Thoughts.

Back to the UCPC recaps. I dropped the ball on these for a while, but the last two presentations I wanted to recap are the two that easily contain the most information to apply to an ultimate team. Both given by championship coaches–this one by Tiina Booth, coach of the ever-dominant Amherst Regional High School team, the second by Nathan Wicks, who took Brown to two National College titles–there’s a ton of insight to be gleaned.

Tiina’s presentation focused specifically on applying a lot of what Dr. Goldberg was talking about in his keynote speech. ARHS has been working with Dr. Goldberg for at least a couple years, from what I could gather.

I think one of the main things to keep in mind with all the information I have here is that, while it’s likely that a lot of the things Tiina does with her team does help, the comparison between ARHS and the overwhelming majority of high school teams is such that they would easily still be a top team without applying many of these methods. Don’t assume that anything here will instantly transform a team into a top talent.

Tiina broke up what she does with her team into three parts: pre-season, practice, and tournaments.

In the pre-season, Tiina spoke about goals and goal setting–drawing a large distinction between “outcome goals”–ie, things which you don’t have direct control over, but can influence (like “make nationals”–obviously, every team that sets that as a goal cannot reach it, but it is something to strive for), and “process goals,” which are things you DO have direct control over (like developing a consistent IO forehand break, or being able to run a 75-second 400. Obviously, these need to be realistic goals–nobody’s going to be able to reach a goal of an 8-second 100, or the like). Tiina said that the pre-season is the ONLY time they talk about outcome goals, whereas with process goals every player on the team will have their own individual process goals which they will write on an index card. Tiina has her players list 3 goals at a time. Every two weeks they’ll revisit the process goals, checking off or crossing out every completed process goal and writing in new ones so that players a) always have something to work towards and b) will ideally be making consistent, measurable progress that is easily measured with a glance.

Tiina further augments this process through a “buddy” system, where her older, more experienced players will be paired with newer, less-experienced ones, and they’ll help to hold each other accountable to their goals. The older players will also help the younger players in setting realistic, attainable goals, as well as generally offering guidance and support, on and off the field. This is a relationship that persists throughout the entire season, as all the players build on their process goals towards concrete, on-field results.

In practice, Tiina first spoke about the importance of people having so-called “great practices,” where a player’s focus is high and everything goes well. Tiina emphasized that while it’s certainly not possible for all players to have great practices all the time, it’s usually the case that at least a few will have a great practice on any given day. What she does is, she’ll ask at the end of a practice–”Who had a great practice today?”–and to those players that did, she’ll tell them to remember what it FEELS like, to try and hold on to that sense of confidence, and to carry it with them into tournament play.

She also went over some of the things that go along with having a great practice: high team spirit and enthusiasm (Tiina likes to say that “False enthusiasm is just as good,” and she’s right–false enthusiasm is just as contagious as the real thing, creating a positive self-feeding cycle rather than a negative one); drilling well–putting 100% effort and focus into everything practiced, keeping high standards for the team; and setting goals while scrimmaging–picking a player to cover who you know will be a challenge to guard, for example.

Ultimately, one of Tiina’s main goals in practice is to push the team beyond its comfort zone, to have them “Get comfortable being UN-comfortable,” so the team can relax as tournaments, which have a relatively lower intensity level. She also stressed the importance of eventually giving the team ownership of itself–a good coach will guide the team without constraining it.

With regards to tournaments, Tiina liked to compare them to a theatrical performance, where a team goes out and performs just as it rehearsed–Jim Parinella made a more apt comparison, though, in saying that a tournament is more like an improvisational comedy performance, where there are preset rules to follow for success, but within the framework of those rules there is plenty of room for adjustment to a given circumstance.

Tiina stressed that, in tournaments, as a coach she does very little micromanaging and absolutely does NOT introduce anything new to the team–she lets them play (though she won’t hesitate to tell her team to get its ass in order if it’s slacking). When it comes time to talk to the team, she’ll pick one or at most two things to focus on, keeping it simple and to the point, so as not to take her players out of a performance mindset.

She likes having a ritual warm-up for her team, and this is one of the things she lets her team take ownership of–especially for a team like ARHS, where they’re always under the scrutiny of somebody, and often play in games with decent-sized audiences, having the escape of a ritual warm-up definitely works towards reaching an optimal performance state.

In-game, Tiina is adamant about having strong, active sidelines–in many situations, players will be assigned to different parts of the field, rotating between the near and far sideline so nobody is too disconnected from the rest of the team, or talking to different roles (for example, “buddies” can talk to each other when one is in and the other out). When it comes to sidelines, she always wants her sidelines to be up and in the game regardless of score, regardless of situation, regardless of team morale–the sidelines should never be a tell of the team pulse.

Attitude-wise, at tournaments the attitude should always be positive, loose, and relaxed. It’s important to push in practice, but at tournaments it’s far more important to relax and just play the game the way you know how. Hand-in-hand with this is dealing with mental traps, distractions, etc. Dealing with mental blocks is often as simple as acknowledging the distraction and moving on, rather than trying to ignore it. Like Dr. Goldberg says, it’s not a matter of how well you can stay focused, but how quickly and easily you can recognize a loss in focus and re-focus. She said that, if she’s got a player who’s really in their own head, she’ll force them to take a break, tell them to go for a jog and try and work through whatever mental blocks they have, and come back ready to play.

Lastly, Tiina does a team morale check of sorts before games–she’ll ask what kind of nervous the team is: good, bad, or not nervous enough. In the case of the first, it’s good to have some jitters and be a bit aroused in anticipation of playing. In the case of the second, bad nervous often has to do with uncontrollables–worried about losing to a good team, worried about impressing the parents, etc. In dealing with these sorts of blocks, it often helps to list the uncontrollables that you are or might be getting hung up on in order to better acknowledge and deal with them. In the case of the third, which can happen when playing a team that ARHS knows it is far better than, Tiina or the team will agree to up the ante a bit by setting some harder process goals for themselves–zero turnovers, etc.

In an effort to reduce the level of distraction of her team (though I think this is kind of silly), Tiina never refers to the opposing team by name. In the vein of keeping the focus on the self (Tiina also never lets her players scout other teams, since it changes their focus), every team is numbered accordingly with their place in the season (team #1 is the first team, etc).

That sums up my notes on Tiina’s presentation. A ton of really, really good stuff to apply there.

Related posts:

1. UCPC Review, Part 5 (the final: "A Season of High-level College Ultimate," Nathan Wicks)
2. UCPC Review, Part 3 (Keynote Speech, Dr. Alan Goldberg)
3. UCPC review: Part 1 ("Fitness and Training for Ultimate," Bryan Doo, Dan Cogan-Drew)
4. UCPC review: Part 2 ("Marking: Techniques and Tactics", Ben Wiggins)
5. The Mental Components of Layout Training