gcooke's blog

Hiatus

2008-03-14T12:31:00.002-04:00

I don't really like it when websites (or blogs) aren't updated, so I will briefly succumb to the assumption that it matters that folks know what is going on with this blog.

I will be taking an indefinite hiatus from posting as I have quite a few irons in the fire right now and will be spending the time I have for Ultimate on coaching.

Thanks to all those who stopped by. I will leave the blog up for archive purposes.....

-G

UCPC in review

2008-01-28T16:01:00.000-05:00

So I am just now getting a chance to sit down and write about the Ultimate Coaches & Players Conference from this past weekend. I am tying up the loose ends, we are receiving helpful feedback in the form of the evaluations, and I am basically closing the books on UCPC08.

I felt that the conference ran about as smoothly as it did in 07, but, after getting a year under our belts, it seemed much less stressful to run this year. Once we got the final details ironed out, it just a matter of folks getting together to talk about Ultimate. How bad can that be?

Our presenters did a great job and we had lots of volunteers that worked very hard. As I mentioned before, we instituted a couple of new things this year that I am proud of: 1) being able to give a cash contribution to the hosting Ultimate team (Newton South High School), and 2) using proceeds from the video sales on Ultivillage to assist Youth players that want to come in the future. There was a lot of other cool stuff, though. VC gave out $20 coupons in very attendees pack and showed their new line of gear. We did a lot of raffles with gear from BUDA, VC, the UPA, Discraft, NUTC, etc. So, how could Parinella, Weisbrod, AND the Count all win raffle prizes? This does stink of corruption....

Just a reminder that we will have presentation materials up on the website (buda.org/ucpc) shortly.

I didn't get to see too many of the presentations. I thought Michael Baccarini's talk on agility and quickness was very good. Many good exercises and thoughts there. I especially like all the bits about motion in the transverse plane , etc.

I moderated a discussion on "Professional Behavior in Ultimate". On the panel was Al, Catherine Greenwald, and Kyle W. I hope the folks that came thought it was interesting. Both Al and Catherine had interesting perspectives on how pro behavior has changed over time and Kyle offered his opinions about the role of SOTG and the UPA. One participant (a student from Syracuse University) had a very interesting comment that professional players in the rather remote setting of, say, a football stadium can actually talk trash and swear to their hearts content, but Ultimate, due to its size and the fact that spectators are right on the sidelines, needs to police itself much more rigorously due to the more intimate setting.

I had a few moments during lunch to hang out at the Expo and chat with some friends. Tiina and I continue to work on how to make the Expo better and not have such a drop off in attendance when the presentations start.

In the afternoon, I enjoyed Miranda Roth's discussion on "Preparing for Spirited Play" and Dan Cogan's discussion on Zone O&D. I think both presentations were geared very much for Youth and College players that have high aspirations. Good stuff.

The day finished off with "A Conversation with the UPA". The panel consisted of Sandy Hammerley(Exec Dir of the UPA), Matthew Bourland (Champ Series Manager) and two at-large Board Members, Kyle Weisbrod and Josh Seamon. The UPA presented their Strategic Initiatives for the next 5 years by revealing their tactics under the headings of building Community, Character, and Competition. So, for example, under community were plans to ease integration of leagues into the UPA and develop women leaders in the sport. Character was items like developing 75 certified observers per year and paying them. Also here was increasing knowledge of the rules via rules quizzes. Competition brought Div 2 series for College and Club, pre-series events for College & Club, roster limits, and a Grandmaster and Women's Masters event in 2009. The UPA said that they were going to announce the full plan in a few weeks.

With that, we called it a day. Tiina and are going to look into the feasibility of running the UCPC in other parts of the country and I am excited by that prospect. The event does feel like the captains meetings of old when folks would gather in a location and discuss who was going to what tournaments that year. I think it easy to sink behind the anonymity of the internet and the UCPC is brief opportunity to get out there and actually discuss Ultimate face to face.

UCPC: 3 days away/Ultivillage partnership, etc

2008-01-23T12:06:00.000-05:00

UCPC is just three days away and there is a lot of stuff going on.

First, if you didn't register in advance, you can do walk-in registration on Saturday morning. Check out the website for all the latest information.

One exciting thing is the release of the UCPC07 content on Ultivillage. We want players and coaches who do not have the opportunity to attend the conference to have access to content, so we think this is a great offering. You can also go and vote for the 08 content you would like to see released. Very cool. As a side note, we have decided to use any proceeds that the UCPC receives from the sale of its content to provide scholarships to Youth players that want to attend future conferences. Our presenters have graciously released their content for this purpose.

Dr. Goldberg is again our keynote speaker and, as has been said many times, is really worth the price of admission himself. I recommend subscribing to his newsletter on his website.

As was the case in 07, there are really too many good presentations to see and it is hard to choose. I do think that the chance to talk with the UPA about their Strategic Plan is a unique opportunity. I think Wiggins' presentation should be very interesting. There is plenty more to check out though. Go to the UCPC Presentations page to check it out.

Lastly, there is the Ultimate Expo. With VC, Breakmark, BUDA,the UPA, plus all the colleges, high schools, and club teams in a trade show setting, it should be a lot of fun and chance to get merch plus talk to Ultimate teams about what they are up to.

Should be fun. Hope to see you there.

Drops

2008-01-10T09:45:00.000-05:00

I have been watching a bunch of NFL games over the past few months. I found myself recently noticing a bunch of drops that left me thinking, in that Ultimate way, "You have to catch that." Granted, I think many drops occur when the QB is pressured and the pass is a bit wayward or at an unexpected pace, but there are many out and out drops on the gridiron. Randy Moss' drop against the Giants comes quickly to mind, but I am thinking more about the benign drops on the 4th read that results in a little dump/swing pass to the running back.

So, the pros go back to the huddle and do it again as they should, but I have been wondering, as a coach, to what standard can we expect of our players if pro players make these kind of unforced errors?

At the elite level, there is obviously a standard of "no turns" and, practically, this is an elusive standard, even for our best players. I can think of 4 instances when a team has turned it less than 5 times at Nationals.

So, when coaching college or youth players, I am skeptical that a) a mantra of "no turns" or b) maintaining a outcome goal of the number of turns is useful. When rain and wind, etc are a factor, forget about it.

Watching the drops at the pro level has reinforced for me that mistakes are going to happen, and many times, frequently. As usual, I think that a focus on process is vital. Work and drill on throwing and catching as a means of developing confidence in the fundamentals. Don't saddle young players with an unattainable standard. Perhaps, with enough work and a bit of luck, the young players we coach will find themselves on a windless day on the fields of Sarasota facing a tenacious defense, and it will all come together in the right way. Maybe, with good coaching, they will be able to remain enough in the moment to enjoy that experience and not count the few turns that their team makes.

UCPC Early Registration ends in 5 days!

2008-01-02T08:01:00.000-05:00

Just a reminder that UCPC early registration ends on Jan 7th.

Register at: buda.org/ucpc

UCPC registration opens today!

2007-12-06T08:20:00.000-05:00

Registration for the Ultimate Coaches & Players Conference will open at 11am on Thurs, Dec 6.

First 30 general registrants receive a free disc! First 30 Club/College/High School Vendors to register get 2 free discs!

In addition, we are announcing our presentations and panels for this year's conference.

Please go to the UCPC website to register(after 11am) and get the latest updates.

Announcing the Presenters for UCPC 08

2007-11-13T09:16:00.000-05:00

We are pleased to announce the presenters and panelists for UCPC 08. Dr. Alan Goldberg will again offer the keynote presentation and our panelists offer a broad range of perspectives and experience. Thanks to all who submitted proposals.

The website: www.buda.org/ucpc

Information about registration and hotels, etc will be published shortly.

Thanks,
Tiina Booth
George Cooke

Evaluating the Seedings

2007-10-28T12:41:00.000-04:00

First, I want to say congrats to the DoG crew, especially Marshall. I remember him saying after Nats in 04 that that was probably his best chance for a championship. Well, that isn't the case and I am glad that the team will have the chance to represent the country in Vancouver.

Second, this post isn't really about the seedings. It is about the simple fact that if teams play lots of games, especially inter-regional games...the data is better, the seedings are better, and the quality of Nats is better as the initial pools are better balanced.

So, again, thanks to the Mixed teams that put in the effort to travel during the season and organize events like Boston, ECC, and Labor Day. I think this season pretty clearly speaks that it is positive when teams play under one moniker and take the good with the bad. One of the primary reasons for the initiative to increase inter-regional games was to improve data for seeding Nats, so how did we do?

In subjecting the seedings to a predictive point of view, this was by far the most successful year since I became NXD in 03. 3 of 4 semifinalists were correct. 7 of 8 quarterfinalists were correct. 9 of the top 10. 3 of the bottom 5 were also correct.

Biggest changes:
Poodle Club +5(possible answer: pick-up team...everyone doesn't show up until Nats)
Bashing Pinatas +5
Barrio +4 (no data to seed)
ICE -3
Mischief -3
Bad Larry -5

This is much better when compares to years like 05, where we had the 12th seed in the finals, 11th seed in Semis, etc.

The seedings were, generally, as good as RRI in terms of predicting outcomes. The RRI, if I recall (I didn't save a copy of the matrix before the event), had Rival too high, Amp too low, etc, but was pretty good.

So, get out there, play the games, travel to tournaments, keep your name, and take the good with the bad. Your team will be better off and the sport will benefit from your efforts.

Qtrs Predictions?

2007-10-22T10:29:00.000-04:00

Very busy getting ready for this show I am doing. I am pretty bummed I will not be making the trip down south this week........

So, let's discuss brackets.

Please feel free to post your predictions for qtrs/semis/finals of any/all divs.

More Deep Thoughts

2007-10-15T09:15:00.000-04:00

-I received a call from one of my captains yesterday as I was headed back from NYC. I guess my girls won Purple Valley. I think this might be the first time the Whips have won a tournament. My understanding is that they lost to Williams on Sat, but beat Tufts in the final.

-With the light diminishing quickly in the afternoons, we are starting to have some practices in which we don't scrimmage. I do like that as it provides a reminder that actually playing is something not to be taken for granted.

-Finished seeding Nats. It was pretty consuming as there are some points with a glaring lack of data. The captains were great to work with and, thanks to Boston Invite, Labor Day, CHC, and ECC, we did have much better data than in previous years.

-Heady times for Boston sports...really a wicked pissah time to get provincial.

-We are getting great proposals in for the UCPC 08. Reminder that proposals are due by Nov 9. www.buda.org/ucpc

Deep Thoughts

2007-10-09T08:15:00.000-04:00

-Interesting to drive directly from working the BC-Bowling Green game to Regionals. Obviously very different atmospheres. The BC game atmosphere was a bit mundane as the game was a blow out. Regionals, with everyone fighting to keep their seasons alive, was very exciting.

-One of my girls qualified for Mixed Nats with Bashing Pinatas. I think she might be the first Whiptail to do so while still a student.

-The end of the Open final has been written about in detail. Not much to say there other than it is rare to see someone very clearly take the game over and exert their will to that extent.

-It was nice to see the celebrations when teams earn their spot to Sarasota. For the established teams, earning a spot might be an afterthought, but I found it one of the most rewarding feelings.

-Brute really took it to Godiva in the Women's final. Pretty solid on both sides of the disc. They had 1 point scored on them on Sat...

-The Mixed Div does all that work to develop inter-Regional results and then we get three or 4 teams with little or no results plus no Moe, Deliverance, Puppet, Pleasuretown. I am especially curious about how Central Regionals played out as Moe was having a great season up until that point.

-Working on Zone D with the girls this week.

Announcing UCPC 08/Request for Presentation Proposals

2007-10-03T13:24:00.000-04:00

All of the permits and budget stuff is settled, so Tiina and I are excited to announce that UCPC 08 will be held on January 26, 2008 at Newton South High School.

The updated website is;

www.buda.org/ucpc

This year's theme is "Preparation and Performance for the Sport of Ultimate". We are accepting proposals for presentations until November 9, 2007. Please go to the "Presenters" page to submit a proposal.

We will be releasing information about registration, logistics, and who is presenting over the next few week, so stay tuned.

Questions & Anecdotes

2007-10-01T09:02:00.000-04:00

1) Will this be the first year that neither of Boston's #1 Open and Women's teams will be a #1 seed at NE Regionals?

2) In the club division, will this be the first time that teams from Canada will be both the #1 seeds in Open and Women's at Regionals? Maybe FG and Prime one year??

3) Wanting it both ways #1:

Complaining that the sport isn't on TV/legit/respected

AND

Whining about the numbers on shorts

Even leaving the pro sports out of it, ever read the NCAA uniform guidelines? Want to be legit? Get ready for someone to tell what color and brand your underwear has to be.

4) Another Hard Time Cap controversy out in the NW. This reminds me a bit of the situation with UBC and Berkeley a few years back.

There is a lot of work to be done in this area. First thing, the concept of an "end of round" time point in the schedule is not only meaningless, but it is dead and gone. Here is what we have:

The Start of the round: This is the first time listed on the SRT.
The Soft Time Cap: The second time listed on the SRT.

To be clear, the UPA suggests and has written into its SRT templates that 30 minutes is needed for the completion of the game after the Soft Time Cap. The 30 minutes listed is NOT a break.

The only other time device available is:

Hard Time Cap

The first thing is that we need to agree that 30 minutes is enough time to complete the game after the Soft Time Cap. If so, then the Hard Time Cap should be no less than 30 minutes after the Soft Time Cap. If the Hard Time Cap is scheduled for less than 30 minutes after the Soft Time Cap, then it should be due to day light, round scheduling, or other concerns.

If a break is needed to change fields AND there is enough time in the day, I will therefore offer my opinion of a "preferred" schedule:

Start of the round: 9AM
Soft Time Cap: 10:30AM
Hard Time Cap(if needed): 11AM
Start of the Next Round: 11:15AM

Notice that there is no "end of round" marker. That is because it is dead and gone.

5) Wanting it both ways #2:

A friend of mine told me about taking a high school team to UPA Open Sectionals a week or so ago. For quite of few of the high school players, this was their first time playing at Club Sectionals. Not unexpectedly, the team played several college teams and, not unexpectedly, the college teams, some who went to Nationals last year, behaved atrociously. Inappropriate sexual cheers within earshot of parents, trash talking on the field, intimidating my friends team during time outs by surrounding them and singing loudly, etc. Of course, "Its all good", right, dude?

After one game that was particularly horrendous, the college team captain approached my friend, who is a very successful Ultimate coach, and asked if my friend would be interested in coming during the fall and speaking to the team about what it would take to improve, etc. My friend reflected for a moment on the 2 hours of abuse that just occurred, took another look at the costume wearing college team and replied "I don't think so....."

Looking at Offense with questions

2007-09-24T08:57:00.000-04:00

The girls and I began work on revamping the offense last week. For us, any work on the O begins with the acknowledgment that any specific work is predicated upon the assumption that we can throw and catch. Without specific focus on those skills and a practice regime that emphasizes their importance and development, we would be better off playing huck and play D and working on the defense. The good thing about working on throwing and catching is that everyone, both new players and vets, need the work and benefit from it.

One of the changes for me this year is that I am reducing my personal assumption that the girls can, without the benefit of defined structures or principles, properly read a situation and react. It is all well and good to say "take what you are given", but without context, it is pretty much meaningless. For example, a new cutter is fronted, so she cuts away. However, she makes her cut starting 25 yards away from the disc in the same third as the thrower, who only has a 20 yard flick, and the team is going upwind. This is a brief example only meant to say that there are many factors to consider in any given situation and it is probably unfair to expect "correct" reads, let alone basic improvisation, from players who are beginning their involvement in the sport.

So, I have been looking at structure, principles, and creating options in a manner that is manageable for my young, but very smart players. Obviously, the idea of breaking down a potentially complex series of interactions into familiar components (for example, dump pass when trapped) is not earth shaking in its originality. I do, though, appreciate the clarity offered by Phil Jackson in his book "More than a Game" when he says:

"Tex's way of teaching the formatting of the offense (which is the most critical consideration) is to break every possibility down to its constituent parts. For example, when Pippen makes the wing-entry pass to MJ, the way in which the defense chooses to pressure Pippen and Paxson will determine which one of them moves to the corner. The timing and rhythm between Pippen and Paxson must be established before the entire five-man offense can operate smoothly. So Tex will drill this particular two-man sequence until it becomes instinctive".

This systematic approach has an appealing potential, it seems to me, for developing confidence in players as the situations they experience will be somewhat familiar. An additional benefit is less real time thinking and "creativity" ("the cross field blade forehand to the break side seems like a good thing to do now"). The next steps are rather clear: identification and drilling.

When breaking things down into components, it is, however, pretty difficult to ignore what occurs several pages later than the paragraph I quoted above in "More than a Game": The Seven Principles of a Sound Offense. Unfortunately, it is hard these days, with a modicum of awareness of RSD, to read the Seven Principles without a smirk and the thought, "Here I go into Crazy Frank land". Research calls, though, and the Seven Principles is a resource. So, I guess my disclaimer, for what it is worth, is that I have been interested in the Seven Principles potential relevance to Ultimate long before CF publicly attached himself to it, and I do recall feeling a bit bummed that I would probably associate the "Swimmy Swim" with the Seven Principles for years to come. In any case, I do think that when one reads the Seven Principles that questions arise: "Could there be something similar for Ultimate?" and/or "How applicable are the Seven Principles to Ultimate?" are just a couple that come to mind. It is important to keep in mind that the Triangle is a "system" which, in the opinion of PJ and TW, makes the best use of the Seven Principles. So what follows is a point by point look at these hallowed concepts and their possible application in Ultimate:

"A sound offense...

1. Must penetrate the defense.
A. Create good % shots. Define what is a good shot for each player
B. Stress inside power game. Play for the 3-pt power play.
C. Break down all defenses from full court presses to double teams.

Before getting into the specifics, I think this is a an interesting example, potentially, of jargon. Several pages before this listing of principles, Jackson says, "The idea is not to go head to head with the defense. In fact, the offense players will always take the path of least resistance and move to open areas". To me, "breaking down" and "penetrating" sound pretty similar to "going head to head". Now, this is certainly nit picking, but I do have basic questions: what is the difference between "breaking down" and "not going to head to head"? and why is it important? I would say my interpretation is that the former tries to identify weakness and exploit it, while the later will try to impart an approach regardless of what the defense presents, but I don't think this interpretation is overwhelmingly clear based on the somewhat vague language.

I think, for Ultimate, that this principle could be simply "Break down all defenses". A possible addition could be specifics about what breaking down actually means. B seems irrelevant and A could possibly be adapted, if one was really limiting themselves.

2. Basketball is a full court game, end to end play. Skills must be learned at a fast-break pace. Know the optimum speed and work to increase it. Transition basketball begins on D. Look to run!

Clearly, #2 is a problem for most pro basketball teams. I do think that #2 is an odd inclusion. Rather than a principle, it seems more like a process for teaching.

3. Provides proper floor spacing 15'-18', creating an operating area and clearing area on the court. It keep the defense occupied on and off the ball.

Obviously, for Ultimate, the "15'-18'" needs to be removed. I think most Ultimate schemes have considered spacing as well as open and dead spots. My opinion is that the vertical stack does struggle to occupy defenders, specifically those guarding the 2nd and 3rd players from the front of the stack in a 5 person stack.

4. Provides player and ball movement with a purpose. There is only one ball and five players. All things being equal, a player is without the ball 80% of the time.

#4 is good stuff. Speaks to discipline and creating space for others.

5. Provides strong rebound position and good defensive balance on all shots.

Pretty much useless for Ultimate. I am not a basketball player, but I am assuming that "defensive balance" means that the team has a defensive option in the case of a defensive rebound/fast break.

6. Provides the player with the ball the ability to pass to any of his teammates. (The offense should also provide a counter to whatever action the defense may take).

Very interesting idea. Most Ultimate offenses have, it seems to me, created systematic opportunities for maybe 3 players at any given moment (primary cut, dump, perhaps a break side option). I am not sure that the goal should be for every player to have potential, but maybe 4-5 could be looked at.

7. Utilizes the abilities of the individual players. Must create high % shots for a team's beast shooters, rebound opportunities for bounders, etc., affords the opportunity to play out of a flexible format rather than be restricted to a definite set play"

While the first part of #7 is useful, especially for teams at a high level, I think the last sentence is where the power is and it brings us back to the idea of small components as building blocks to understanding possible options based on what is presented.

So, I am skeptical that the Seven Principles can be used, as written, as a template for Ultimate. I do think it is interesting to contemplate similarities between these concepts and we do now, or could do in the future. I think, for the time being, that, for my girls, increasing the sense of situational familiarity on the field based upon repeated component work is a positive way to begin thinking about offense.

Sectionals

2007-09-17T09:14:00.000-04:00

Due to my plea bargain agreement in which I took my wife out swing dancing this weekend, I was let out of my veal pen and allowed to stop in on both ENE Women's(Sat) and Mixed(Sun) Sectionals. Seriously, swing dancing was a lot of fun. We found a community place at a nearby town where they had lessons and a live 18-piece big band, so that was cool.

My captains this year have some very creative ideas about structure this year and Sectionals was just one example. The Whips were able to get two teams out to the event this year. One team (Whiptails) was comprised of Seniors and 2nd year players that played on the B team last year. The other (Whole Damn Bus) was alums plus 2nd year players from the A team. The benefits of this rather quirky arrangement are obvious in that PT is increased, older players are teaching younger players, etc. It seemed to me going in that Whole Damn Bus had a legit shot at Regionals, so I was wondering if the seniors on Whiptails were concerned about placing themselves in a situation in which they might not get the chance at playing at Regionals. I think, though, that my seniors are concerned more about the team as a whole, though, than their personal opportunities in early fall. I am not surprised by their selfless attitude, though. It has been a struggle every fall to teach the first year players how to play while still moving the returning players forward. So, this approach to Sectionals is about focusing our attention on our great group of sophomores and keeping them moving forward. I did receive a call from my alums asking me to come out and say Hi, so I made the trek out to the very nice soccer complex in Lancaster, MA.

Going to tournaments is a real social event these days. I get to see lots of folks I haven't seen in months or years. I ran into Julian, who has been a great commenter on this blog. We discussed the differences between coaching your peers in club vs coaching college teams. Interesting stuff.

Godiva seems pretty strong this year. With VY, Johanna, Mo, Sarah, etc, they are a good team and it showed as I checked the SRT and they lost to Brute by 1 in the final.

My girls did well. The Whips struggled a bit, but had a close win against BC. I think it was great for them to get some reps n this setting. WDB did qualify for Regionals. The alums looked pretty strong. Nell was very poised with the disc and Leslie was running hard as always. My current players made contributions: Min running hard, Caroline in the cup. It was pretty windy, but the overall level of play held up. It was great to see folks again.

On Sunday, I headed down to catch the finals of the Mixed Div. I had read on the SRT that Quiet Coyote had upset Slow White the day before. Due to this format, that meant that Slow could not win the event...so that is kind of a big deal. Again, it is like reunion weekend down there for me. Hard to concentrate on the games while I am chatting away. I plunk myself between the Slow/Chinstrap game(loser is 4th, winner plays for 2nd/3rd) and the Tandem/QC game. Tandem gets a break to go up 1-0, and then QC rattles off 3 and is pulling. I turn my head to check out the Slow/Strap game which is just getting going and, as I am standing on the endzone line near QC, I hear, from behind me, one of the 7 QC players say "Let's go for the kill". I think to myself "Uh Oh....3-1 is a bit early to be going for the kill". QC pulls. Disc is pulled inside out from the right sideline. Never comes back in and Tandem gets the disc 10 yards from the goal they are attacking. 2 short quick passes. Goal. This begins a 14-3 run and a win for Tandem. Now, of course it is convenient to frame things in this manner and I am very certain that saying "let's go for the kill" did not cause the guy to throw the disc out of bounds and begin the Tandem run. However, I do think that language is important and this example does bring up the topic of what is "helpful" language. I talked with Tiina a bunch about this under the tent at NUTC this summer. One thing I used to say to my girls when we would get up to 12 or 13 was "Let's close out this game now". This was intentionally taken from tennis and watching Pete Sampras close out games after breaking his opponents serve. I think, after talking with Tiina, that this is not effective language. It doesn't present any concrete goals or add to focus. It also sets up doubt in that if we don't score...well, then we didn't do what we were supposed to do. I think "Let's go for the kill" at 3-1 is the same thing. We talked at NUTC about saying, instead, "Let's recommit". Commit to running 10% harder. Commit to focus. I think that is better language. Now, I don't think that saying "Let's recommit" prevents the guy from yanking the pull out of bounds, but, perhaps, deciding to commit to focus could remind one not to throw an inside out along the right sideline.

The Slow/Strap game is similar. Close to begin with, but Slow pulls away. I have to leave to go rehearse with my rock band for my upcoming shows, but Slow beats QC for the 2 spot. It is a competitive section. QC is a good team and they will do some damage at Regionals. I think, after walking through CHC, that Slow realizes that the same will not be true in a few weeks.

Tandem looked good. They have picked up some talented players (Colin M, Pooja S, A Tong...and Tom Matthews...great to see him out there).

So, it was fun to check out some good Ultimate. My opportunities to see Ultimate (other than Whips practices) will be limited this fall. No CHC, one day of Sectionals, one day at Regionals (working the BC game on the 6th), and, sadly, no Nationals(the band I am playing with is opening up a series of shows at a theater in Boston on the Friday of Nats).

Non-Thinking

2007-09-10T08:18:00.000-04:00

I have been trying to integrate the "Inner Game of Tennis" into my approach with the girls this year. Gallwey talks about talking less when working on mechanics, for example. He views "visual modeling"(my words) as a better way to approach getting the mind out of the way of the body. I am thinking about bringing in a camcorder so that the girls can see what they are doing. For now, I am just trying to demo (or have someone who is capable demo) something close to "proper form". I have one girl that has a few quirks with her throws and is also very critical of herself. When we discussed Gallwey's ideas about self 1 vs self 2, she replied "My self 1 hates my self 2". I figure there is hope if the sense of humor is still intact. Anyway, I decided to throw with her the other day and I said that we were going to throw together and we were just going to enjoy the experience and not think too much. I tried to chat a bit while we were throwing just to keep our minds, which weren't going to quiet down that much, at least distracted enough so that she wasn't overly critical of herself. It seemed moderately successful. The other thing I am trying to do is give her only one thing at a time to focus on with her mechanics. Gallwey talk about wanting the serve to be as mindless as turning on a light switch. So that's sort of what I am shooting for.

We have been doing "go to" a lot. I am starting to think "go to" is pretty much all you need as far as drills go. At our first practice, we did go to for a while and then I said that we would shoot for 25 completions in a row (turnover=start at 1 again). The girls had a reasonable amount of focus during the drill. Sometimes they were encouraging and counting out the completions, other times talking amongst themselves and I was the only one counting. So we ranged from 3 to 19 for completions. At the second practice, I asked why "25 completions". One of our 2nd year players said quietly "To psych us out?" That was pretty good answer. We talked about that when the team gets to 18, 19, 20 completions that we launch into our future brains ("what if I drop pass number 25?) and that this is exactly the same situation as when the game is 14-14. So, we want to play loose and quiet our judgmental minds (It is "bad" if we don't get to 25).

One error I have made in the past is assuming that the girls know certain aspects of the game. Like person defense. Last spring, due to this assumption, we really hadn't worked on person d much and it showed. We had to relearn the fundamentals at Sectionals and we did a pretty good job by Regionals. My captains this year are doing a good job of keeping my honest in this regard. At the third practice, the captains stopped the scrimmage early and we worked on inside/out and outside/in throws. Meaning defining what they are, going over the mechanics, and then working on them as a team. I was a bit surprised because I assumed that we all knew that stuff. So, it was a very positive exercise and I think the team will benefit from it.

Today we welcome all the new players. We will focus on bringing them in to the team and probably spend a lot of time on throwing. Our long term challenge will be to teach the new players the stack, throwing, defensive positioning, etc, etc, etc, while still moving the vets forward. We have some new structures in place to try to accomplish this, so it will be interesting to see how it works out.

What's Going On

2007-09-04T07:25:00.000-04:00

Seems like I have hit the ground running after a very fun and relaxing summer.

Worked the Wake Forest-BC game on Sat. I continue to find the way that the coaches speak to the players interesting. As I mentioned a year ago, the coaches are jumping from the small details("keep your elbows in on those blocks") to the big picture ("make them beat us with the pass"). The pre-game warm-up routines are highly scripted, but I thought it was interesting that there is little to no warm-up when they return from the locker room for the 3rd qtr. I am working the NC State game this upcoming Sat. Tom O'Brien's reception should be interesting.

Practice with the Whiptails begins today. We are having returning players practice this week, and then we will open things up for the new players next week. The focus this fall will be very much on offensive fundamentals. We will probably hammer away at a few basic principles. I am very curious about the number and experience of our new players. I am hope we can keep building on last year's trend of lots of motivated players.

I am helping with scheduling, etc for CHC. I am not going to be able to make the trip this year due to working the NC State game. I am going to be missing a bunch of tournaments this fall due to other commitments. I think CHC looks to be great, so I am bummed I am missing it.

Sectionals starts this weekend. In general, it seems like teams negotiated the Team Registration Deadline and emerged relatively unscathed. I hope the Coordinators find this is an improvement over past years.

On Vacation

2007-08-27T07:16:00.000-04:00

Back after Labor Day....

O and D Development Timeline

2007-08-20T07:41:00.000-04:00

I was on vacation last week. Thanks to those folks that stopped by the blog anyway....

On Micah Flynn's recommendation, I just finished Michael Lewis' "The Blind Side". Very interesting book that primarily deals with the story of Michael Oher's (now a sophomore at Ole Miss) rise from the ashes of Memphis' poorest slums. There are some very interesting subplots, however, like Bill Walsh's development of the "horizontal" version of the passing attack known, of course, as the West Coast O (Walsh's version, developed in Cincinnati, differs from Coryell's (whom Walsh worked with) in that the Charger's O was primarily vertical in nature). A subplot of this subplot is the rise of the left tackle(Oher's position and the protector of the QB's blind side) as one of the most important (and highest paid) positions on the field. This is due to Walsh needing the tight end to participate in the passing game, BUT having to have an answer for Lawerence Taylor's speed. The answer was basically the need for a "Freak of Nature" in the left tackle position. 6'5", 325 pounds of low body fat, and the ability to move this body across 40 yds in less than 5 seconds (in high school, Ohr was faster in 10 yards than anyone of the field...and he weighed over 330 pounds). Pretty much less than 1% of the population fits this body type. In any case, I found the tactical history of the West Coast O interesting and it made me curious about a discussion that arose a few weeks ago out of one of my NUTC posts; that is, when did certain strategies arise in Ultimate? So this post will put out the little that I know and is essentially a variation on Loring Holden's "Ultimate Timeline", which he posted to RSD in 93. I hope that folks can add what they know. Perhaps it will be informative.

I will start with the D and what is easy:

Mid-1970's: Zone- Pretty well documented that Rutgers U invented the zone and was using it by 1976. Eric Simon is quoted on the Rutgers U web site, and he describes the tactical decision for Rutgers to move away from zone in the championship game of April 1976. It is also documented that Irv Kalb brought the Rutgers zone out to California around this same time. The questions I have:

-what zone was this(by 1982, the only zone I recall was a cup zone)?
-how much did the Glassboro zone of 1979 differ from the Rutgers zone?

Mid-1980's: The Force- The force was discussed in my NUTC post. Jim P brought up that Kennedy and Kalb's book, published in 82, does not mention the force or the stack. I would love to get a sense of when this began and where it originated.

Late 80's-early 90's: The Clam- The history of the clam was discussed ad nauseum on RSD back in the 90's. Seems like Earth Atomizer was the first "big name team" to codify the Clam as a full-field/point D around 90-92. Dan Powers wrote in RSD that Bob Carroll from Florida invented the Clam. I actually played pick-up in Florida about 4 years ago and ran into this guy named Bob who claimed to have invented the Clam and then taught it to Lenny.....I was skeptical. Paul Sackley disagrees with Powers and attributes the Clam to the Mighty Popes in 86 and also states that his team, Mighty Tired, used it before Earth. One thing that is interesting is the amount of discussion about the Clam. Seems like it was a pretty big deal and changed the game for a while. Mooney asserted that the Clam "could only be used off a stopped disc" so it seems the Clam really benefitted from the 9th edition pull rules and has become less utilized since the 10th.

Early 90's: 1-3-3- First mention I recall is Mooney's Conceptual Ultimate from 94. The first mention I come across in RSD is 95. So is this a Boston/DoG invention?

Around this same time, the idea of zone to man transitions pops up. Again, Mooney covers this in Conceptual Ultimate.

Interesting that there is a thread on RSD about a new hybrid zone that Buzz Bullets and MUD are using.

Anything else for the D?

Onto the O:

Mid-70's: The Forehand- I watched a bit of the '75 game at the Rose Bowl on DVD and no one was throwing forehands. I imagine that the forehand was integrated shortly after this. I recall needing to know the forehand in 79-80 or so.

Early to mid 80's??:"4-person play"-big discussion on this in 99 on RSD with KD. In general, no one says that NYNY invented this, just that they popularized it and were unstoppable using it. Someone suggested that the Clam was an attempt to deal with this. I don't recall using this play in 80-82, but Coffin asked in this RSD discussion if this idea came from Cornell. if it did, it was after 82......

Mid-80's: The Stack??- As above, no mention in K&K's book from '82.

1987??: Horizontal Stack- There is reference on RSD to NY (at a tournament in Phoenix) using the "1987 Swedish" 3-4 offense. This seems pretty specific and Sweden was winning the Euro Champs every year around this. No Worlds in 1987......

Early 90's??: Spread O- There is a discussion in 91 on RSD about a new offense used by Santa Barbara. The O looked like the "dots of a 5 on dice, but with a few more spots". There is mention that this O used the "center of the field". I don't know if this O has anything to do with the spread O that we know of today.

1996-German- Pretty clear that Germany, at Worlds, brought out a thrower driven 4-1-2 to beat the Clam. I have seen the 3-1-3 variant used in Mixed with some success, but in general, it doesn't seem that "thrower driven" offenses have really taken hold.

No clue:
Dump-Swing??

Anything else?
Note: This list is an acknowledged subjective listing in the sense that it discusses strategies that have been "mainstreamed". I haven't included things like "Plinko" or Frank's "Motion O".

It seems pretty clear that most tactical developments come as a response. The "new" (and higher paid) left tackle as a response to the quicker blind side rushes of LT or the nickle defense as a response to Lombardi's O innovations of the 50's. Somewhat similar to Ultimate. Perhaps we are in a period in which we are waiting for a D response to the spread/ho stack.

I did go back and look at some of the posts on RSD in the '91-'93 period. There was, probably not surprisingly, much more discussion about the basics of strategy than there is today.

Money

2007-08-06T09:16:00.000-04:00

Open up the paper on any given day and there are a plethora of current scandals in professional sports that titillate our moral core. Doping, corrupt refs, labor holdouts, and, perhaps the most egregious of all, a punter offing another punter for a starting spot. I am sure that you will be beguiled by the powers of my observation when I saw that that it all comes down to money. When one starts to consider the incentives and potential rewards in the current pro sports world, can we really be that surprised? If not surprised, then at least we have to be cynical. Maybe both reactions are unfair. Pro athletes are expected to be role models and it does seem a bit disappointing when we learn that they are not all nice guys (and gals? There doesn't really seem to be equivalent scandals in women's pro sports). While it is pretty easy, from the comfort of the daily drudgery of our office veal pens, to claim that we wouldn't be seduced by the money, are we really that sure? This post will take a speculative look at the impact of money on our precious little amateur sport.

I was at PT the other day and, during my exercises, an interesting conversation happened between two of the PT's. They were talking about a third PT, a common friend of theirs. It turns out that he was hired by Pedro the year he barely made it through the year due to his shoulder problems. Pedro's contract was structured such that he would receive bonuses after 20, 25, and 30 starts that year. In total, my numbers might not be totally accurate, he would receive a $500K bonus for 30 starts. Apparently, Pedro is pretty savvy when it comes to money, so he hired this PT to get him through the year. Their contract was also incentive based and, I believe, he would not be compensated unless Pedro got over 25 starts. This PT basically worked only for Pedro for the year. He would give treatments before and after Pedro warmed up. He would be working on Pedro's shoulder while Pedro was going through the business of his day. In the end, Pedro got his 30 starts and wrote a check to this PT for $165K.

The large contracts that pro athletes receive is pretty much in our face on a daily basis, but, speaking for myself, I have pretty much no clue about the details of the incentives that the athletes have as part of their contracts. I wouldn't call the above story "eye opening", but it did make me think about the impact of money, specifically incentives, would have upon Ultimate.

If one looks at the incentives for performance we have in Ultimate today, I think we can confidentially say that they wouldn't be enough reason to get out of bed for even the sponsored "amateur" Olympic athlete, let alone the pro athlete. Let's look at one pinnacle of our sport: winning the UPA's. The reward: your team name goes on the trophy and in the UPA Hall of Champs website. I think I can argue that Ultimate players are pretty ignorant of their history. How many folks can name the teams that won Nats in 1988? I can't. So the reward for winning Nationals is that no one will remember that you did. Perhaps an incentive with some actual meat on it is winning Nats in a WUC qualifying year. I do think that representing one's country is an honor, but in the context of monetary incentives, it still isn't on the radar. You get the cool gear, but you pay for everything else.

Of course, any sort of competition can get our juices flowing, but I am going to argue, for the purposes of this post, that, when comparing the financial incentives of current pro contracts with the incentives of today's Ultimate, there is very little reason to cheat, take steroids, or off someone because they get called to receive the pull more than you do.

So, I started to think about the potential impact of money on our sport. Let's imagine professional Ultimate with incentive-based contracts. Supposing, for example, that, like other sports, that every player on the UPA champ team received a monetary reward for winning Nationals. Or that a player would earn extra money for scoring x number of goals during the season. Or that a defensive specialist would get a bonus for a certain number of blocks at Nationals. How confident are we that the tenets of SOTG can withstand the pressures of performance-based financial rewards? If your answer is "not confident", it seems to me that we are talking about refs making binding calls. No more calling your own fouls and, at the minimum, getting a do-over. Another possible answer is "Not Confident, but SOTG (and self-officiating) is a necessary component of Ultimate". In this case, I think what is really being said is that Ultimate MUST remain a true amateur sport.

This post is, obviously, highly speculative, but it is not a doom and gloom scenario. It is simply offering my opinion that injecting money into Ultimate could offer a big challenge to the viability of self-officiating. However, if one agrees that adhering to self-officiating is a necessary component of Ultimate and that this adherence leads us down a path of permanent amateur status, does this not, to some small degree, inform our approach today?

I guess one could consider this post to be commentary on our ability to be honest. I do think I am a bit cynical in this regard, but there is at least one example of competitors doing the right thing in the face of huge financial reward and it is golf. I just finished reading John Feinstein's "Lessons of Q School" and it documents golfers navigating the rigors of qualifying for the PGA tour. At stake is literally the ability to play pro golf for the next year and hundreds of thousands of dollars. There was an example of a player letting the ball bounce while putting it back on the his spot for a putt. After he sank the putt, he was not convinced that he had replaced the ball to the correct spot before the putt. He reported this to the official at the end of the round and was disqualified. So this is an impressive act and maybe even testimony that self-officiating can withstand the pressures of potential financial reward, but I am skeptical, obviously.

I understand that the concerns of this post feel far way and that there are more pressing concerns like developing youth Ultimate. I agree with this, but are we not laying down the foundation for our Youth players? Are we being fully responsible to our youth players by avoiding thinking about whether the sport will remain an amateur experience for them? Or whether they will need to learn how to play at the highest level with refs? This be premature, but, it seems to me, at least worthy of a bit of thought and discussion.

NUTC 3

2007-08-01T20:33:00.000-04:00

Images by Brian Cook

Camper Counselor game: kids put out the "small" line. Not kidding. All Paideia/Amherst middle schoolers under 5' 2" against Dylan, Micah, Brent, etc......they throw into a poach and 1 pass later it is a goal for the counselors. On the way back to line I overhear the kids saying "I think our problem was we threw to the same 1/3 of the field as the cutter". Very cute. We chuckle now, but we were probably looking at the core of the 2012 Worlds team.

Overall, a young camp this week. Many middle school players, which is great. We need to be on high alert for dehydration, though, as the small kids have no body fat and they have to push themselves hard to keep up with the big kids.

Dylan won counselor distance, placing both first and second. Josh Seamon came in third. Tiina and Micah seeded the tournament. All 4 teams from Pool B made semis.

Closing camp feels like a big step toward the twilight of summer. Thanks to all our counselors, our wonderful nursing staff, and the staff at NMH.

NUTC 2: Closing

2007-07-25T21:11:00.000-04:00

More pictures from Brian Cook.

Lucky with the weather this week. Ebay and Derek in the finals tomorrow. Micah's string of making it to semi's ended. Campers didn't beat the Vegas over/under of 5...they scored 4: one by the girls, a camper throwing his SECOND career hammer for a goal, a camper ripping one from Adam Fagin, and a wild goal in which, after the campers completed a long huck off the pull, 4 counselors laid out, bodies everywhere, but the campers managed to get the goal.

The kids were very well-behaved and psyched to play this week. I even had a couple of campers ask me if I was a good player when I played. I was honestly touched. Of course this lead to the disc was made of rock, the stall count was 30 seconds, forcing had not been invented(true when I played in college), and there was only a club series...college teams played in the fall series(also true when I played in college).

The counselors were a vet crew and made life easy for me and Tiina. Lots of parity in the teams this week, which was great. Jody did a lot of teaching work and his contribution to the curriculum can't be understated.

After the camper distance competition, we had a very brief and unfinished counselor distance contest. While not an official result, Andrew and Jody said they thought I won counselor distance with my one throw....in my hiking boots. Speaking of which, I have been doing a bit of work on learning how to throw golf discs. Pretty weird. I am managing to get some of them somewhat flat.

NUTC 2: New Start/Questions

2007-07-23T06:20:00.001-04:00

Beautiful weather start to week 2. Chance of rain for the next couple of days, but the start has been great. Slightly smaller group this week. Our counselors:

Emily Baecher
Lexi Marsh
Jody Avirgan(NYC)
Sam Roberts
Derek Gottlieb(CO)
Micah Flynn

CITs:
Andrew Hollingworth
Jason Chow
Adam Fagin(CA)
Leila Tunnell

We ran the camp hard yesterday...shuttle run relays, Chelsea's diamond run, foot fires, body builders, etc. I think the kids slept well last night. The general level of play seems to have increased over the past couple of years. In other words, more kids know more coming in.

Last week we did not have access to the fields in front of our dorm due to the soccer kids. We have this week, though, and DDC seems to be all the rage.

Zip....we figured out that technology for Sunday night. It worked great.

Questions that have been discussed under the tent and in the dining room:
1) Percentage of the time you set up "go to" and the lines are too close together.
2) Why is the transition to man always after 3 or 5 passes? Why does every team say "fire" for the audible?
3) Percentage of the time that a goal is scored after an "on field, in play" time out.
4) Percentage of possessions greater than 35 yards in which a goal is scored after a dump-swing is completed(dump-swing occurs any time during the possession).

Please feel free to weigh in. I will add the general consensus from here in the comments.

NUTC: Finals/Haiku/Changes in Medicine

2007-07-19T18:28:00.000-04:00

All photos are courtesy of Brian Cook Photography. I will include just a few shots that he took on Weds.

Dylan's team won the finals. I had to leave camp early to get to the doctor, but Dylan's team was very good this week. Nonetheless, the tournament was enjoyed by all. I heard that Leila said that her and Brent's first win in the last game of the tournament was her best NUTC moment...awesome.

The high point of the Talent Show was Zip doing Rec Specs??(I think that is what it is called) with two campers providing the music and narration. It culminated in Zip doing the worm on a table with a disc on his head and then doing a tango with Tiina.
Here is Jess' Haiku from the Talent show(Orin is one of our excellent nurses):

Shoulders

Where is my shoulder?
Someone go find Orin now!
No more Birdman game

I went to the doctor today and they took some more x-rays. They said that the folks at Greenfield did a great job resetting my shoulder. They threw away my sling saying "They used to restrict this injury, but sports medicine proved that to not be effective. Now we do PT and we say that you can do as much as you are able". So, that is great. I start PT next week.

More to come once week 2 gets going.

NUTC 1: Wrapping Up

2007-07-18T20:07:00.000-04:00

typing one handed as my wife is busy helping the counselors wrap things up. week 1 is almost a wrap. dylan's team plays micah's team in the finals and then we all go home.

adam fagan (nutc 06, carlton, mischief) stopped by for a few days. in general, the kids seemed to learn a lot and, for the most part, had a good time.

i noticed dylan helping out a few players with how to lay out. i went over to offer tips, but, for some reason, they didn't seem interested.

dylan's team beat zip in semis and micah beat sambob/ebay. both were very good games. hard fought, great plays, good energy.

i did manage to play "motorcycle girl" with my wife playing guitar....

overall, camper numbers are up 30% this year, so we have a couple of days to reload and then it begins again on sat.

NUTC: Week 1: Losing to Ego

2007-07-17T11:14:00.000-04:00

Right before coming to camp I finished reading the newest release of The Inner Game of Tennis. Tiina put some copies out in the lobby, but we've received some comments from the campers in which they indicate that they're not tennis players. I think that the book should be called The Inner Game of Sports. The thing I took from this reading of the book is the battle between Self 1 (Ego) vs. Self 2 (the present mind/body). In general, I think I'm a person who manages this battle with a modicum of success, but this week I had a momentary failure in which I launched myself into the future and received a clear physical reminder of one potential consequence of forgetting to remain in the present.

This post will go into the NUTC happenings of the last day or so, while giving my own story, which provided fodder for this morning's presentation on remaining in the present moment.

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny, hot and full day of Ultimate. The campers seemed re-energized now that they have been assigned to their teams for the rest of the week. I think that the development of team-based bonds helps to break down the pre-existing alliances and cliques that the campers bring with them. The morning featured a lecture by Zip and Micah on some new NUTC offensive ideas. The teams put these ideas into practice in their first set of scrimmages with good effect. Dylan's team seems very strong and will probably get a Number one seed in the tournament.

During the day there was the usual smack talking about the Camper-Counselor game. Clearly this is a highlight for the campers as they get to match up against some of the game's biggest stars. For the counselors it is a chance to have some fun and blow off some steam. I felt that the big story might be Andrew Hollingsworth is his debut on the Destructor side erasing six years of humiliation by now being on a team which would score more goals in the first half than the total number of goals that he had been involved in as a camper.

In the course of this smack talk the subject came up as to whether I would participate. It was hard to communicate my personal reservations to our young bucks, but some of my concerns were chance of injury, being out of shape, and no real upside for any showboating, as my skills have always been mediocre at best. When Dylan asked me if I was going to play I said, "Probably not," and he replied "Well that's too bad, but I'm sure that you thought about it a lot and made the best decision for you." I always appreciate Dylan's sense of the big picture, and I had been giving it a lot of thought, weighing my above concerns against wanting to be team player and not a party pooper. My wife, of course, who is typing this post via dictation, was adamant that playing would be a bad idea. I even talked to Ruth and Tiina about how I really have nothing to prove, and wanted to keep my dignity intact.

So, after lunch we moved back out to the fields and did skill stations. The kids seemed a bit lethargic after lunch and being in the heat, but they still seemed to gain a lot from our counselors' excellent teaching. We finished the afternoon off with scrimmages in which teams are putting the finishing touches on for the tournament.

After dinner we headed out to the fields for the Camper/Counselor game. I deliberately showed up late in flip-flops with my daughter so that I could avoid any pre-game peer pressure. I arrived with the counselors up 2-1 as the campers were able to put a very good line out there, including the three kids from Columbia who play on the national team. The game was very entertaining as the Destructors inevitable began to trounce the campers, and we had a sideline show in Tiina's not surprisingly excellent Frisbee dog, Roo. I spent most of the game tossing with my daughter and viewing the proceedings with a slight detachment. The camper team did manage to score three goals, one of which was eerily reminiscent of Zip's follow-up catch for a goal in college finals. We did manage to have two all-female points played, which reinforced the general sense that our girl campers (27 this week!) are excellent players.

As the game wound down I started to think about how cool it would be (first mistake) if I were to play offense in the last point of the game. Of course, this means that the campers would need to score, so I had conveniently created a nice foil for my participation. Well, what do you know, the campers managed to score a goal, so I thought: this is the perfect time to go out barefoot and throw the final goal (second mistake). As I got to the line (Ruth turned to our nurse and said "Get ready") it became obvious that the play was going to be either George to Ted or Ted to George. At this point I was so caught up in the future that scoring the final goal seemed even more glorious (third mistake). It was decided. Ted to George. I said to the folks on the line that i. f it was a turnover I was going to call an injury time-out. We received the pull at the brick and I set myself up on the break side, and broke for the goal. Ted put out a disc that I'm sure Dylan or Zip would have caught easily, but for me, in my bare feet, was just slightly a stretch. As I entered into the end zone it became apparent that I was going to have to lay it out to catch this goal, so I did. I didn't get the catch, and my bid was slightly above falling down . I did manage to get my arms out in front of me and my legs fully outstretched, but as I landed I realized that something was very wrong. I immediately noticed a numbing sensation in my left shoulder, and as I stood up I realized that I had dislocated my shoulder to the point where my arm was hanging unnaturally by my side. I couldn't move my arm nor feel my fingers. I did not however want to freak out any of the campers or counselors, so I walked off the field (remember, I had pre-called an injury time-out) and indicated to Tiina that I needed to go to the hospital. I started walking toward the car, then my wife, my daughter and the nurse cam running up, and my family and I got in the car after the nurse quickly confirmed that I needed to go to the hospital. On the way to the hospital my wife never said I told you so and was incredibly nurturing.

A dislocated shoulder is a very painful injury. I was in a lot of pain, and I thought I was going to pass out a number of times. The Greenfield hospital staff, while busy, did seem to push me along as fast as they could. However, each wait along the way was excruciating. I only became comfortable after getting an IV with morphine in it, and it was at that time that two capable doctors put my shoulder back in place. They gave me a sling and pain meds and set us on our way.

Thanks to the wonders of morphine and Percaset, I slept fine, and the NUTC staff has been incredible in picking up my duties and being supportive. Dylan's first concern was whether I'd be able to play guitar in the talent show. We shall see...

So this experience has been a not-so gentle lesson in listening to your body, minimizing fantasy and expectations, and not letting one's ego override the body's sense of what is best for itself.

NUTC 1

2007-07-16T08:13:00.001-04:00

NMH was rather sleepy last year, but this year, we are on campus with both a soccer camp and....the American Idol camp! Very exciting. Interesting group of campers this week. Relatively few Massachusetts kids. Lots of kids from New York/New Jersey, Seattle, Nashville, plus three kids from Columbia. We are also starting to get the kids of some of the top players from the 80's.

Our counselors this week:

Micah Flynn(Boston)
Colleen Schmitt(Austin)
Emily Baecher(Mich)
Brent Anderson(Amherst)
Jess Huynh(Eugene)
Lexi Marsh(Toronto)
Dylan Tunnell(Atlanta)
Sam Roberts(Amherst)
Ted Munter(Boston)
Josh Ziperstein(Atlanta)

Awesome. Lots of new faces, but they just jumped in and it seemed like they had been here all along. Excellent teachers and role models.

We had our normal welcome meeting and the kids reacted with the usual horror about having to get up early for the first real day of camp. Indeed, as we moved to the fields in the bright morning sun, the kids seemed to get a bit of slow start. The kids are doing a a pretty good job of self-monitoring, but there is the usual...calibration as they get used to the standards and expectations of camp.

We ran them through the basic fundamentals and the skill level is pretty much all over the map. It was a tricky day as we had several thunderstorms that made us get off the fields quickly, but the campers were very patient and we only lost about an hour of scrimmage time.

Last night we divided the campers into teams and today we start working on some offense ideas.

More to come.....

New UPA Registration/Rostering Guidelines

2007-07-12T08:47:00.000-04:00

So, there are about 6 weeks to go until the new Team Registration Deadline of August 24th. Never enough time, really, to get the word out on what is, in my opinion, both a big deal and a cultural shift in the way the UPA operates. This year marks the final break from the idea that unregistered teams could walk up on Saturday morning of Sectionals and still participate. Granted, we have had a "Late Deadline" which created a buffer for those teams that missed the "Early Deadline", so teams have not been able to walk-up for a couple of years, but now it is clear....you don't get your roster in by August 24th.....you don't play.

Here is the link to the specific language in the 2007 Club Series Guidelines

These rules are going to make the jobs of our volunteer coordinators easier. They will know, for example, how many teams they will have at their event on August 24th! Gone, also, are the days of a team submitting an "invalid" roster (meaning between the old "early deadline" and "late deadline"), but taking a bid to Regionals from one of the teams that submitted a valid roster. So, if you are in a Section in which you are concerned about the number of bids you will receive to Regionals, you better let the other teams in your Section know that they must get their rosters in by August 24th.

I will summarize the two key changes for 2007:

1) Team Registration Deadline: All teams wishing to participate in the 2007 Club Series MUST submit a valid roster(7 players minimum, unless granted a college extension) via the online rostering system by August 24, 2007.

That's it. Simple. In order to play this year, your captain must submit your team's roster by August 24th.

2) Roster Deadline:
a) Teams must finalize their rosters by the Tuesday before Sectionals
b) Teams can drop as many players as they want between the Team Registration Deadline and the Roster Deadline
c) Teams can add up to 7 players(regardless of how many they drop)between the Team Registration Deadline and the Roster Deadline

So, in other words, if you submit a roster on August 24th with 20 players, you will be able to carry, at the maximum, 27 for the Fall Series. You could drop 4 and add 7 for a total of 23, but you will not have more than 27 for the Series.

I am happy to answer any questions, but I recommend contacting your SC if you have specific concerns.

Getting Ready for NUTC

2007-07-09T08:27:00.000-04:00

On Friday, I will pack up and head out to Northfield Mount Herman for my third year at Assistant Director for NUTC. Can immersing oneself in Ultimate for three weeks be considered anything other than luxurious? Probably not, although in my case, getting the family either out to camp, or day care arranged for when my wife is at work in Boston, plus making sure that I am somewhat involved is a challenge. Ah...the sacrifices I make for this little game of ours......

I do think that NUTC will be great this year. Tiina and I have been having a bunch of discussions about tweaks to the program (both big and small), and, as usual, she is pushing things forward and making improvements step by step. There is a lot of reliance on the feedback we receive from both the campers and the counselors and Tiina listens....so if you are returning to NUTC this year, I think you will notice the attention to detail.

The list of counselors looks great. A couple of core folks will be missing this year due to....new jobs and a wedding, but there are some exciting new faces(Ted Munter!?!! for example) that should spice things up in a different way.

I will be posting frequently from camp over the next few weeks. If you attending camp and are reading this: be prepared to have a great time. Take advantage of the opportunity that has been given to you. Try to be in pretty good shape...although if you are not....it is pretty much too late.

I look forward to seeing both old and new faces. We have campers coming from new states(Wyoming!) plus the usual suspects from Atlanta, Seattle, California, Amherst, Boston, Chicago, New Jersey, etc, etc. We will also have some campers from the Columbian Worlds team(I don't speak any other languages...so I will be useless), so that is very cool.

More to come next week.....

Game Management: Time/Point Caps, Overtime

2007-07-02T07:47:00.000-04:00

This post will go over the workings of the cap rules plus my opinions on "game management" during caps. As a TD, I have received many questions about how the caps work. As a spectator, I have seen many teams struggle with managing the end of games, and as a coach, I have my own ways of negotiating these points in the game. This post will hopefully condense these three points of view into something somewhat useful.

The rules around caps are specifically handled in Section V (Length of Game) in the 11th edition. Here is the section in its entirety:

Length of Game
A) Game to goals: A game is played until one team first reaches or exceeds the game total, with a margin of at least two goals or until a cap is reached.

1) Caps are maximum score limits imposed before or during a game to limit the time required to declare a winner. The game ends when one team’s score first reaches the cap.
a) A point cap is a maximum score limit imposed before the event.
b) A soft time cap is a maximum score limit imposed during a game once a predetermined time of play has elapsed and after the current scoring attempt is completed.
c) A hard time cap is the ending of the game once a predetermined time of play has elapsed and after the current scoring attempt is completed. If the score is tied, play continues until one additional goal is scored.

2) The team with the most goals at the end of the game is the winner.

3) A standard game has a game total of 15, with a point cap of 17.

B) Halftime begins when one team’s score first reaches or exceeds half of the game total, and lasts ten minutes.

C) Overtime begins when the score is tied at one goal less than the game total (e.g., in a game with a game total of 15 goals, overtime begins when the score reaches 14-14).

Comments:
-Nomenclature--Teams need to get the nomenclature straight. Sure, it is confusing that the names of the caps changed with the 11th, but it is time for us to molt and stop referring to the point cap as the soft cap.

-Once the soft time cap is in effect, you play to that score. There is no win by two.

-If a soft time cap or hard time cap occur either during half time or while waiting for the pull, the teams need to play the next point and then put the cap into effect. It is important to understand when a point (scoring attempt) begins and ends(This is defined in Section II.Q).

-Overtime--Overtime seems to be continually confusing. With the 11th, its occurrence is simplified. In a game to 15, overtime is 14-14....even if the game is capped at 15. The other thing is timeouts. In overtime, each team has ONE timeout regardless of how many they had prior to overtime.

That is the mechanics of the cap rules. Here are some thoughts on game management:

-I don't agree with the "no timeouts in the cap" rule as has become all the fashion these days. If the concern is keeping the tournament running on time, caps, specifically the hard time cap, can easily be used to accomplish this purpose. As a coach, I view usage of timeouts is one of the few means of managing the game and coaches shouldn't be punished for keeping timeouts available.

-I really like to have a timeout available for the end of the game. In general, I am not in favor of timeouts during a point, specifically when a player has caught a long pass and is by themselves close to the endzone. This situation happens frequently enough that the offense should know how to handle it and, if not, it can be drilled. I want to use my timeouts, at the conclusion of points, to stop the opponents run or to take a quick breather and re-calibrate. I do think that if the team is driving for the win and the hard cap is not a concern, then taking a timeout close the endzone can be a good call.

-While it may sound unsavory, there have been times, when we have been clinging to a lead and the time between the soft time cap and hard time cap is 15 minutes or less, that using timeouts can be a means of protecting a lead and shortening the clock. The best example I have of this is when Nell called a timeout after we scored just 30 seconds before the soft time cap in our pool play game against MIT in 06 Sectionals. We had a 2 point lead and with the hard cap coming in 10 minutes, and we were able to effectively reduce the time needed to protect our lead.

-I always have my cell phone for keeping track of the exact time. I am aware of the caps well in advance.

-Perhaps I am gun shy about running out of timeouts due to 6TM's 04 semi against CLX. We used both our timeouts early in the second half. The second timeout was used during a point to set up an endzone play. I think a timeout would have been very useful in stopping their big, back breaking run at the end of the game. As anyone can call a timeout, I think a team has to be exacting in communicating when the team has the green light to call a timeout.

-A very good test of maturity and mental toughness occurs when you are behind by 1-2 and the caps are imminent. Playing loose while pressing to get a break or get a quick score is a great challenge and basically puts the mental paradox of sports in a nutshell.

The Games Within the Game

2007-06-27T18:24:00.000-04:00

I went for a little trot today on the beach. Maybe my little paunch that I have developed protruded a bit too much out of my wetsuit. The wetsuit is necessary in the 55 degree water down here at the Cape. Anyway, I was on my little trot when I ran into Bill Stewart and his son Robin. Former Metal guys. Friends from way back. Are these two the only father and son duo playing at the elite club level?

After my run, I settled into the spot where my family was boogie boarding, etc. I was there for a bit when I noticed, from afar, Bill, Robin, and a few friends playing a game of honey pot. First, it was nice to see real throws on the beach, and second, Ultimate players are just so quirkily restless. They are always up to something. Their game reminded me of an idea I heard about of documenting The Games Within The Game...other wise known as Alleviating Boredom. Here is the start of a list(by no means comprehensive....I never play any of these). By all means jump in.

1) Ro-Sham-Bo
2) Milk
3) Honey Pot
4) Goaltimate(?)
5) Hot Box
6) Frisbee, Banana, Water Bottle, Shoe, Goldfish
7) Bear Ninja Cowboy
8) Miniature Tanks

Boston Invite Write-Up

2007-06-24T22:05:00.000-04:00

It has already been posted on RSD that the results of this year's Boston Invite are surprising. The primary reason is, of course, Boston not winning the thing in the Open Div. The question on RSD is: when was the last time this happened? Well, I will tell you. Ring won in 04, Sub Zero in 03, Ring beat a split squad in 02, and Florida won in 01. So, it is way too premature to be confidently predictive based on what happened this past weekend. In fact, my take on the weekend is that the story was, as usual, teams having different agendas coming into the weekend, be it finishing tryouts(Boston, Slow White), learning how the new roster is working (Shazam, Slow White, Boston), refining and early building(Brute Squad, Mischief), or in the final stages of ramping up for Canadian Nats (Capitals, GOAT). It is seductive to try to write off the top dogs as faltering or on a downward spiral, but it is a long season. What follows is my observations, sometimes very detailed and written in real time on the fields, others in retrospect. As usual, a big thanks goes out to Barbara, Tracy, Geoff, and Josh for running a great tournament. The weather was great and things seemed to go without a hitch.

Mixed Division:

Largely due to the work of Slow White, specifically Kris Kelley and Mike Miller, but also with the top Mixed teams buying in to a general sense of season, this was an awesome field here in Boston. The first person from the Mixed Div I saw on Sat morning was none other than Steve Finn(see my traveling well post), who is getting the band back together in the form of Shazam Returns. This incarnation looks familiar if you think back to 04, and the intentions of this team are clear to the observer, especially when one considers what their leader has accomplished in the past three years. Steve told me that he had 80 tryouts this spring.....and 50 very good players got cut. Shazam came to play here in Boston and stated that fact early in their first round 15-4 dis-assembly of Slow White. Shazam ran an effective zone in the windy conditions and Slow White is a consistent team, even to the extent that they prefer calm conditions. One observer, who knows Slow, said to me “They are not a morning team”. I heard that Slow felt that they were jet lagged, not their West Cost opponents. Clearly, that is a mental area of the game that will need to be addressed come October....especially considering that their first game was at 11am.

Brass Monkey showed up with a smaller squad than usual, but the folks they brought are very talented. Nate Miller consistently impresses me with his calm leadership and talent. He is probably the only non-College 07 player I saw all weekend, in any division, who actually marks with legal 11th edition marks(the wrap around marks in Open are ridiculous...not even close to being legal 11th marks). I felt that Brass Monkey, with the jet lag and small squad, might run out of gas by the end of the day, but they handled Tandem in the early game before squeaking out a 13-12 victory over Slow White in the second ground. Brass showed resolve and toughness in this game going down 11-9 before gutting out the win.

Mischief showed up with a full squad this weekend and they began their game against Flaming Moe with energy and intensity. They are obviously athletic and have several of the most athletic men in the division in the Smith Brothers and Tyler Grant. Mischief’s O runs through several of these guys and while they like the long game, they seemed pretty comfortable in the strong winds that began the day. Shazam’s win over Slow in round up set up a big match at the end of the day with the South Bay crew, and, due to the round robin format, could very well be the final. Shazam went up several breaks in the first half to take the half 8-5. I never like three point leads. Shazam is focused and both teams are athletic, so it is a fast paced, intense game. Not many turns so the quality is about as good as one can expect, especially this early in the season. The teams trade through the second half and at 13-11, Mischief pulls out a zone look of their own. Mischief gets two breaks to tie it up at 13-13. Shazam converts on O then gets a handblock and converts, game over…Shazam wins 15-13.

Sunday morning: Brass Monkey vs Mischief in a big west coast battle. They trade although both teams have some miscues. A big Brass hammer floats but it scooped up by Josh Greenough to maintain a 5-4 lead. Mischief then turns and Nate Miller puts it to Coco who makes the big lay out for the score and the break. Mischief turns it twice, once on a very bad hammer by a Smith brother, but they get a turn and out it to Tyler for the score.. Mischief takes half with three breaks, culminated by a Callahan from youngster Adam Fagan.

It was around this time that I got my first ride on a Segue. Very cool. I think the tournament should rent me one for the weekend.

Flaming Moe takes half against Slow White 8-4. Slow brings it to 9-6, but the O seems a bit out of sync. Slow has a large roster. Perhaps managing this is the real task of the weekend? Moe is ramping up having played Mischief, Shazam, and Brass Monkey on Saturday. Paul Norgaard is back on Moe and adds some real firepower to that team. Moe is buying into the season and are traveling to ECC in Aug.

Mischief starts to pull away from Brass and it is 12-7, but Nate Miller is starting to do more work downfield and busts long to make it 12-8.

Slow is trying to build the energy and make a run. Slow gets the turn and puts it to Hunt Allcott, who toes the line, 11-9. This point is pretty sloppy with a bunch of turns, but Slow breaks again 11-10.

Mischief closes the game out 15-9.

Moe regroups and is able to get some breaks back. They put it to Guy Pugh for the win 15-10.

Brass and Shazam are battling. Shazam is mixing up zone and man. Brass gets a break to tie at 6’s. Shazam takes half on a big run by Mickey Thompson.

Amp is finding their game against Slow. I think SW is not sure if they are sorting out their roster or they are trying to win the thing. Amp goes up 9-5. Slow goes on a 3-0 to pull to 8-9. Slow battles back to 11's and then closes out the big comeback win.

Shazam continues to press in the second half. Steve Finn makes a very nice deep cut off a give and just beats his Brass defender for the goal. Shazam is able to close the game out and essentially lock up their possession of the Boston Invite tournament. Congrats to them on a great showing.

In general, Shazam looks very strong as does Mischief. The division will benefit from almost this same exact field of teams competing at ECC in August. I would like to thank all the teams for making the trip and creating a great event.

Women’s:

Like Mixed, the Women’s div has a high quality field. Brute Squad is camped out on field 8 for the duration. Brute Squad looks solid all Saturday, although Layuma’s zone causes them to work hard. Lady Godiva was up and down over Saturday, but scored a big win over Backhoe to take third place in the pool.

Small Rackages is a new Women’s team made up of Bait plus Chad Larson's better half. They looked good as did Capitals who won the B pool. As I mentioned earlier, Capitals is on a bit of a different pace than the rest of the teams as their championship is rapidly approaching

Small Rackages plays very well against Godiva. Godiva has some young players, but SR is athletic and dominates with a 15-4 win. Godiva had some of the old guard like Johanna, Sarah C, Jess B around, but the team is obviously just getting going.

Semis: Brute vs Small Rackages. SR is hanging with Brute in Semis. They have opportunities to tie and they do at 7-7. Brute is playing well, but SR likes to work hard. They trade to 10's before Brute goes on a run and wins out. Capitals is handles Backhoe in a pool play rematch. I actually had leave during the final to head down to the Cape for vacation, but I just read in the SRT that Capitals won 15-6. Congrats on a great showing.

Open:
I spent much of the first round Saturday checking out the Open div games, and the Pony-Boston game was quite the way to start the tournament. Very fast and athletic, but a high number of turnovers that probably indicates early season rustiness. PoNY has added some players notably BVH and Bailey Russell, but Boston is, of course, completely new with added talent in the form of Kurt Gibson and Ben Faust. The game is close throughout. They play right on through the Soft Time Cap and PoNY is up 14-12 as the hard cap is coming on, but Boston has the disc and is moving up the field. Boston completes a pass to near the goal line and calls a timeout??!! This was the first of many examples of, in my opinion, not great time management by a bunch of teams. In this case, though, not only was the timeout questionable, but it was handled casually...like 3 minutes in length...not 90 seconds. By the time Boston got the disc in play, the hard cap came on with the disc in Forch's hands. He throws a hammer for the goal, but it is game over.

I spent most of my time over between the Mixed and Women's fields, but there are probably many blogs which will give good info on the Open field.

I did watch some of the Boston-Van Buren Boys qtrs, which Boston rolled. Van Buren Boys(basically Chad Larson men) made their debut with a small squad and, in the words of Shawn W, "it was very clear that this was our first tournament together". The Boston game was over pretty quickly as VBB had trouble converting their long looks and Boston was able to convert the breaks.

Boston took half against Truck Stop 8-5, but I heard from Ted Munter that they gave up a 5-0 run in the second half before succumbing 11-15. So, there is some work to do there for the hometown boys. Congrats to GOAT on winning the Open div.

I did follow how Big Ego was faring in the fast lane. They won their pool on Sat, but lost to Zebra Muscles in the play-in game. Maybe that 1st round bye was pretty enticing. Of course, this resurrected hopes of the Colt 45-Big Ego death match (with Boston having a bye, no less), but, unfortunately Colt 45 crapped the bed and descended into the bowels of the Eastern Div. Big Ego pulled out a 1 point win against Gunslingers and found themselves in the Semis against a good New Noise squad(who played Pike 14-15 in the elite play-in game). NN takes the half 8-7. I hear one of the NN players say "Don't give Parinella so much cushion. Make him go through you if he wants to go deep". Clearly things got pretty physical as Jim suffered nasty gash on his eye going for a goal at 12-12. Simon V, as usual, worked very hard, and it was fun to watch Marshall and Al work the disc in small spaces. Al has a very quick backhand release and the two of them work well together. NN kept pressing and pulled out the 15-14 win.

Two quick things to wrap up:

1) I received a complaint about having the hard time cap coincide with the start of the next round. To me, this kept things simple as the players never know what the horns mean, plus it meant that the hard cap was used as a stop gap to keep the tournament basically on schedule....which, in my opinion, is the purpose of this cap. I am curious about feedback on this idea.

2) People need to learn how the caps work. In both this tournament and Mixed/Masters Easterns, there was confusion about whether teams needed to win by two in the Soft Time Cap. We need to, as a whole, get much more up to speed on these rules.

Boston Invite Preview

2007-06-18T07:19:00.000-04:00

Summer is here and so is the Boston Invitational. We have something like 70 teams competing this year. The fields should be in great shape, so it should be a great tournament. Here is my take on a divisional preview...in alphabetical order:

Mixed:
8 of the top 10 teams in the country(including 3 West Coast powerhouses and top teams from 4 of the 6 Regions). Awesome. This came together largely due to the efforts of Slow White in reaching out to the Mixed Nats teams and getting them organized. SW felt that more inter-regional play would help develop a sense of season, increase the quality of Mixed play, help prepare the teams for Nats, and, my favorite, help with seeding Nationals. SW also organized and pushed for quality Mixed teams to attend ECC and CHC, so they should be commended for their efforts. I think it will be interesting to see how the traveling teams do.

Open:
There have been some comments that the Open div is a bit "weak" this year. Only 2 Nats qualifiers this year. While I think the top 5-6 teams pretty much have the only shot at winning the thing, perhaps the wide open nature of the teams will create some interest? Who will play up or down? Hey, maybe some lack of predictability will be good for this entrenched div.

I am looking forward to getting a look at the Boston Ultimate team. With Graham's injury is this really a merger? Will the approach be different from DOG? Speaking of which, I am also interested in how Big Ego will fare when playing against the kids. Which brings up, of course, due to this, the potentially delicious BEU-Colt 45 rematch in Div B semis.....if things go to seed (and that is a big if). Will Colt 45 prevail again despite MD's adolescent definition of intensity? Or will Jimmy P make MD eat his words? Pull up a chair, folks. Plenty of heckling fodder there.........

Women:
Maybe I have saved the best for last? Mixed gives them a run for the money in terms of quality, but this the largest Women's tournament at BI in a number of years and it stock full of quality teams (8-10 Nats level teams plus many high placing Regional teams). I think it is likely that we will see a Brute-Backhoe final, but with a new 12 team elite div...there will plenty of good games.

Thoughts on Focus, Preparation and Performance

2007-06-11T09:28:00.000-04:00

When I was in high school, there were a few of us that played sports (mostly soccer) and were involved in music, art, etc at the same time. There was clearly tension between the "freaks" and the "jocks", but there was not any overt ostracism...at least in the circles I was in. This tension continued in college. I actually think there was more of a distinction at UMASS in the early 80's. I would hazard a guess that the "arts" folks felt more uncomfortable with the jocks than vice verse, but I did make a choice to move away from sports in 1982 and pursue music "seriously". I think if one looks at the current landscape there is more tolerance for pursuing different things in one's life. Perhaps this is just due to the fact that I am older and have a pretty good sense of self at this point, but most of the kids in my daughter's 4th grade class are "over-scheduled" with sports, arts, language, etc.

In general, I have pursued either music or Ultimate during my life, but, over the past couple of years, I have come as close as I have to pursuing both simultaneously...even if I am not playing on the field.

This past weekend I wrapped up a series of eight shows at a local theater in Arlington, and it has been interesting how the sports psych principles that I work on with my girls come into play in terms of performing music. Much of this is repeating what I have said before, but it is helpful to be reminded that the basic principles of mental preparation can come into play repeatedly and in different aspects of one's life:

-Focus on the the things you can control--We had one or two nights in which our crowd was a bit smaller than anticipated. I spoke to one leader in the group and he was concerned that the morale of the group might be low due to the smaller crowds. We talked about the size of the crowd as an "uncontrollable". I try to focus on 1) knowing the material and 2) being in tune....not on the size of the crowd or their response.

-Intensity is focus on the present execution of fundamentals--Using emotion as source of intensity or drive is opening yourself to the ups and downs of your emotional and energy cycles. I found that the more I focused on execution first, the more I was able to tap into higher and, most importantly, consistent, emotional states. I think many of the Ultimate players I played with and the musicians I play with now are dependent upon external factors for their intensity....or on an "emotionally" driven sense of intensity, which, in my opinion, results in inconsistent performance.

-Preparing for games(or a performance) should be the same for all games (or important performances)--We had a classic example of not doing this this past weekend. On Saturday, the gig was "important"...investors coming to see the show, etc. All of a sudden our routine changed. Everyone warmed up in a different way and there was at atmosphere of "this is serious". Well, we played fine, but just slightly tight. On Sunday, when it "didn't matter"...surprise...we went back to "normal"...and we played loose and fun. Sound familiar? There is no doubt that your mental state will be different for finals than for round 1 of pool play, but this is all the more reason to rely on familiar routines for preparation. Want to be loose in the finals? Then warm up on Sat morning the same way you prepare on Sunday afternoon.

-Keep your brain in the present-- Focus is a big deal. It takes a lot of experience to maintain concentration for an entire game. All my mistakes this weekend came when my mind was not in the present. I was thinking about what just happened or what was going to happen.

So, it was am interesting experience to apply this stuff to an area outside of what I am used to. It was also helpful to subject myself to what I ask of my girls. In general, I was relaxed, focused, had good execution, and, best of all, I had a very good time.

Mixed-Masters Easterns/Other stuff

2007-06-04T07:31:00.001-04:00

I drove up to Devens on Friday afternoon to see how preparations were going for Mixed/Masters Easterns. Last year, we had the main grid(fields 1-12) done by about 3pm. This year, I drove up and Barbara and her crew had the whole thing finished. Lined, coned, water stands, portopotties, field signs....all ready to go. She did a remarkable job is handling the basic logistics of the tournament, including the bulk of the registration. Geoff, Tracey, and Shiellah also did a tremendous amount of work, and the teams seemed to appreciate all the effort that the staff put in. Really, those guys did a lot of work.

I was unable to stay around that much this year as I was performing in a music group in nearby Arlington. I did get to see a few games and it was good to socialize a bit.

Saturday seemed, in general, to be a day to get things ramped up as there were lots of drops and throwaways. The focus seemed to be turned on for Sunday as the intensity and level of play really jumped.

I stopped by to check out the Masters a bit. Good to see the old Dog guys out there. I am sure Al will write about how he did and Jim will write about how the team did, so I won't go into much detail.

Other news:
What is it with the assumption that caps affect timeouts? When did that get started? Why is that treated like the default now?

I have been moderating the Credibility topic over at the UPA stratgeic planning blog. I came upon this article here. I am not sure I really agree with all of it. In the end, what we think matters little. The almighty dollar is really what defines whether an activity is "legit" or not....in my opinion.

All-region awards came and went again. Another year in which my girls got shut out. Part of me thinks there is not a better sign of our depth and team-orientation than this(only one other school in the country finished third or higher at Regionals without an All-Region Player). That, of course, is positive George. Dark Side George wonders if this popularity contest really serves any useful purpose.

Traveling Well

2007-05-21T07:43:00.000-04:00

Nope...this isn't about taking advantage of SOTG.

Club season is beginning to kick into high gear and teams are starting to travel all over the place to tournaments. Many times, it seems to me, the "home" team, or at least a team in the very near vicinity, wins tournaments. Obviously, there are no frothing crowds to create a home field advantage, but perhaps we don't travel that well as teams. Certainly, there isn't any kind of structure or the type of amenities that even a professional minor league team demands, so I do think that traveling does test a team in terms of its ability to create a sense of structure(off the field). It also tests the team goals and the individuals responsibility to take care of the things they can control. In a sense, most teams rely of their specific level of athleticism to get them through, but there might be ways to increase a teams performance by paying attention to the details of traveling.

So, what are some things that a team can do to travel well? I don't suspect that many folks will want to reveal their company secrets, but I am curious as to both the positive and negative experience that folks have had.

Here are some things I have noticed have worked well for me:
-Having a set time to get to the fields in the morning. I think it is important that there are some kind of consequence for being late.
-A defined and set routine for warming up.
-Getting enough sleep.
-Having good directions to the fields.
-Clear process and outcome goals for the event.

As an individual, I had a pretty OCD routine for the morning of tournaments:
-cleated up and warming up 45 minutes before the first pull
-arrive at the fields 1 hour prior to the first game
-breakfast(plenty of water, 2 egg and cheese sandwiches, small coffee) 2 hours prior to the first pull(varied a bit depending on driving time to the fields)
-wake up, long hot shower and stretching 2.5-3 hours prior to the first game.

So, if games started at 9am, I was up at 6-6:30. This was hard when I had arrived the night before and if there had been time zone changes.

I think teams can place a bit of time and energy into planning and thinking about how they travel as a team. I will be looking at this a bit s the summer progresses.

Wellesley Alumni Game

2007-05-14T08:23:00.000-04:00

We had our annual Alumni game yesterday. Beautiful weather this year. Last year it rained so much we had to play indoors. This year we had eight alumni ranging from the class of 02 to grads from last year. The alumni game is an important day for the team as it is a chance for connection. New players to the team get a chance to see where the foundation of the team comes from. Seniors get a chance to demonstrate the work that has taken place over the past years. The alumni get to reconnect with the team and see the changes that have taken place since they graduated. It is nice to visit with the alums. Folks are still playing, working, traveling, etc. I have been thinking a lot about values over the last week or so, and the alumni game is a time to be reminded that core values run through the years like a stream. The sense of community, respect, and fun that were important to the team over 5 years ago are still part of the basic make-up of the team today. Probably most importantly, everyone can check in on the perspective that the team is bigger than all of us and the game is a chance to celebrate our accomplishments and the investment that everyone has made.

It is also a bittersweet day, of course, as it marks the last time we will have our seniors as part of the team. This group of seniors, especially Tyke, Ronnie, Ace, Langdon, and Jess, should take a great deal of pride in the way the team has progressed over the last four years. Four years ago we were a young team that barely qualified for Regionals. These seniors have guided the team to a time of growth in terms of numbers, and, of course, great accomplishments on the field. To leave the organization in much better shape than when they arrived should be a source of pride.

I will, in particular, miss Tyke very much. Tyke pretty much "bought in" to Ultimate from the get go, and her enthusiasm and hard work was for me a great source of validation as we began to build the program up after the spring of 03. As I have said before, her selfless approach after her knee injury this past fall is a remarkable testament to courage, discipline, and sense of team. Tyke would make any coach feel proud and I was lucky to have worked with her for 4 great years. All of our seniors brought something to the team, and as every year, it is hard to imagine the Whips without Ronnie's sense of humor and unstoppable cuts at high stall counts, Langdon's calm leadership, Jess's throws, and Ace's play against a zone offense. We will get a chance to be reminded of these things when they return as alums in subsequent years.

NE Women's Regionals Write-Up

2007-05-07T11:10:00.000-04:00

Regionals is the best time of year. There are time where I think this sport is going to kill me, and perhaps the excitement of Regionals is due to dancing close to the line in terms of stress. We were lucky to have a gorgeous weekend up in Hanover, NH, and the first thing I must say is a big thank you to Kendra who served ably as our RC this year. Kendra was highly organized and communicative. I hope all the teams are able to drop her a line and thank her for her time. Congratulations to Dartmouth and Tufts who deservedly earned bids to Nationals by playing playing very good Ultimate and carrying themselves with class and positive spirit. I am sure that the region is wishing them the best and hoping that they represent well in Columbus.

There seems to a rumor floating around (it even came up on RSD this morning)that using brackets as our format was somehow different and/or new. We have actually used the pool play format only once, and it was when we had 14 teams. My perspective is that pool play has always been a West Coast thing (my sense is that the extra game makes the sense of traveling in a large region easier), and that the story this year was actually Regions like the AC, and ME going with pool play instead of the usual brackets.

Pete and I met in Waltham at 6am and headed up to Hanover on a beautiful day. We arrived promptly at Sachem fields at 8am and pulled in behind the girls, who had stayed at Dartmouth overnight. Our first game was against Vermont, who had, in talking to their coach Darren Byerly, lost a bunch of seniors from their successful 06 campaign. In watching them warm-up, it was clear that they had some quality players, so we certainly were not looking past them. There wasn't a breeze in the air when the game started, so we decided to test the work that we had done on our person D over the past few months. With the proper focus on defensive positioning we were able to get some turns, and although nothing was easy, we were able to get some short goals with a minimum of possessions. My concern was offensive efficiency. I wanted to minimize our possessions and save energy for the later rounds. We were pretty successful at this and were able to secure a 15-7 win.

The news in that round was BU beating a very good Yale team(please give me some credit on saying that BU was a VERY TOUGH first round match up and an very dangerous 11 seed) and MIT beating Williams. Go Metro Boston. It doesn't escape my notice that Metro Boston teams were only eliminated by other Metro Boston teams over the course of the weekend, and we placed 3 teams in the semis. Our sections final placements were: 2,3,4, tied for 5th, tied for 7th, and 9th. Nice work.

Our second round match-up was Wesleyan, who beat a Leila Tunnell lead Conn College teams. I knew very little about Wesleyan other than they were "scrappy" and "gritty", in the words of Mo McCamely, from Brown. It was getting windier so we had success early with our zone. Langdon scored 4 of our first 5 goals, or something like that. We had a hell point at around 4-1 that concerned me greatly as we just seemed unable to throw and catch. This lead to bit of lack of focus on our part as we went deep into our roster for a few points to rest the folks that had been on the field for a long time. It was wonderful to have a pretty deep team this year, and, when called upon, folks like Ronnie and Ace stepped up, and we had great contributions from our first year class of Moody, Gabrielle, Caroline, Min, and Bizno. Wesleyan made a run at us at this point, though, and tied it at 6-6. I was a bit pissed that we let them back in, but I felt confident that we could win if we got our offense back on track. We managed to to get a zone back in gear and, again, get some short goals. We emerged with a 15-10 win, and, indeed, Wesleyan never goes away. Their coach, Jayadev, wrote me back in the fall about beginning work with that team, and I got the sense that they were very much in a rebuilding phase. They made remarkable strides this year. Hopefully they will continue to build on their success.

The win in qtrs got to semis vs Tufts, and, importantly, a slot on Sunday (remember back to last year? This is still not "expected" territory for us). we moved over to field 3 which was upwind-downwind instead of crosswind. It was very windy. 25 mph gusts. I was actually happy as we had played Tufts closely at Sectionals in similar conditions and it certainly helps to minimize the damage created by their very talented throwers. I was quite interested in the flip, and I was surprised when Tufts won that they elected to pull. It seemed to me not unreasonable that they would want to set themselves up to break us upwind early, though, so I guess I wasn't that surprised. We took side and so received downwind. We scored going downwind and some success with person D, although the wind made it hard to take much comfort in our success. Tufts was able to get reasonable even despite a very strong headwind. Most likely those passes are complete without the wind. One of my big goals for the game was to establish our offense going upwind, even if it meant giving them some short goals. I felt that we were too quick to pull the trigger at Sectionals and that are upwind looks were basically punts. We got a turn from Tufts, and found our offense. We were able to throw and catch, break the mark, etc. Angie played big with good break mark throws and she scored the goal to secure the break 2-0. We pulled and played zone. Most teams do struggle against our zone, but Tufts plays a 2-handler set and they are are not most teams. They have very good throwers and poppers and they will exploit whatever crossfield opportunity we give them. They score upwind and then downwind 2-2. We score downwind and it is 3-2. Looking back, I probably should have taken a timeout to just reset our focus, but I was afraid that Sangwha would get mad at me. All kidding aside, in hindsight, Tufts puts so much pressure on our offensive efficiency that I think a stoppage of play here would have been prudent. Tufts went on a 4-0 run here. We were able to get turns on every possession in this stretch, and play good offense, especially upwind. Jersey and LB had some very good deep throws that we were able to complete, but we had a few instances of pressing for the score and not continuing possession, even if it meant taking a 1 yard pass while we reset. We are able to go through their 1-3-3 and score a couple in a row to take it to 6-5. Tufts breaks us again and takes it to half, 8-5. As I have said before, if you give a good team like Tufts 40 looks at your zone, they better break it. The second half was remarkably familiar to our sectional game against Northeastern. We seemed to have the ability to hang with Tufts through almost the entire first half, but then our energy collapsed, we started dropping the disc (I think back to what might have happened if we were able to cut our possessions against Wesleyan in half), and Tufts O really got in a great groove. They bageled us in the second half and took an impressive 15-5 win. I told Sangwha that I was very impressed by the mental focus of their team. Good work there.

We had a team dinner after the game, got some ice cream, and then Pete and I crashed in a local hotel. We talked about some adjustments and things we wanted to do on Sunday. I learned later that BU and Williams had won out in the back door, so the matchups for Sunday were: Wellesley vs BU, Northeastern vs Williams, and Tufts vs Dartmouth(who had beaten NU 15-9) in the final.

I knew going in that BU would put a lot of pressure on us. They play very good defense, have very good athletes, and a legitimate force in Mackenzie. What we do depends on whether she is on the field or not. They are also very well coached by Kathy Dobson, who perhaps, along with Mike from Dartmouth and Jeff from Harvard, defines a calm approach that I respect very much. This game to me came down to our ability to convert turns created by our zone D. We could throw and catch well enough to get away with a 15-9 win. BU is a very passionate team. They have done a lot of work and it was no surprise to me that hey went deep into this tournament.

Very much on a side note, I spent the entire game on the home side, which is unusual for me, but I really couldn't deal with the BU boys on the other sideline(in my experience, the Williams boys are equally as obnoxious). I think if I had been over there I would have gotten very pissed at folks I consider friends. Pete made sure that I stayed on the home side as he said "You don't want to hear what they are saying about the girls". It wasn't totally bad. I was grateful, for example, when one of the BU boys helped us out by pointing out where the disc should be put into play. That kind of input is valuable when the game isn't observed. Oops, my bad, the game did have observers who seemed quite capable of managing the game. Pete did convey to me that the boys were heckling us us based on some disc space calls that we made. My opinion is that there were a lot of marks over the weekend, but also in the BU game that were legal 10th edition, but not 11th edition marks. I felt that the conversations that took place between the players to be reasonable in terms of defining the "appropriate" terms by which we were going to play.

I very much enjoy the opportunity to play BU as they fully challenge us to play our best. That is program building upon its history of success and we are lucky to have them in our section. Our win meant that we played Northeastern in the backdoor final. I felt we were in a good place for this game as compared to last year as we seemed to have more gas in the tank. We had been thumped by Northeastern two weeks before, but again, I felt with better execution that we would have a shot at playing with them. What I didn't know (Jason said the same thing to me later) was that Jersey was going to have a monstrous game and launch us into new territory. NU went up a couple early. We kept the focus on throwing and catching though and managed to get a couple of breaks back and go up 4-3. NU runs a good zone, which we were having better success with, but we were really struggling to contain them with our D. I decided to call a time out after we scored at 4-3 to reset and refocus. Maybe try to learn something from the Tufts game. NU was running very good give and gos from the front of the stack and we were getting beat to the open side, so we had to do a few tweaks and revisit the offense. The time out didn't really work, though, as NU took half 8-6. We were having good moments, though. At one point Gabrielle caught a pass near the end zone, but turned it over. NU scored and she apologized on the line. I said that we just needed to play without fear. She went out and caught and threw passes on the next point, and just moved on past the error.

Something had to change after the half, and it did. I had little to do with. One of the big things is that NU lost two players to a concussion(one due to dive during our game, the other happened in the Williams game). I didn't realize that Courtney had to go to the hospital until about the end of the second half, but this was a huge loss for their team. The fact that they played so well speaks to their depth and talent. The other was that I started to play Tyke while Northeastern was playing zone. Tyke and Ralph started to play deep and on opposite sidelines, essentially creating a choice for their deep-deep. Somewhat counter intuitively, this left our first years like Min, Caroline, and Gabrielle as our poppers. They did a huge job of making big catches and throws to keep the disc in play and not let the NU wings to overplay on Tyke and Ralph. Meanwhile, LB was able to get some effective long throws which allowed big swings to Jersey who threw HUGE bombs for goals to Ralph and Tyke. I think she threw like 6 goals in the second half. Basically put the team on her back and carried it. In big games against very talented teams like BU, NU, etc, someone has to step up and it was Jersey. The effectiveness of this basically gave us a big run and we pulled out a 15-11 win.

I went to check out the Dartmouth-Tufts game, which Dartmouth won. Lots of zone D and many, many passes on both sides.

So, we found ourselves in the first game to go since Wellesley played Smith in 2000. Exciting stuff. Tufts was a bit down after their loss, but I was not going to even mention that to my girls. They are experienced and talented enough that they will get up and move on. Which they did. Tufts played great against us, and we did not throw and catch well in the first half, which they took 8-1. In the second half, we played a lot of Senior lines, and got big plays from Ace, Ronnie, and Ema. We went on a little run to 12-6, before Tufts closed it out to earn their spot in Columbus. I think my girls truly enjoyed the experience. I heard Bizno say that it was the most fun tournament she had been to. That is awesome.

I would just like to finish by offering my NE Coach of the Year. I think Mike from Dartmouth is the obvious choice. Most folks had written Dartmouth off this year with the losses of Shmi, Rory, and Liz M. They had a rough spring and lost in qtrs at Yale Cup. It seems to me that they timed their season perfectly, and peaked right at the most important time. I knew that they were a young team last year once you got past the stars and I felt that they would be a force in the region for a while. They are a talented team that has a positive system. I am sure they will do great at Nationals.

The hardest thing to do in Ultimate is.....

2007-05-01T06:50:00.000-04:00

...man d...and it is the most overlooked. Sure, the O guys get all the attention, but, remember, they have an advantage. Here is a partial list of what someone playing man d downfield must keep track of:

-where the disc is
-keeping their hips turned such that they can see the disc
-where their person is
-what the habits and tendencies of their person are
-what the strengths and tendencies of the thrower are
-the force
-where the person they are guarding is in the stack
-what the weather conditions are
-knowing that what you are giving them is what you are supposed to be giving them
-anticipating that they will cut to the space that you are giving them
-communicating with your teammates
-knowing if you are last back

I think I take it granted sometimes that all of the above (plus what I have omitted) is understood.

Having said all of this, perhaps it is true, then, that the hardest thing to do in Ultimate is play man d in Mixed Ultimate....as there is many more opportunities to create isos downfield?

Bids to Boston Invitational are going fast

2007-04-24T08:47:00.000-04:00

Bids to the Boston Invitational are going fast. We are very excited
about the demand for spots and we think it is going to be a very full
and competitive tournament. While the deadline for bids (May 26th) is
a month away, teams cannot wait much longer if they hope to get a
spot. We anticipate that all bids could be allocated by the end of
the week. If you want to participate in one of the premier east coast
tournaments of the summer, you need to get your bid in ASAP.
The website:
http://www.buda.org/joomla/content/view/91/356/

Registration:
http://www.buda.org/joomla/component/option,com_fabrik/Itemid,366/

Teams list:
http://www.buda.org/joomla/content/view/94/360/

Finishing Sectionals/Moving on to Regionals

2007-04-23T09:30:00.000-04:00

Our story continues as Sectionals is postponed due to the 5-day Noreaster that we suffered through this week. What was left to play was our game with Northeastern for 2nd place in the section and the recently changed bracket(we got our 6th bid back during the week.....) with BU, MIT, BC, and Brandeis vying for the 6th spot to regionals. According to the SRT, MIT beat BU for 5th and Brandeis beat BC, so BU will play Brandeis for 6th...sometime this week? Good luck to both teams. So we hosted Northeastern on a beautiful day out at the Wellesley Campus. It was good to catch up with Coach Adams and we talked about how wide open the region was (more on this later).

The game started off very close and patterns developed that would continue throughout the game. We received and had some success working down the field. NU was playing a poachy clam that was mildly disconcerting and we ended up turning it in their end zone. They came back and scored to break us for 1-0. We manage to tie it up, but our execution is rough. Lots of drops, errant passes, etc. Maybe this could be as a result of NU's junk D, but I felt at the time that it was more a function of our execution. NU goes up a couple of breaks, and we crawl back to 4-4. We are having some success with our zone and getting some short fields to work with. NU, however, is having a very good day on O. They are effective with their break marks plus dump swing. We seem to be struggling to even take away what we are trying to take away...plus they are taking what we give them as well. We get the turn, but we drop the disc in the end zone. We get the disc again on the line, but we can't convert. NU puts up a couple of big passes and goes coast to coast for the 5-4 lead. Then....the wheels came off the train. Our execution errors give NU extra possessions, and their O just seemed to crank up a notch. They go on a 3-0 run to take half. Second half is more of the same. NU closes the game with an 11-1 run to win 15-5. Ouch. NU played very well and while folks were giving them some crap at Sectionals about playing HAPD(maybe they are just smart), their offense was as good as any I have seen all season. Congratulations to NU for taking 2nd place in the Section. I wish them the best of luck in two weeks. I think NU has to realize that we need to look for positives in the game. Stuff to build on. A chance to reassess our process goals. I feel confident that they won't take it as disrespectful when I say that most of our turns were either execution or unforced errors. I think with a bit more offensive efficiency that the game is a much closer affair.

So moving onto Regionals. Lots of work to do in the next couple of weeks. I guess the thing to talk about is seeding...and this is going to be a bear to seed. Here is just a sampling at some of the "problems":

-Harvard having a "poor" Yale Cup(with 8 players) then beating Northeastern at Sectionals on their way to finishing 4th. Lots of data here to underseed them. With Lucy and Ellen on the field...watch out.
-BU potentially finishing 6TH in the section. There is a first round game I don't want to have.
-Wesleyan losing a bunch of games at Yale Cup, then winning the section.
-The format at Yale Cup basically makes any kind of analysis using final placement useless.
-Dartmouth having a "weak" start of the season.
-Yale having a great Yale Cup then losing two games at Sectionals on their way to a second place finish.
-Williams losing many close games at Yale Cup....wins their Section easily.

So, my attempt at seeding is a based on a ranking of strength, supported, as much as possible, by data. Specifically, head to head and, importantly, record against common opponents. I think the later is one that gets overlooked. There will be little previous years results and little to no final placement at Yale Cup as part of the ranking.

1)Tufts-only real blemishes are the Yale Cup loss to NU and an Ultimax loss to Williams in March. Beat everyone else and beat NU at Sectionals. Clearly deserves the 1 seed.
2) Northeastern- loss at Sectionals to Harvard, but has a better Record Against Common Opponents(RACO)(4-2) than Dartmouth (2-4), Head to head win over Wesleyan and better RACO (6-4) than Willams (3-6). As Sectional winners, these 3 teams seem to have the only claims on the 2 spot.
3) Dartmouth- head to head wins over Yale,Wellesley, and Williams. Better RACO(4-1) than Wesleyan(3-4).

Now it gets hard. I think the 4 teams vying for the 4-7 slots are: Williams, Wesleyan, Yale, and Wellesley. No one else, based on Sectional results, can really be considered for these slots. Williams, with head to head losses against Yale and Wellesley combined with with a worse RACO (1-4) than Wesleyan plus the fact that Wesleyan must be seeded higher than Yale, is pretty much locked in at 7. So, for the 4-6 slots, I think there is a line of reasoning that goes: Yale has a head to head win over Wellesley, the Wesleyan sectional win is an "upset"...put Wesleyan at 4, Yale at 5, Wellesley at 6. My problems with this analysis are: 1) it doesn't use all the data, 2) it overweights the Yale head to head win, 3) it underweights Yale's two loss sectional performance, and 4) it overseeds Wesleyan from a strength point of view. Looking at RACO as a data point, I think a better gauge of Wesleyan's strength can be obtained. Wesleyan has a worse RACO against Tufts, NU, and Wellesley, but a better RACO against Williams. In other words, I think it is hard to argue that Wesleyan deserves a 4 seed from a point of view of a strength ranking. So that results in:

4) Wellesley
5) Wesleyan
6) Yale
7) Williams
8) Brown- Head to head over Williams was a forfeit. Williams has a better RACO(2-2 vs 1-3). Head to head win over Harvard
9) Harvard
10) Conn College- Quality win over Yale. Better RACO than MIT
11) MIT
12) BU--if they beat Brandies and qualify..if not then Vermont
13) Vermont or Brandeis
14) Bowdoin
15) Middlebury
16)UMF

UPA Strategic Planning Blog

2007-04-18T21:22:00.000-04:00

I am serving as a moderator for one of the topics on the new UPA Strategic Planning Blog. Lots of interesting topics and potential for discussion. Take a look. Jump right in.

Initial Bids to Boston Invitational Announced

2007-04-16T21:40:00.000-04:00

The initial bids to the Boston Invitational have been announced here.

The pool of teams looks to be excellent and we continue to receive
bids from quality teams. Bids will continue to be accepted on a
rolling basis, so check back to see if your bid has been accepted.

Sectionals

2007-04-16T08:59:00.000-04:00

Marathon Monday. Rainy, cold, windy. I heard a radio report that this is the worst weather for the event since the early 70's. The marathon has never been canceled. I was joking with my girls that I think this might be a year in which a person from Africa does not win the Marathon. I think it will be a 5'4" 200 pound Scottsman with about 20% body fat wearing hiking boots. He will win in a 4 hour war of attrition muttering "Ay, 'caint tell me this is rain. I'll show you some frigging rrrrain. Come to the Shetlands with me, Laddy....now that is rain".

I find Sectionals stressful. In fact, it is the same kind of stress that used to make me so nervous as a player in Club Regionals. Perhaps one has to lose a few games to go in order to have their mental awareness aggressively push out into the future and concern itself with the cloud of a season ending too short; in the case of my seniors, a college career coming to a close weeks before we had planned. In our little section, there are 6 pretty clear "upper tier" teams battling every year for 5 spots. We had hoped, due a bump from 9 teams over the past few years to 11 this year that we might be able to snag that 6th bid, and, in fact, it looked like we had 6 bids up until roughly Thursday when a UPA HQ miscount was discovered and we found ourselves in the comfy confines of the ubiquitous 5 bids. Just as a side note, said from the perspective of National Mixed Director, I find it frustrating that the number of bids (obviously pending participation) is not listed on the SRT for each Section (along with other details such as the number of fields, etc, etc). I think I am going to make my SC's put this kind of info on the SRT come the fall. With the general exception of Tufts (I think they might have played in the "game to go" in 03...at least that is what I recall Bernie saying to me this past Saturday), the other 5 have gone through years in which they danced with missing the cut. MIT(new to that club this year), BU, Northeastern, Harvard, and Wellesley. Just the latest edition of the Death March in Boston(well...RI this year).

First, I must say that Sam TH and Katie did a great job running the event. They were organized, communicative, and were clear about dealing with a Sunday of cold rain and sleet. About as good as one could hope for from a SC.

I must say that I received some flak this weekend about my "Death of Huck and Play D" comments two weeks ago. I think folks are not reading my insightful comments with enough care as I CLEARLY gave myself a huge out: "Unless the conditions merit such an approach". In my book, with a lot at stake, the conditions on both days, most of time, were troubling enough (Sat: Windy, Sun: Rainy) that a prudent person might at least give HAPD, at the minimum, brief consideration. In all our games, except for Tufts, I felt we did a good job of taking high percentage long looks and minimizing giving the other teams short, easy goals. I do think that in the Tufts game that we were too quick to pull the trigger when going upwind. By the end of the game, we did have some moments of finding our offense...I just wish that I had pushed my girls to try to establish it earlier. While Tufts might carry itself with the refined air of a vintage wine that looks down upon the working class malt of HAPD, they had, for the most part, just as much trouble scoring as we did on Sat. So, to overhear the Tufts players disrespecting our team by chiding our lack of offensive abilities certainly did not sit well with me or my players. I do think it is the responsibility of the top dog to not flaunt...well, in this case it would be the desire to be a fine wine.

It was great to see some new teams and faces this year. The section welcomed the addition of Bently College (I believe the name is Wubus.....I spent some time trying to figure that out and I didn't feel like bothering their coach with my inane banter). Always great to see a new program getting going. Just a few years ago, BC was in this position, and they have made great strides with Rosie Ano coaching them. They have an effective 4-person cup, and are developing confidence in their ability to throw and catch. My understanding is that they were up on BU in the 5th place bracket before BU got it together and won the game. Great stuff from a new program. Also, Brandeis is an improving team. Well, any team would benefit from Dory Ziperstein (and Peri Kurshan as a coach). I had a chance to catch up with her on Sat and she seems to be very much enjoying working toward building a team. I understand. It was only a few years ago that I was in that position.

Then there is Tufts-B and my own Wellesley-B team. It was just a year ago that I wrote that I wish I had a B-team like Tufts. Well, we do. It has been very hard for me to give enough time to both teams. Work is busy...blah blah blah. Excuses. Luckily, Nell Weiner (a captain from last year) descended upon us and has been taking the lead with the B-team. Really couldn't be better as Nell is the same calm and positive presence that she was for the past 4 years. Not that things are totally Hallmark Card material. My girls are frustrated some of the time. They work very hard to improve upon their fundamentals. They have some veteran leadership (Liz K, Pam, Tori...who might have broken her ankle on Sat). However, they are process oriented, so my hope is that the foundation is laid for these girls to have a great 4 years as a Whiptail. The B-team drove down today, in the pouring rain, to play one elimination game with Brandeis. That is a dedicated bunch.

My A-team girls had a good go of it on Saturday. Our first game was against...Wellesley-B. Lovely. I wrote Sam TH and proposed that we have the game be our Friday scrimmage and that we could just show up for the second round. He didn't go for that for some reason. Damn UPA folks are such sticklers. I spent a little time during our first round checking out MIT vs BC. BC, as I mentioned above, has improved. We went into our second round against them determined not to overlook them, and we had some work to do on our zone. Surprisingly, it seemed like BC really struggled against our zone. We were able to get a lot of short goals and secure a much easier victory than I anticipated. Next round was against MIT. Big game. A win maintains us with our 2 seed in the pool and gives us a good shot at Tufts. We have some success with our zone and are able to go up a couple when a very strong player, Erika(?), for them lays out for an errant throw and breaks her hand. This is a big loss for them. After that, they seemed a bit deflated. We found our offense (Angie, who was not feeling well, played a few points and was great with her break mark throws) and had success with our zone. As I have said before, Nancy and Nurit are great coaches. The team is strong fundamentally and they play good defense. MIT would go on to lose its first round on Sunday to Harvard and will play BU in the game to go at a later date as the last round of the tournament was postponed. Lest a coach become a bit cocky with their success, let's remind ourselves that MIT is just 4 years from the best run a NE team has had in College Women's Ultimate. They will be back...and it might be in just a few weeks.

Our final game on Sat was against Tufts. The are a very good team. Caroline Chow is clearly one of the best throwers in the Region. They are deep, play good defense, have a patient offense, and they crushed us a Yale Cup. My girls, however, really wanted to come after them. There were many incentives at play: qualifying for Regionals with the win, getting a later start on Sunday, plus there was, I guess, a large party to attend on campus that night. I don't even really want to know about those kind of things. I felt this was an opportunity to work on our mental toughness as we could play with the awareness of what was at stake without the tightness of be concerned about what was at stake. Good training for Regionals. The game was not pretty, really. There were several very long points in which Tufts would turn it against our zone and we would sort of stand around...and, with no cuts, we would just throw back into Tuft's end zone...repeat ad nauseum. In general, Tufts really challenged our zone with good popping and handling. We were able to force a lot of turns and get some risky throws out of them, but I think if you give a team 40 looks at your zone...they better break it. 65 minutes later it is 5-5, capped game to 7 (in our pool of 6, games were to 11). We pull to Tufts and get a nice turn in the open lane, but can't convert. Tufts scores upwind to take the lead 6-5. We receive but turn and then start trading with Tufts. About half way through the point, Sam TH says to me that we forgot the half. I thought to myself, "The Half...what is he talking about". Oh yeah, it is a game to 11, remember. I guess We (meaning Tufts and Wellesley) forgot about the half and just "played through" without mirroring, or more importantly, us PULLING to Tufts. Obviously, we had just gained an unfair and significant advantage. Well, Tufts scores to make it 7-5 and the game is over, clearly. There isn't even a discussion. Looking back, though, I wonder what would have happened if we had been able to punch it in and tie up the game? My opinion is that the "course of action" should be consistent. In other words, we are either "playing through" OR we are replaying the point. It is inconsistent to have the possible outcomes be ONLY: a) Tufts scores and wins or b) Wellesley scores and we replay the point. So we were able to avoid a potential nasty problem. Luckily. Tufts went on to beat Northeastern on Sunday to win the section. Congrats to them...they are clearly the top of the class.

Our loss to Tufts and the three way tie in pool A meant that we played BU on Sunday morning. Loser of that game drops into the 5th place bracket. In the pouring rain. And sleet. My girls showed up on time and in good shape. I think most of them didn't even go to the big party. BU is clearly amped up and gunning for us. I warn my girls about hypothermia and that they need to self-monitor. We go down 0-2 as we can't throw in the rain and BU is playing good defense. Kathy Dobson has done great work there. BU is athletic, has confidence in its O, and they play good defense. We manage to score and have a chance to put pressure on their offense. We play zone and they really give us all we can handle. We are able to get some short goals, but we have very little offense as open side cuts to the forehand side are heavily fronted and several long forehands literally slip out of our hands. We struggle to 6-6...capped game to 8. We take half after we tweak our zone a bit and get a short goal. We pull to them to start the next point and are lucky to get an early turn which we punch in to secure the win and a bid to regionals. My girls ran into their cars to keep from getting too cold. BU is a very good team. I see that they are playing MIT in the "game to go"(postponed). Boy, both those teams really would be quality additions at that event.

Our final game was against Harvard. Jeff Listfield said to my captains that he was going to open up his rotation to get PT for his newer players and prevent injuries for his starters. We walked the disc up through their zone to take the first point, so we never saw zone again. Harvard is a much stronger team now that Ellen has returned. She killed us with her forehand. Basically, they scored most of the time that Ellen and Lucy were on the field, and we broke them when they weren't. I thought we played well, though, and earned a 13-7 win. After shaking hands, everyone ran into their cars and headed home. Sam TH made the right decision to postpone the final two games(MIT v BU, Wellesley v NU) to a later date.

So, it was a successful weekend for us. Min came up to me and said "I was a bit worried after Yale Cup. I thought that was as good as we were going to be". There is always work to do, but we are certainly building in a positive and organized way.

UPA SRT Formats: Soft Time Cap/End of Round, etc

2007-04-11T20:06:00.000-04:00

A common question I get from players when they are looking at UPA Sectional and Regional formats on the SRT is, "Why is there a 30 minute break between rounds?" An example of what I am talking about is Pool A above.

Start of Round-9AM(So far so good)
Start of next round-11AM(Got that)
So.."what is that 10:30AM time?" is the question I receive. Just to back up for a moment, the old nomenclature for rounds is reflected in Pool B. Here is the way it went:

Start of Round- 9AM
End of round-10:45AM
15 minute break between rounds
Soft Time Cap-15 minutes before the end of the round
Start of the next round-11AM

This is overly complicated and, when one looks closely, one realizes that the "end of the round" serves no real purpose. The round does not actually end at that time (unless there is a hard cap at the end of the round).

The language on this was changed about a year ago, I believe. The Championship Committee discussed that a reasonable amount of time between the SOFT TIME CAP and the start of the next round was 30 minutes. This 30 minute break was edited into every one of the official UPA formats on the SRT. It is a much more clear and concise way of describing things:

Pool A(the same schedule as Pool B above)
Start of Round:9AM
Soft Time Cap:10:30AM
Start of Next Round: 11AM

Just as additional examples, I have included pools C and D as examples of different times between the start of the round and the soft time cap.

Yale Cup/Program Building/Death of Huck and Play D

2007-04-09T10:15:00.000-04:00

I was only able to attend Yale Cup on Sat this year as my daughter turned 10 on Sunday. She was bit sad about leaving "single digits" and for my wife and me, it was a serious "Where have the year's gone?" moment. Perhaps it was better to be absent on Sunday. My girls did not play their best Ultimate on Sat, except for the point in which I had to go to the bathroom and they promptly discovered their offense and broke Dartmouth upwind. One of my girls said "We played a lot better at Southerns". I thought, hmmm, what has changed? With the win over BU on Sunday morning, maybe I should just gracefully exit stage left......

Despite a format that, in the words of Adam Tarr, results in "meaningless" relative final placement, there was a lot of good Ultimate down in New Haven. My prediction: the loss of an opportunity this weekend to establish strong data for determining relative inter and intra sectional strength will reek havoc in terms of seeding regionals.

...but enough whining, what about the Ultimate?

I might humbly offer that Sangwha(coach of Tufts) and I are somewhat "seasoned" at this point. We currently have the longest tenure of NE Women's coaches, and it is quite clear that College women's Ultimate has improved dramatically in the last 5 years. When I started, many teams played "Huck and Play D" as a concession to basically not having the ability to execute an offense. Now, the spring in NE is time is which even a seasoned club vet might take a moment to think, while facing driving wind, snow and rain, "should I throw this 10 yard pass? No, I think we will go for field position". So, while there were times in which HAPD "made sense", there were also times in which teams, in the most salivating of calm conditions, would offer no pretense of an offense. Literally, just pick up the disc and throw it as far as possible to no one. I think one of the biggest changes is that this is pretty much non-existent anymore (unless the conditions "warrant" such an approach). This is not to say that teams do not like the away game. It is just that now the long looks are becoming higher percentage. In addition, most teams attempt to break the mark and have enough facility to execute some form of offense. In addition, as recently as last year, it seemed that only the top 2-3 teams of a region (Tufts, Dartmouth) could quickly and effectively analyze and utilize "take what you are given" as well as take advantage of mental errors (especially D mental errors). Many turns in the past were "unearned". Execution errors on the part of the other team. Maybe the talent was deeper this year at Yale Cup, but most teams were much more effective than in the past in exploiting mental errors. That bodes well for College Women's Ultimate as there is more parity (at least in our region) and the standard of quality is increasing (for example, defense has to really earn their keep).

So, Yale Cup is an opportunity to check in on what needs work. I was not particularly concerned with results as much as keeping focus on working on our goals and trying to play good Ultimate. Saturday was a "rough" day for us, but (again, think parity) to go into the tournament with the mindset that games against teams like Williams and Yale(who made finals) can be checked off as wins (we didn't have that mindset) would be naive. Yale is a very athletic team. Always has been. The addition of Liz Middleton from Dartmouth has given them a strong and much needed handler presence. Williams is a tall team with some very talented throwers. They gave us all we could handle and we were lucky to escape with a 1-point win. Even Harvard, who we beat handily in a scrimmage several weeks ago, took half against Cornell...with 8 players(1 of which had never played with the team). The field is deep if a quality team like Harvard goes 0-4 on Sat. Then there is Dartmouth. Folks had pretty much written them off with the loss of Schmi, Rory, Liz, etc. We beat them 13-1 down in South Carolina a few weeks ago. I think everyone pretty much gave them up for dead and they came in seeded..what?..15th this weekend. Well, folks....they're back. They are fun, talented, and are doing pretty well considering the losses from last year. Tufts seems to be the class of the region, the loss today to NU in qtrs notwithstanding, as Sangwha is doing a great job there. I watched some of the Brown-MIT game. Brown, no surprise, looked quite good as they continue to re-build. They are still quite young, very athletic, and have solid fundamentals...which you would expect from a team coached by Mo and Mike K. I do think that Mike should wear his Tandem pink more often, though. It kind of breaks things up in a nice way. I think MIT had a similar Sat to what we had. Nancy and Nurit were working hard over there. They are great coaches. With all of our teams, it is easy to coach and work when we are flush with talent and experience. The real work comes when the bottom falls, players graduate, and a new foundation needs to be laid. The coaches that stick through those times are really grinding it out. I have great respect for how the coaches of Brown, MIT, Dartmouth, etc, return year after year, through the good and the bad. Our sport will benefit from their investment.

So, Sectionals will be very tough. Looking at the results, things were pretty shaken up by the Yale Cup Brackets. In terms of the seeding, I think the seeding matrix on the SRT pretty much gets this one right:

1) NU-win vs Tufts
2) Tufts-win vs Wellesley
3) Wellesley-win vs BU
4) BU
5) MIT-win vs Harvard
6) Harvard

I don't know enough about the rest of the teams except for Wellesley-B, of course, who should be seeded lower than Tufts-B due to head to head results.

Crap Formats #3

2007-04-06T15:50:00.000-04:00

The latest addition to "creative" ways to deal with 15 teams.....

The Rumors are true.......

2007-04-04T20:49:00.000-04:00

So, the buzz flying around Boston this week was a reported merge between DOG and Metal. It is true. A note was sent to the Boston Ultimate community confirming that a new team is being formed, and it generally outlined the process by which the team will be formed (open tryouts/pickup) as well as some of the goals of the team ("play championship Ultimate"). No real surprises there. I probably overstated the case a few posts ago that many of these changes might be spurred by the fact that it is a WUC year. While I don't think it is a total coincidence that the old DOG guys picked this year to get the band back together for Masters(see Jim'sblog), I'm sure that WUC's is just one small part of the picture in terms of decisions like the DOG-Metal merger. So, what does this mean for Boston Ultimate? Probably good things. The Metal-Dog divide seemed to me to go deeper than the Dog-Blackjack/Boss Hogg/Snapple, etc dichotomy. Metal took pride in clearly defining their aesthetic with a different set of criteria than Dog. Add in the UMASS vs Brown dynamic plus the establishment vs anti-establishment nuances and the result was two different cultures....a house divided.

The letter indicates that Ted Munter, Greg Connelly, Josh McCarthy, Jeff Graham, and Forch will be at the helm for this new venture. Clearly, that is a potent brain trust and, from my outside perspective, indicates that Dog has been coveting JG for some time. It makes sense that with Jim and Al stepping down from the longest tenure with a single team that DOG is put to bed and that Twisted Puppy arises from the ashes. I think it was pretty clear that a new guard was taken the reigns of the DOG offense last year, but, at times during Nats, the O looked shaky and the D will have to find ways to cope with the obvious challenges that lurk on the horizon. It is clealy overly simplistic to view Metal as "raw, athletic, frenetic" and Dog as "cool and disciplined". That is pretty much just a convenient way for us spectators to try to set up a story. The good part is that both sides are ripe for the taking. Ted was in attendence for much of UCPC and I know he was quite taken with what Goldberg had to say. Perhaps this team will display the athleticism, discipline, and mental toughness to play "championship Ultimate". I hope so and I think this is a good time to recharge. I can't wait to see the results.

The fun vs competitive continuum

2007-04-02T09:07:00.000-04:00

Many teams seem to struggle with the notion that things can EITHER be competitive (hard core, intense, etc) OR fun(spirited, etc). Probably most high level teams (and, maybe, "casual" or "pick-up teams) have got this sorted out, but for many others, the perceived relationship between fun vs competitive is important, and confusing, in terms of goals, expectations, friendships, and even whether one wants to participate. Is there an actual mutually exclusive relationship between fun and competitive? Where does this notion come from? Do other sports have this "problem"? Does this issue occur only in certain parts of our sport (ie, is it age-based, division-based, etc)? This post will humbly offer my take on how to frame this apparent decision.

I had an interesting look at this at my B-team's tournament that they hosted this past weekend. I had to show up late due to family obligations, and when I arrived, I found out that my gals had been beaten 13-0, and 13-0 in the first two games. When I talked with the team, they were a bit down, but pumped to improve and get over the hump. Now, there are many reasons for being on the Whips B-team. Some folks are new to the game. Others are too busy for A-team commitment. Still others want to be on a less competitive team. Now, from a simple view of the fun-competitive continuum, one could say that the A-team is on the competitive side and the B-team is on the fun side. However, as I said....this is the simple view. So, if the B-team is the "fun" team, why were they down after the first two big losses? Isn't the point to have fun, enjoy the experience of the team and enjoy the opportunity to play this sport in the nice sun of the early spring? Well, yes and no.

I am going to argue that there is no need for a team to decide between fun and competitive. I think that goals determine and dictate the process by which a foundation is created for teams to have a season that is BOTH fun and competitive. It is naive to think that if a team is not playing well, or not up to its potential, that it will be a "fun" experience. In fact, I think that if a team does not set good goals for itself that there is the potential that it is doing so as an "out". As in, "oh, that loss didn't matter...we were just trying to have fun". Lack of definition might salve the wounds of underachievement, but it won't make it more fun. The problem with a team that is not having fun (regardless of its competitive level) comes from a misalignment between the players and the team goals.

So, a team should have, in my opinion, a goal or two that are "stretch" goals. Goals that push a team's potential. The process goals that are derived to achieve these stretch (and other) outcome goals will lay out a series of tasks that need to be completed. Each player on the team should sign off on the goals as a "contract". In other words, it is an agreement to do what is necessary to achieve the team goals. My opinion is that this will smooth over any misalignment in expectations. So, a team more interested in "fun" might set goals for itself that are relatively easy to achieve and are less about pushing their potential.

Now, I heard someone say once that "if I rank all my games in terms of fun, all the games I've won rank higher than the games I have lost". I think my girls have discovered that it is fun to win games, and that enjoying the experience of the team's success is usually a bi product of playing good Ultimate(as defined by the team goals). We still discuss the fun vs competitive continuum, but I have noticed that the tenor of the conversation has changed as we have become better at goal-setting. We are less polarized. Less convinced that success comes at the expense of fun. More convinced that fun comes with playing good Ultimate, welcoming challenges, and pushing to maximize the potential of the team and the individual.

Boston Invitational Registration is now open

2007-03-29T11:45:00.000-04:00

Registration is now open for the Boston Invitational. Get your season into high gear at one of the premier tournaments of the season.

Great fields and competition.

16 Elite Open Teams
16 Easterns Open Teams
10 Elite Women's Teams
10 Easterns Women's Teams
10 Mixed Elite Teams
8 Grand Masters Teams(40+, Sunday Only)

General Info and registration information can be found at:

http://www.buda.org/joomla/content/view/91/356/

We look forward to seeing you in June!

E-mail: bosinv at buda dot org

Spring

2007-03-26T09:10:00.000-04:00

Definitely feels like spring here in New England. We are looking at a nice string of 50 degree plus days. Even an old guy like me thinks, when driving by a lonely, brown patch of grass, "Hey.....nice field".

-Lots of RSD posts these days announcing club tryouts. Is it me or does it seem like there are more than usual? In my little world, I attribute it to the fact that it is a Worlds qualifying year. I look forward to the Worlds year in the four year cycle. There is a little more at stake for the Fall Series.

-On the home front, my girls are returning from Spring Break. They had a successful jaunt at Southerns two weeks ago. I think the highlight was a big comeback win against Georgia. Nice stuff. They also played at Ultimax this past weekend. I would post the link, but the tournament is not listed on the SRT. We will have a lot of stuff to work on before Yale Cup and Sectionals. One big thing will be our ability to concentrate for a whole tournament. I try to talk as little as possible during practice, but even when I do spout just a bit.....some of my girls immediately start to wander mentally. We have distinct and robust ability to tune out as a sideline and take little advantage of this opportunity to help each other. This seems to me like both a culture and a focus problem...so we will work on that.

-Registration is going well for Mixed/Masters Easterns. Geoff is doing a great job in keeping the teams list updated. We are working on many details, so this should be a great event. We have also been receiving inquiries about the Boston Invitational. Geoff (TD) and me(Comp Director) will be serving in our same capacities as MME. We will be getting the BI website up soon and registration info will be available shortly.

-I have said before...but I have to say it again. In my opinion, the "conventional wisdom"(Interesting description of this Galbraith term in "Freakonomics". The term was not intended, originally, as a compliment...basically Galbraith was saying that we associate truth with convenience.) that high scoring offensive games are the most exciting to watch is a bunch of crap. I don't care what the TV ratings "prove" as we are in sad shape if TV Ratings are the "truth" (you can have the revenue). I think one would have to be brain dead not to find Purdue's defensive tenacity against Florida or Memphis' athletic D to be the most fun to watch so far in the March Madness. One just had to flip over to any Pro Basketball game to see the contrast...a bunch of guys standing around when on D.

Mixed/Masters Easterns Registration is now live

2007-03-19T10:52:00.001-04:00

Mixed/Masters Easterns registration is now live. The web page is here. 32 Mixed Teams. 6 Masters Teams. We run the MA and NE High School Championships on Sunday, plus we are introducing a Dames Div on Sat.

Great event. Great fields....lots of fun.

Habits

2007-03-19T08:32:00.000-04:00

I have been working with my girls on breaking some "bad" habits. I have been thinking about habitual behavior in somewhat of a negative context lately. Like habits are always bad. This, of course, is not the case, so this post will discuss, in a general way, both good and bad habitual behavior.

The definition of habit by answers.com is useful for this post:

1a: A recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition.
1b: An established disposition of the mind or character.
2: Customary manner or practice: a person of ascetic habits.

I guess the the parts that interest me (and bother me much of the time) are "unconcious" and "customary". To say that actions done without thinking and based on social norms and customs does sum up habits pretty well. With my girls, we discuss actions on the field in terms of general principles more than hard and fast rules. In general, I want my girls thinking in the present moment about the current circumstances and making quick decisions. At the UCPC, Goldberg talked about remaining in the present brain, that is to say, not living in the past (I can't believe I missed that freethrow) or in the future (when I hit this home run, it will be so great). He has also discussed in his books about being in the zone. While sometimes this can be characterized as "unconscious", I think his description of being solely concerned with the present is more apt. I do think this distinction is important when it comes to habits. Habit free behavior, within the parameters defined by Goldberg, seems to be clear thinking and decision making in the present moment. Habits, however, seem to be decisions based on custom and unconscious patterns and are, therefore, erroe-prone. So, I think the focus is not on whether "unconscious" behavior is bad as much as habitual decisions can result in a disconnect from the present scenario.

We are working to break the following habits:

-At some point, before I became Wellesley's coach, the way that the team would respond to zone D was by calling "recognize!"....as in recognize that it is zone. For some reason, this has always bothered me. We are now working on saying "Zone" when it is zone. Just say what it is. We are actually not concerned with what type of zone it is, although we will follow up "Zone" with "1-3-3" or otherwise, if needed. While this is simply a way to deal with a habitual type of nomenclature, the simple call of "zone" is also an additional way of breaking habit. To a large extent, person defense affords the offense, especially downfield, the opportunity to define the spaces in which it will work. Obviously, zone D is just the opposite in the sense that the defense is defining the spaces on the field. These past two sentences are meant to be simplistic and not account for poaching or mini-clams, etc. So, for us, the call of "zone" is not meant to trigger "Oh, I am a wing....I need to run over to my spot" as much as say "look for the spaces in which I can be effective".

-"Trap for 1". This is somewhat like an urban legend. Who is responsible for creating the idea that a trap is somehow wonderfully effective? Meaning more than forcing back into the field. As a cutter on a team with good throwers, a trap was a wonderful opportunity for me to create a difficult decisions on the part of my defender.....however, if we were being forced back into the stack...the options are somewhat more limited. This is not to say that we don't trap...or won't trap for 1...there just has to be reason for it.

-"What do you want to do? I don't know, let's just force forehand". If there isn't a bigger abdication of the opportunity to have something a bit under one's control, I don't know what it is. Again, we will force forehand...all the time....there just has to be a reason why we are doing it.

-"Everytime I cut and don't get open...I resign myself to just getting back into the stack". First, I think most good cutters know if they are going to get open before they cut. Second, any good offense will go to option B if the primary option doesn't work. Idris wrote about good cutters making a good secondary cut after getting shut down. I think this is a great idea. Maybe you will get the disc in another way, and, at a minimum, you are not saying to your defender "I clear to the stack...EVERY TIME".

These are just some examples (for both our team and many others) of habitual on-field behavior. I got to thinking about players' pre-game rituals. There are legendary examples of basically OCD pre-game behaviors. I developed a nice one myself. Is ritual different from habit? I am not really sure. I do think that a pre-game ritual can be a positive source of predictability and preparation for a player. I think that one could argue that listening to one's body, in the present, is needed and that this could, or perhaps, should, depending upon the circumstance, lead to modifications in the routine. I think a player should also be able to react to circumctances beyond one's control that might interrupt their comfortable pattern.

So, in summary, I think habits are something that we need to step back and examine. Why do we make the decisions, especially on-field, that we do? Are we focused on the ever-changing scenarios that are unfolding before us, or are we falling back on patterns of behavior that, while comforting, are perhaps determental to both the team and to our individual performance? I have a friend, who was a very accomplished Ultimate player, who used to say, "The hardest thing for people to change is this (he would be pointing at his head)." I think, at a minimum, that a modicum of awareness of our habits can go a long way toward changing these behaviors.

Tommy Proulx/ Spring Tournaments

2007-03-12T09:14:00.000-04:00

This past fall, the Boston area Ultimate community experienced a big change when Regionals was run at Devens without the presence of the, up to then, ubiquitous Tommy Proulx. Since 1998, Tommy had been at the center of the relationship between BUDA and Devens, and he developed a template for the way tournaments should be run at that venue. Teams playing in a Proulx run tournament knew that they would experience a quality event with lined fields, games that ran on time, etc. He also went the extra mile and concerned himself with details that most people wouldn't even notice. Last summer at the Boston Invite, in what would be one of his last tournaments, he brought TV's and a satellite dish so that Clapham could watch the World Cup Qtrs during their bye. While this kind of work made Tommy visible, it is just the beginning of the kind of dedication and commitment that Tommy showed to our sport over the years.

Tommy's big coming out party was the 2001 UPA College Nationals in Boston. Tommy's ideas have a lasting influence. The model of holding the finals in a local stadium (separate from the pool play venue) was Tommy's idea and has become a necessary component of a venue's bid for that event. Tommy always was an idea person, though. When he presented me the concept of a "Mixed Easterns" tournament to be held on the traditional Boston Invite weekend (BUDA had secured a permit for an extra weekend in the summer due to the positive relationship between Tommy and Devens), I was deeply concerned about not only the viability of Mixed Easterns but also how players would respond to the Boston Invite date being changed. As usual, both events have become more robust since the change.

Tommy has been remarkably dedicated to Youth Ultimate over the years. He coached the Andover team. He organized the NE YCC teams. He organized BUDA's High School League, and was TD for last summer's Youth World tournament.

Tommy also served as a UPA Board member for a number of years. He was treasurer for the organization and helped push through big youth and league initiatives. Tommy's work as a league organizer has served as a model for other organizations and he was a presenter for the UPA League Conferences.

He continued to play through the years, even though he was hampered by an ACL tear a few years ago. So, this past spring, Tommy began to make plans from stepping down from the sport, which he did this past fall. Clearly, this was the right thing to do, as the commitment to his growing family was becoming more important and the demands the sport was placing on him were too great. Frankly, I was a bit surprised by the extent to which he went "cold turkey", but I guess I can only look to my retirement to see how a clean break can be the best way to approach such a change.

It is difficult to understand and recognize the contributions of someone like Tommy Proulx. Clearly, all the attention goes to the rock stars on the field, which is to be expected and, to a certain extent, their success would occur regardless of whether the fields were lined. However, Tommy's contribution was much greater than just a TD. His promotion of the sport from Youth players on up laid a positive foundation for the sport to develop faster and in a much more public way.

So, how do we recover from the loss of Tommy's leadership and contribution? Well, while there are big shoes to fill in some areas, a template was laid for how to run a quality event at Devens and Club Regionals this past fall was run without a hitch. Just as any other year, earnest planning for events such as Mixed/Masters Easterns(June 2-3) and the Boston Invite(June 23-24) is in the works and information about bids will be released shortly.

With energy and commitment, the shoes of someone like Tommy can be filled. The legacy of great organizers is, many times, good ideas and a structure in which people can be replaced when it is time for them to move on. It is easy to sit on the couch and bitch about "What I think should be done....." It is quite another thing to take the personal and financial risk to actually put ideas into action. The Tommy's of the world give us clear examples of what can be accomplished. While their actions are many times behind the scenes, we need to recognize folks like Tommy for giving us specific examples of how we can grow and improve the sport.

College Coaching Mandate?

2007-03-05T08:58:00.000-05:00

When I first started coaching at Wellesley, I felt a bit of pressure to make sure I taught the "basics". Even now, as I coach all year long, I do think that our focus on fundamentals in the fall is positive and necessary. Obviously, if Wellesley was a program with a consistent B team year to year, we could probably jump the A team right into the finer nuances come Sept, but even so, to what extent, in these nascent years of both our sport and, specifically, coaching our sport, are we mandated to teach the fundamentals and offer a broad perspective on our strategic principles?

I have written about "systems" in this blog before, specifically, when discussing my conversations with Gwen in the summer of 05 at NUTC. I said it then, but her words keep ringing in my ears, "We (Stanford) look for the athletes for the A team. We have confidence in the system and we plug players in". I am consistently fascinated by Syracuse basketball and their adherence to zone D. If you go to Syracuse, you are going to play in Jim Boeheim's zone. It is common to hear comments like "Player X decided to attend School Y because he felt comfortable in the "West Coast Offense" or "Option Offense", etc. Pitino makes a living with the full court press...etc...etc. Once a system of success is discovered, coaches attach themselves like tattoos.

So, as Ultimate coaches, are we mandated to teach everything from the stack, dump and swing, hammers, ho stack, to cup zone, 1-3-3, etc, etc? My general sense, now, is "No". I feel much more confident in working toward our team goals (which very well might include many of the aforementioned "basics") as opposed to focusing on "completing the text book". Not only is there plenty of precedent in other sports (Syracuse is just one example) for adherence to a specific system (which is what makes college sports and the natural ebb and flow of their programs, due to, in a small way, the suitability of the current talent for the system, so interesting), but I think it is generally acknowledged that the principles behind the first cut out of a stack are pretty much identical to cutting out of a horizontal set.

The realization that we don't need to teach everything or must work on generally agreed upon specifics can add focus to the program. There were times during my first year at Wellesley when I felt a bit of the "blank canvas" scenario. I think there are many times when a limited palate results in the most productive work. So while this post eschews a mandate, it also suggests definition and intent when it comes to developing systems that will be taught. Players, as they move on from college into club, will adapt and, if they have an awareness of other systems and philosophies, they will learn new ways of approaching the sport. Perhaps our mandate as coaches is actually to nurture such awareness. To make our players realize that they work within a single subset of the available possible options. After all, Carmelo Anthony is doing fine in the Pros...and he played only zone in college.

2007 UPA Series Guidelines: Important Changes

2007-02-26T11:11:00.000-05:00

Every year, your UPA Competition Committee convenes in January on the
weekend of the UPA Board Meeting. This committee consists of Will
Deaver(UPA Champ Series Director), Matthew Bourland(Champ Series
Manage), and the five National Directors- DeAnna Ball(Women's), Adam Goff(Open), Jeff Kula (College), Dave Raflo(Masters), and Yours Truly(Mixed).

One of our primary goals every year is to review and update the Series
Guidelines. The Series Guidelines is an important document that
all players should be familiar with as it defines the Administrative
and Competition Rules for the upcoming UPA Fall Series. Most
questions (from seeding to wildcards to contact information to bids to
Regionals) about the way the UPA Championship Series works can be
answered by reading this document.

This post will quickly discuss two changes for 2007:

1) Uniform requirements now include numbers on shorts. Not much to say here. Pretty straight forward.
The Competition Committee has been steadily tightening up the Uniform
Requirements for the last 4-5 years. The addition of numbers on
shorts will lead to more cohesive and professional uniforms.

2) One deadline for roster submission. This is a pretty big change,
but one, again, that the Competition has been moving toward over the
last several years.

In previous years, there have been two deadlines: A) an "early"
deadline, and B) a "late" deadline. There were additional rules with
these deadlines: on-line registration only, a "valid" roster contains
a minimum of (7) players, teams could only add (2) players to their
rosters after the "early" deadline, and team that add more than (2)
players after the "early" deadline had to pay a $50 late fee.

For 07, you can basically throw away the above paragraph. Teams that
wish to compete in the 2007 UPA Club Championships will need to submit
their roster via the on-line rostering system by one Team Registration
Deadline. This deadline is two weeks before the first Sectional
weekend(2 weeks before Regionals for Masters). A valid roster must
have a minimum of (7) players(a minimum of 3 of each gender for Mixed)
at the time of the Registration Deadline. Teams can add up to 7
players between the Registration Deadline and the Tues before their
Sectional Tournament(Roster Deadline). Teams that submit a valid roster by the
Registration Deadline will count toward their section's bids to
regionals as well as Nationals size and growth wildcards.

Just to reiterate the key points:

1) Team must turn in a valid roster (a minimum of seven players) by
the Team Registration Deadline.
2) Teams can add up to seven players to their roster after the Team
Registration Deadline. The seven adds must be complete by the Roster Deadline (Tues
before their Sectional).

The Series Guidelines were published Friday, Feb 16. I think it behooves all players to check them out.

Ulitmate Season...rant.....comments

2007-02-12T08:45:00.000-05:00

I will be traveling with my family next week, so I will not be posting. Expect some info about UPA Series stuff come March 1.

Also, Mark M's rules blog has moved and become the UPA Rules Blog. I highly suggest that folks check it out. Reading the 11th is required for my Wellesley girls. We did a lot of work last week on ground checking the disc while putting a live disc into play.

Onto the topic of the week:

There was a call by Neva on RSD that results need to be posted on the SRT in order for ranking systems to work. Hear..hear! We seem to treat our tournaments as if they are in a vacuum. That they don't intersect with the concerns of others. That the data produced couldn't be of use somewhere down the line. While there seems to be a collective sense that a formal Ultimate season would be positive and exciting for the sport, we seem content in passively bleating about what we would like to happen and determined to resist the most primitive baby steps that could start us in this direction.

In my more extreme moments, I just find the fact that two of the lead posts on RSD this morning are players pleading for the most basic information about President's Day and Mardi Gras galling. This type of lack of information plus the derth of info from College Vegas is, to me, unacceptable. If we view things from this context, even asking why Ultimate is a not a big time sport is a joke.

If we want to take advantage of the small opportunities that are available to us in kick starting the development of a season for Ultimate, we need to be much more clear about what we expect from our tournaments as players, spectators, coordinators, and remote viewers. The concern of this post is not "which tournaments should be considered the "regular season" as that, in my opinion, puts the cart before the horse. Our "regular season"(events prior to the UPA Series) now is a mish-mash of "fun" tournaments, "serious" tournaments, lack of data, rumor on RSD, lack of communication, little documentation, and no standards in terms of formatting or accountability. The result is a "product" that has, in general, no continuity, few stories that draw us in, and little reliable data. Despite our best efforts to handicap ourselves, great rivalries and stories do manage to crawl out of the muck and, like some oasis in the desert, provide compelling drama and excitement.

Here is a summary of some things I would love to see.

For tournaments that want to be part of the Ultimate season:

1) The results and final standings should be clearly posted on the SRT within a day of the completion of the tournament.
2) The seedings and format should be locked down and published on the SRT by the Tues before the tournament.
3) Tournaments should have a bid/registration system with clear deadlines and defined policies toward teams dropping out. These policies should encourage teams to feel that they are making a serious commitment to attend when they submit their registration fee.
4) The format should be close to the standards defined by the UPA Formats Manual. If we are going to use the results of tournaments for such things as seeding, then the results need to be determined fairly. The format shouldn't change during the weekend.
5) Seeding should be done, as best as possible, in an order of relative strength. Pools shouldn't be built based upon "playing new teams", for example.
6) Teams need to understand that results will be used as data. No complaining after the fact that "we were at half strength"...or hungover...or whatever.
7) Results, if at all possible, should be updated on the SRT during the tournament.
8) The TD should be prepared with a variety of formats (very easy to do on the SRT) in the event that teams drop. The TD should publish the intended format ASAP, but also indicate that the format is not confirmed if they have teams that might drop. In this case, the TD should pro-actively communicate, on the SRT, how teams might be affected if the format were to change.

For tournaments that are not concerned with being part of the Ultimate season:

Ignore the above. Run whatever BS format you want...oops, I meant BCS format. Just keep it off the SRT. Leave your teams in the dark about seeding and the format. Or better yet...just make it up as you go along and seed things to favor your own team. We need to remember that teams are just there for the party.

Then we can let the market decide. Teams that want to be treated respectfully at an event with a modicum of "professional" standards will know where to go. They will know that their results will be derived fairly and that they will become part of a story larger than themselves...the Ultimate season. Perhaps we might even to get to the point where basic communication is an expected part of what teams are paying for.

This will also hold tournament TD's accountable to certain standards as well, and, possibly, mitigate the possibility of TD's influencing such things as Sectional and Regional seeding by creating seedings and formats at their own tournaments that are unfair and biased.

There will be many factors that will come together one day to give us an Ultimate season. Luckily, we have some things we can influence and control today that can start us in that direction. This post does not claim to offer an opinion or an outline of what an Ultimate season would look like. I just think there are some small things we can do today to raise the bar a bit higher.

Start of the Season

2007-02-05T08:38:00.000-05:00

I find the start of the spring season to be an exciting time. The Whiptails started up again this past Tuesday, and spring practices always begin with a higher sense of purpose. If we have done our jobs, the focused work on fundamentals from the fall has laid a proper foundation for the spring's focus on refinement and a shift toward placing players in the best position to be successful.

There is a major difference to the start of this season, though, and that is the imminent split of our squad into two teams. This is the only the second time Wellesley will have fielded two squads for the spring season (the other being my first year of coaching, the spring of 2003). We have been blessed with a dedicated group of 33-37 players all year, so this is an obviously an necessary and obvious move, but still difficult nonetheless. Our culture is not one of split squads. It is one where we all work together as a unit. This has caused some consternation on the teams, but I think my captains, Emily and Langdon, have handled the situation expertly. They seem very sensitive and have done a good job balancing the desires of our players as individuals with the demands of the "good of the team".

Our practices from this last week were done with the full thirty five of us all together. After active warm-ups (no more static stretching!!...Bryan Doo got his message through), we split in half. Half of us do track workouts and the other half works on skills in the basketball gym. This seems to be a good way to both manage our numbers and achieve our goal of working on conditioning during the winter.

The team really...really wants learn, and my girls are impossibly polite. I can go on about how something we are doing as a team is "unacceptable", then go over and talk to someone individually and the response is almost always "Thank You". One of my Senior players has made some kind of personal leap and is approaching things by checking off and making very calm decisions with the disc. I have been vocal about how this is very positive and she came up and thanked me on Thursday. While I am pretty sure I am not a hard-ass, I sometimes wonder if I am complementary enough.

We actually get a lot done in our small basketball court, and we have defined things enough such that I can say "Dump Swing" or "Never Ending Game" and we can pretty much jump right into it.

As I mentioned last fall, I am very lucky to have Pete Zuraw(a Wellesley employee) helping me out at most practices. Like many things these days, it seems that if I open things up to additional input that our natural strengths come out. Pete, for example, is tremendously patient and skilled at taking players and working with them on improving their throwing. Not only does this very clearly expand our one-on-one time, but it allows Pete and me to focus on what we are good at. I think the four of us (me, Emily, Langdon, and Pete) have a natural division of labor that is comfortable. For instance, Emily and Langdon have been working the team out on the track this year. In the past, I have had to push the team and actually run the track sessions. Not that I mind doing the track work (Emily threatens the team that I will come down and run the sessions if they don't work hard enough), I just think we benefit overall from me having the time to work on team disc concepts.

We will be defining our Process and Outcome Goals in the next few practices. That should enhance our focus and what we are trying to do at practice.

UCPC Content available for download

2007-01-29T16:39:00.000-05:00

I meant to include this in my UCPC Recap post and Shiv's comment reminded me that I need to say that I will be uploading content (handouts, powerpoint, and audio) to the UCPC website all week.

Go here to download.

UCPC Recap

2007-01-29T11:25:00.000-05:00

Whew. What a week. One of the busiest 4 weeks of my life is capped by a day long conference 2 years in the planning. The cherry on top is that I had to pack up the gear from the conference and then race over to Arlington to play with my band. I felt like I had fallen over a cliff this morning. I don't "do" busy very well, so I'm looking forward to getting back to my normal pace.

Jim posted about his experience at the UCPC. I think the event went over very well. It was pretty amazing to see high school kids from Minnesota and Pennsylvania, coaches from Texas, Ohio, Montreal, and Presenters from Massachusetts, Seattle, Oregon, and North Carolina, etc walk in the door at Newton South High School

I can't thank BUDA enough for their support in making the conference happen. Tiina and I are also indebted to the Presenters and Volunteers who gave of their time. Many folks, including Shiellah Quintos, Josh Mullen, Emily Baecher, and Andrew Hollingworth (just a few names among many) took the initiative to solve problems and make the conference a better event. I would also like to thank Kyle Weisbrod for coming in from Atlanta and running the panel discussion as a data gathering event for the UPA's Strategic Planning Initiative.

I actually had a pretty calm day on Friday. I realized that the conference was a train with wheels in motion. What was done was done. Even still...I really didn't sleep on Friday night as there were many details that needed to be resolved. Small things like Wiggins getting rerouted and not arriving until 10am, which meant that Gwen and Miranda needed to know, at 1am, if they were going to rent their own car or not(they ended up getting the hotel, after driving around on Boston streets on the coldest day in two years, at 2:30am). The good thing is...no one freaked.

The event began with a keynote speech by Dr. Alan Goldberg (www.competitivedge.com). Really great stuff. Lots of talk about acting without thinking and being in the moment. At one point, he brought uncontrollables and my Wellesley girls (all working hard as volunteers) started laughing at me because they had just realized the limits to my original thoughts. Dr. Goldberg's presence really added to the legitimacy of the event and I am grateful that he could spend time with us.

I spent a bunch of time wandering around checking out the presentations. I thought they were excellent. Ben Wiggins' marking discussion revealed a depth of analysis and focus that was remarkable. Made me realize that I don't spend enough time on marking with my girls.

I spent a large portion of time in the auditorium as I was making sure all the av stuff was going smoothly (I work as an audio technician for corporate meetings, so we were able to get dvd's going and provide a feed for Jeff Irvine/Ultivillage. Hopefully, we will be able to get some of the conference footage up. After Wiggins, Dan Cogan-Drew and Bryan Doo discussed Fitness for Ultimate. Again, eye-opening. I hired Bryan as my trainer a few years back, but I hadn't really touched base with him in a while. His basic focus was hamstrings and core. He really does not think static stretching is good at all. One of the things he discussed was the difference between warm-ups at the start of the day vs between games. He mentioned that Ultimate was very difficult to train and prepare for as the demands of the tournament format are pretty unique. In that context, I felt that their presentation was a small opening into the future. There will come a time when there will be a base of knowledge, developed by professionals like Bryan, that will help us to prepare ina serious manner for the rigors of our sport.

I walked by Tiina's presentation. It was packed. Goldberg, Parinella, Ted Munter, and Tully were all in there. Then I wandered over to Bryan Dobyns' session. I got a chance to introduce myself to Chris Phillips and we reminisced about the 1982 UMASS vs Hostages game to go that we had both participated in.

After the second round of presentations, everyone gathered, had lunch, and wandered around the Ultimate Expo. I think the middle school and high school kids loved wandering around and getting all the free stuff from the colleges (Miranda mentioned to me that if Ultimate was an NCAA sport that we would have all been fined for recruiting violations). My wife and daughter volunteered for the whole day, so they ran the ARHS/NUTC/UCPC/Dan Cogan-Drew video/Alan Goldberg cd/book table with Dory Ziperstein and Emily Baecher. This does not come without perks as my wife got to chat up Goldberg for an hour about the specifics of mental toughness and swimming. I thought the Ultimate Expo went well. I would have loved to see more vendors and club teams participate. Lincoln-Sudbury High School Ultimate parents did all the catering as a fundraiser for their Ultimate team. I thought they did a great job and they worked very hard.

After lunch, I got Cogan and Doo going and then I wandered over to see Wicks present on coaching college Ultimate after stopping in to see Miranda and Wiggins talk about MOHO. I think the "5 Rules of MOHO" are good rules to remember...at any level. Wicks had written me a couple of times expressing a bit of concern about whether folks would be interested in 45 minutes of what he had to say. I decided to go see how it was. I will just say that there are 2-3 ideas that he presented that I am absolutely going to blatantly steal. I thought his presentation (organized based on the calendar year) was informative and focused. Most of the presenters, including Nathan, encouraged questions as they were talking. Not only did this promote interactivity, but I thought it helped to diffuse any formal pretensions (compared to the meetings and conferences I work at regularly, this was quite refreshing).

Kitt Hodsden flew in from the Bay Area to discuss "Ultimate for the Non-Gifted Athlete". As we didn't require pre-registration for the presentations, I was interested as to what her draw would be as she was up against some big names (Parinella, Dobyns, Wiggins). In the end, she had very solid attendance at both her presentations. I think this speaks to the fact that the attendees were very interested in content...especially that which pertained directly to them. We tried to encourage attendees that were there with several teammates to spread out...don't go see a single presentation all together. I think, overall, that most groups followed this advice.

Gwen Ambler chose to speak on fundraising for Ultimate, and her examples of what she did at Stanford are remarkable and inventive. Just another example of why that program is on a different planet. I got a few moments to touch base with Gwen during the conference. The first time, really, since NUTC 05. Gwen, even in the face of her tremendous success as a player and coach, is always interested in what others have to say and I always benefit from her insight.

I had an hour to set up the panel discussion in the auditorium, so I did not see any of the 4th round of presentations. Folks started to filter in at around 5pm, and we premiered the NUTC promo video as they came in.

Kyle served as moderator for the panel. Our panelists were Emily Baecher, Miranda Roth, and Steve Mooney. We asked Jeff Graham as well, but he had to leave the conference early at the last minute. Kyle opened the discussion with a brief description of the UPA's initiatives and how this event would fit into the overall scheme of the Strategic Planning Initiative. The format was basically focused on two questions/issues (paraphrased): 1) Should we grow Ultimate via grass roots or high profile events, and 2) Discussing the tension between SOTG and highly competitive play. Kyle did a great job keeping things moving. The response to 1) was overwhelmingly in favor of grass roots growth, both by the panel and the audience. I do think the different view points of the panel were constructive. Mooney as elder statesman seemed to reveal that while he has as great a historical perspective as anyone out there, he was not as concerned with in vogue issues of the day. Miranda, of course, offered the perspective of a coach/player at the top of the game, and Emily offered the perspective of a growing player with a solid foundation in Youth Ultimate. Mooney refereed to a conversation that he had with Bill Rodriguez about what Ultimate would look like in 100 years. From that perspective, Mooney felt like we were "fine" and he did advocate for the importance of protecting and nurturing our culture.

Question 2 was a bit more polarized, which is to be expected. Some folks felt that refs are necessary at the highest levels. Others were adamant that refs are a bad idea. Miranda brought up what I think is the important distinction between SOTG and refs (I brought this up in my "self-officiating" post. It was during this discussion that Steve interjected a very interesting comment. He basically said that in the context of SOTG, our culture, and promoting the sport, that the Mixed Div could offer the best opportunity for marketing ourselves as the sport of the future (paraphrased). I swear to you that I did not pay him to say this. I actually had a conversation with Steve about this at the inaugural Mixed/Masters Easterns in 2003. I was playing with Steve, Jim, Al, Cork, etc on Big Ego Ultimate. The masters div was about 6 teams. We were on the line, and Steve looked at the other 35 Mixed Div teams playing and said to me, "That's the division to be playing in". In any case, it was quite a comment.

Kyle finished the discussion by having all the attendees place stick-on dots on big sheets of paper so that we could "vote" for our preferred direction that the UPA should take in terms of the the 2 questions. This data will be gathered and combined with the data gathered at other SPI events. The result will hopefully be a picture of what Ultimate players want. Again, I am glad that the UCPC could function in the context of larger purposes.

With that...the conference came to a close...9 hours of talking about Ultimate....how bad can that be?

This morning, Kitt, Gwen, and Miranda came over for brunch. It was a rare opportunity to talk with other College Women coaches. Very fun as we exchanged funny stories about coaching, teaching, and trying to make our programs as good as they can be. Gwen and Miranda left for the airport, and Kitt is staying over until Tues as this her first time in Boston.

---all I can say is thanks.

I or D Part 5- Gender Equity

2007-01-23T11:28:00.000-05:00

This will be the last post in the series. I am sure that many folks will be glad to see me get off my high horse. This post will address what is to me a critical area in which our sport has an opportunity to set itself apart from most other sports (and virtually all field sports). By putting men's and women's divs side by side at its showcase events, the sport has not only differentiated itself, it has indicated its priorities and values.

Now, there are no rose colored glasses here. While we have been successful, in a general sense, of physically putting men and women equally on a tournament pitch, there is, in terms of "backroom" sentiment, clear disrespect toward the women's division. One needs only look as far as The Count's post on Day 4 of Nats to get a pretty clear view of this sentiment. Other spectacles such as the Sockeye heckling debacle two years ago further this point. Finally, one needs only to talk to the women involved in the formation of the division in the early 80's to get the sense that the creation of a women's division was met with great reluctance back in the day. Luckily for us, good sense prevailed. This is not to say that we should all enjoy watching women's Ultimate, or that we shouldn't be critical of its quality of play. The point is: a policy of gender equality is good for the sport because, due to differentiation, it places us in line with some of the small social steps we have made in the last 30 or so years and, unlike most other sports, gives us an advantage as both genders have access to participation under one umbrella.

Ultimate might be perfectly aligned to be the field sport of the post Title 9 era. There are examples like the WNBA in which the "men's" division has promoted its development , but, for most field sports, if they even acknowledge the "better half", it comes in the form of griping about losing its funding due to Title 9. Of course, there is usual line of rationalization about why it 'ok" to ignore women athletes based on "objective" data (men can run faster and are stronger), but then we have the NFL rolling out with great pride the fact that women make up 43% of its fan base (up from 35% a few years ago). While the NFL is basically Neandrathal in terms of promoting any kind female involvement in the sport (other than eye candy), they have all of sudden seemed to wake up to the fact that they have, until recently, basically ignored 50% of their fan base (read: potential income). With this kind of example, why make things hard for ourselves?

Ultimate is obviously behind most other sports. Most of the other field sports have roughly 80 more years of organzational experience than we do. Very few, however, have a structure in which women and men are treated equally. This is a clear opportunity to not only offer assets like positive role models to both genders, but we have a relatively equal playing field of experience to draw upon, in terms of leveraging this as an asset.

I think it could be argued that gender equality could be THE most important thing that our sport has to offer. More than the flight of the disc, "purity" of the sport, SOTG, etc, etc. As we move into the future, we will probably need to clearly state our values and priorities. I think there are not a small number of us that feel that a policy of gender equality could, in the future (if not already), come at the expense of our ability to promote ourselves. Hopefully, a clear statement of values will help us negotiate potential difficult decisions.

I do think it is important that we view the divisions with a clear and informed mind. I personally found this year's Riot v Fury final the most compelling of the final games. Why? The story was interesting. It is naive to assume that faster and stronger athlets are ALWAYS more interesting. From a broad point of view(meaning over the last 2-3 years), the Fury win has to be considered an "upset". It is been stated several times in the Ultimate blog world that a good story like an "upset" makes sports exciting. As such, I found it very interesting to see Fury systematically take Riot apart...great stuff. Kicked the men's ass.....in my opinion.....

So, to review, the context for this series of posts was to churn the waters for the panel discussion on "The Future of Ultimate" at the upcoming Ultimate Coaches and Players Conference. It now looks like the UPA is going to participating in this panel discussion as they are, obviously, working on a Strategic Planning initiative. It is my hope that subjects like media, technology, self-officiating, and gender equity can be part of the discussion as I think they will be important parts of our next steps into the future.

I or D Part 4-Self-Officiating

2007-01-17T11:07:00.000-05:00

Wow. Very busy time right now. I was in Boulder for the past weekend for the Board meeting, planning for the UCPC is really ramping up, plus there is that thing called life that has its normal demands....ok.....moving on.

Kevin and Glenn had comments about self-officiating in my "Game Pace" post that lead me neatly back to the Imitate or Differentiate thread. Clearly, this is a controversial subject and this post is not meant to evaluate self-officiating or to wade in on the "ref" debate. It will simply discuss that, for good or for bad, self-officiating is probably the clearest and most obvious example of an opportunity to differentiate ourselves.

I will first start off by saying that this post makes the distinction between SOTG and self-officiating. In the broad scope of things, SOTG is essentially good sportsmanship, which can be found, to a greater or lesser degree, in the basic teachings of most sports. While SOTG makes the assumption that knowingly breaking the rules is in violation of SOTG, I don't think that SOTG mandates that Ultimate can ONLY be self-officiated....we wouldn't be able to have observers if this were the case.

As I said above, self-officiating is perhaps the most obvious means by which Ultimate can set itself apart from other sports. Maybe it is naive, but I think self-officiating can be looked upon as "social experiment". A project in which assumptions about the way we behave in competition are challenged. Maybe it is laughably optimistic, but maybe the way folks treat each other in the context of "positive" self-officiating could be a major component of what the sport has to offer. Maybe Ultimate without some self-officiating component is not Ultimate anymore.

Clearly, there are some challenges. Other sports, in a pick-up context, practice self-officiating. There is an image problem if the one of the things that differentiates us is generally known as a "school yard" means of arbitration. It doesn't take a lot of insight to see how people outside of the sport can't take it seriously.

A big question I have is can self-officiating be viable if money is involved? If not, does self-officiating therefore limit our potential?

I think a helpful perspective comes down to an answer that is familiar: Let's concern ourselves more with making the game great to play...and less with "external" standards of success.

Ranking the "game pace" of Ultimate

2007-01-02T08:55:00.000-05:00

Lots of talk about the "pace" of Ultimate these days. There have been plenty of complaints over the years about too many arguments, slow resolutions to foul calls, too much time between points, etc. In general, there seems to be a sense, as Kevin mentions in my "11th Edition" post, that players would like to see Ultimate become more "fan friendly". There are also many discussions in places like RSD about getting Ultimate on TV and what it will take to accomplish that. I had some questions about not only "game pace" but also its relationship to TV, so I spent some of the past week doing "research". I timed football, hockey, basketball, soccer, and Ultimate games and developed a ranking based on the data. This post discusses those findings.

I think I need to start by saying that my sample size would not pass muster at even the most basic academic level, but I do think the numbers give a rough sense, enough to have a discussion, of what is going on in major TV sports. Here is what I sampled:

Soccer- 1st half of Chelsea vs Wigan from early Dec
Hockey- First period of the Bruins-Columbus game from Dec 26
Basketball-2nd, 3rd, and 4th qtrs from the Heat-Lakers game on Christmas Day
Football- 1st half of Eagles vs Cowboys on Christmas Day
Ultimate-2003 UPA Club Championship Open Final-FG vs Condors

Here is how I devised the ranking number:

What I was interested in was the time the ball (or puck or disc) was "in play". I measured the time the object was in play and then I divided that by the total time for the period. Hockey and basketball were easy as the clock runs when the object is in play, but for the other three, I had to get the data with a stopwatch. The result of dividing "in play" by "total time" results in a percentage. I then ranked the teams by this number. I also made some general (not comprehensive) notes about longest times that that the object was in play, etc.

BASKETBALL:
Heat vs Lakers, Christmas Day

Each qtr is 12 minutes. I did time starts and stops in the action, but the main measurement was the start and finish time for each qtr.

2nd qtr- Began at 3:06pm, lasted 36 minutes
3rd qtr- Began at 4:01pm, lasted 28 minutes
4th qtr- Began at 4:33pm, lasted 31 minutes

Total "in play" time= 36 minutes
Total time for period= 95 minutes

Game Pace Ranking = 0.38

Notes: The average duration of time in which the ball was in play was roughly 25-30 secs, although there were a few periods of much longer sustained action, including a wild 2:44 span in the 3rd qtr in which there were no stoppages of play.

FOOTBALL:
Eagles vs Cowboys, Christmas Day

1st Qtr- Began at 5:08pm, ended 28 minutes later at 5:36pm(the announcers remarked that this qtr moved very quickly)

Total "in play" time= 2:37

2nd Qtr- Began at 5:38, ended 43 minutes later at 6:21pm

Total "in play" time= 3:05

Total "in play" time= 5.7 minutes
Total time for period= 71 minutes

Game Pace Ranking = 0.08

Note: Longest sustained period of action was an 11 second kick-off and return

HOCKEY:
Boston Bruins vs Columbus Blue Jackets. Dec 26th.

Note: I don't have cable so I had to resort to the web stream of the radio broadcast. As such, I was not able to get to the level of detail of the other sports.

1st period- Began at 1:54pm, ended 32 minutes later at 2:26pm

Total "in play" time= 20 minutes
Total time for period= 32 minutes

Game Pace Ranking = 0.62

Note: Hockey had long periods of sustained action and, in general, just seemed to to flow along with very few stoppages.

SOCCER:
Thanks to Marshall Goff as he had Tivo'd an English Premiership game. I appreciate his help.

1st half of Chelsea vs Wigan- Early Dec.

Total "in play" time= 30:47
Total time for period= 47 minutes

Game Pace Ranking = 0.65

Notes: Average sustained period of play was 32 sec. Longest sustained play was 2:35.

The ranking is as follows:

1) Soccer-0.65
2) Hockey-0.62
3) Basketball-0.38
4) Football-0.08

Observation: I am guessing to certain extent, but I find it interesting that there is an inverse relationship between the "game pace" ranking and the TV market share of the sports.

So, where does Ultimate fit in?

Game: 2003 UPA Club Champs- Furious George vs Condors

1st half= 60 minutes
"In play" time= 27:52

2nd half= 61 minutes
"In Play" time= 19:55

Total "in play" time= 47:47
Total time for period= 121 minutes

Game Pace Ranking = 0.39

Notes: Average sustained duration was roughly 25-30 seconds. Longest sustained duration was 57 seconds. Longest cumulative break was time between points, followed by long slow walks after a turnover, followed by arguments about foul calls.

Game Pace Rankings with Ultimate:

1) Soccer-0.65
2) Hockey-0.62
3) Ultimate-0.39
4) Basketball-0.38
5) Football-0.08

Observations:

1) Based on this data and on my observations in watching all of these sports live in the past two months, I don't think Ultimate is unduly slow or any less "fan friendly" than other sports. I am not saying that it wouldn't benefit from a higher pace, I just don't think we are asking for an unreasonable amount of patience on the part of the spectator.

2) I think this data suggests that Ultimate would translate pretty well, in its current form, to TV. There are ample breaks for commercials and instant replay.

3) Is asking for Ultimate's pace to increase and become more "fan friendly" in the live setting at cross-purposes with the requirements needed to get it on TV?

I spoke a bit with my brother (a college div 1 rowing coach) about this post, and he felt that Ultimate shouldn't worry about TV. He thought that the focus should be on making it fun to play and then go from there. His suggestions for Ultimate: professional uniforms and very well run events.

Hopefully, the data (however small the sample) in this post speaks to the fact that sports viewed live or experienced on TV place very different and sometimes conflicting demands on the experience and that we need to be careful about our assumptions when it comes to looking at other sports as possible role models.

11th Edition

2006-12-22T08:10:00.001-05:00

Someone on RSD requested that the blog folks express their opinion about the UPA's proposed 11th edition, so I will jump in. First, however, I wish everyone a happy holiday season. I will take next week off from posting, but I will resume posting on Jan 2, 2007.

I can sum up my thoughts about the 11th very quickly: I think you should vote to approve it. This is not to say that it is perfect or that everyone will like all of it. I really like the cap language, but I am not a huge fan of not having to acknowledge a goal. I think this edition does a pretty good job in further defining marker fouls....which is not an easy task. Overall, I think the 11th is characterized by streamlining and removing redundancies.

I think the biggest reason to approve it, though, is that the process was transparent. The creation of a Google discussion group was a good idea, and the Rules Committee can't be responsible for some folks communicating as if it was RSD. If you wanted to be part of the process, or had questions or concerns, there were clear opportunities to participate and get your say in.

This is a chance to move out of the comfort zone of what we are "used to". The 11th does not solve some of the gnarly rules issues that we have inherited, but it does clear up many inconsistencies and redundancies. Thanks to Peri and the SRC for doing a lot of hard work on our behalf. I think their efforts deserve a vote of approval.

I or D Part 3-Media & Technology

2006-12-18T08:55:00.000-05:00

Before I launch into my usual weekly diatribe, I just want to congratulate Jim for winning Peter McCarthy's Woman of the Year Award on RSD. I am sure he will get teary during the acceptance speech.

A good place to start with imitation or differentiation is, hopefully, Ultimate and media and technology. Technology and the media have, obviously, played a crucial role in the development and popularity of sports. In my previous post, Blaine discussed the importance of the development of Youth Ultimate in terms of growing our sport and tied the increase in popularity of sports like football and basketball to the increase in kids playing those sports. I am not in disagreement that a robust Youth initiative could lead directly to growth in our sport, but I think the exposure that the Big Sports gained via the media could be equally, and perhaps even more, responsible for the surge that has happened over the last 30 years.

It could be argued even further that media has played a defining role in the popularity of sports. I think it is not a coincidence that baseball, which in my opinion translates better to radio than other sports, had its "Golden Era" (say 1925-1956, roughly) during the time of radio's peak (in terms of market share) as a media outlet. The emergence and domination of TV as a media outlet also coincides with football's (and to a lesser degree, basketball's) dominance in the media marketplace. It does seem like a case of one hand feeding the other as well as some synchronicity. In the case of baseball, the pacing and movement limited to the base paths translates very well to the spoken medium and our ability to abstract without visual aid. Football, while somewhat cumbersome in its stop and go nature in the live setting, translates very well to TV as there is plenty of time for instant replay and, of course, commercial interruption. All of the above sentences speak only to how a sport translates to a medium and ignores many other factors, such as great athletes, great stories, and the cycle of increasing money, that have also gone into the growth of our highly saturated sports market in the media.

It seems hard to imagine that Ultimate will benefit, in the near future, from some kind of technology change as significant as the change from the single dimension of radio to the two dimensional world of TV (like football did). The screens might get bigger, crisper, and flatter, and the sound might get louder and more "surroundy", but until someone figures out how to place me in some kind of virtual reality where I experience being in the Sockeye horizontal O ("Poach!") while sitting in my living room, looking at a screen is going to be where it is at for a while. It seems to me that many discussions of Ultimate and the media assume, with perhaps a sense of....resignation(not quite the right word), that content delivered to my TV in the "traditional" manner (meaning network or cable provided predetermined programming) is the ONLY way in which I will be able to experience our sport when watching a screen. However, this ignores obvious technological advancements that, while not being as significant as "virtual reality", could possibly be a springboard to a higher media presence for our sport. The ability to control and distribute content via the web has already drastically altered the media landscape and could leave cable and network providers gasping for air, much like the traditional record companies of today. We would be foolish not to exploit any advantage available to us. I think there seems to be a certain sense of desperation when talking about getting Ultimate on TV, and desperation is a common attitude of those that do not have options. To have options is empowering, and, as such, I think it would be prudent if both paths (web and TV) were explored. Now, my point is not to say that one path (distributed content via the web) is better than the other(getting Ultimate on TV). While it seems, at first glance, that Ultimate on TV is inherently Imitative and web content will be a means to Differentiate Ultimate, I think both tools come into play in both paths.

I am not going to spend that much time on the Ultimate on TV subject. The challenges here are pretty familiar and well known. I will say that Imitation of other sports will be largely present if Ultimate is make it on TV, and we should expect that compromises will be needed. The place where the line is drawn will be different for each of us, but there is clear precedent that compromise is a fact of life when Ultimate takes steps out into the "real world". For example, the decision to not air full games on CSTV could be considered a compromise. I am sure there are many folks who feel that the decision to have Mixed for the World Games is another great compromise. To be clear, I am not being critical of these decisions as I think both ventures are positive for the sport. As I said before, a clear understanding of the cost vs benefit analysis is needed for these decisions. I do think it is possible to consider that differentiating ourselves could be an asset when it comes to selling our product to TV interests. There are certainly plenty of examples of successful programming that was viewed as outside the norm when initially proposed. Here is just a random list of some interesting possible issues/questions:

-Would the Ultimate season need to be altered so that games could be shown during times that don't conflict with other sports?
-What is the best camera angle or method to film our sport?
-There are complaints about the time between pulls in a live game...might not this time be of interest to TV folks in terms of commercial time?
-Folks arguing? People seem to be pretty interested in that on TV these days........
-What about team names? I know the MLU created, shall we say, trite names for its teams. Do we respect the history, stories, and geographical alignment of the UPA club teams....or do we start anew?

The above list is not meant as a demonstration of anxiety or an attempt to set up roadblocks by creating "problems". I just think the issue is highly complex.

I had a conversation about 10 years ago with a musician friend, and I asked his opinion as to when music would be distributed via the internet. We discussed it, but the conversation was never "if", it was "when". We are at a similar place now when it comes to video and there will be an opportunity to control and broadcast content at some point in the near future. Ultivillage and the UPA/CSTV initiative are taking the initial steps down this path and I think this bodes well for us. I think the opportunity to differentiate ourselves and break some new ground, on our own terms, is staring us in the face. Here is what I would like to have:

-Full screen, high quality, streaming video
-Games presented in their entirety
-A library of available games with a reference database

Want to see the semis of Nats from 2005? No problem. NYNY in its heyday? That is there as well. How about when you need to teach the 4-person cup to your team? Simple, just stream the 03 Riot-Fury final. Scout your first round opponent at Nationals? Got it. Want to see the growth of Chase S-B as a player?......type in a query and you can view Chase playing in high school, college, club, and World Games. Etc...Etc.

I would probably stop blogging and spend all day just watching that internet content. Getting me to stop blogging has got to be an incentive for someone............

So, I think it easy to view media exposure as some kind of panacea. Perhaps it will turn out that way...I certainly don't know. The potential paths that the sport will venture down will offer us an opportunity, via Imitation or Differentiation, to examine what makes Ultimate what it is to each of us. I hope that many of us jump into the fray and offer up our opinions.

Whiptails: End of Semester

2006-12-13T08:55:00.000-05:00

We had our last practice of the semester yesterday, and overall I felt like it was a very productive first half of the year. Our captains, Jess and Langdon, did a great job of handling the difficult task of coping with our large numbers this year. In addition, they showed great leadership and focus.

I think our primary goal of focusing on fundamentals was successful overall. It is a challenge to give enough individual attention, and, as such, it was great to have our assistant coach, Pete Zuraw, as he showed a remarkable willingness to spend individual time on the details of the forehand....or backhand...or whatever else was needed. Clearly we would not be as far along if not for his involvement.

There was a ton of improvement on the part of the girls over the course of the semester. Many girls went from no throws at all to a good command of the forehand and backhand. I think a number of the girls really "bought in" to Ultimate as well. Many of them attended practice diligently and showed a desire for working hard.

Of course there is lots of work to do. We are still too easy on ourselves ("I think you were in", "Sorry about that foul"), so we need work on holding each other to high standards. We also still feel like the dump pass is done as an emergency as opposed to trying to gain an advantage. We will continue with trying to keep the disc moving and gaining confidence in our ability to possess the disc.

In general, we get much more done in the fall than we did several years ago. I think our indoor practices are much more effective and this contributes greatly to being better prepared for the spring. Our ability to focus and concentrate over the course of a practice is improving and we will continue to develop this come January.

So, we have a long break until the beginning of February. I think it will be a good time to recharge the batteries.

Imitate or Differentiate Part 2- Goals

2006-12-11T09:48:00.000-05:00

Last week I discussed Imitation or Differentiation as "modeling" tools for framing possible processes for moving our sport forward. I received some interesting comments. Thanks to those that took the time to write in. The comments made me realize that I had put the cart before the horse a bit and while it is good to discuss Differentiation, I needed to think more what purpose Differentiation or Imitation serve. Really, it is simply a goal discussion. So this post will discuss some of the goals brought up in the comments I received. I think I need to be clear that the goals discussed are not comprehensive nor meant to suggest a specific plan or set of priorities.

As these posts come in the context of the UCPC panel discussion, I am sure that it will come across as overly convenient that perhaps the best way to frame a discussion of goals for Ultimate is via the means offered by UCPC's keynote speaker, Dr. Alan Goldberg. I have talked quite a bit in this blog about the difference between outcome and process goals, so I spent some of the past week thinking about goals for Ultimate in terms of Goldberg's definitions.

The real power in defining goals as Outcome or Process is in the fact that these definitions can help to identify the things that are in our control. I think discussions of goals for Ultimate frequently involve external (uncontrollable) means of validation, so identifying goals in this manner is essentially empowering and also helps to identify areas that could benefit from tools such as Differentiation or Imitation.

One of the goals that came up in my post and the comments last week is legitimacy. Meghann, Glenn, and Blaine had questions about legitimacy, and I might stretch a bit to say that underlying many discussions about the future of Ultimate is our coveting of legitimacy. I think we could maybe add respect as an additional component. There actually might not be a better example of an Outcome goal than legitimacy(or respect...just ask the Chicago Bears). Clearly, being judged as legitimate is something beyond our control and places great power in the fickle opinions of others. I am not sure that I agree with Blaine that legitimacy is the wrong word. The primary use of this word has to do with conforming with stated rules (as Blaine mentions), but there is a historical usage, which I might guess informs its use in the context of Ultimate, which separates musical comedy from legitimate theater. I do think that this is appropriate, especially considering Joel Silver's comments that the sport was created as a spoof of real sports. I think we need to be careful when wanting legitimacy as a goal as there is no clear metric by which to define when Ultimate has "arrived".

Ultimate as a sport sanctioned by athletic organizations at the high school and college level is another goal that was discussed in the comments last week. I think this is another example of Outcome goals and, maybe, a case of "be careful of what you wish for". Without much effort at all, several examples of concerns with this type of sanctioning came up in the comments. My point is not say that this Outcome goal is a good or bad thing. It is just to say that we need to examine why we want this and what the pros and cons are. Ultimate on TV or the Olympics are also similar Outcome goals. Again, highly complex pros and cons involving money, integrity, and this legitimacy thing.

Growing Ultimate, or getting more players to play the sport, is a different type of goal in that it is a Process goal. It is a means to achieve the Outcome goals listed above (and other Outcome goals). This goal, as stated, is something we have a large degree of control over. I think it is somewhat clear that as our constituency grows, our ability to determine our own destiny also grows. There is a lot of work to do here, however, and while the sport is growing, we need to remain humble. I have been working at Boston College football games this fall, and I would hazard to guess that more spectators (meaning non-players) watched BC play Maine (a Div-1AA team) in the relatively small (44,500) Alumni Stadium than watched the entire UPA College and Club Championships combined. So, while there is a lot of work to do, there is no question that growth, even slow and small in nature, will be an asset for the sport.

So, in summary, I think it can be helpful to view goals for Ultimate as controllable or uncontrollable as this has the potential to enhance our focus. Next week I will continue with discussing some assets and opportunities that I think Ultimate has and how Imitation or Differentiation can help to leverage these in terms of goals like increasing the number of participants in our sport.

Feed is up and running

2006-12-08T14:38:00.000-05:00

Idris had a few extra moments in his day, so he reactivated my feed to Ultimatetalk. I did need to go in and edit some of the incorrect timestamps, and on the ones I did change...it changed the author to "Idris".

I left up a few of my recent posts so folks could catch up.

Now I just need to figure out why the first few sentences of my posts are not showing up.

...ah...technology.....

Imitate or Differentiate

2006-12-04T09:28:00.000-05:00

One of the interesting components of this conference I am working on (www.buda.org/ucpc) is the panel discussion that Tiina and I are planning. The topic is "What is the future of Ultimate? Where should we go and how should we get there?” I think this topic (Tiina's idea) is timely and relevant. It happens to sit well with the UPA's Strategic Initiative, "Ultimate Revolution". I did do the survey. Maybe I will win the iPod. This post will be an introduction to a series of posts that will attempt to provide my views on developing a context for thinking about the future of Ultimate. Perhaps this will help in focusing our concerns at the panel discussion at the UCPC.

The purpose of this introduction is to try to lay out my perspective on defining how to think about our sport in terms of proceeding out into the future. I think there are two basic approaches to considering what our problems are, what our strengths are, and how we should move ourselves forward. These approaches are: imitation and differentiation. Practically speaking, these two approaches exist on a non-mutually exclusive continuum, and, as a result, any policy or opinion about the future of Ultimate will exist as a combination, or amalgam, of these two opposing methods. I will discuss each as a separate entity for this post, but it is important to keep in mind that both can come into play.

Imitation could also be described as "modeling". Clearly, any vision of the future of Ultimate should incorporate the lessons learned by other organizations. There are constant discussions about how Ultimate compares to other sports. How do our athletes compare? How do we get sponsored and how have other sports attracted sponsors? Is Ultimate a good name for the sport? Why is poker on ESPN and Ultimate is nowhere to be found? Here is a big one: does the lack of refs in Ultimate hold us back from legitimacy? In the discussions I have read or participated in, the participants frequently cite examples of what other sports have done to become successful. It is hard to see, though, the down side of the cost of legitimacy. We see and covet what other have. I have one quick example that does not claim to indict imitation. It just speaks how a story has many sides to it. A few moths ago, I was at practice with the Whiptails when I noticed a woman standing on our sideline watching us. As is my custom whenever I see a parent, I go over and introduce myself and I did so in this case. When I asked if she was a parent, she said, "No, I am the AD for Wellesley". Now, like many schools, Wellesley's Ultimate team is a club team (like the debate team) and exists outside the realm of the athletics dept. We do not have access to trainers or support services that the varsity sports are entitled to. This does make sense to a large degree as there are the obvious liability concerns, etc. I think my girls would love just a bit of the support that the varsity teams receive. I had a very interesting conversation with the AD. She was very interested in how hard my girls worked, and she was very respectful of our efforts. She also indicated that she was working on ways to get the club sports access to the Wellesley trainers. She was quite surprised and impressed by the fact that we practice three times a week the entire school year. Then she made the point of this story. She asked me if I realized that if the Whips became a Varsity sport that they would only be able to practice 19 weeks a year (as opposed to 38), due to NCAA Div 3 regulations. My girls benefit greatly from having the freedom to practice all year long. I am sure that for every story like this that there is a contradicting example of how being like other sports would have nice perks. The point really is, though, that imitation, or modeling, takes an external point of view of our sport. While this can be positive, it is also important to realize the costs of success. I think another example is TV. I have said it before in this blog. Watching a televised football game live is like watching ice melt. The sport is so tailored for the TV experience that the "real" game, meaning the one occurring on the field, suffers in my opinion.

On the other hand, we have differentiation. While again an external point of view, differentiation seeks to examine and promote what makes our sport different from other sports. It can be hard to have confidence that non-participants will respond to the things that set us apart and that we won't just crash and burn in a failed social experiment. Clearly, though, this last sentence is overly dramatic. There is no end point in my opinion, worst case scenario is that things continue as they are now. Over the next few weeks, I will discuss some of the things that I think could potentially differentiate Ultimate. Essentially, what our "assets" are.

The discussion of the future of Ultimate incorporates assumptions about what legitimacy is and that our collective definition of legitimacy is something that we want. The purpose of this (and the following posts) does not attempt to impart my vision of legitimacy. It just seeks to identify possible tools that take us on different paths. Clearly growing our sport and making it "legitimate" (what ever that means) is a difficult task. As I have said before, when I started playing in the 70's, folks were convinced that Ultimate would be an Olympic sport "in 20 years". Well, "20 years from now" was 10 years ago and from my seat, it does not seem we are much closer. The idea of a definition of legitimacy is important because if we say that legitimacy is TV exposure then that limits us to roughly 5 sports all invented in the late 19th century when it comes to imitation. There are basically no role models for what Ultimate is trying to do (popularize a team sport invented in the late 20th century). As such, the primary focus of my subsequent posts will our differentiating assets as carving our own path might be the only choice handed to us.

What the Whips are working on at the end of the semester

2006-12-04T08:17:00.000-05:00

The post-Thanksgiving period has been a tough time for us in terms of getting much done. Things get busy, we are practicing indoors in a basketball court, finals are approaching, etc. I think there is a natural tendency to relax a bit and let the end of the semester kind of just wind down. Over the past few years, I have really been encouraging the girls to actually ramp up a bit and try to get as much done as possible over these brief few weeks. So here is what I am working on:

-Continued focus on fundamentals: throwing and catching. I stopped by a ARHS game at Regionals in Oct to see how Tiina was doing. She said to me that the boys were struggling with throwing and catching and until they got it together that she "had nothing for them".

-Better decision making. One thing I have started to do at our indoor scrimmages is to make passes over head height a turnover. This does a couple of things: makes the players the think about their throws and forces them to exploit only the two primary lanes (open side or break side via dump/swing).

-Focus on executing "away" dumps: This is the dump pass in which the dump cutter cuts away from the thrower and into the middle of the field. The thrower throws it out into space. This is hard, especially when done as a forehand.

-Mental focus. We continue to work on improving our concentration. I will stop the scrimmages for a break when we lose focus. I am also working on the basics like "focus on the things you can control". I have been lucky this year that we have had tremendous interest in the Whips, and our numbers are up to over 30. Usually, by now, I might be in the low teens. Unfortunately, there has apparently (my captains keep me blissfully unaware of the social knot) been a bit of consternation about how our potential A and B teams might break come the spring. This is a perfect opportunity for my girls to work on focus. Not only is the spring many months away (the first snow of the season is lazily coming down past my window as I type), but I am not even thinking about A and B teams at this point. The goal remains the same: team-wide work on fundamentals. Come January, we will sit down and discuss goals for the spring. The viability of separate teams can be dealt with then.

UCPC: Registration is now open!

2006-12-01T11:01:00.000-05:00

Early Registration for the UCPC is now live and open! Information about registering for the conference can be found here:

http://buda.org/ucpc/Registration.html

I have also updated information about the Conference Hotel. That information is under the "Hotels & Directions" page.

Quality as a Parameter for Policy

2006-11-27T07:25:00.000-05:00

There has been lots of talk about quality on RSD these days. Most of the talk occurred after Nationals and was concerned with
whether or not the Mixed Div belongs, but there was also a more recent discussion about whether the glory teams of yesteryear could have competed with the teams of today.This second conversation is rather familiar and benign due largely to its speculative nature. Its an age-old argument in any sport and somewhat in the "glory days" category, but it does set up the general idea that quality is a dynamic and subjective entity. Not surprisingly this discussion is characterized by two age-based camps. The older folks who are adamant that Flying Circus and NYNY would have intimidated Sockeye, and the younger folks who swear by the athleticism of the current generation.

The conversation several weeks ago about whether Mixed belongs in the fall series is a different animal, though, as an assumed standard of quality is being presented as a means of defining policy. This is critical distinction, compared to the old vs new argument, as the highly subjective nature of quality is being asked to determine a course of action for an organization. Jim P succinctly breaks down the Mixed "issue" into two separate arguments: 1) the question of whether the inclusion of Mixed in the Fall Series limits the potential venues for Nationals, and 2) whether Mixed is high enough quality to warrant inclusion is the showcase event in our sport. This post seeks to deal with only the issue of quality.

I think before we consider the quality of Mixed Ultimate, we need to define parameters that define quality in general. There seems to be a general assumption that we all are in agreement about what quality Ultimate is, but I would argue that we are very far from all being on the same page as far as this is concerned. Part of this is the very nature of the shifting criteria that is quality. This point becomes very clear in the RSD discussion when Sam TH poses the question that if we consider that Mixed is lower quality than Open, then doesn't it follow that Women's is lower quality as well. Jim P's response is that "this is different because Women's is the best players of that gender". My point is not to say that I think Jim is defining a position as much as it is to point out that when we draw a line in the sand to define quality, we almost immediately need to start defining qualifiers.

There is a part of quality that can be supported by objective measures. Perhaps we could call this Absolute Quality. These are measures like speed, jumping ability, throwing distance, etc. For the most part, these measures need to take an athlete out of the context of the team experience and then measure their performance in isolation. This is basically the method of the NFL Combine and it does result in being able to say with some degree of certainty that "Person A is faster than Person B". Based on this standard,though, I might not consider # of turnovers as a measure of Absolute Quality as there are needed qualifiers (the teams were evenly matched and played real D). I think fewer unforced errors could be a measure of Absolute Quality, but, again, it involves subjective judgment in terms of defining events as unforced or not. While Absolute Quality might be of interest in terms of stats and playing cards, I think it is pretty obvious that it almost impossible to define a policy for a standard of inclusion based on Absolute Quality. As an analogy, Absolute Quality ignores "intangibles" (things like desire, work ethic, heart) and creates problems when dealing with player specialization (is a faster player "better" than a player who can throw farther?). Just as we don't expect team managers to make personnel decisions based solely on objective measures, I think concerning ourselves with trying to define policy in an internet newsgroup based on an assumed sense of Absolute Quality is at best a distraction.

I think an even more useless criteria could be called Relative Quality. Let's define this for the moment as quality defined by comparison(without objective measurement). To a certain extent, this measure is defined by the "Windy City vs Sockeye" argument. If we, for the moment, consider the 2002 Dog-FG semi as some kind of standard, could we therefore define a standard of inclusion based on that game? What do we do with games like the 2001 or 2005 turnover-laden Open Finals? Should the Open Division not be included at Nationals because the Ultimate played in 05 was not up to the Relative Quality of the Ultimate played in 02? Why is the Mixed Division the only Division that gets to be compared with Open? In the end, basing a standard of measure upon an opinion of Relative Quality looks a lot like any Dogma or Belief System. The definition of dogma actually works very well here ("A set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true") and certainly fits the standard means of communication of the RSD forum. Could there be a better example of this definition than the assertion that Open is the most compelling and most interesting Ultimate due to its quality?

I think one could argue that the above assertion is backed-up up by the bigger crowds that attend Open games. However, this makes the assumption that the number of spectators can somehow accurately determine quality. To me, this is a highly suspect means of measurement and it seems we have made a huge leap, in terms of defining quality, from objective criteria to the whims of spectators.

I think, when it comes to trying to determine policy, that we make sure we do not assume that the Ultimate that interests us as individuals is somehow what everyone should, or would, also find interesting. This discussion of quality seems to be an attempt to re-characterize what are essentially dogmatic assertions in some kind of objective cloak. Certainly, everyone is entitled to their opinion and will be drawn to whatever aspect of the sport that interests them. Quality, without the benefit of a defined set of measures and thus inherently subjective, is probably not a good parameter for defining a decision in regard to inclusion in the Fall Series.

Solo...for now....

2006-11-27T07:00:00.000-05:00

I want to get started with my weekly posts again, even though my feed is still disabled to Ultimatetalk. Jim wrote recently about the number of hits his blog has, and while he certainly has the best name recognition in the blog world, I think he can tip his hat to Ultimatetalk for a large percentage of his numbers. Its interesting to see how visitors to your site become currency and can feed into some sense of self-importance. So, to still post without the benfit of Ultimatetalk is a good lesson.

Just a reminder that you can subscribe to this blog via the Feedburner form. If you do, updates to this blog will be e-mailed to you.

Thanks for reading.

UCPC Website Update

2006-11-14T15:02:00.000-05:00

The Ultimate Coaches and Players Conference has just been updated. Please go to www.buda.org/ucpc for the latest updates, photos, and logistics information. Our goal is to open on-line registration, hosted by BUDA, on December 1st, so please stay tuned.

Upgrading to Blogger Beta

2006-11-06T08:50:00.000-05:00

I have spent a bunch of hours over the past few days getting up to speed on this new Blogger Beta upgrade.

There are some pretty cool features and I hovered around on various Blogger Hack Blogs to customize my blog with "peekaboo" posts and nav bar. Geeky stuff, really. So my blog is pretty tripped out at this point...which is fun.

One of the big issues I have been dealing with the way that the rss feed is handled in Beta. In the old version, updates and edits did not affect the overall timestamp of a post in terms of its rss feed. Essentially, the rss feed made the timestamp the publish date even if a post was updated or edited. In Beta, however, all edits and updates to a post result in a new rss timestamp.....the time of the update. So, last week when I upgraded, Beta gave new timestamps to all my posts (the time of the upgrade), and my blog proceeded to flood Ultimatetalk with over 100 posts. I am working with Idris on this (he is being very patient with me), so I hope to have my feed to Ultimatetalk up and running sometime this week. This change will impact bloggers as they will want to keep edits of older posts down to a minimum. There is also potential for reader confusion as the new rss feed does not list posts in order of publish date, but by update or edit date.

In the meantime, you are free to use the handy Feedburner subscription on my blog if you want to receive e-mail updates when new posts are published on this blog.

Thanks, g

Same As It Ever Was.......

2006-11-02T14:45:00.000-05:00

I feel like this really should be on my "Joke of the Day" calendar. Its like deja vu all over again

Nats

2006-10-30T11:40:00.000-05:00

If anyone is looking for a complete immersion experience into our little world of Ultimate, just come on down to the UPA Club Championships in Sarasota. It feels both luxurious and decadent and as we made our way through the finals yesterday there was a palpable sense of our attentions turning back to the concerns of real life. The emotional ebbs and flows on these vast green fields are unlike any other that I have experienced in Ultimate as there is both the sense of gratitude for the opportunity and tension due to so much at stake.

My wife and I roomed with Tiina B (making her first trip to Club Nationals) and Michael B, so needless to say all our post-mortem discussions on the day's proceedings were heady and invariably correct. Ruth seemed to have a pretty good time volunteering at the info table, and we did manage to go out every night for dinner. This was a welcome respite from Ultimate as she has no interest at all in the game, and I enjoyed the opportunity to talk about something else other than Ultimate (actually, the discussions at the hotel with Tiina and Michael frequently went to other subjects as well). There is no better example than the fact the fact that Ruth took about a hundred pictures, not one of which involved a single point of play.

The job of Head Scorekeeper is a busy one, and I had the pleasure of working with two Rock Stars in the husband and wife team of Laura and Aaron, from Ottawa. Laura was in charge of entering in the scores to the SRT, and Aaron, in his third year as a Field Marshal, was invaluable in terms of his experience and his ability to do RUFUS statkeeping. I also had a great Field Marshal team who showed up on time and worked tirelessly. All these folks (Darren, Joe, Melle, Martin, Ephi, Suzanne, Seth, Kathleen, Amanda, Julia, Dug (explained as an "acronym" for Doug), Erik, Haley, Eric) contributed to the overall great quality of the event. My goal, which was shared by Laura, was that if we were going to be charged with a task, we might as well do it as best as possible. My sense that is that the folks looking in on the SRT appreciated that we were doing pretty much real-time reporting of scores on 30 fields, so again this speaks to the dedication of the Field Marshals. I did have a few moments to check in on RSD during the weekend, and it was remarkable to contrast the pro-active volunteers cleaning trash, filling water, checking scores, and the obvious commitment and work ethic of the players in all Divisions with the dogmatic bitch and whine of folks like Corey and ultimate7. If you want to make things better, then either play well enough to earn a precious spot on those beautiful fields or take some time out of your day and help clean them up. Otherwise...shut the fuck up. I was thanked on many occasions by the players for all the work of the volunteers. Your offerings of gratitude were appreciated by all of us, and it is nice to know that the efforts of the support staff are not met with a sense of entitlement of the part of the players.

I think the experience of a spectator at Nationals when the horn sounds at 9:30am on Thursday is quite similar to a 6-year walking through the gate of Disney World for the first time. It is completely overstimulating and overwhelming. I watched Ultimate 9 hours a day for 4 days and I didn't see 5% of what occurred. Here is what I did see:

-The is a discernible difference in intensity as one walks down the rows of fields. If we consider Open as a 10 (the most intense), then the other divisions are several notches below. To be clear, this is not a comment on quality, just how loud things are. To walk down the line of the 8 Open fields is like walking the gauntlet. 250 large men on the sideline screaming at the top of their lungs is intense. Things got much quieter as I would transition to the other divisions.

-Al Nichols should be a hero for us all. 42 years old and in the mosh pit with the best of them. I had a brief moment to say hello to him and remark on his longevity while giving him his second place medal, and he responded with grace and consideration even in the face of a disappointing defeat. Age can sometimes inform humility. I have been in a number Ultimate situations in which the hierarchy is in your face. Things like talking to someone as then have them walk away mid-sentence to go lick the ass of someone higher up on the food chain who just walked in the door. While it is easy to get seduced by being deferred to (even in this tiny little Ultimate world), remember that "this to shall pass" and that somewhere down the line you will need to make decisions about continuing your career or not. Ultimate as a documented entity is in diapers and while the Moons vs KD might be our best story so far, most of us, like the 99% of the players that played before us, will be forgotten....regardless of the creativity of the spike.

-Speaking of which, it was not a great weekend for the blog folks. We have Luke publishing highlights from a hat tournament shamelessly under a "Nats" moniker, Jim and Al getting dismantled, Idris spectating, Hector wiping his ass with the disc before spiking it, and my main contribution was Cone Bitch.

-There was a lot of straight up mark this weekend. Like most of the time off a turn or pull. It seemed clear to me that the defenses were challenging the O to demonstrate confidence in possessing the disc. I thought it was clear that the teams most comfortable with possessing the disc were Fury and Furious George. For all the talk about Huck and Hope, I did not see it in the 2-3 Furious George games I watched. In fact, I thought FG, as they have players that can throw and go deep, was clearly the best O I saw all weekend. Now, if that is "true" then that speaks very highly of Sockeye's D, which, to me, was the difference maker in the final. While FG was clearly able to possess the disc for high pass counts, it just seemed impossible for FG to able to sustain a high degree of efficiency. For the most part, however, they were able to and it was only couple of long pass (not hucks) that did result in the few turns that they made. I think if FG had been able to establish a deep game then it might have been a different story. Sockeye's O does love the long game, and their points went much faster than FG's. Sockeye attacks aggressive marks by calling the fouls, and, as many of the foul calls come on hucks, it seemed that fouling Wiggins resulted in another shot rather than a disruption of the "flow" (I am not saying that I thought FG trying to disrupt the flow, I just think that Sockeye, with their long looks, is able to absrob the fouls better).

-I was very impressed with Fury in the final. They are very deep when it comes to throwers, and, like FG, their throwers will also go deep. Fury was able to convert their break opportunities early on, so the first half was a surprising blow out.

-I was really happy to see Slow White as the only non-NW team in the finals. I did feel that the Mixed final was evenly matched, but that Slow made more unforced errors early on and had to play catch-up. I thought SW looked very good all weekend and they should be very proud of what they accomplished.

-I was able to watch DOG twice on field 13 and they really looked overmatched against both FG and Sockeye. FG beat DOG on both sides of the disc and demonstrated higher competence with a very DOG-like O (great end zone O....lots of changing the field).

-I was able to read the Mixed Div write ups on the UPA website, and I think Bil did a great job in his write-ups. He also managed to film the whole thing as well, which is awesome as he takes great photos (including a great shot of the winning Masters Final goal). I was a bit perturbed, however, to see that the very first sentence of the very first day is "Poor George Cooke". It then goes on, in faux sympathy, to describe how hard it is for me to seed the Mixed Div. First of all, I don't understand why I am even mentioned. Really, it is clear to me, based on the language of this paragraph and in his RSD posts, that Bil doesn't really respect my approach, thinks that I am "wrong", and thinks that I must be upset that I get the seedings "wrong". Hey, there was also a running joke among the ND's about who was going to get things more "wrong" (as if it was ever in doubt). I said many times during the weekend "Who is seeding the Mixed Div? They should fire the guy". I also think that a live broadcast of me doing "dartboard seedings" (throwing team darts at a dartboard numbered 1-16), would probably be exciting, boost ratings, and be more "correct". So, for the record...one more time....seeding is reactive not predictive. Any language in the articles that indicates that I am upset by how things played out, or that the final results should be close to the original seedings("Fickle fortune's wind blew but lightly on some pools today, while in others, the seedings failed to conform" and "many prognosticators had penciled Slow White into the finals (although they came in seeded No.5")) is Bil's subjective take on the matter.

-As Jim posted a year ago, I cannot imagine trying to get on a plane later this week and flying down for worlds. I wish all teams the best of luck. In the Mixed Div, I would seed that 1) Mischief, 2) SW, 3) Brass Monkey, but I am sure that Bil would disagree.

Overall, I did not have much chance to socialize. I got a chance to say hello to Tully and Amy and their new baby, but that was one of many examples where I had to keep moving on to the next task. Each division has a different story. Many folks were talking about the blow-outs in the Women's Div. Masters and Mixed were all over the place. Open displays some parity, close games, and great intensity. I was happy to see both Johnny Bravo and Chain break through and shake things up a bit.

Off to Nats

2006-10-24T11:52:00.000-04:00

My wife and I are catching an early flight tomorrow morning as we are making our way down to Sarasota for Nationals. My wife is going to volunteer this year by helping out with orgainzing the player packs and various other on-field duties. I need to get my scorekeeping stuff together and meet with the Field Marshals tomorrow. One of our goals is updating the SRT with every half time score, so keep checking that out. If you don't get the info fast enough, just comment here and I will be sure to get back to you.

Advice to the teams: LEAVE PLENTY OF TIME TO GET TO THE FIELDS ON THURSDAY MORNING. The traffic is traditionally horrible on Thurs. Last year, 6TM got stuck in traffic and some folks didn't get to the fields until 9:10am. I suggest hitting the road at 7:30am from Siesta Key. Worst case scenario is that you find your field early and have plenty of time to warm-up.

My concerns this year will be quite different: What games to watch?????

I think I have got my first round narrowed down to:

Dog/VC
Gendors/Rival
Fury/Godiva
Brass/Moe
Slow/Flycoons
Sockeye/Chain
Mischief/PR
Ring/Metal
Riot/Nemesis
BL/Hooray
Brute/Mojo

Seems doable, right? If I stay a whole 5 minutes at each one...I should catch them all. Maybe if my customized golf cart (all black, big rims, built in ipod and latte machine) arrives in time I can get it to 6 minutes per game.

Ultimate Coaches and Players Conference: Presenters and Seminar Topics Announcement

2006-10-24T09:05:00.000-04:00

Tiina and I are very excited to release the list of presenters and seminar topics for the Ultimate Coaches and Players Conference! Please go to the UCPC Home Page (www.buda.org/ucpc) and click on the "Presenters" link. We feel this is a top notch group of people and we are very excited by the diverse and informative topics that we have to offer. I want to take a moment to thank everyone that submitted proposals. We really appreciate all the interest.

There is also some preliminary logistics info to check out, so please come by the website for all the updates.

Tiina and I will both be down at the UPA Club Championships, so, if you are down there, please take a moment to stop either of us if you want to talk about the UCPC.

We will be releasing registration information at the beginning of December, so stay tuned.

Crap Formats #2

2006-10-16T13:00:00.000-04:00

Very busy times these days.

I am working pretty hard on Nationals logistics. Seeding, observer rules, schedule, etc. It looks like I might be Head Scorekeeper....so that will be fun.

Bumpersticker I saw the other day:

"George W: Pull out like your father should have."

Brilliant.

Worked on the 2-handler set with the girls the other day. In my attempt to indoctrinate them in this set, I decided I wouldn't even teach the 3-handler set this year. My vets don't seem comfortable in the 2 set, though, so they fell back on the 3 set this past weekend at a Smith College tournament.

Speaking of tournaments, my girls have this format to look forward to this upcoming weekend:

http://www2.upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=34&id=2773

I can't make any sense out of the seedings as I don't think that MIT and BU should be seeded behind us. Also, 16 teams in 3 pools??? I guess this is being driven by the 6 field issue, but 16 teams in 4 pools can be done on 6 fields in 4 rounds. The byes aren't any worse than the published plan.

Then there is the brackets. First, both A and C pools have their 1 and 2 seeds on the same side of the bracket. That's a big no-no. In terms of match-ups, A1(1) vs C3(8...9??) makes sense. B1(2) vs A2 (6). No problem, kind of. C1(3) v B3(8). Low seed plays a high seed. That's good. B2(5) v C2(4). Right on. What happened to 7??

I think 4 pools of 16 in 4 rounds followed by 2v3 pre-quarters makes a lot more sense.

Ok...that's the bitch for the week.......

The Best Mixed O Scheme So Far?

2006-10-11T13:05:00.000-04:00

In 2004, I purchased some videos of previous Mixed Finals as 6TM was just forming and there was interest among the leadership in what prior teams had done in terms of organizing their offenses. After watching a bunch of film, we ended up using a variation on a scheme that Donner Party had came up with, and we had great success with it that year. In 2005, a decision was made to focus on a spread offense ("Pairs"), and I must admit that I was disappointed that we moved away from what had been quite effective for us.

The scheme is based on a T-stack. For those that have not read my previous post, the T-stack is 3 horizontal handlers and 4 vertical cutters downfield. In a sense, it just takes the handler in the front of the stack and flares them out to the break side to roughly where they would have received the swing pass.

In the case of Donner Party, they ran this O with four women. They would put two male handlers out on the outside, and they had very strong women handlers that could run the show as the pivot. This left three women cutters downfield with one male cutter. Obviously, this creates a very difficult 1 on 1 matchup downfield for the sole male defender.

6TM ran this in 04 with 4 men (a male handler at the pivot) most of the time. I am a bit surprised that more Mixed teams have not incorporated this look.

Nomenclature for Alternatives to the Stack

2006-10-11T12:45:00.000-04:00

This post is inspired by yet another conversation that went roughly as follows (liberties taken):

"I haven't seen many teams playing the German anymore."

"Is that the one with the 4 cutters horizontal downfield?"

"No, that's the Swedish, its that one with the iso in the middle of the field."

"Right, that works well. I also like that one in which there are 3 handlers in a horizontal line near the disc and then there are 2 pairs of cutters near the sideline on opposite sides of the field."

"Don't some teams call that Brown?"

"I have no idea....I just call it 'the 2 pairs of cutters on opposite sides of the field'."

"Yeah, that's easy to call on the line......"

I propose that we lose the terms "German" and "Swedish" in terms of the everyday vernacular unless someone can write a paper that documents exactly which stack goes with which country. I mean no disrespect to the teams and countries that could have invented these stacks, but our ability to communicate is severely hampered by rumor and misinformation. I just don't want to slog through it anymore.

I need to say that I think teams should call these whatever they want internally. I am just speaking about general conversation.

So how about:

"Pairs"- This is the offense with 3 horizontal handlers back and a pair of cutters close to each sideline.
"3-1-3"- 3 horizontal handlers back, 1 iso cutter downfield, 3 horizontal cutters downfield.
"3-4"- 3 horizontal handlers, 4 horizontal cutters downfield
"T-stack"- 3 horizontal handlers, 4 vertical cutters downfield

Now that I am on a roll, I don't think "2-3-2" is a good term for a standard cup zone. I have played on teams in which we had a "2-3-2" zone (meaning a cup zone), and a "real 2-3-2" zone. This is just too confusing. I don't think that "2-3-2", when referring to a 3-person cup, accurately describes this zone either from a functional or visual perspective.

I tend to call a standard, 3-person cup zone a "cup zone". I think the case could be made to call it a "3-3-1". I call a 4-person cup zone a "4-person cup". Are there any practical versions of a 2-3-2 zone? I haven't seen any, but if there are, let's call it a "2-3-2".

Quick thoughts about NE Regionals

2006-10-10T14:45:00.000-04:00

For some reason, the weather this past weekend reminded me very much of playing Ultimate in my early years in Ithaca and Amherst. It was pretty much a perfect NE fall weekend with the changing leaves, picture book blue sky, and just a hint of coolness in the air. Almost made we want to play again..........

Well, not really, but I did have plenty of time to reminisce about what it felt like to play in the fall in the old days. I do love Regionals, and I could just enjoy the experience without the stress of worrying about whether my season was going to end prematurely. I was never on a team that would have caused me to consider that qualifying for Nationals was an afterthought, so I was always much more nervous at this tournament than any other.

I am quite touched by Jim's little compliment that the Mixed Div is exciting due to the upsets. In general, I thought Jim's post on Regionals was excellent. Funny and a bit of the old TM thrown in on the side. I do think that Jim's compliment was probably just a momentary lapse due to bathing in the afterglow of Dog's domination of the event. Dog did look great this weekend, and I think his summary of the improvement of the D's O is very insightful.

On the women's side, I got to hang out for moments with the Lady Godiva folks and it was great to see Lori Parham, Shana and Sarah Cook, Molly Brown, Amy D, Chris C all back on the field together. I think they will have a great time at Nationals.

The Mixed Div was topsy-turvey on Sat, and it played out much like the MA Regional in that the 3 and 4 seeds ended up playing in an elimination game in the 3rd round. It was sad for me to see 6TM not make it to Sunday and not give themselves a chance to play for Sarasota. I thought the 6TM-Tandem game was quite intense. Exciting, but difficult to watch. Of course, a few folks came up to me and joked that my stock really went up this weekend. I was able to get a laugh in as the humor is based on the ridiculous nature of the premise (any serious assertion that I could be the difference maker on a team like 6TM would frankly be an admission that the team was in deep shit). 6TM had massive turnover on the women's side this year, but as far as the men go....the real loss there is Olen. He was a sparkplug for that team and any real self-analysis will say that there is a hole needs to be filled.

I thought that Slow White looked very good this weekend as they got all their new Patagonia stuff. They also played very well. They ran a patient offense and their long looks were high percentage. I think they are approaching the season with a correct build and they look to be peaking in a few weeks. It is fun to watch them as it is clear that they are enjoying themselves without being cocky.

So, our attention turns south now. I look forward to seeing the NE teams down in Sarasota.

loss

2006-10-03T09:08:00.000-04:00

I somehow managed to escape alive from my teenage years despite a somewhat typical arrogance in my assumption that I could survive anything. Without the maturity to cope with the loss of my father when I was 12, I careened into my early 20's without awareness of the lessons that can be learned from losing someone close to you. Over time, I have been able to gain some perspective and not take things as much for granted to the point where most days I am able to remind myself of my fraility and insignificance. We are reminded of this message frequently, from our own personal interactions to the public declarations of survivors and familes of victims of 9/11. Sometimes, though, the facade of an awareness of perspective does not help to remove the bitter taste that is left in one's mouth in the face of the randomness of an accident like the one that took the lives of two players from the Gendors this past Sunday. Hh wrote much more eloquently about this than I ever could, but I was struck by the link he provided to Will Wiersma's MySpace page in which Will, one of the deceased, mentions "life is simple" and "living as if you are dying tomorrow". A few weeks ago, I got on a plane for Chicago so I could work at CHC. As I got on, it crossed my mind, as it does frequently these days, that this could be the last thing I do. I did not presume to take any comfort in the idea that I was "doing something I loved", and I was quite certain that my wife and daughter would not take comfort in such sentiment. So, the questions and struggles remain, regardless of how much we remind ourselves of the gift that is our time here: Do I get on the plane? Do I drive to the tournament? Do I leave the house today? On days like yesterday, I have no answers.

stuff.....

2006-09-25T12:20:00.000-04:00

Luke says that nothing is going on in Boston. Last I checked I was still posting, but I guess my comment that I had heard OTHER people say that the West Coast Offense was a tacit agreement to neuter the meaning of a turnover really hit home.

In other news, the 11th edition draft is here. I have taken a cursory look at it. I like the new Cap language. I dipped my toe over in the 11th Edition discussion group and asked Peri if there had been discussion about raising the minimum number of players needed to start play (currently 2), and she, as usual, took a moment out of her day to inquire why I would ask (there had been no discussion on this topic apparently). Ultimate7, as usual, weighed in with the tact and finesse that we have come to expect from him, so I think I will write Peri directly as it seems like there won't be a conversation over in that group.....at least not when there is an "RSD voice" present.

So Sectionals is complete. I have been "on-call" for the past three weekends. I work sometimes on the weekends (lately I have been doing audio work for BC football games), so my colleagues don't know quite what to make of me stopping work to discuss the placement game rule in the 13th place bracket of a tournament 2000 miles away. While all the results are not quite in, I think things seem to be playing out as expected. Mischief beat Brass Monkey to win the NorCal tournament. All the talk this year has been around Brass picking up Griego, Casey, Coco, and Greenough, but Mischief must have done some serious recruiting as they are playing very consistently in a very tough Region. Moe beat the Carleton folks to win NWP. I will be watching to see if they can do it again in two weeks. Slow White went through ENE without much difficulty. They seem to be ramping up very effectively. There was talk on RSD about the Gendors "curse" and them not being able to beat a team twice in a weekend. We shall see this upcoming weekend when we have three Regional tournaments (anyone else notice that there is no RSD talk about the other divs for yet another year. Someone said it is because the results in the other Divs are probably set in stone. This goes back to my post last fall about upsets equaling excitement). I think Regional is the best time of the year.......

On the home front, practices at Wellesley started last week. As usual, we have many brand new players, but this year the new folks seem to be hanging in there a bit longer. I have been impressed with my returning players as they have been working very hard to teach the new players the basic fundamentals. I think we need to remain committed to working very hard to push the new players through this stage even though it feels like the vets are not able to focus on their skills and progression. This is going to require patience and I hope it will pay off in a few months as there is a great deal of energy and enthusiasm overall. Things did get off to a bit of a rough start at the first practice, however. There must have been forty people there and it was very exciting. We introduced ourselves, and then the team went for its usual jog warm-up. I made my way around the field putting down the eight cones. As the team passed me by, one of the girls toward the back of the pack said to me "What is this? The track team". Weird, but I could let it slide. We stretched out in a circle and went around and said names. We then did the NUTC throwing demo. Have you ever noticed that people from Canada and Minnesota manage to work in how great those places are into most every conversation? You can say something like "I saw this coffee mug I liked the other day", and the response will be "Yeah, I have this friend back home in the Twin Cities that is a potter, and she makes the BEST coffee mugs!". Etc, etc. I am like this about NUTC now, and my captains have pretty much had it with me. They will say "Let's do go-to today", and I will say "Great idea! Let's do the REALLY GREAT version we did at camp". So far no one has rolled their eyes at me (which was a big camp no-no), but I think we are close. Anyway. So we are doing the NUTC throwing demo. I have Jess, Angie, and Peter out there to demo the basic throws (Peter is a Wellesley employee and an Ultimate player. He has been at the school for a year now and is coming to pretty much every practice to help out with things. He is great with the girls and with so many girls right now we are able to split up the squad and be
much more efficient). We start with flat backhands. I am talking while they are throwing and I go through the basics of the motion. As I start to talk about body rotation for power, I hear giggling from the circle. I turn around and it is Track Girl. I walk over and ask if there id a problem. She says "I just think talking about this is so funny. I mean.....its just frisbee". Now, I think I have demonstrated that I maintain my sense of humor through most circumstances. I do have a problem, though, with disrespect. My first thought was to tell her to get the fuck off the field and don't come back. I did manage to have some self-restraint (which my captains thanked me for later) and I just walked away. Peter came up to me once we started to drill and said "We won't see her on Thursday", and, indeed, we did not. While I was quite taken aback by such of show of disrespect for a voluntary activity, I have to say that was far and away the only display of this sort that I have experienced so far at the school, and in all other respects, it has been a great start to the year.

The Break

2006-09-18T11:00:00.000-04:00

So it is reiterated frequently that offense has the advantage, the offense should score most, if not all the time, etc. While I recall someone saying that they thought that the West Coast Offense was actually a tacit agreement among the NW teams to neuter the impact of a turnover, I think we can mostly agree that the goal and expectation of most high level offenses is to become automatic. I know that some teams give their O only one shot to score before going with Plan B. Having said all that, it seems to me that, like tennis, one of the most significant and exciting moments in an Ultimate game is, therefore, The Break. The Break is a coveted opportunity, but only if set up by efficient offenses. The Break will lose much luster in a game of many turnovers and inefficient offenses, but as a team develops confidence in the efficiency of its offense, it can start to turn its attention to converting its break opportunities.

To me, this just reinforces my feeling that the most important position in Ultimate is that of the D handler. A player that can play intense and focused D and then turn around around and run the show is special indeed. Is there a better historical example of a D handler than Lenny Engle? Mid-Mid in a zone that actually worked, good person skills, and got as many touches as Mooney. While it is obvious which side of the disc won the Dog media battle even though Zaz wrote a great article on Lenny a few years ago, is there a player more under the radar, in terms of recognition, than Lenny? Perhaps it is in the nature of this position to go unheralded. It seems to me pretty obvious, though, that if a team is going to truly focus its energy on coverting the rare break opprtunities that come along in high level play, then it must make sure that it has the D handler position well-covered.

My CHC Trip

2006-09-11T17:15:00.000-04:00

I arrived at the fields on Sat am and I was greeted by two surprises: 1) the fields, while still a bit hard, were as nice have they have been in several years, and 2) one of the first players I saw warming up was Ken Dobyns. Ken was there to play with the new NC Mixed team, Black Molly. Nice to see him out of the fields again. This post is not a blow by blow account of the tournament, but will be random observations that I wrote down from my golf cart.

-It was fun to check in folks I haven't seen in a while. I greatly appreciated that folks would come up to me and ask, "So, how is the...uh....spectating going?" or "Thanks for organizing and..(pause).....watching". While I am touched that folks would appear interested and I thought it was cute that some seemed to not quite fathom how I could possibly be enjoying myself, I did enjoy checking out a lot of Ultimate, helping out in a small way, and I think it was a productive trip.

-The visor is out. Way out in terms of fashion. Pretty much dead. The few that make the choice that a visor is cooler than a baseball cap thankfully do not wear them brim up anymore. While there are many creative ways to deal with hair and the sun, a baseball cap is the way to go. However, I think throwing one's baseball cap dramatically in order to make a play is unnecessary. I saw the following exchange:

Floaty pass into the end zone
O guy takes off his hat and tries to throw it on the ground, but the disc drops too quickly. O guy jumps up in the air and catches the disc with one hand while holding his cap in the other hand...still above his head.
D guy makes the a play on the disc, can't catch it and calls "Foul" saying that the O guy with the hat had violated his vertical space by pushing down on him with his elbow.
O guy then does a full reinactment of why it was impossible for him to have pushed down on the D guy while holding his hat above his head.
D guy is unconvinced and the disc goes back.
O team scores after a pass or two. O team captain (not the O guy with hat) says to his team "Ok, we need to work harder on preventing D guys from jumping into us and calling fouls."

-"Fire!". When did we all decide that "Fire!" is the "code word" for man in transition D? I saw 10 teams from different Regions and Divisions use "Fire!" for this purpose. I spent most of last Feb vacation reading about Baseball signs and codes in other sports. Compared to many other sports that use real codes and signs, we are still banging on rocks and waiting for lighting to strike a rock to create...."Fire!" My feeling is: why not just say "Man!"? We can't really think we are fooling anyone. While we are on the subject, why does the transition always occur at 3 or 5 passes? I think if I had heard a line call like "Zone for 4 passes to backhand, silent count", I would have fallen out of my cart.

-It was pretty windy all weekend which I thought was good for teams with an eye on Sarasota. While this made it tough for good Ultimate, especially on Sat afternoon, I saw lots of "casual" passes become turnovers across all divisions. There were many, many examples of players rushing their throws or not setting up their bodies correctly, and this resulted in turns that could have been avoided. When folks did set up and respect the wind, there were some amazing throws..which was great to see.

-Maybe this is an obvious statement, but intense D makes things exciting. I found myself walking around during rounds looking for the best D...in any division.

-Having said that, I was pretty impressed with DoG this weekend. They are a fun team to watch and the overall feeling from the team is quite positive. When I talked with the guys that I know, they would all say that there is a lot of work to do, but the games I saw were well played, very physically intense, and enjoyable. I thought the O was well-focused on their system and at times looked automatic. They are playing very good D, though, and have the depth to put out some varied looks with confidence. In the final, SubZero had to work very hard against Dog's man D and, at times, threw many passes. Dog did have the depth and conditioning, for the most part, to hold the line without concern about roster depth. While there can be arguments about the effectiveness of the Dog O vs the West Coast run and gun, the answer, it seems to me, will come more from Dog's D providing answers for Nord, Grant, etc, rather than the O proving itself.

-Nemesis looked goos this weekend. Amy D and Lryica seemed very confident and unruffled by the wind. There was nice trophy presentation after Nemesis won the tournament. The trophy was in honor of Dean Smith, a Windy City player who passed away in 2005. There was some discussion about whether or not the trophy should be spiked in rememberence of the Windy City championship. After a brief talk, the trophy was indeed spiked. I overheard a rather interesting debate afterwards about whether spiking the trophy is actually a sign of respect.

-The Mixed Division was able to put out a very strong field for this tournament. Four regions were there and the teams got in a lot of good games. While the wind made for Uglitmate at times, the quality of play was good. I found the most compelling game was the CLX-Mr Briefcase qtr match-up. Very good defense. Hard fought, physical, and aggressive. Mr Briefcase is a deep squad to this tournament, and they are able to put out varied lines. I think this makes it a little bit harder for their opponents to settle into matchups. Briefcase is a a physical team, but CLX does not seem ruffled by that. One quip of the day was by Briefcase, "Stop making shitty foul calles because your team can' read (the disc)." One point I saw had about four foot blocks. The game ended up with Mr Briefcase winning 8-7 on a Callahan by Tony Blanchet-Ruth.

-While the results of this tournament don't back me up, I thought Annapolis All-Stars had a good tournament, and they seemed as organized and focused on O as any team out there. They are a heady team and do lots of different things on O and D. They are fundamentally solid and experienced. I don't know who they were missing this weekend, but they did seem to have some trouble ramping up to play hard D. They did do this in the first half of their pool play game with Flaming Moe (and it was the other most enjoyable bit of Mixed Div Ultimate I saw), but I guess the second half was a different story. One bit of minutia is that during their qtrs game, one of their pullers kept pulling inside out...out of bounds on the same sideline..and then dropping it in, barely, on the same sideline. To me, this is highly risky as I have seen pulls that never come back in (think Condors in the 99 Finals) as serious momentum shifters.

-Anything can happen in brackets with a lot of parity, and in the Championship bracket of the Mixed Div (7 games) there were three double game points and four win by two games. At that point in the tournament, it is obviously about which team can focus, be mentally tough, and play with confidence. I am sure some teams walked away with questions, but, hopefully, the tournament provided a forum by which teams can get a sense of how they will be challenged, and how they will need to respond, come Regionals time.

Riding Self-Officiated Refs

2006-09-05T12:45:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading John Feinstein's "A Season Inside". He spent a year in the mid-80's writing about college basketball (the year Kansas won). One of the chapters profiled several of the refs that work consistently for Div 1 college basketball. It was an interesting look at the lives of folks who get paid a little bit of money (they all have "real" jobs) to officiate big events. One of the interesting points is that this group of refs liked to test each other on new and/or obscure rules. The refs profiled were, at the time, some of the best in the business and yet sometimes they got the rulings flat out wrong. The book also went into the specific relationships between the coaches and the refs. Again, it was a good look at the personalities of the sport and the "game within the game" that is officiating. I came away from reading the book with great respect for the refs interest and energy in doing the best job they possibly could.

So, while I do understand Idris' frustration with Ultimate players not knowing our rules "inside and out" and I do believe that if Ultimate is going to differentiate itself via self-officiating, then a lot of energy needs to go into making sure we know the rules, it was interesting to read about professional refs getting the little details wrong. Now, this is not to say that Ultimate players deserve a wide berth when it comes to getting the rules wrong. Quite the opposite actually. While we can take it for granted that self-officiating players will make mistakes in their interpretations of the rules, we should, in the spirit of Idris' comments, take pride in individually developing high standards for our knowledge of the rules until say, a rules test is needed to step onto the field.

I think it is safe to say that heckling of players about the quality of their play is considered socially acceptable on a broad level. There does seem to be a sense of etiquette that heckling is more acceptable at "social tournaments" than during games "that really matter". Again, it is a difficult and shadowy thing to try to define "good taste" as we all have different interpretations of exactly when it is the best time to get shit-faced and ride someone about their play, and that is not the purpose of this post. So, while we can say that in a general sense that heckling is considered OK, depending on the circumstances, I think we are are a bit more unsure about what happens when we disagree with someone's call or interpretation of the rules. I think we have a bit of trouble differentiating between the player that is cheating and the player that made a bad call. Clearly, this has to do with the interpretation of intent, which is highly subjective. Add to this the bias of either being a player and inherently impartial or rooting for one team over another, and it is clear why aggresively disagreeing with a call could be considered in "bad form". I do, though, think it is possible to disagree with a call and not define the player as a cheater. While riding the refs in other sports has become routine and often crosses the line of acceptability, I think it is possible to consider that Ultimate, as it transitions to bigger venues, could benefit from our very loose social contract of not riding our self-officiated refs.

UCPC: Venue, Date, and Request for Proposal Announce

2006-08-29T09:27:00.000-04:00

I just finalized the permits for our venue, so I can announce that the Ultimate Coaches and Players Conference will be held at Newton South High School in Newton, MA on January 27, 2007. Newton South has just undergone a major renovation, so the UCPC will be held in a new venue that should suit our needs.

Also at this time, we are seeking proposals for presentations. We are hoping to have a wide range of topics at the UCPC, so we are excited to hear about your ideas.

Please go to www.buda.org/ucpc for the latest updates. If you wish to submit a proposal, please click on the "Submit a Proposal" button and fill out the form. We look forward to hearing from you.

Where is the D?

2006-08-28T13:40:00.000-04:00

It is interesting to be attending tournaments as a spectator these days. I enjoy watching games, which is good, but my viewpoint is understandably quite different than when playing or coaching. I find myself sometimes watching the games with the underlying question "Is this something that the general public would find exciting?" I think this is because I am highly invested in the sport and want it to grow, obviously, but I am also subjecting the sport to my awareness of the "issues of the day": how does the sport flow, how is the self-officiating working, would it work on TV, etc. In general, I find that the sport has a varying degree of excitement very much in line with other live sporting events I have experienced, and, as I have said before, there are predictable circumstances that contribute to excitement such as semis vs pool play, athletic plays, good stories, etc.

In any case, it was with the above baggage that I decided to take my daughter to the end of Saturday's play at Chowdafest in Seekonk, MA. As an aside, I have been very much enjoying my new found free weekends with my family, but as my wife was not feeling well in the afternoon, I decided to pack up my daughter, hit the zoo, and then catch the last round of pool play.

After driving down south and arriving slightly after the last round had begun, I managed to check out all the games in the round, say hello to a few folks, and even grab a bowl of the Chowda, courtesy of Matty B, the TD. Maybe my expectations were too high due to not having seen any club play since the Boston Invitational, or perhaps it was the last round of the day and the games didn't matter, but I found the overall energy of play to be quite low. Don't get me wrong. I have slogged around with the best of them at this very tournament, especially in 04 when it was 100 degrees and we had 10 people, none of whom were younger than about 30. Mostly I just felt, from my spectator viewpoint described above, that the intensity on D was non-existent. Teams were able to score without many turns, but it seemed that this was the result of a lack of adversity rather than excellent O.

It did make me realize that when it mattered, the D line of 6TM 04 (I was on the O line) was about as fierce as any I have experienced. This is not meant as a reminiscence or a "Glory Days" moment. It is meant to say that while there is a lot of focus on offense in this sport, watching seven folks sprint down as fast as they can after a great pull knowing that the other team will be lucky to complete three passes is quite exciting. I believe in a previous post about what creates excitement in our sport, that Jim P said that "either team having the potential to score" was a big factor in contributing to excitement. I agree with this, but I also feel that great defense, and the resulting intensity, is as compelling as a game with very few turns. Perhaps this is due to a lack of publicity. I recall that in one of Seigs' posts that he said that Jeff "Dick" Brown said that the D line should never talk or write about what they do. On the other hand, Jim P has said several times, when talking about Dog's D "Well, that is enough about the D"(I am sure that this is his blog point of view and not the point of view of his book). Steve Mooney's Conceptual Ultimate articles were very balanced between O and D, and while a bit outdated (the articles are 12 years old now), they do offer some interesting and fundamentally solid perspectives on how think about defense. So, while the D does not get much lip service in our sport, I think the lack of intensity of the defense during the games that I saw on Saturday contributed greatly to an overall lower level of energy than I was expecting and made spectating not as exciting as I hoped.. I am sure that as the Series begins that this will change.

Upcoming Pre-Season Events

2006-08-21T12:55:00.000-04:00

As I have said before, I am really excited about the Fall Series this year. The first big milestone is the early deadline for online roster submission, which is this Friday. In addition, there are four pre-season tournaments that I will be watching via the trusty SRT. These events all look to be competitive and will provide important intra-regional data points.

Aug 26-27:

1) Chesapeake- Mostly top MA teams like AAS, AMP, Olio, and Hooray. I will be watching to see if newcomer, Black Molly, can follow up on its Howdown win. Garrett says that this team, with a full roster (it looks like Spear/ Raleigh Llamas), can play with anyone in the country. Added in are NE teams Puppet Regime and Tandem.

2) Chowdafest- Since this tournament moved from late June to late August, it has become an important preview of NE Regionals. This year should be no different as Slow White and Chinstrap will be there plus MA teams Philly KRU and Animal.

Sept 2-3:

3) Labor Day:

Highly competitive 10-team field with 5 National Qualifiers from the NW and SW. Throw in the Gendors and this is a great group of teams.

Sept 9-10:

4) CHC- Once again we get a nice blend of teams with 4 regions represented. All the top Central teams are there (CLX, Moe, ICE, Mr Briefcase, Salsa Police), plus top teams from the MA (Black Molly, AAS), NE (6TM, Slow White, Puppet Regime), and the SW (Pleasure town). Should be true to its billing: a great tune-up.

Looking Forward

2006-08-07T08:07:00.000-04:00

I am going on vacation for the next 10-12 days, so I will not be posting during this time. I have been quite busy with Ultimate since NUTC, though. This is what I am working on.

First, the Fall Series is starting to ramp up. I am looking forward to the Series. I know I differ from some players, but I like Sectionals in the early fall as teams roll out their new rosters and are fresh with expecations and anticipation. I am doing a lot of work these as NXD on scheduling Sectionals, Regionals, and dealing with various issues. We also need to make a big push to make sure that teams understand that they can only use the on-line rosterinf system this year. No more paper rosters. Thst is a pretty big deal.

Second, I am working with a bunch of great folks on CHC. We are currently working on formats and team confirmination for that tournament.

Third, there is some basic debriefing to do about NUTC. I am working on notes about what worked well and what didn't while it is still somewhat fresh.

Lastly, there is a lot of work to do on the UCPC. I hope to have the venue permits done when I get back home and be able to announce the confirmed date and location. We are also starting to contact possible presenters and develop a request for proposal form that will go online in a few weeks. A big task that needs to start in Sept is contacting colleges about the Recruiting Fair.

There is a lot of work to do, but I am quite excited about the fall. It will, though, be nice to recharge the batteries for the next week or so.

NUTC: 2006 is in the books

2006-08-03T14:20:00.000-04:00

NUTC Sessions A, B, and C came and went this year bookended by heat waves. Combined with the large numbers in Session C, we needed to adjust the schedule radically this last week to keep the kids out of the mid-day sun. When we were on the fields, we provided salty snacks and took to having "salt parties" with each team during half time. I bought some sea salt and the kids responded well to the "Death or Glory Salt Party Half Time Show". I appreciate Al's reminder of this method back in Session A.

I became a bit concerned early this past week when I perceived that we were not being as diligent as I would like about certain parts of the schedule. We had trouble getting off the fields early enough for rec hour, and one of our evening events ran a bit late. However, when the heat wave hit, the counselors and staff went into "crises mode" and everyone had each other's backs. If tasks had been put aside due to concerns about dehydration, someone stepped up and took the initiative without being asked. Really, I can't thank the counselors and CIT's enough for their efforts.

A big story this year was Jody getting his first NUTC tournament win and emerging from a losing streak that had the emotional ups and downs of a Shakespearean tragedy. In session B, he won twice as many games as he had in the previous 6 sessions as a counselor. In session C, he went undefeated on his way to second straight championship. This is pretty disappointing really as there is nothing to talk about anymore under the tent.

The energy of the campers this week was great. They worked hard and played good Ultimate. There are a couple of young phenoms with good throws but also very good, albeit young, Ultimate minds.

The camper/counselor game was fun this past week. One point featured the counselors wearing old high school Ultimate jerseys. While the counselors were changing, however, some campers managed to steal their coveted NUTC instructor jerseys and then revealed them from under their camper jerseys while on the line. That pretty much one upped the counselors and there was a few minutes in which it was feared that one of the jerseys might have fallen into a campers hands permanently. There was also a point that featured the weird but compelling game, "Miniature Tanks". Ask an 06 alum about "Miniature Tanks".

So, I am off for a bit of a vacation with my family. I hope the campers and staff from NUTC 06 have a great rest of the summer.

Ultimate Coaches and Players Conference: Boston 2007

2006-08-01T00:50:00.000-04:00

After a year's worth of initial planning, I am pleased to announce the first Ultimate Coaches and Players Conference(UCPC). This event will be held in Boston in January 2007, and the website is www.buda.org/ucpc. The sponsors for the event are BUDA and NUTC, so my thanks goes out to them. The website is a simple introduction to the event, but we will be adding content about the venue, presenters, proposals, etc. Tiina Booth and I are going to host the event and we are close to signing the permits for the location. We have begun contacting possible presenters from the wonderful crop of Ultimate coaches and players, and, additionally, we will be soliciting proposals for presentations shortly.

The UCPC is being planned as a one day event, and it will feature seminars, presentations, panel discussions, as well as the Ultimate Expo. The Ultimate Expo will be a Trade Show with Ultimate vendors, and a Recruiting Fair for college programs.

The plan is to have content that will appeal to a broad range of attendees. We hope that people involved in Ultimate from the middle school coach to the elite player will find topics that interest them.

So stay tuned for more info shortly. It should be an exciting event.

NUTC-Session C

2006-07-31T11:35:00.000-04:00

This is the busy week. 104 campers.

First, though, this story from the end of Session B:

Last Wednesday afternoon I came to the fields after running some errands and I saw two gentlemen, probably in their 70's, sitting under the tent watching the proceedings. I went over to introduce myself, and they introduced themselves as twin brothers who live in the area. They said that they heard that there was a frisbee camp in town and that they wanted to see what it was all about. They asked me how I liked the facilities and, when I described how much we liked Northfield School, they seemed delighted. I then found out that the brothers went to this school, one of them was a former Board member, and that their Great-Grandfather had founded the school. They were very happy that the school was being put to good use. By this time, the kids had begun warming up for scrimmaging, so the brothers and I began a lively discussion of the sport. They seemed to be endlessly enthusiastic and interested in what we were doing. We discussed the camp, the stall, self-officiating, and the club and college structure. They would ask questions like "What skill sets do you need to be a handler?". Every time one of the campers did an athletic play (they were scrimmaging by now), they would say things like "Look at that throw!", or "Isn't that wonderful!". I mentioned to them that we were going to have the finals in "Goaltimate Stadium" the following morning as they started to make their way home. The following morning, I walked out of the dorm to start the finals, and it is a nice scene. The dorm overlooks the field in a natural bowl, so campers and parents were spread out on the hill. It is a very nice way to watch the game. As I made my way down to the field, I noticed one of the brothers, my new friend, perched in his fold-up chair with his wife and a friend in prime spectator form, ready to go. I went over to say hello, and I noticed that they all had copies of the 10th Edition Rules in their hands! I asked where they had gotten them, thinking that maybe somebody from the camp had given it to them. They said that had printed them up from the internet and were studying them to get ready for the finals! I was pretty much in love by this point. I spent a few moments watching the game with them, and they appreciated the plays, but also enjoyed learning about zone to man transitions, skill sets, positions, and other strategy.

Onto the week at hand. Our counselors this week:

The All-In Crew:
Dan-O
Jody
Lexi
E-Bay
Dylan

Returning for second week:
Shmi
BVH
Chelsea
Amanda
Jennie

New this week:
Tully Beatty
Isaiah
Zip

Yesterday we ran our normal schedule, but the focus, with double the amount of campers, was to move everyone quickly from place to place. We did have some campers struggle with the heat, but everyone made it through the day even though we ran them pretty hard with the sprints.

Tomorrow we break up into teams for the rest of the week.

NUTCvillage-Disc 1 (Extended Version)

2006-07-26T01:10:00.000-04:00

Disc 1 features the entire Session B camper/counselor game. All the highlights from the Destructors 15-1 win are available. Some exciting moments were Mike Wiseman landing on Chelsea Dengler after they both went up in the air. The Longmeadow program scored the only goal, and overall the game was a bit sloppy. I continued my trend from last week of finding myself matched up against the fastest kid in camp (perhaps they are trying to set up a mismatch. Hey, if I look down the line and see BVH, Graham, Chelsea, Micah, Dylan, etc......I would do the same) and then beating them deep. I guess I do have some legs left.

As the first game moved rather quickly, Disc 2 is the special "Extended Version". Game 2 saw the Destructors tighten it up for a 10-1 win. The major highlight was when a "ringer" from Amherst High went up and ripped a goal away from Graham and BVH.

NUTC-Session B

2006-07-24T23:16:00.000-04:00

Session B dawned at NMH, the birthplace of Ultimate. It is interesting to imagine Jared Kass driving up from Amherst College on Route 63 over 35 years ago to teach summer camp at this very campus, and, while armed with the idea of the "ultimate" game, he did not know he would meet camper Joel Silver and that the seeds of our new sport would be sown. All of this is poignant this week as we have 14 campers from Columbia High Scool attending.

Our counselors this week:

The All-In Crew:

Dan-O
Dylan T
Lexi M
Emily B
Jody Y

Plus:
Micah F-in week 2 of 2
Jeff Graham- MA
Mike Wiseman- MA
Amanda Strout- GA
BVH- NYC
Chelsea Dengler- OR
Jennie Yen- GA

Awesome.

BVH, Jeff, Dylan, and Chelsea showed off their diving skills in the pool this afternoon. We also set up the Goaltimate and DDC courts this week as it was just too hot last week.

This week we have a videographer, Jeff Irvine, filming the proceedings. We are hoping to have our first visitor tomorrow. Ted Munter will be coming out from Boston.

The weather broke yesterday afternoon, so it should be warm and less humid. Perfect Ultimate weather. The campers this week are mostly from New England, and two high school programs, Columbia (NJ) and Longmeadow(MA), are well-represented.

I had a break in the evening, so my daughter and I took our rabbit outside so he could stroll out in the quad. One of our campers came over and he mentioned that he had attended college nationals as a spectator. I asked him what he thought, and he said it was a great experience. I asked what he thought about the finals. He said, "I am sure you have read all about it, but I had some thoughts about the men's final". I asked him what he thought. He said, "Florida was 8-10 men deep, while Wisconsin had an army. It seemed to me, though, that Wisconsin lost the game with shallow pulls. Every pull landed about 10 yards shy of the end zone and by the time that Wisconsin got down the field, Florida had gained another 10 yards and had a short field. So, while Wisconsin made a run at the end of the game, because I think Florida was tired, it was too little too late. If Florida had had to work an extra 20-30 yards every time they had received the pull, maybe they wouldn't have won the game."

Insightful stuff from a young man. It brings up a couple of points. First, how important pulls are, and how their importance seems to be a bit overlooked. I think in 04 6TM probably won 4-5 points per game due to Adam Goff's pulls. This was a huge advantage. The second point is different. A lot of the reporting we read in Ultimate is a point by point description of what happened. While we get this in pro sports, we also benefit from the interpretive analysis as offered by the camper in my discussion. While pure description is needed at this stage as our media outlets are limited, it is my hope that interpretive reporting develops as a means of increasing both our quality, but also our cumulative knowledge.

NUTC-Session A quick summary

2006-07-19T23:43:00.000-04:00

So week 1 is winding down to a close. Time flies when you're having fun. We close tomorrow morning with the tournament final followed by awards then it is check out time.

The counselors did a great job this week. There was a substantial increase in the quality of play over the course of the week and it can be attributed to the fine teaching of the counselors. They also consistently demonstrated best practices during drills. One specific example was Micah and Dylan's team. They were running a standard away cut drill and, at the start, the drill was a bit lazy with lots of turnovers. After Micah and Dylan joined, concentration improved and there were fewer throwaways. Across the board, the counselors put their all into coaching and the campers respond.

The kids ate a lot. There was a 100 kid soccer camp here the week before us, and the kitchen folks told us that our camp (61 kids) ate twice as much as they did. The kids took our warnings about dehydration seriously, but the heat did take its toll in another form: chafing. It got to the point where I had to go buy a case of baby powder.

So the staff has tomorrow afternoon and Friday off. We then reconvene on Saturday for Session B, which is similar in size to this week. Session C is looming with 100 campers.

NUTC: Camper/Counselor Game

2006-07-18T23:36:00.000-04:00

We just had the camper/counselor game.

We won 15-4.

It was all about Flash.

As promised, I "came out of retirement" for the Big Game. I sang myself onto the field with the "Chariots of Fire" theme song. Then we put on the NUTC Eye-Black, and it was...........the Dylan Show. He pretty much ruled the air. He threw a no-look-pass behind him for a goal. He took off his NUTC jersey to reveal a basketball jersey while running for a goal.

During half-time, we had the counselor distance contest. Derek won, followed by Dylan...then for third.....Yours Truly with the Power Grip!

Game point featured the couselors playing off-hand catch/off-hand throw. We did have a turn, but with Emily B running the show (she has had to practice her lefty throws as she had shoulder surgery a year ago) we were able to close it out.

The kids stayed to play pick-up as the sun was going down. Good stuff. Hopefully the heat will break tomorrow.

National Ultimate Training Camp-Session A

2006-07-17T11:30:00.000-04:00

Session A of the National Ultimate Training Camp began this past Saturday, and the big story is its new home. The Northfield Campus of the Northfield-Mount Hermon School replaced our old home of three years, Hampshire College. While more remote than Hampshire College, the new campus offers excellent facilities, a great staff, and, most importantly, fields that are probably in the top five that I have seen for Ultimate.

We have 61 campers this week, and they hail from most of the NE states plus Colorado,Illinois, California, Georgia, and Washington, etc. The campers are mostly experienced players, and the theme of camp this year is "No Flash". This means focusing on fundamental skills. We have a camper from New Brunswick that paid her own way to NUTC with babysitting money she earned, and then had her parents drive her the 11 hours to camp.

Tiina Booth, our director, has, as usual, picked an outstanding crop of counselors for this week's session:

Dan Parrish-NC.....has been at every NUTC
Derek Gottleib- CO
Dylan Tunnell- GA
Micah Flynn- MA
Josh Mullen- MA
Jody Avirgan- lately of San Fran
Shmi Narayan- MA
Emily Baecher- MA
Lexi Marsh- MA

My role, as Assistant Director, is to basically herd campers and to espouse wisdom to anyone who will listen.

Registration featured the usual, "I forgot sheets", "I forgot my toothbrush", etc, but everyone arrived safe, received cool gear from VC, Breakmark and Discraft, and everyone got to play some pick-up after signing in.

We woke up bright and early at 6:45am this morning, ate breakfast, and made our way to the fields. One of the nice thing about Northfield is that we can walk to the fields and not have to bus it like we did at Hampshire. We started the day by discussing mental toughness as the thought of the day was "focus on the things you can control". This was appropriate as it was VERY hot today (upper 90's, very humid). Our EMT weighed in on the dangers of dehydration and we kept on the campers all day about drinking enough fluids. We worked on fundamentals and scrimmaged until lunch. The same template followed in the afternoon. I am very impressed with the teaching skills of our counselors. After Rec Hour (swimming, etc), it was dinner. The evening activity was team night in which the campers are divided into teams for the remainder of the week. Teams for this week:

Team Jody/Shmi
Team Josh
Team Dylan/Micah
Team Derek/Emily
Team Dan/Lexi

We did various team games before lights out. Tomorrow looks to be another hot day. Temps in the 90's and humid. We will be focusing on the camp philosophy of creating a safe place by working very hard to ensure that everyone is hydrated. Monday is a fun day as this is the first time the teams get to work together, and it will be in this environment that we will continue to drill fundamentals.