more of a Dawg thing, so I’m gonna guess Chain didn’t throw the second bottle. I guess I’ll find out for sure at practice tomorrow.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)