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.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Looking at Offense with questions
Monday, September 10, 2007
Non-Thinking
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.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Wellesley Alumni Game
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.
Monday, May 07, 2007
NE Women's Regionals Write-Up
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.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Finishing Sectionals/Moving on to Regionals
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
Monday, April 16, 2007
Sectionals
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.
Monday, April 09, 2007
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.
Monday, April 02, 2007
The fun vs competitive continuum
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.
Monday, March 05, 2007
College Coaching Mandate?
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.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Start of the Season
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.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Whiptails: End of Semester
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.
Monday, December 04, 2006
What the Whips are working on at the end of the semester
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.
Monday, September 25, 2006
stuff.....
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.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
06 NE Regionals...from my perspective
Well...I guess Neva was right.
Coming into the tournament, our primary outcome goal for the season was to make the second day of Regionals. Certainly, many established programs might chuckle at such a goal, but for us, after losing in the backdoor quarters last year, I felt that it was an appropriate, if not ambitious goal. I think that some teams probably felt that we "didn't belong", but we were very clear that our concern was getting to Sunday and not proving anything to anybody. This goal carries historical weight for our program as well. I think, coming into the weekend, the Whips felt still under the shadow of our 03 class of 14 talented seniors. Nell and Naomi, our captains, played on Wellesley's first and only (so far) B team that year, and the A team lost a 10-9 heartbreaker to Tufts in the backdoor quarters that year. My understanding is that the only other time Wellesley made day 2 was in 2000, when Andrea lead the team to the game to go. This all might seem quaint, but I was talking with Bernie from Tufts during our semis, and, as a contrast, Tufts has made day 2 every year, except last year, forever. When discussing this goal with the team, we talked about the sacrifices necessary to achieve this goal, and the team, as usual, was up for the challenge to our commitment as well as bucking a historical trend.
As I packed for the weekend, I was most anxious about the fact that we did not have a format and a schedule yet. At about 9:30pm, I finally received an e-mail confirming both. The lack of such info basically meant any preparation during the week was guesswork, and we happened to guess right as the format was indeed the standard double elim bracket. I guess there was some issue with field availability, but the experience certainly informed me, as a UPA coordinator, about what information is necessary and when it needs to be disseminated.....but that is fodder for another post.
ROUND 1:
Every game goes to seed except Yale over Harvard. As I said in my previous post's comments section, I had Yale at 9 instead of 10 to begin with, but I do feel the data supported Yale at 10. As I hung our during our bye, I had the pleasure of hanging out with Northeastern's Coach, Jason Adams, and he said that they had a nail biter with Williams 15-13. If I recall correctly, Williams went up 7-2.
Our day opened up against Smith. I had heard that they liked to huck and play zone, so we decided to back them. It was just windy enough to help our zone, and we took half 8-3. We were able to open up the roster a bit, so that was positive. In the second half, we continued to open up the roster, but each time we did, Smith went on a mini-run. We were able to close out the game comfortably at 15-9.
ROUND 2:
I believe everything went to seed in this round, in both brackets.
For us, it was our big game as the winner went on to semis and, more importantly, Sunday. Also, as not the biggest squad, I felt it was vital to avoid the fourth round backdoor quarter game. So this was the time and our opponent was, as expected, Northeastern. A few of my players were a bit nervous before the start. Tyke said she felt nauseous. We received going down wind, and they broke us and then scored downwind. We were having trouble with their 4 person cup. We were able to get some breaks as well and started to break down the mark of their cup. It was pretty windy, so neither team was that efficient, but we were able to secure half, 8-5. We traded to start the half, and then we seemed to make some mental errors. We had decided not to take undue risks in our own red zone, but we made some casual passes, they broke us twice, and it is 10-9. We then bear down and go on a 4-0 run. They score to in row before we close it 14-11. The game is long and ends 3 minutes after semis is supposed to start. We take a moment to recognize the achievement of our outcome goal before heading over to play in semis.
ROUND 3:
In the other semi, Dartmouth beat MIT. Brown, Williams, Vermont, and Northeastern win their games in the backdoor.
I had some ideas about tweaks for Tufts, but I was concerned that we were out of gas. We talked briefly about what we wanted to achieve in this game. We decided to go all out for a few points and see where that took us. Pretty much the only glimmer of light from Sectionals was our zone, so we decided to commit to that. The first point had a few turns, we had success with our zone and scored 1-0. After that it was, I swear, the closest 15-1 game ever. Tufts played great, but we never gave up. We were able to open up the roster a bit and some of our newer players made some good plays. Marisa popped well, and Kat made a nice block to save a goal. Good stuff. While it is always frustrating to lose in that fashion, I am always proud of how mentally even my girls are. We never get too up when we have success, but we also don't get too down when we lose....especially if we feel we played good Ultimate.
ROUND 4:
I left as Brown was up on Vermont 10-8, and they won 13-11, so we would play them in the morning. Northeastern beat Yale in the other backwater quarter. So a good showing from the Metro Boston Section.
We had a team dinner and bonfire at Tories house in VT afterward.
SUNDAY:
MIT beat Northeastern 14-11 in the other backwater semi.
I had scouted Brown during their Vermont game, so I was pretty familiar with their sets and calls. I thought we would have success with our zone, but they are talented, fundamentally sound, and a very difficult opponent. Plus their coaching staff is much smarter than I am.
We receive going downwind. I think we trade and then they break us and score downwind. We seem to wake up and have good success running our offense upwind. We are able to tweak our zone a bit, and we go up 7-3. I remark to the team that I love the fact that you can't tell how we are doing during a game. No big celebrations after we score, no cheer, but our heads are up when things are not going well. Bernie from Tufts said we play with heart. I hope that is true, but I know that we do not rely on emotion to stoke the fire.
Brown, however, for a young rebuilding team, has a lot of heart and fight as well. They start going over the top of our zone, and they go on a BIG run. We are finally able to score downwind and take half 8-7. We decide during half time to have LB push more aggressively as deep deep to help Naomi as short deep. We are also saving a point of man defense as we have not shown that the entire game. We pull to them and trade to 10-9, cap is on, game to 12. We are pulling to them upwind. We decide to play man for the first time, hoping to surprise them with pace. We pull, get our marks wrong, and are lucky that we get a drop. We are, after a while, able to score upwind. 11-9. We get a turn and can't convert. After a controversial catch which gets sent back (I don't even need to acknowledge my obvious bias, but I felt it was clearly not a catch), we get a turn and score to win 12-9.
I must mention Ted Munter's positive sportsmanship. At one point in the game, one of their defenders knocked down Angie as she was going for a catch. This occurred right in front of Ted. Angie went down and held onto her head. After a few moments, Angie was able to get up, but was pretty disoriented. It was an awkward moment as it was clearly a foul, but I try my best (and fail sometimes) to let things go their way on the field. As I was helping Angie off the field, I felt my only choice was to ask her if she is going to call a foul. Clearly a leading question, but a question nonetheless. Angie says "Yes, I think so." The defender contests, but Ted jumps in and says "I don't think you can contest. It was a foul". She rescinded the contest.
THE GAME TO GO TO THE GAME TO GO:
MIT. It came to my attention during the week that some of the MIT players took issue with my comment on a previous post that "me and the Tufts coaches enjoy the chess match". I must have missed the rule that one can't use chess as a symbol for Ultimate strategy as putting Ultimate into the same sentence with chess denigrates the proud heritage of such a real intellectual pursuit. I am pretty sure I meant it as a turn of phrase. In any case, my apologies to the chess folk. Of course, this mandates that I must use chess as a symbol for the entire summary of our game....so here it goes.
Like the seven distinct chess pieces (horsey, turret thing, etc), MIT in white, and Wellesley in black lined up on the field of battle. As is customary, the game begins with the first moves (called the "Startings"). Wellesley gets the first move as they are black.......
Ok, enough of that. It takes too much research.
We had to move to another field, so now there is a distinct crosswind. MIT mixes up their defense sets while we settle in on adjusting our zone. It is back and forth, but MIT is having success at breaking our trap by throwing up the line and around our wing. About mid-way through the half, MIT comes with a cup and man downfield. It takes us a bit to adjust and they take half 8-6 (Nancy even mentioned to me in an e-mail that they were doing this but I forgot to prepare. Damn.)
During half, we discuss some adjustments to their man/zone combo. We are getting open, but we are not cutting under enough. We also tweak our zone a bit. Petek, who has played maybe 3 points all weekend, basically focuses us on the how we are going to stop the up the line throws. She is a model for any player who does not play a lot, but remains focused and talking on the sideline.
MIT keeps up with man downfield and the cup underneath. We get good swings that result is open looks. Tyke makes a perfect cut deep for LB, who makes a great pass, but Yelena makes a HUGE block and they score to make it 11-7 game to 13. We have success working up field, but turn it. Our zone is working well and there are a number of times where they put up very risky long passes. On this point, however, one of their receivers catches it, and calls a timeout. During the timeout, I can see that Naomi is emotional. I realize that she is starting to wrestle with the end of her college career. I check in with her, we play good defense, but they score...12-7. I walk back to the line with Naomi and it is very emotional, but very few words are spoken. At this point, there are few adjustments to be made. I really can't talk other than bleat out something about playing with heart............ which I pretty sure most everyone on both sidelines is quite happy about, so the team makes it own calls. I am thankful that we have a "bottom up" foundation in terms of decision making. We score, and then score again. Digging deeper, running on fumes, playing with heart. Langdon makes a huge grab in the back of the endzone to make it 12-11. We pull and get the disc back. Ralph makes a great cut and Nell puts it into the endzone, but it just goes off Ralph's fingertips. MIT works it and has success with a deep shot. They score. Game over. 13-11.
My girls were remarkable in being able to take the loss in stride and will take pride in their achievements. I am especially proud of what Nell and Naomi have achieved over their careers at Wellesley. They have worked very hard and become leaders of a team that rose to the occasion and achieved its goals in a clear way. The team was remarkably selfless and focused on the concerns of the whole. It was a great weekend and a fantastic season.
Congratulations to Dartmouth and Tufts for earning the spots to Nationals. They dominated the region this year. I wish them best of luck.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
06 Metro Boston Women's Sectionals
For the Whiptails, this story begins last weekend at Yale Cup and involves a subplot that I didn't get into in my recap post. Going into that weekend, the team goals were clear: advance to pre-quarters and give it our best shot for quarters. However, we were also aware that the tournament had direct seeding implications for Sectionals...and Regionals. One of the things we have been working on as a team is grappling with a paradox of athletics: how to remain in the moment when you aware of that your actions, in the present moment, impact what occurs in the future. I think separating outcome goals and process goals can really assist players in developing the maturity to manage this paradox. As a team, we are having much clearer discussions about what might occur in the future, based on possible results, but I have been so impressed that the girls do not develop expectations and are able to remain focused on the present task at hand.
So, going into Yale Cup, I was aware that it was likely that Metro Boston was going to be, in the words of Adam Tarr, the "dreaded" 9 team/5 advance format. For those of you not up to speed, it is a pool of 5 and a pool of 4. The winners of the pools play one game on Sunday for 1st and 2nd. The other 7 play in a round robin to decide 3, 4, and 5. My goal was to place higher than Harvard and Northeastern and snag the coveted 3rd spot behind Tufts and MIT. I have the greatest respect for MIT, but, this year, I felt that the only shot we had at the championship game was to be in MIT's pool at Sectionals, not Tufts. I feel that my speculation was correct based on the the end results at Yale Cup (10-5 loss to Tufts, 9-7 loss to MIT).
Beth N, being the great SC that she is, rewarded teams for their hard work at Yale Cup and used those results to seed Sectionals. We, as predicted, were seeded #3, and while we felt we earned it, we by no means felt entitled to that spot. We felt very well set up to achieve probably our primary outcome goal for the year: qualify for Regionals. Pool A was Tufts,
Harvard, BU, Brandeis, and BC. Our Pool was MIT, Wellesley, BU, and Tufts B. I spent a fair amount of time talking with my captains, Nell and Naomi, about how we were going to approach the weekend. I felt we developed a solid plan for subbing and tactics, and we had a brief meeting after one practice to over with the team what we were planning. As the week progressed, the weather forecast for Sunday got worse and worse. By Thursday, it called for an inch of rain and 20-30 mile an hour winds. Clearly, winning our pool and avoiding playing four games in crap weather became more urgent.
Our start time, due to the fact that we were in a pool of four, was a very civilized 12:30pm, and our opponent was Tufts-B. Our plan was to open up the rotation and rest some players that were a bit tweaked. The conditions were a bit windy, but we were able to score upwind goals and beat them 13-0. They went on to have a tough day in that they did not score a goal, but the girls on that team are getting great experience. It is their presence that leads to the solid foundation upon which that program enjoys great success. I would love to have a B team like Tufts-B.
The next game was against BU. We had beaten them in a scrimmage two weeks before, so we felt we could beat them. We did want to manage our rotation, though, and save legs for MIT. We came out strong and took half 7-3. In the second half, we went up 8-4, and then I felt like our rotation lost some focus, or. perhaps, BU dug their heels in and scored on an upwind goal after we had trouble getting organized after a turn. Before you know it, is 9-8, 12-10 good guys receiving. We were able to trade it out to cap 12-10. I spoke to Nell about whether she felt our confidence was rattled, but she felt we were fine.
So, now comes the death match. I think we won all our flips during the weekend, and we choose side each time...going downwind. MIT pulled to us, but we couldn't score. They basically ripped though us and scored on a big upwind flick. They scored downwind to make it 2-0. We receive going downwind, but can't score. They go upwind again with ease, and as one of their players catches it for the goal, I say to Nancy "We are taking a time....." There is a call. Disc goes back. Turnover. We score downwind. We get a chance to set up our zone and we get solid play from Snitch, Jersey and Tyke. With LB as last, Nell and Langdon can push to the difficult wing spots. MIT seems to make some mistakes, and we are able to get it to 3-2, good guys. Our rotation is very tight at this point, maybe 8 players. Our sideline is wonderfully selfless. Active, engaged, and trusting that the right decisions are being made. We discuss before pulling it that we sometimes give up runs during the second part of the first half. We decide that we won the game to three and now it is 0-0, game to 4. Both teams are playing well and battling hard. We manage to take half 7-4, and Beth informs me that cap will go on in 15 minutes. I felt that the game was going to go to cap, so we needed to maintain that buffer. I made the team aware of the cap, but I told them that we could not play for the cap....we had to earn the win.
While we had some unfortunate turns on goal attempts, MIT also had goals that were dropped. MIT had some very good displays of sportsmanship, the most noteworthy being Darlene uncontesting a strip call by Angie that the MIT sideline clearly felt was not a strip. We ended up scoring upwind in a series of points in which both teams traded upwind goals. After MIT scores to make it 8-6, Nell calls a timeout because we need to refuel for the last several points. I look at my watch. It is 5:12pm and the cap is going on in three minutes. Now, I think it can be unseemly to "play the clock", but I think it important to keep in mind what is at stake: achieving our goal of qualifying for Regionals and avoiding playing 4 games with 11 players in the cold rain. The next point has a lot of turnovers. MIT gets close to scoring, but can't convert. I can hear the people gathering saying how hard the teams are playing. We can't convert. Then, finally, Naomi throws a big backhand around the mark to Tyke, and it is 9-6. I look at my watch and it is 5:24. One minute to hard cap. I go over to Beth to confirm what is going to happen. Beth remarked to me frequently over the weekend how much she loves this event, which is, for many of the teams in our section, the big tournament of the spring. She is also clear about the rules and their implementation. She spoke to Nancy and Nurit and we played the point. They scored...hard cap went on....game over...9-7. That always feels like a strange way to win. That does not take away the fact that my girls worked very hard and played well against a very talented and experienced team.
As it turns out, the weather was not so bad today. Our game against Tufts (who won their pool) was at 11:15am. The game started, as Josh McCarthy put it, "very clean", and we traded to 2-2. Our O seemed a bit edgy, though, and we took a lot of deep shots. I think the decisions were good ones, but we seemed a slightly frantic. As the first half progressed, we began to have trouble with their cutters and they seemed to be very good at taking what we gave them. We kept trying to adjust, but if we overplayed the open side, they dumped it and went around the other side. I mentioned in my Yale Cup post that they seemed "high strung". I do think that they were much more calm in this game. We did have some success playing zone against them. We were able to force some risky throws, but they were able to come down with them. They took half 8-4, and we ran out of gas. They closed it out with a 14-4 win. Alicia and Sangwha (the Tufts coaches) are quite the pair, though. Alicia came over and gave me a big old hug after the game, but Sangwha, as usual, never has the time to shake my hand. And I have been her freaking teammate for the past two years. I thought Tufts played very well and are right where they need to be heading into Regionals. I was very proud of my girls for going out and achieving what they wanted to do. They showed a remarkable ability to remain focused.
I had a chance to peruse the SRT and, based on the results from our region, I will take a whack at seeding the top 9 for Regionals.
1) Dartmouth- beat Tufts at Yale Cup
2) Tufts-obvious
3) Wellesley-has to be seeded higher than MIT
4) MIT-Beat Brown at Yale Cup
5) Brown
6) Northeastern-has to be seeded higher than Harvard
7) Harvard-beat Vermont at Yale Cup
8) Vermont-
9) Yale
Monday, April 17, 2006
2006 Women's Yale Cup Write-Up...from my perspective
Great tournament this weekend. Beautiful weather. A plethora of teams playing in their final games before the Series. I do not have much to say about the teams that Wellesley did not play, so I will just reiterate the rumors and stories I heard.
Saturday Pool Play:
Pool A: My understand is that Tufts rolled through their pool, although Alicia, the Tufts coach, said they had a bit of a struggle against Brown. Tufts, Brown, and Harvard advance to the champ bracket, Williams and Smith drop.
Pool C: At first I thought that this was the Pool of Death, but pool B did put all their three champ bracket teams in quarters. State College, Rochester (I heard they played very well on Saturday), and Vermont advanced. Northeastern dropped, but I don't think they feel too ruffled. There is no question that this was a hard pool, and they know that they are a talented team.
Pool D: There was an untrue rumor that Middlebury beat Cornell. Cornell, in reality, won the pool. MIT and Middlebury did advance to pre-quarters.
Pool B: My girls had set their goal as pre-quarters, so we had set our sites on Skidmore and UMASS as "must wins". We did have to play Yale and Dartmouth in the first two rounds though. One of our goals for the season is to get to tournaments early and warm-up properly. While some of the girls left on Friday, most left Wellesley at 5am. We were all at the fields before 8am. Awesome. Our game against Yale started a bit rough as we were having trouble matching their cutters speed downfield. We went down to a 2-3 point deficit, and then we decided to force backhand to prevent inside out throws, deny the backhand dump cut up the line, and take a few steps into the open side as a buffer. We were able to get some turns off of difficult forehand dump passes, and we were able to crawl back to 6-7. I was a bit concerned about our scoring efficiency, and the amount of energy we were expending at this point. The game was capped during halftime, and we able to score three points in a row to steal away a 9-8 victory. Yale had a rough go of it after that as they went 1-3 on the day. My friend coaches the Yale team, and she is also on 6TM, so we hung out in the evening and she said that Yale is at a real gut check moment at this point.
Our next game was Dartmouth. We ran an open rotation and made a determined effort to conserve energy in this game. One thing I am proud of is that my girls call their own subs. We have small enough roster to do this, but my girls are amazingly selfless and seem able, across the board, to get appropriate lines out on the field. Coming from this type of culture, I was a bit blown away, when watching the Brown men play, that the coaches call subs AND THE 4-PERSON PLAY, etc. And I thought you had to be smart to go to that school. Anyway........ My empowered girls scored the first goal easily, but then Dartmouth got cranked up and ripped off a 7-2 lead. We had no answer for Macy (sp?) during this run as she got many scores and D's. I got pissed at this point that I had to walk around 3-4 Dartmouth guys that were in my way on the sideline that were egging her on in a way that was mildly disrespectful to my team. We were really struggling with their horizontal stack during this run. At some point, however, we were able to play some zone, and, lo and behold, we went on a 4-0 run and brought it to 7-6. As we scored our 6th goal, Dartmouth was pissed and they ran back to the line in that "OK, we're not fucking around anymore" kind of way. I made sure my team enjoyed watching that, and I went back to the sideline to enjoy the now quiet group of Dartmouth boys and strap myself in for the Dartmouth run. It came...sort of, and the game was hard capped at 12-7. We set for ourselves the goal that we wanted to score and not let them win with a goal. We did and they won 12-8. I am sure that my small little victories seem petty, but in a game against a very talented group of athletes, I will take what I can get. I told Mike, their coach, that I thought Dartmouth is the best team I have coached against at taking what they are given. And they do it quickly. We set out specific goals for our D as we set up our lines, and we knew what our weaknesses were. They took what we gave them in a surgical manner, so I think they are quite an impressive team.
Next up was Skidmore. I am working on scouting teams, and in doing so, I saw that Skidmore runs a split stack and Chelsea or Hammer throw it long. We decided to back their receivers and make them beat us with throwing and catching a lot of passes. This worked well and we won 11-5. We struggled with our efficiency in this game and I was worried about being tired for the UMASS game, but we had a bye...so we could rest up.
The UMASS game was another upwind/downwind affair. We focused on protecting our upwind goal and we played a lot of zone. We won 10-5 and achieved our goal of making pre-quarters. The girls were quite tired, but, overall, had maintained a high level of intensity (the kind from my previous post). I enjoy the fact that we have good smart, quick conversations on the line. The atmosphere is one in which folks can speak their minds, and we usuallty get good ideas out of the process. We deiced to rest up, eat a lot, and get to the fields early.
So from our pool, Dartmouth, Wellesley, and Skidmore advanced. Yale and UMASS dropped.
SUNDAY:
I didn't watch many of the games on Sunday, so the SRT will just have to do if you are looking for general results.
We showed up, on time, at 10am for a 10:45am game against Vermont. UVM beat us twice at Savannah, so we really wanted to redeem ourselves and make quarters. They showed up at 10:35am, so I really felt that they were not going to be ready. It was very windy, so Nell and Naomi, the captains, and I went over which goal we wanted to defend if we won the flip, which we did. We received going downwind, and scored. We decided that passes within 25-30 yards of the upwind goal had to be 100% or we were going to look long. We pulled to the them, played zone, and I surprised by their willingness to throw hard passes in their half of the field. We were able to get a D on one of their swing passes, and then punch it in for the upwind goal. 2-0. We took half 7-2, and then won 11-5. We felt pretty good about a smart, but not pretty, win.
Our quarters match-up was Tufts. They came out VERY hard aginst us. Loud sideline. They broke our zone after a couple of chances and went up 3-1. Our O seemed very hard to execute as they play good man D, and it was hard to complete passes in the strong wind. My girls did not fold, though, and they worked hard on both sides of the disc. They started getting open when they really cut well, and we came back to 4-3. They went up 5-3, and then came down in a 1-3-3 defense. We were able to go through this, but had trouble with our endzone O, so they went up 8-3. We traded to cap, 10-5. I mentioned to Alicia, the Tufts coach, that I think that Tufts seems very high strung and wrestling with expectations. I meant this in no way to come across as disrespectful to her talented team. She and Sangwha are friends and I hope for their success. My impression is that they seem much more mentally frenetic, and therefore less scary, than a team like Dartmouth.
Our last game of the day (Skidmore forfeited to us) was against MIT for 5th place. We went up 2-0 as we had success with our zone, and then they cranked it up and we had a lot of trouble with both our O and matching up aginst them playing person. They took it to 5-2, and LB said on the line that we should "get back to having fun". We decided to take some long looks, and play zone again. This brought us to 7-6. They scored to take it half, and then we traded to a capped game 9-7, MIT.
So it was very good weekend for the Whiptails. We played very well and achieved our goals. We have a bunch of stuff to work on this week as we get ready to do it again at Sectionals next weekend.
