Short Regionals Recap
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Loading ...One week later, the recap. Gonna keep this real short.
Game 1, v. Metro Boston All-Stars of NY (which is to say, don’t know whos from don’t know wheres). Wagon starts off sluggish, is down 1 at half, picks it up a bit in the second half to win by a handful. I played a bit. Personal highlight was D’ing up on a terribly crappy dump cut around the back of the disc–guy lofts up a floating lead, thinking the dump will beat me–he doesn’t. I bid the tangent to make a chest-high layout grab for the D. I think we start sluggish here (and later) because of a lack of a good, concrete warmup to get us ready for game situations. We do some running and throwing drills, sure, but that’s the extent of it.
Game 2, v. GOaT, Wagon’s best game of the three. We go down 0-2 off the bat, but come out firing on all cylinders, get a couple short turns on D, and generally capitalize. Eventually GOaT gets their shit together and puts us away, but we ran a tight rotation and tight until a bit after half. I only played a few points, and wasn’t involved in much–all zone-man transition points.
Game 3, v. Gunslingers (aka McDermo’s squad). We come out weak again, both sides are playing sloppy early and middle. at 9-5 or something we open up our subbing rotation, and, surprise! we bring it back to 9′s. Funny what a difference fresh legs can make. We close the rotation up at this point and continue to suck it up and drop the game and any chance and progressing; McDermott and co go on to lose to Red Tide in their next game.
Good time, overall. Got to watch DoG hose Metal, Seigs threw and caught a score, I think. Good to watch some high-level ultimate, where receivers catch just about everything in their vicinity, throwers throw to space, and O generally looks pretty, nothing really forced. DoG looked really good. Keeps giving me something to aspire to. I remember specifically seeing Zip at one point as a wing in the zone; throw goes over the top, cross-field forehand to his man on his side–Zip closes something like 15 yards in the span of a couple seconds with his man, just in time to leap and get the D. Quite honestly, it was jaw-dropping how quickly he closed. Helps me realize that there is SO much benefit to be had simply from being more fit than your competition, helps me to know that if I keep working, by this time next year I could have 8-10 more lbs of muscle on me, and just be a monster. Motivates me to train hard, and train smart. I’m getting there–with flexibility and strengthening, the source of my knee woes is slowly coming into clear focus. Another month of strengthening and stretching, and I think I’ll be money–of course, then I’ll have all winter too…looking forward to being home without the distraction of classes this winter and continuing to whip myself into better and better shape. Wagon was a worthwhile experience for sure–it’s definitely enhanced my appreciation for some finer aspects of the game, and allowed me to look beyond simply how Dartmouth does ultimate to see hat there are many roads to the same destination (the endzone). though I can’t say it compares to the level of investment one feels in a college team.
That’s all for this post, I’ve got reading to do. Next weekend, Purple Valley, should be a blast. I’ll be looking to rein in my game a bit from Yale where I was looking to test myself on hucks and breaks a bit–as we solidify our roster and get our system in place it’ll be a lot easier for me to do my thing out of the stack and rely on my teammates to carry things through–simply put, I’ll have less impetus to be a playmaker and more impetus to be a player. If that makes sense. That’s my hope anyways; with this still being a tryout tourney, I’m sure there will still be ample opportunity for me to open things up. Decision making will be the primary focus.
DoG has some great athletes, though very few if nay DoGs train at the same level of dedication as you or even as I. Some guys just are born monsters.
I think DoG trains hard when we train but not all that intelligently. What we do do exceptionally is get our guys to recognize certain patterns on the field and make smart decisions. Considering where the sport is now, that’ll win you more games of ultimate than an excellent training regimen.
what specifically do you mean “not intelligently”?
Anon, in my experience, there’s a difference between training hard and training smart. I can, for example, do track workouts ’til the cows come home, but I’ve found that some time spent in the gym strengthening my posterior chain (hamstrings, glutes, primarily) doing deadlifts, as well as getting better balance in terms of my body’s strength, has given me just as much if not better returns. Now when I finally do start doing track workouts I’ll (hopefully) be at a higher level than I would’ve been otherwise. But that’s specific to me–it might not work as well for somebody with different needs athleticallly. It all depends, you see. Seigs might have different thoughts on the matter, this is the simplest way I could put it.
Seigs, I definitely agree that DoG plays very smart. I definitely remarked on more than one occasion about how high the team’s “frisbee IQ” is when I was watching. Obviously 2 turns all finals is the proof in the pudding there. But as much as smart decision-making will do well for you on O, it really does take solid athletes on D to counter, say, the huck-n-hope O. Athleticism enables smart decisions. It’s sort of like how in baseball, a batter can have a great eye, draw lots of walks, but if they stop hitting then the good eye is useless, because a pitcher will just blow stuff by them and superior athleticism will win out.