Nationals...

Nationals was pretty bittersweet. I felt this was the year.

The core of ironside is made up of 2003 college graduates which means a lot of the team was 28 (jeff and i are the old two of that group at 29). There was also a feeling that for a lot of us, this might be our last year playing for boston due to age, job/family commitments, mileage on bodies that can no longer stay healthy, and moving away.

Practices were special.

Last season there was a sense of urgency that fortch, doug, and mccarthy wore all season. Winning the sprints at the end of practice (well, once fortch worked off his winter belly by chopping chords of wood), taking that extra second to look a teammate in the eye, working hard on every cut all season. Those 3 really brought up the level of those practices.

This season, it was even more prevalent as more and more players saw this as their last, best hope for a title with boston (me, faust, etc). I moved away and couldn't organize the tuesday night mini practices, but, our track workouts were more intense than anything we ever did to date, we had more teammates doing them as a group than before, and practices were intense and heated at times.

However....

We also had a pretty up and down season in terms of results. We started the season sort of late by having extended tryouts with sons of liberty trying to create two boston teams. This meant tryouts for ironside really started mid-june, and the roster wasn't finalized until after june right after a poor boston invite appearance where we simply played bad.

after that, we beat a lot of teams at ecc by playing b- ultimate. i left seattle being disappointed at our play, but felt good that we could beat a lot of teams not playing our best. I was also left underwhelmed by revolver who everyone was heaping praise on.

at chesapeake we played pretty uninspired ultimate at times, but we were experimenting with lines, Ds, Os, and other things. On sunday, we were demolished by chain. We looked flat-footed and slow and they looked awesome.

We came back and worked and worked and worked and by the time regionals rolled around, we crushed teams. I felt really good going into nationals after absolutely crushing one of the strongest (on paper) goat team to date.

one of the biggest adjustments of the season was the hole that fortch left both in the offense and the defense (zones), as well as his confidence and leadership in the huddle. that guy could probably convince me to do pretty much anything.

anyway, wednesday morning i arrive at the tampa airport to be welcomed by stiffiling heat and humidity. I wait for my teammates to arrive. Our last couple practice weekends had been somewhere in the 30s to mid 40s, and i wondered how the team would be able to handle the temperature differential. The answer became better than most northern teams.

Thursday, we arrive at the fields at 8 a.m. to start to warm-up for our game at 9:30 a.m. We talked about some strategic things, and some changes that had to be made due to injuries.

Ben Faust who is a dynamic cutter and thrower for our offense had been battling injuries all season, and his quad injury was so extensive that he couldn't get up to speed meant that we needed to bring george stubbs and chicken over to the O sometimes to fill in his void.

This would mean our Ds O would sometimes not have the same fire power, but offensive fire-power is not something our D's O lacked. Matt Holzer and Paul Batten also had been riding the injury bus all season and were going to see slightly limited PT to see how their bodies could handle the injuries/heat (if you get injured, nationals is a very hard tourney to play due to not being able to get in good enough shape).

Anyway, about 30 minutes before our game with bodhi, when every team was warming up, Goat rolls up to start to warm-up for their game with pike. Ted Munter looks over at them, and then says to me, "goat just lost to truckstop, they are not ready to play today". His prediction was absolutely correct a few games later.

Back to our game with Bodhi. I think Bodhi was affected by the heat more than us. They are much younger than us, and I am not sure what was happening to them, but they looked like they were melting into the ground as we played them. There were several times that they turfed either the first or second pass and didn't even get our of their own endzone. The game was completely out of hand within the first 5 points, and the score could have been a lot worse as our D's O turned it over a few times near their goal line leading to easy scores.

We then got in shade, ate some salt, ate some tums, put ice towels on our heads, and tried not to let the heat affect us too much. We watched some other games after we cooled down some, and could not believe how slow people were running. The heat was just taking all the power out of people's legs. Ring was in a close game with chain i believe and was tied at 10s before they just seemed unable to convert scores due to lack of people cutting. They worked the disc up to the endzone on D in several occasions and then just stopped cutting and wound up throwing a high risk / low reward pass that would get d'ed.

Our next game was against san diego streetgang. we had watched them play doublewide and knew what to expect. what we did not expect was that they were going to play near perfect. i think they started on D and got maybe 2 breaks in a row on us by hucking quickly off of a turn. when our D line got onto the field, their two handlers, a lefty and a righty were dropping bombs all over us. it didn't matter the stall, if we were backing them, or if their was a good or bad matchup, if someone was going deep, they were sending it. and it worked, 90% of the time. I think they took half 8-5. and we were unable to get the turns needed to win the game. it was a little rattling because of how slow our Os D looked after the turn and it was unnerving to see us unable to stop a team confidently hucking on us.

By this time, several players were starting to feel the heat. We were doing everything possible to stay hydrated. For the doublewide game, we came out swinging. they had kurt on the D line, and he was out of shape for kurt's standard, but his job was to bomb it after the turn. they broke us a couple times, but our D line kept the game close. I think doublewide took half on us. out of halftime, the sun had sapped a lot of players energy. Everyone still had the desire to battle, but the game was being played at 3/4 speed. I really think that we would have lost this game if we weren't so deep. the D line just chipped away and wore them down until we went on a 5-0 run to close them out 15-10.

I felt good while playing but awful after. I ate a burrito, drank fluids, pounded salt, and in general tried to stay hydrated throughout the night. I was hoping tomorrow was going to be cooler.

On Friday, we had only 2 games. the first game would be against truckstop, and the second game would be against revolver. we had a team meeting to talk about the two teams and what they like to do and what we should watch out for. For truckstop, we wanted to pressure the dumps, take away their i/o breaks that they live and die by, and concentrate on team D. The O line was going to be aware of where stout was on D and make sure he couldn't just hangout deep like he likes to. Off of a turn, we were going to play stout tight and force him under as he doesn't like to work to go deep if you shove him under.

For revolver, we were going to poach off of the handlers to force it to a sideline because they like to run their offense through the middle. we were going to make them break us with arounds. On Offense we were going to play stubbs more and more on O and play chicken some o points as well to add athleticism to the O line.

A lot of our strategy against them would be based on taking away their pull play and on forcing certain players out and others under. This was a little bit of a change since we normally just force everyone under to contest the under throw.

Anyway, we start out by playing truckstop, and i think we get a couple breaks early, and our O looks much better than it did yesterday. Then, our O starts crowding the force side and we stop looking deep, and i think truck takes half on a few breaks.

out of half, our D takes over, getting several blocks and also forcing several stall 9 throw aways. those are always something to be really proud of (especially as a dump defender). truckstop seemed to be lacking a cutter thrower this season, and when the cutters would get the disc, the offense would stagnate. We wind up winning 15-12 after our defense goes on a few runs in the second half.

We then get ready for revolver. i thought this would be an excellent chance to steal the 1 seed for the tourney. i thought going into the tourney that chain was the team to beat and by winning this game, we could be sure to play them at our freshest.

We start out on D. We run down on the pull, and i am off my handler to force it to a sideline, they throw it to him and he launches a break huck when i am just putting on the mark to no one. kind of surprising and uncharacteristic for them. we work it down and score. on the next D point, we get a turn, and then cough it up and they work it down and score. we trade for a few points, and then we get a turn with our bozo zone, and convert on a crazy hammer from crockford into the sun to seigs (this might have been in the ring game though, everything is blurry). all of a sudden they break us to take half 8-7.

they proceed to break us twice more out of half. by the time our d line gets on the field, we are running out of chances to close it. we have been stupidly hucking off of a stagnant disc against them when we get turns. We got enough turns to even the score up in the second half, but converted only 1 or 2. I think we were at 12-11 when they closed us out. Our O line forced a few deep balls that we didn't have to, and we were having trouble scoring near the endzone.

I felt very good about that loss even though we lost an opportunity to take the 1 seed. I was pretty confident that we could make adjustments to win the next game, and that we would put some stacked D lines in sometimes as we had pretty much just played our 2 D lines alternating the way we do in most games.

I also thought they were going to run out of gas. The first thing I noticed was that they only played about 15 guys where we had played everyone who was healthy, and they only got a break on our team when they stacked their D line with O players.

I actually thought sockeye would beat revolver the next day due to revolver's short rotation and apparent lack of depth (it also could be that their players all look the same.... for instance, they seem to have 2 near identical lanky red-headed handlers who throw bombs).

aside: I only got to see glimpses of sockeye's play and they seemed to be making it very hard for themselves by playing long and sloppy points and close games against all the teams they were playing. they normally would not pull away from a team until late in the second half, and their games seemed to take the longest to finish.

We go home, and I feel pretty good. I felt bad in the revolver game though. The heat was making me weak and winded at times as I was having problems breathing in it. We have 6 D handlers and I am probably playing just under 1/2 to just over 1/3 the D points which is a lot less than last year where I was playing 2/3 of the D points and felt like crap by Saturday.

At the end of the day, I feel I am finally ahead of my hydration and looking forward to Saturday.

Saturday comes. Ring first round of the elimination games for the 3rd year in a row. I don't feel we are ever not in control of the game. I do have an unfortunate turn to a wide open crockford trying to lead him to the sideline. I always think he is running to the sideline and he never does because I am an idiot. I can't tell you how many times this season that exact same situation happened.

Ring forced jeff under which made him become a thrower and lead him to get comfortable being an extra handler around the disc. This would turn up to bite us the next game because for our offense to work effectively, you have to have the best cutter in the game cutting instead of handling. we win 15-11.

I then go over to watch quiet coyote beat amp. redshirt and a redshirt clone, matt packard, are taking the game over with their athletic grabs, and misha horowitz is representing the metro east with his hucks. amp seems to be playing really tight and no one is actually making in cuts.

on defense, ben kleaveland is smothering misha on the dump, but they are not playing good dump defense on jay adams who is just getting every other throw upline by circle cutting the defender.

on offense for amp everyone just seems to be standing and watching their main receiver cut deep, which leads to a layout dump d block on a poorly thrown dump. QC picks it up and scores for the win and the opportunity to go to worlds.... I would assume that QC will pick up brian stout for worlds. I think they are going to turn some heads considering arguably their best receiver didn't come to nationals due to food poisoning.

We go to the grocery store to sit in AC for our game vs. chain. i hate the late semi's as a player. you have so much time before your first and second game.

Anyway, we start out and chain breaks twice to start. Our D line does a good job of getting it back to even, but then we get broken 2 more times to take half. we are having some pretty uncharacteristic turns from handler to handler, and we aren't doing a good job of creating space.

I played some piss poor dump D one of the points I was in and wish i could take it back, but I was also instrumental in some big yardage throws to get our second break in the half (twice since the first time the camera was on the field... i am not really known for big yardage throws or throwing upfield....). Ironically that was the point that I wound up on Dylan. I remember being in a gym with dylan when he could hang on the rim from a standstill and I could barely touch rim with only one hand from a run.... I was hoping he didn't remember that as he started to run deep.

For the second half it was more upwind down wind and i am not high on the upwind D handler depth chart so I knew my PT that half would be limited until we got a break. that break didn't come until late in the half and then they scored upwind to make it 13-11. They then proceed to break us 2 more times to end our season. We also had enough chances to get all the break backs with turns and we simply did not convert.

I was in tears at the end not because we lost which was pretty frustrating, but because I wouldn't get to play with my teammates one last time on Sunday. I had played with 2 of them in college, and at least 6 of them were my metal teammates, a few of them were metal tryouts with me 5 years ago.

So, why didn't we win nationals if the team we had this year was arguably better and deeper than last year? To be honest, I don't really know.

Our Os D looked a little slow at times this year, but that wasn't our downfall. At times our endzone O looked very sloppy for both the O and D line. Our offense is to score at the cone from the back of the stack, but we rarely did it. We also never really swung the disc well all season. i would say that was the greatest change from last year, we didn't move the disc from side to side as well.

If I had to make adjustments as a coach next year, I think I would slow down the endzone drills so players can absorb the mistakes and adjustments that they need to make. I would also play a lot more double score, and I would practice dumping more. I would also do a more zoney cobra D and add in a bozo transition and get rid of the normal zone transition.

but, what i realized last year was by the time you reach the semi's anyone can beat anyone, it is just a matter of who is on. last year, we were on (in the semi's.... jam was on fire in the finals). this year, chain was on.

Overall, looking back on my 2 years with metal and 3 years with boston, I grew a whole lot more as a player with boston than I did with metal, and I attribute a lot of that to having a great coach. Ted is really the unsung hero of what makes ironside work. He has a knack of getting the best out of each and every player. If you ever have a choice between playing for a team with a coach, and one without, you should play with a coach*. *that statement is true if said coach isn't an assclown.

I watched fury play brute in the finals. fury's d just looked much more sophisticated than brute. they seemed to run a clam or a poach off the 2nd or 3rd in the stack to the openside to slow down kathy dobson, and then they took away brute's around break and brute's offense stagnated. off of the turn, they had athletes on the handlers and just ruthlessly ran them deep. brute looked unwilling to handler crash the 4 man cup, and unwilling to throw a little blade over the top. i am very proud that brute never gave up and kept swinging until the end.

I then watched chain beat revolver. revolver played an even shorter rotation than against us, and chain used pretty much their whole 27 man roster. i think if fatigue wasn't a factor though, revolver still wouldn't have won. It was chain's year.

So what is next? I really don't know. I signed up for winter league in NC. I think I am going to try out for ring next season, and I hope to have a lot of fun with them. I would like to see them get over the quarters struggle.

I am also going to try to lift weights in the offseason. something that I have really never done. I am getting older, and I think I need to if I want to extend my career.

It has been a good season. I got to be a part of one of the best D lines that I have ever played on, and that was a truly awesome experience. I really hope we go to worlds.

-josh

Northeast Regionals

15 teams, and the dreaded pool play. The conditions on Saturday were very windy at times (25 mph slightly diagonal upwind/downwind) and cold. The conditions on Sunday were a little less windy until late in the day and also pretty cold. there was frost on the grass during warmups on Sunday. Brrr.

Anyway, my goal for this weekend was to play every game like the finals. To make sure I warm-up to 100%, play every point my hardest, and make sure I and the team respects our opponents by playing as best as we can. My legs felt like lead all weekend because last week was my first week back from unemployment due to relocation. Working in the field for 12 hours a day on your feet is a surefire way to make your legs tired.

The first game of the day, we had Colt .45 for the first game of the day. We gave them different D looks, played very hard D, and were efficient after the turn. It should be noted that it wasn't windy yet. We won 15-2.

We then played Red Circus from Halifax. They drove something like 12 hours to get here. They had a fairly small roster, but played hard. We won 15-6. I think it was starting to get a little windier. On a strategy note: we found out that some of the D setups we have been experimenting with this season worked against teams that didn't know what it was. Always frustrating at practice when the O line knows exactly what you are doing, what the Ds weakness is and what its strengths are.

Replicants from NYC was next. They are a pretty talented team, and by this time it was a strong wind. They have around 3 handlers who play a lot of points, and a bunch of young athletic cutters. Strong enough that pulling upwind became difficult to make it further than a little bit over half field at times. I think we traded the first 4 points and they were very good to start by moving the disc well and hitting open receivers. They blinked first and our stingy D line scored and I think secured the downwinder. then the wheels fell off for them and they began trying crazy high-risk hucks and throws when I really think a simple throw would have been completed. We win 15-5.

Bye Round. Everyone just tries to stay warm, eat some food (because of the wind, there seemed to be little downtime to get real food in between games).

We then play bodhi. I think they are really fired up to play us, and we are really excited to play a team that will push us. We start out, and I think we trade a few points before bodhi gets 2 breaks on us. Their twisted metal-esque 1-3-3 was aggressively tight, and the wind was making it difficult to go over the top well. We had to make adjustments for the wind and swing the disc more than we normally do.

Bodhi was pretty fired up and was playing hard, physical ultimate and it was fun. They have a pretty talented team. After consistent, hard defensive pressure point after point, they start missing on their hucks and dump resets and we start getting the breaks back to take half 8-6 I believe. The wind is slowing down some which makes breaking the mark and hucking to space a lot easier. After half, we come out and I think break a few more times and bodhi's wheels start to fall off with drops and throw aways. I think we win out 15-8.

To wrap-up Saturday: Our O-line was broken 3 times (once by red circus and 2 times by bodhi), and our D line was efficient at scoring considering the wind and some marathon points played when the wind was really, really blowing hard.

From a me perspective: I thought I played well, although my legs were tired coming in from working in the field for the first time since august. That was a rude awakening back from funemployment. I had some nice breaks, some nice scores, good handler D, but I felt slow when people took me downfield. I can run faster, but my sore hips and hamstrings were not letting me turn over quickly. Pretty frustrating experience.

On Sunday: We played light and dark which is Amherst High + plus alumni friends. There were around 4 players on that team that I would have loved to tryout for us, bodhi, or sons. They have a really good zone D which, admittedly, helped them a lot on saturday. but, what i was most impressed with is that they all throw so amazingly well. They might have gotten either one or two breaks on us, one coming from a 90 yard i/o upwind flick bomb if i remember correctly. These kids were a real treat to play.

We then play Pony. Every year Pony gets more and more good players, and every year I think that this is their year to compete with ironside, goat, and bodhi, but they always seem to come up short at regionals. I have no idea if it is a mental hurdle or what. The wind is very strong at this point and the upwind pulls are getting a little half mid-field, and I think we trade a few points, but we are getting at least a turn every time they are on O. We are having some difficulty scoring upwind, and if we turn it over with our Ds O, it normally leads to an easier downwind goal with the shortened field. One of the first chances to break, I make their job really easy by doinking a disc off my thumbs to start a play right in the endzone they are attacking. Trying to do too many things at once instead of making sure.... Nice gift josh.

The wind has made it difficult to run transitions zones and other things because we are working on so short of a field when pulling upwind. After the turn, we try to fast break as much as possible in order to get some crisp throws off to start. This leads to a bunch of handlers cutting downfield, which must look pretty enjoyable from the sidelines, watching a bunch of squirrels making 5 yard jukes from the back of the stack.

It might be either right before or right after half that they drop a pull. After that, they had their heads down and there was no question who was going to win that game. We close out 15-9.

Next up is our regional rival goat. I really like playing them. Their handlers are pretty incredible and fun to cover. Although DJ is playing with the masters team this year, they bolstered their O handler power by adding a super fast swede guy (joel?) and derek alexander. With those 2 and Tolly, their Russian handler, behind the disc, you have to watch out for getting taken to the house. By this point, my legs were trash and knew that this was going to be a challenge. Luckily, I got all my standing on ladders, crawling through ductwork, and squatting for 12 hours a day out of the way from now until nationals, so that shouldn't happen to me again.

Aside: Goat might have too many talented O handlers and should move some to their D line. There is no need for 5 of them, especially if hassel is sometimes behind the disc. I think if they would put tolly or some other O handler with good D on the D line, that would lead to easier d goals for them.

Anyway, we start out and I think we go up 4-1 on them as they can't seem to figure out how to throw backhands in the wind. The normal textbook bombs that they throw are just landing 1 field over. I have never played a game like this where I am on the team that is absolutely just dominated a really good team like that before. (I have been on the opposite side though, and it sucks.... I think Metal got curb stomped 15-3 or something at chesapeake one year by viscious cycle). We wind up closing it out 15-6.

Another interesting thing I found out this weekend is that Goat doesn't normally have weekend practices, but rather they practice on the weekdays. Mindblowing. I think it would be really interesting to figure out a lot of the teams practice schedules.

Anyway, then I watched Quiet Coyote stop beating themselves and earn a trip to nationals. And I watched PoNY have nothing go their way and have no energy against Bodhi. Bodhi is the deeper team than PoNY, and there is no question that Bodhi has bigger huckers in the wind, but I at least thought the game was going to be a slugfest.

That is about it. I think both Goat and Bodhi are going to upset teams in pool play. I think depending on conditions and if they can get handlers clicking with their receivers, Goat could win their pool.

-josh

Loose Ends, General Thoughts, and the Fireball of the South

The fall series is starting, college teams are forming up, club teams are ramping up for regionals, and everyone is filled with hopes.

MIT is going to have some pretty big transitions this year. For the first time in a long time, they are going to have a new coach(es), have to play without a kevin albert / andrew ji type athlete, and have to develop pretty much all new handlers.

I saw on a website that there is a small chance that college nationals could wind up in philadelphia or at my old stomping ground, lehigh. I feel 12 nice fields at lehigh might be hard unless they were allowed to use the football stadium, the soccer stadium, and the field hockey turf. but if they are allowed to do that, that would be pretty sweet. nice weather in the spring, moderately windy, beautiful campus.

speaking of beautiful fields, i got to use my "out of towner" pass this last weekend for NE sectionals and instead watched NC mixed sectionals at the Eurosport soccer complex. those fields were AWESOME. as far as my thoughts about mixed sectionals were:
1.) only having 5 women on a team is a terrible idea. after 2 games the women are lucky if they can still move.
2.) only tau dumped swang well.
3.) don't complain about a team calling a timeout in a time cap situation. you had the whole game to beat them.
4.) STEP OFF THE MARK. a good mark isn't a stationary straddle. vary your depth. there was a player on clean plate club, strasser (udel guy from way back), that just would work it up the field by reaching around the mark who was leaning into him... repeatedly, like every other pass, and the mark refused to do something different.

I have no idea what this post is talking about. i don't mean it in a bad way, i just can't grasp what it is referring to. maybe because i am not really a thrower. I guess it is saying that it is good to be able to decouple your legs from your top half so you can break. Or maybe it is saying that a lot of the throws int he elite game are released at shoulder height? There was a video link on the site that tried to show the two different breaks. It just looked like normal breaks to me. Most of the time, short breaks are released high and soft, and long breaks are released low and fast. I don't know if that is what it was referring too. I think it is more of a situational thing. i don't know if he was talking about the hucks or the breaks either.

Being 700 miles away from your team means track workouts alone. Track workouts by yourself suck. especially this year because we are doing more field specific workouts (change of direction, cleats, etc) than just running 400s and 200s this year. we did have some 200s last week and it was a joy because you can't lie to the watch.

some examples of the stuff we are doing are:

what we call the team usa box drill, i guess they did this at team usa tryouts, or something.... it is the devil.















This week, among various other shuttle runs, we have 3 sets of 2 reps of this. 1:30 of rest in between reps, 4 mintues between sets. the key is to do it as hard as humanly possible. your legs will be plenty tired towards the end. I think this would be a good college relay drill.

This, and the simulated D points are the two hardest things for me. They just ravage my legs. Simulated D points though might be a bit overkill for a college team that practices 3+ times a week since you can actually just play good D instead of having to pretend you are playing. ahhhh college.

we bumped up to one "track" workout and one speed workout a week now. I am also trying to get some riding in on the nice country roads out here. my wednesday night pickup has stopped since the team i was picking up with didn't qualify for regionals, so i am going to have to find another throwing outlet fast.

I am also having a hard time coming to grips with the fireball in the southern sky. it is no joke. it is so much more intense than up north. if you are outside around noon, you feel it could just melt you into the ground. I just did this weeks cardio workout around then and it was awful.

speaking of nonsequiturs, sorry, my brain is mush right now. another drill that we did some this year is a variation on the break mark drill. you know the two line drill where you mark, throw, and then cut for the breakmark? well, this one you have 1 mark for 5-10 throws, one thrower for those throws, and a line of cutters. after the thrower throws they do a shuttle run (maybe 5-10 yards back) and then the mark hands then another disc, taps it in, and the cut from the back of the "stack" happens. i like it because 1.) you get a lot of throws in to make immediate adjustments in you throws, 2.) as a marker, you can learn to make adjustments on the fly. 3.) it does a better job of throwing tired than the breakmark drill. if you ever want to change up the breakmark drill, you can try this drill if you have space.

wow, this post is one of the most jarbled posts ever. mental note: don't post after workouts.

-josh

Chesapeake, You Win Again...

Ever since chesapeake has been in existence, it has been my least favourite tourney. Don't get me wrong, the location is tremendous, it is drivable from boston (if you are an idiot), and the fields are normally flat-ish and nice for august on the east coast.

However, there is one thing that I associate with late-august in Virginia: extreme heat and humidity. Oh, and severe underperformance.

Metal would always be having a promising season only to have our legs knocked out from us at chesapeake. The past hasn't been too much better for ironside (double game point win against forge, getting blown out by chain the year before).

This year, the weather was great, the fields were pretty flat except there were deep, narrow holes in the field apparently caused from horses. how the horses don't snap their legs off in the holes still confuses me. If anything they were a little hard, but, again, it is august on the east coast.

Friday: I drove through some pretty bad storms to get up there. it took a little over 6 hours (5 hours on the way home), and got in only to find that a lot of the team had delayed flights and I wasn't the last person rolling in at 11 at night.

Saturday: woke up, got to the fields, and had a full 12 hours of ultimate ahead of us. oof. game, game, bye, game, bye, game is a pretty rough schedule.

We played Madison first. It was a fairly chippy game. probably the most calls out of any team we played all weekend. we got up and got into control the first half, and then our D line got lazy and stopped getting turns and our O line in the second half coughed up and got scored on a few times. All of a sudden it was 11 all game to 12 with madison pulling. our O line had a miscue which left a force side throw floating out in space to no one, and madison about 20 yards out for the win. However, our O line buckled down and played D getting a turn and then marching it up the field for the win. The win didn't give us any good feelings though.

We played El Diablo next. They pretty much are a young team of a lot of hard, scrappy workhorses and had one really good player who could cut very well and throw bombs. We slowly pulled away in that game.

We then went to get some real food since we would be playing until after 7 pm that night.

We played truckstop next featuring ex-metalurgist, brian stout. stout of course was shirtless 90% of the time. We played pretty well against them and did a great job of putting a lot of defensive pressure on their handlers and cutters. after the turn, we were very efficient with the disc.

Then, we had the second bye of the game. just in time to start to feel how hard the fields had been on our bodies.

After that bye, we played in one of two "showcase" games. I would have rather played our game earlier and had time to watch revolver vs. chain, but, I am not the TD. We played ring of fire. Again, they play us very well with their poachy D, force middle, and transition zones, but the more we see it, it seems the better we do against it. We started out super sloppy. Luckily both teams wanted to play that way.

I was happy to see steve poulous(sp?) back and playing. Rusty and Jared again scored or threw a lot of goals against us. On D we got a lot of turns, but the force middle D slows us down some as the D cutters don't quite have the same flow as the O cutters have (and the D handlers don't have the same breaks).

We go home, swim in danny clark's pool, and eat some great food his family cooked.

Sunday, we wake up, get to the fields. and get ready to play Bodhi. bodhi just got done playing the pre-quarters. Their offense never clicked the whole time we played them, although individuals on their O line played well. Our D line scored every time we had the disc until late into the second half. towards the end of the game, bodhi got one or two breaks on our O line, but we were in control.

We then had about 15 minutes before the chain game, and we all just sort of wandered off to do our own things. there was no warm-up or focus. chain had an almost full roster here and it seemed at least from an O line perspective most of their players were healthy.

We start on O and our o line is not clicking. they are doing a good job on our handlers forcing us to go to the second or third dump option a lot, and we cough up the disc 4 times in the first 2 points. not good. i think they only get one break in that series though.

The D line struggled to stop their 4 man play out of ho or vert. the combination of zip, dylan, aj, cricket, joel wooten, etc is a pretty big task. not to mention their handlers are very good as well at both breaking and hucking. when chain is on, they are very hard to stop.

in 8 D points i think we got one turn and then immediately gave it back on an errant huck (which is increasingly leading to my belief that if you are struggling to get a turn, your first opportunity it might be a good idea to try to work the disc up with methodical in cuts - safer passes since you haven't thrown in a long time and it tires out the O line who, if you do score will be out on the line for the next point - another thought for another day). The D line did get opportunities for Ds that did not fall our way. we had a couple tipped discs, Ds that another O player caught, and a couple near misses. on a different day, maybe they would have been turns, but the bottom line is we got beat and beat bad. I think they scored 80% of their goals in less than 5 passes (we played some zone against them as well).

On the field over, it looked like ring was handing it to revolver, but apparently the game was pretty close. The final was not close. Both teams play pretty similar offenses, but chain just has more dynamic throwers. we tried to get revolver to play us for 3rd but they said they didn't want to because they had labour day next weekend.

Lots to work on as sectionals and regionals approach.

from a me perspective, i thought i had a very good tourney offensively and defensively. On sunday i felt a little slow from my joints being stiff from the fields, but after a few points of the bodhi game i was at full speed. I still need to work on my throws, my marking, and my quickness and speed before we get to regionals. I am looking forward to it.

-josh

ECC: Wrap-Up

The two weeks leading up to ECC were pretty crazy. Emily was away in Magnetewan, Ontario with childhood friends and it was my last week of work, so, i pretty much lived at the office that week.

I packed, painted, took doors off hinges, pulleyed couches down from the 3rd floor porch, put doors back on, recycled computers, etc from sunday to monday night. 3rd floor moving sucks. tuesday-wednesday traveling from boston to philly, then philly to pittsboro, nc. thursday the truck came, i unpacked everything just in time to get a ride to the airport.

all in all, i had 1 day of throwing in 2 weeks, not good.

on friday we played johnny bravo, kie, and sockeye.

johnny bravo has had a bunch of roster changes, but for the most part, their handlers are the same. they struggled against our zone looks and they also gave up the disc on hucks. we played pretty sloppy but won.

kie was short, fast, and chippy. they hucked i think 0 times on us, but they consistently managed to get the unders. they struggled with zone and we played it a lot and worked on having different personnel learn our different zones.

we then played sockeye which would have been an "under the lights" game for us since it was 9:30 or so start time boston time. i think we went down a break the first half. they did what they historically do to us which is front our players, especially our handlers, and force us deep. this year we have a more consistent deep game, plus jeff isn't as injured as he was all last season.

on defense tim gehret (sp?) was tearing us up. he gives and goes very well. and their cutters were non-stop in and out ho machines as usual. in the end, it was all about the fact that sockeye coughed up the disc more than us.

from a me perspective, i didn't feel up to speed until the sockeye game and my legs on the mark were still kind of dead. too much travel and heavy lifting for me.

after that, we went to a nice, completely empty family-run italian restaurant and made some owners evening.

Saturday: we played ring, furious george, and jam. ring came out on fire and played an interesting cup in the front, man in the back zone against the ho stack transition as well as their typical poachy, force-middle defense, and it got them up 3-0. our own d line got 0 turns in the first half, which i did not help our cause with two turns during the same D point. i had little confidence in my throws all weekend and i was having a lot of trouble on my forehands as my shoulder was sadly really, really stiff from me being so weak and carrying heavy stuff all week before.

ring was also dropping hammers all over the place in the first half. 30-55 yard hammers to cutters in stride. sometimes there is little you can do but tip your hat when people are that on (and then force backhand).

the second half, ring's O just started to hiccup and there was a dropped pull, at least two drops with their men hearing footsteps, and a couple huck turnovers. our o line remembered that it is stingy and stopped turning it over.

I had never beaten furious before this weekend. they had smashed metal in the past at nationals, and i was interested to see how furious would look like this year. the take away message in playing them is that oscar guy can bomb bendy flick hucks down the sideline to really tall receivers.

I think we went down by 4 in that game, but the difference was that we got breaks in the first half. towards the end of the second half, we were in the drivers seat again.

jam had about 15 dudes, so it was a little frustrating only getting 3 or so breaks on them. they are all pretty talented and don't turn the disc over if they don't have to. they are still the best team at dump swinging and attacking the underbelly of defenses that we played all weekend.

on a me perspective: this day was my worst day, my legs were slow, and my forehand was crazy.

paul, will, chicken, seth, and i went to the river and sat in it for an ice bath. it was awesome.

sunday morning we played goat. i like playing them because they have pretty talented and fun handlers to cover. we played a lot of transition, and other stuff to get hassel and big andy out of their normal rhythm. there was a little bumping and things got heated in the first point of the game, but cooler heads prevailed and we played well and nicely after that.

after goat, we played chain. they had maybe 15 people like jam, but they were clicking and absolutely crushed ring in the game before. they gave us a game, but eventually our legs wore them down and we did a good job of containing their stars (dylan wasn't there.... i have yet to beat chain when dylan and jason simpson both are uninjured. hopefully we will get our shot at chesapeake).

chain is going to be really strong this season. they are filled with great athletes who also happen to be great throwers. it seems like every good cutter they have could be a handler as well.

the next game was revolver. they are pretty stingy with the disc like we are, but run through their cutters. their handlers pretty much get the disc started and then occassionally go for deep strikes. it seemed like in the slight amount of wind, that was a better strategy.

we blew a goalline d break, but all in all, we did not play very well. it was windy enough that there was a noticeably easier side to score from, and because of the break, our D line spent a lot of time going upwind which meant i would see less pt since i am not what you would call an upwind thrower (stupid bird arms).

i did not play very well this game. my legs started to go and i made an abysmal dump cut being the third option for a trapped thrower and got absolutely blown up by the second dumps man. my fault. that could have been the game right there. goes to show games are one and lost on simple things like dumps. we also seemed very disjointed on offense, often looking off swing passes to hold the disc to look for the huck. this let the dump defenders set up properly and made completing dumps harder for us than with most teams.

i was really impressed with revolvers D. Their handler D worked our handlers pretty well, and they did a good job on our cutters. I can't wait for the rematch, and i hope they bring close to a full squad to chesapeake.

that is pretty much all i know. i have been using my time off to get in shape (bike riding, running, sweating in the sweltering carolina sun), and I am going to try to throw around at least 3 times a week outside of practice.

chesapeake looks fun, except for the super late showcase game. i think if it goes to seed it will be against goat and i love playing those guys, so it should be fun.

-josh

Ironside 2009

Well, I made it through what was the longest, most competitive tryout I have ever done. By Cazenovia, there were 36 good players, all of whom I am pretty sure all of the top teams in the region would have gladly taken on their teams.

A few weeks later, the tryout list was down to 33 and all of those 33 could play on any national calibre team. It was all about the selection committee making the pieces fit, and, I was lucky enough to be one of the final 27. I view it more of an ivy league college selection process, everyone that made it deserved to make it, and everyone who didn't, didn't necessarily deserve to not make it.

Because there were so many talented handlers, because I kind of suck at throwing, and because I am moving in August down to Chapel Hill, I thought I had an uphill battle to make the team. I did have the fact that I had a really good season last year help me, and the fact that I improve year to year, but, it was tough. The weekdays were the toughest because they were out of my control. The weekends were when I became super-unnervous because I knew I had control of one thing.... how I played.

I am not terribly athletic in a general life standard, and I am definitely not athletic for a national level player standard, so, it takes me a while to get back in the groove which is always scary in the tryout process. The first couple weeks, I just didn't have enough leg muscle to be fast (I lose about 10 pounds during the off season).

As the tryouts got longer, I just focused on the stuff I am good at: scrappy handler D, getting down on the pull, handling with my legs, breaking the mark, and trying to have zero turn days.

So, now that I made the team, it is time to get to work on becoming better. I am planning on working out like a maniac, throwing a ton (have to find some people to throw with / play mini down in NC), and doing whatever I have to do to put the team in a situation that we can win.

I am really excited about the team. I think we have a strong shot of winning it all if we work hard, and, if the intensity of the practices at tryouts stays up, we are well on our way of achieving our goal.

-josh

Will Neff won the Callahan

Awesome.

That is all.

MIT on TV??

A couple weeks ago, the team was contacted by the discovery channel on a show called Time Warp. Apparently it is hosted by an MIT professor and the slo-mo photographer lives near Boston. They were interested in the MIT team because of the connections with the host.

Anyway, after some emails back and forth, they came out to watch a practice today and to talk to the kids a little about ultimate. I got there late and the production people had already left, so no clue as to how it will go down. Anyway, we are going to film on May 22nd all day. I think they are just going to film slow motion throws, layouts, point blocks, and people catching.

It should be fun. I hope it promotes the sport in a positive light and works as a recruiting tool for the team.

More details to follow as I know more.

-josh

Regionals: we had a good run

My goal for the team this year was for them to make Sunday of regionals. It is pretty much my goal every year, but this year it was a bit of a stretch considering the fact that we lost every single game including all the consolation games at regionals last year.

We go into regionals with I think 15 players. About 10 of which I would consider "A team" if there was an A and B team split. The others show a lot of promise, but just aren't at regional level yet. The biggest hurdle as a team this year has been: 1.) Lack of numbers for the team and 2.) Communication, sideline voice, etc.


We go into the UConn game knowing they have a few good players, and that we should try hard to isolate them and win those matchups. MIT matched up well on the teams with a few stars this year, and were blown out by teams with no real stars but rather about 14-15 solid players.

I think we got down the first couple of points just playing jittery offense. Wide open pass, to wide open pass, to a deep look that is either to no one, or is just out of reach. A couple rock solid players are just sort of sleep walking through the game (another problem is that MIT classes don't start until like 10 a.m., so very few of them are used to being up at 8, let alone playing).

I call timeouts, remind them that the game won't be won by itself, and that we are playing a good team, and they are going to win if we don't work on defense. Finally, due to nothing I said, we start to play better. Andrew Ji is just starting to roll and getting layout D blocks, skies, and taking over the offense. This will be the theme throughout the tourney. Andrew and our other senior, Footsteps, played the best tourneys I have ever seen them play. The both played close to 100 points for the day (ouch), and they both were getting layout blocks even when battling cramps in the last game.

Anyway, the game is very back and forth, We normally get down, tie it up, and then get down by 3 again. It isn't until 10s that we trade the next two points and then score the next to to win in a cap 13-11. All in all, not a good start, we played a lot of ultimate already, and we aren't playing efficient. Luckily, our junk D we worked on to save some legs worked out well.

The next game is against middlebury. They aren't very deep either, but their top 5 or 6 players are all very talented. If they only had 1 or 3 solid players, we might have had a chance, but, they were too talented and athletic for us. oof. Tough loss. In the second half, I pull some players and play the younger kids.

We now have to bounce back off of a loss, something that MIT doesn't do very well at all. We walk to the new fields and find that UMaine has upset URI. This is a little bit of a surprise, but after seeing UMaine play in the first couple of points, it became clear how it happened.

UMaine ran a really cool give-n-go oriented handler motion with the ho stack cutters cutting and then looking to throw break side dishey passes to the handlers streaking up the field. In other words, they just never stopped moving for one second. For the first couple of posessions, we never had them hold the disc longer than 2. That was a bad sign. Looong game.

On defense, they ran a very aggressive junk against a ho stack that was effective in making us throw a lot of passes. I didn't spend too much time on handler defense and different styles of marking this year, and that came back to bite me as only a handful of kids could actually play D on the handlers without being toasted just watching the guy throw and go. It is ironic that i am a handler defender I know.

Anyway, back to the game, they take half 8-5. Andrew, Owen, and I give a speech about how this is it, the game is in our control, but we have to want it. We then come out a little flat as the kids are trying to learn how to play with emotion and not be so robotic. Then, the blocks start flowing, and we start to climb back into the game on the back of andrew ji and footsteps. The kids have also realized that UMaine has no answer defensively for andrew, and they start jacking it deep to him with abandon.

We tie it at 12s, make it 13-12 us, I think at some point though, really close to 15 all, we get broken when one of their players just played good dump D and got a well-earned block. We pull at 16 all, they drop a contested dump pass, and then we work it up, and i believe score on an upline pass to footsteps for the game winner.

I think in hindsight, we should have forced middle to slow down the give-n-gos. Our marks in gerneral are sub-par though, and our communication on the field is minimal with only about 4 players that routinely talk on the field.

We then get ready to play BC. They are not tremendously talented as a whole, but they are deeeep. They have about 18-20 players who are all capable and competant to play at a regionals level, and they have this kid named Phil who is a talented cutter and handler.

We were out of water, and we couldn't find the spicket. That was a little annoying. We already had players cramping in the last game, and I knew we were in trouble. Too many points played by too few players.

We start out, and I think go down a couple early. We are fighting and working, and as more and more kids tire, Andrew picks up even more of the load. We tie it up close to 5s, and then i think they take half 8-5 or 6. Phil's hammers are giving us troubles and he throws them late in the count, and the kids are too tired to react to them. He is also doing a nice job of keeping the O moving when not throwing hammers.

We take the full halftime, and we are physically spanked. I have seen the look at a team that has played too many points before (regionals second half against dartmouth 2 years ago), and it is a terrible thing to see as a coach. There was nothing I wanted to do more than to go out and play with them.

Everyone looks around in the huddle, and are determined to leave it all on the field. We come out and start to claw our way back into the game slowly. Again, the d's come through andrew and footsteps, and the goals come primarily from andrew just out-athleting BC. The game is taking it's toll on him though, and he is starting to cramp after every goal.

I call timeouts just to rest people, and we get back into the game at 9s. they go up two breaks i believe, and then we score to make it 11-10. I call a timeout to rest some more and get ready for the final push, but there just isn't any gas left in the tank. we get several ds but we start to sputter on O, handlers missing dumps, throws to space to people not there, and people standing around just letting their man poach off.

BC runs away with it 15-10. the last point, the kids are so tired that they don't count properly to match-up on D, communication rears its ugly head one last time.....

In one way it is a good thing that they won because either way, they were going to be the fresher of the two teams on sunday. no amount of ice baths can wash away 100 points in a day.

on the other hand, it would have been a really nice way to end a coaching career to see the kids you coached for 4 years get to experience the magic of sunday of regionals where anything can happen. It would have also gotten andrew ji exposure to others that don't know how good he is. he has one of the highest ceilings out of anyone i have ever coached, and i expect that sometime within the next couple of years, his impact on the club series will be known.

I guess as a consolation, i know that i coached 2 players for the full 4 years of college and both of them are capable of contributing to a club national level ultimate team. something to be proud of, but i couldn't say that if they didn't work so hard as individuals.

Anyway, that is it for the season. Club tryouts for ironside and sons of liberty tomorrow, and a bunch of MIT kids are trying out, so it should be fun to play with them. I hope all of them make sons of liberty since that will be a great experience for them.

-josh

I never put on a uniform to play a game.

..... I put on a uniform to win. - Larry Bird

I have never had the desire to impose your will to win on a game more succinctly described than that. Read those two sentences again, and again, and again.

This year, MIT got jerseys early in the season, so a lot of people received jerseys who eventually cut themselves because they couldn't handle the late night winter practices, track workouts, and outside practice on the astro-turf in 25 degree weather. In my mind it cheapened what a uniform stands for or what it means to belong to it.

If I had my way, the jerseys would have been passed out shortly before sectionals. By then, the roster is set, those who still remain know what it means to work for one another, has been through the ups and downs, and understands what it means to take a group of individuals and make it something greater than the sum of those individuals.

In essence, what it is to be a TEAM. Everyone is working to bring out the strengths of each other while letting others lean on them to overcome their weaknesses.

We are in bonus ball time. Every point we win means that we get to play one more point with each other. And, if you think about it, that is really what we are fighting for; to extend the season.

We are going into regionals seeded 8th. Anyone in the top 12 or so could beat anyone. The difference is all about who wants to win. And, hopefully, looking into your teammates eyes early saturday morning will be reason enough to get that fire, that ball of hate for the other team trying to end your season.

Play with your heart.

We come out flat too often. We wait around until we are down 4-0 and then start slowly playing, sometimes, we don't even start until the second half. Don't wait for a reason.....


i could write pages and pages about the difference between wanting to want to win, and flat out wanting to win, but i think al pacino says it best.

http://youtube. com/watch? v=9rFx6OFooCs

That is heart, that is the ball of hate, and that working so hard for every inch of the field for your teammate and brother so you can play one more second, one more point, one more game, and one more tournament with him.

You guys have worked so hard to build back from 2 years ago. Don't throw it away by waiting for a reason to play D.

Work hard, take the extra few steps to set up a cut, step out on your throw, clear hard, or reposition yourself on D.

Don't wait for a reason. Do not wait for a reason.

You already have a reason: each other.

Stomp on their throats. Don't let anyone or anything stand in your way.

Inch by inch.....Tech on seven
-josh

Ramping Up for Regionals....

MIT is busy learning some new tricks for regionals, but mostly, we are working on the same old fundamentals since really, the team that plays their game the best normally wins.

We are focusing on continuation cuts, attacking deep more, handler motion, etc.

The kids have an alumni scrimmage Saturday, practice tuesday, scrimmage vs. sons of liberty wednesday, and the final practice on thursday to go over any loose ends.

On Thursday after practice, I arranged the team to do a workshop with my friend and former Metal teammate, Max Woolf, who is a motivational speaker / life coach. I think this will be really good for the kids to get in the right mindset for regionals.

I think a lot of ultimate, and a lot of college ultimate is basically about who wants to win more. There are a lot of mental headcases in this sport, and the baggage they carry onto the field with them amazes me. I don't want that to be something that holds us back.

-josh

Sectionals Recap...

We rolled into Saturday 14 deep. 3 rookies, 4 sophomores, 2 juniors, and 2 seniors, and 3 grad students (only one in his last year of eligibility (and first on the team)). I think that is the breakdown at least.

We made two even lines, dubbed ingeniously, "line 1" and "line 2", and played each line for 2 points at a time for the first 2 games. The first game was against wentworth. They had a couple dangerous players, but were mostly a young team. We made sure to bookend their good cutter and force their main handler with big lefty throws out, and beat them 15-6.

We then played Bentley-B, and beat them 15-3. The last couple of the points, we played what would be our "o line" against them to get them used to playing together.

We have had several key injuries ankle injuries that have left us with only 3 handlers and missing a couple good O cutters, so this entire weekend we worked on having an efficient O. We focused on moving the disc quickly, communication amongst the handlers, and good hard cuts and clears from the cutters.

We then had our big showdown of the day which was Northeastern. The kids were pretty pumped up to play them since they played them and won in a very close game under the lights a couple of weeks ago at MIT, but the victory was far too close to leave them confident about it. We start on O, score, and then score the next 3 points to make it 4-0.

We go zone, they score with their main handler, piccard?, picking it apart. At some point, their tall fast kid casey rolls his ankle. We trade until 5-2, and then we score the next 5 in a row.

We then go back to line 1 and line 2 trying to play everyone and finish 15-5. Pretty good day for MIT. We played aggressive D. Got a lot of Ds on in cuts either by forcing a bad throw, or by smothering the dump, and we won a lot of the air battles.

We go to olive garden, everyone is happy. It should also be noted that we played on quite possibly the worst fields ever and came out injury free (i made everyone with ankle issues in the past wear their braces), but, we wouldn't have been able to play sectionals if not for those fields.

Sunday...

We come out on Sunday 15 strong with an additional rookie.

We begin by playing Harvard. MIT had a good warm-up, everything was clicking, and they were fired up to start. We come out on fire, getting numerous Ds and bookending their cuts which worked very well for stagnating their flow. We made sure not to let stubbs throw his backhand upwind because we felt we had a better chance at d'ing his long flick hucks. We had numerous players step up and made big plays on O and D for use, and we took half 8-5. Our handlers were moving the disc well, and we responded to the clam and junk well by moving it around and picking apart the holes.

We then start the second half well, but Harvard makes a late run getting to within a break in the cap, and we manage to punch in the final upwinder on a long huck to andrew ji.

We then have a two hour bye. We do our best to eat, get in cars to get warm, and drink, but once we get back out to warm up, the spring is a little lost. We start the game against tufts, and have a couple hiccups and then tufts proceeds to walk all over us. We proceed to look tired, frazzeled, and have numerous unforced turn-overs. At around the beginning of the game, ji bruises his heal and cannot play for the rest of the weekend.

It should be noted that tufts good D accounts for a lot of these throwaways. To date, they definitely have our number, but with that game over, we know we have regionals... and potentially another chance to play them.

Aside: Whatever tufts does as a program is pretty awesome. Their C team is larger than our team.

The 2/3 game is next, and Harvard was looking just as tired as us. We agree to play sooner than the 50 minutes that we were supposed to wait to play that round because both teams don't want to cool down only to have to warm back up. We come out and struggle a little to fill andrew's cutting role. Cody and Phys have done a lot of deep cutting and it is starting to show, our handlers stopped talking and cutting to create space for one another, and we started to have more and more miscues on offense. However, we never gave up fighting, and we still had numerous layout Ds, scrappy play, but on offense our tired legs just aren't getting it done to reward the effort.

We wind up losing fairly handedly. Overall, although I would have liked to have ended the weekend on a higher note, I think the team did very well. We held seed, proved to ourselves that we can play with anyone, and the loses will give us motivation for the next couple of weeks. We have lots to work on, and the team is getting better and better by the day. I am pretty excited for regionals, and since this will be my last season coaching MIT, I want to see the kids I have coached since freshman year be rewarded for all their hard work they have put into building this team in the past couple seasons.

-josh

Ouch....

We got smoked tonight. Tufts played pretty well (we really didn't give them an opportunity to play great), but the biggest opponent was ourselves. The team got weirdly intimidated and played very frantic offense.

Around the endzone, we abandoned our dump-swing, and tried to rely on really hard breaks and bending throws to space.... which never work.

I thought we played okay to good defensively. We had some points where we generated turns on hard man and zone D, but, we quickly squandered those opportunities with throwaways.

We need to work on marking. We aren't active enough. We are either doing the stupid college get really tight and don't move and wonder why you get broken mark, or we are doing the stand at a 45 and don't move and wonder why the huck went off mark. We just aren't being dynamic.

We are currently having trouble adjusting to clam or zone for a few. This is because our handlers are holding the disc for too long letting the D get a good look at things instead of throwing to what is there quickly and having the D adjust / catch up. Hopefully we will clear this up at tomorrows practice.

-josh

Sectionals....

I am back from working in Fairbanks, AK for a week, and MIT is ramping up for sectionals. We still have a ton to learn (starting disc in ho on sideline, getting comfortable with the second and third dump option, zone O with an active mark / off point, bookending D, etc.) and we are rapidly running out of time.

I hope we make it out of sectionals for the sole reason to extend the season because the team is really starting to gel and grow now at a fairly fast rate. It would be terrible if the season ended Sunday (let alone Saturday).

We have 2 practice days (tues and thurs) and 1 scrimmage with Tufts (Wed). Tufts looks very, very strong this year (for our region anyway), and will be the #1 seed at sectionals this weekend.

There are 5 spots for regionals up for grabs, and I really think it will be a dog-fight between 4-5 teams for the last 3 spots. Hopefully we will play well and won't get put into the death-march of a 5th place bracket since we have about 17 players on our team that aren't injured with a large talent spread (think A and B team combined).

This also presents problems at practice having the better players pushed, so I have been having either the coaches, some ironside guys, or some friends and college players taking the semester off from other schools come out to practices. I hope in the long run this is better. Anything is better than having 13 at practice though.

We have been streaky, prone to come out slowly in games and then play catch-up which is really exhausting for the "starters", and I hope starting this week that will change.

should be fun. I hope to update after Wednesday since I get 2 days off of work to try to recapture the time i lost on 30 hours of plane rides.

-josh

The importance of throwing the swing....

I think that completing the swing pass is a hugely under-valued skill, yet it separates the good handlers from the bad handlers, and the great teams from the average teams. There is little doubt in my mind that Jam's success in the finals (and the rest of nationals) this year was due in large part to their ability relentlessly swing the disc and constantly change the field giving them easy, low risk throws.

This year's version of MIT is pretty young and inexperienced, and we really only have two handlers who have played a handler role in our system for more than two years.

With that said, I am having trouble getting across the huge value of swinging the disc. We have worked a lot on dumping the disc (since being able to consistently dump the disc the most important skill you can possibly develop), and we add the swing component into that dump swing drill, but, for some reason, in real game situations we struggle to throw the swing.

I feel there are 3 reasons for this:

1.) Front of the stack isn't paying attention.

2.) The dump feels it is better to have the disc in his hands than the swings hands, so he greedily holds onto the disc.

3.) The dump is slow in the transition from the catch to the throw.

I will address each scenerio:

1.) The front of the stack (in our system, the front of the stack gets the swing the majority of the time) should always, always be looking at the thrower. I can't possibly think of a reason why he shouldn't be.

If the thrower turns to the dump, there are only 2 possible situations that the front of the stack is going to do: a.) be the swing, or b.) be the other dump option if the first dump doesn't get the disc.

Both of these options are easy to see and time if you are looking at the thrower. Always, always be making eye contact with the thrower as the front of the stack. Period. If you always make it a point to do this, you will always be ready to cut.

Nothing is more crushing to a coach than when you see a rookie work really hard to get a great dump throw off that goes to the dump, and the dump catches it and is in perfect position to throw, and there is NO ONE cutting to the break side. Crushing.

2.) Lack of trust with the front of the stack, not being prepared to throw, not thinking about throwing to the break side.

for some reason, especially in tight games, MIT's handlers this year, when they catch a dump, are not looking to swing the disc. They simply catch it, and make no effort to even look to the swing side immediately, some go in-so-far as to pivot back to the open-side.

This, as a whole, helps no one, and leads to an inordinate amount of turns. For one, you are turning back towards the person who just threw you the disc, and he, generally is already covered by the way the mark was set up on him. he is typically clearing out, which forces the thrower to have to either throw around him and his defender to an in cut, or, to hold the disc for an extended amount of time to wait for the throwing lanes to open again. All this does is lets the defense set up again.

If you are a good thrower and the swing cutter for some reason is not, it still should not stop you from throwing that pass. What you are doing is opening up the field by moving the disc horizontally, making the defense have to adjust, and, chances are, you are going to be the dump for the next throw.

A bonus to completing swing passes is that for every swing pass you complete, your mark is going to have to respect that swing throw more and more which will lead to the mark playing off of you more and more to try to stop the around. This will lead to some i/o looks to the front of the stack, some give-n-go opportunities, and easier throws all around.

3.) I think a lot of people think swinging the disc requires break throws. It actually doesn't at all. Most of the time, if a proper dump is given, you will have enough separation where all you have to do is throw a very simple, uncontested throw to space.

I think the trick comes in the preparation. When you catch the disc, you want to come out of the catch and be in proper throwing position, so, if it was force flick, when you pick your head up to look at the breakside, you want to already have your backhand ready to be released. What I mean by that is that you should NOT catch, look, windup, release. It should be catch, windup, lookup, release. this minor difference in the order of those things is HUGE.

Also, remember as well, you are throwing to the space where you want the swing cutter to be, you are not waiting for the swing cutter to get to a space and then trying to drill the disc at him.

I could go into the minutea of which foot to try to come down with first when catching and the angle you should attack the disc, or how to minimize the windup (something my club coach constantly tries to have me work on since I have tennis style backswings which no one needs), but, all you need to do is do what is mentioned above, and completing the swing pass will be really simple.

There are two things that really helped me learn how to swing the disc. When I played on a club team in philadelphia, the captains stressed the importance of moving the disc horizontally on the field and would swing the disc even if we lost some yards on it. They would stop drills if you didn't try catch the dump and come up ready to throw the swing.

The second thing was that I have practiced decoupling my lower half of my body from my upper half when throwing. This helps throwing on the run and I don't have to be fully planted to releasing the disc. I practiced this after reading something idris nolan wrote about him practicing throwing with his non-pivot foot off of the ground when throwing. Try it sometime; it will change the way you look at throwing.

Anyway, I am very hungry and it is food time. We are going to continue to work on this at practice, and I think that the kids are starting to understand the importance of swinging the disc because when they do it, they are starting to score much easier and they are opening up the field a lot more.

-josh

Away I go...

So, yesterday MIT had the last practice i will be at for over 2 weeks (st. lucia here i come!!).

There is still a lot to work on, and we have very far to go if we want to meet our goal of being a regionally competitive team.

The captains and leaders of the team sat down with me and we figured out a game plan for the next couple of weeks.

We need to work on zone offense as we haven't really taught it in full yet. MIT runs a two handler offense (they sort of ran a bad 2 or 3 handler offense in vegas), and we use a lot of handler motion to break the cup.

We have a couple good handler's this year that need to learn the system for it to be effective.

We also need to work on cutting in flow. The handlers are hesitant to throw the swing (note to aspiring college/club handlers, always be that guy who throws the swing....), and the cutters don't cut off of each other well. We have some drills lined up to do that.

The biggest hurdle we face as a team is taking the majority of the team who have played little to no organized sports before and having them see the field, see the patterns, and use the patterns to get d's. Right now, everyone just reacts a step slow.

okay, i have a wedding to get ready for, so, I will get back at this in 2 weeks. with what we are doing to help raise people's field awareness (can you?). Any thoughts on this?

-josh

Sick Day Post....

So, I am sitting here at home sick with my washing machine still in a dismantled heap in the basement, and me losing a days worth of work to sleep off a nasty cold.

Yep, that means time to update the blog. It has been a while.

MIT is currently in IAP. I have no idea what it is, but apparently only about half of the students opt to do it, and the half that are here, take a weird gaming class where they essentially spend every waking and non-waking hour programming to compete in some weird virtual game. Lame.

We also are having a fairly bad winter with lots of ice and snow keeping us indoors. Indoors is bad because we don't get any time (1 hour 2 Xs a week). Some parent of an MIT student just spent a lot of money on a new nexturf soccer field on the inside of the outdoor track. The next logical step would be for them to put a bubble over it so people can run indoors and play indoors. ..... maybe next year. As for now, it sits, unplowed. And although the team has offered to shovel it in return for some field time on it, the athletics department declined the offer.

So, for now, we are stuck doing track workouts, weight lifting, shuttle runs, and then as many drills as you can smash into 1 hour of time on about 80% of the available space in the area inside of an indoor track.

I am working on getting the handlers to be aggressive with their upline dump cuts. I am also working on getting the cutters to respond to those cuts with deep cuts for them. If we are aggressive with the upline cuts, we will either get a lot of upline dumps, or a lot of non-contested swings. If we get the upline throws, I want the handlers hard work to be rewarded with a viable deep option. I am hoping this will increase our deep look percentages and completions as well as opening up the underneath game.

I think it is hard for cutters to get a feel for how easy it is to throw a huck making an upline cut as opposed to hucking from a handler spot. Cutters normally have worse marks and more separation than handlers do allowing most of their throws to be easy. Handlers are rarely more than a couple steps open on their defender, and the defender is relatively fresh to put on a hard mark. Getting it upline with all your momentum with no mark is like christmas, even for a shitty deep throwing handler like myself - you have to try really hard to NOT complete that look no matter what dog meat you normally put up.

I am trying to get the team ready for vegas, but I am afraid that by the time they go there, they won't have played on more than a 40X 40 yard patch of indoor space for only an hour at a time.

Will catch up later, but time to sleep.

-josh