Fundamentals

I tried a lot of stuff during my first couple of years coaching. I was new to this role, and as I felt I needed to keep the girl's interested, we did all kinds of tricky things. Zone to man, various spread O's, etc. To a large extent, I was probably struggling with the lack of self-imposed limitations. Too much freedom, really, and I knew, deep down, that not only was there not much added value, but that my girls were not benefiting from it very much.

Last year my captains were adamant that the focus would be on throwing and catching. During the dark winter months, we would spend our time in the little basketball gym throwing and catching. This was different than previous years in which I preached variety as a primary tool toward combating boredom. I guess we were a little less sympathetic last year.

We emerged into the spring with a fair amount of confidence in our ability to throw and catch. Early on, we went to a tournament in RI, and we got a chance to play Amherst High school. They beat us 11-2, but Emily B said it was one of the hardest fought games of the season for them. What became clear was not only had our work paid off, but the ARHS girls provided a clear example of the benefits of focusing on fundamentals.

Tim is talking in his blog about the good old days of college, and the lack of strategy. Or, at least, a simple strategy that suited their skill set, however limited at the time. I think most college teams can get a lot of mileage out of the following fundamentals:

1) Being able to throw and catch deep into your roster
2) Confidence in breaking the mark
3) Real person D
4) An effective zone D

1) and 2) will allow you to run pretty much any offense, and 3) and 4) should get you the disc. Once your team has really got these down, then you can refine the basics. Stack O. German, Swedish, Argentinian, or whatever spread you want. (How many times have you had the following conversation while waiting for the pull: Player A-Hey, let's run the Swedish!. Player B-Is that the one with the pairs on the side? Player C-No, that is the German, the Swedish is the one with 2 horizontal rows, 3 handlers and 4 cutters. Observer-You have 10 seconds to signal readiness. Player A- No...No...the Swedish is the 3-1-3 with the iso person in the middle. Player C-Fuck it...let's just do a stack. Jack it to me).

We played a team last spring that brought it all, and was prepared to execute none of it. By point 6, we had seen every O and D system known to our young sport, and we were never off-balance or even particularly ruffled. I thought at the time that that team had spent a lot of time working on things that were not adding value. One of the primary responsibilities of a coach is to decide how you are going to allocate your precious practice time. I think many of us put the cart before the horse in the interest of being "tricky".