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

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.