Resets: Or, the Most Important Thing in Ultimate Frisbee
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Loading ...Yeah, yeah, throwing and catching. Fundamentals aside, here, let’s talk about one step up–the dump. Absolutely essential as a building block for any offensive strategy (even if you Huck and Hope, you’re going to make some dump-like passes to set that up at some point).
It doesn’t take a team strategist to figure this out. Dumps give you a reset on the count, and, when leveraged correctly, are a WEAPON. Anybody who played against Dartmouth last year (particularly our D line) can attest to the lethality of the dump if you fail to contain it. Conversely, a team that dumps poorly is going to give up its fair share of short turns, and if you can’t dump with competence, then these same dumps will lead to a slower, more predictable (read: easier-to-defend) offense.
You know the whole analogy about how the running game sets up the passing game in football? With ultimate, the dump game similarly sets up the rest of the offense.
There are tiers of dumping. How comfortable are you?
- The “get a reset” dump. You look dump at high stall, and have to rush a throw. OR the dump cutting is ineffective (you have a “dancer” who doesn’t get open by much, and takes 4 seconds to do it). Either way, the throw winds up more or less shovel passed to the receiver, who gets the disc somewhere within the vicinity of 2-5 yards of the thrower (and likely coming toward the thrower or moving straight back). No advantage gained, merely a new count to look upfield and insist that somebody “CUT!”
- The early/competent dump. Note that those two terms tend to be synonymous. The decision to dump the disc is established early in the count more often than not (before stall 4 or 5–this will vary depending on your team’s offensive philosophy), and/or the dump cutter has an easy time getting separation from her defender. In this situation, the pass is usually made to a receiver in stride, perhaps going upline with the defender trailing (“power position,” anathema to all defenses–the thrower has a free shot deep, with momentum from the run to put it even farther), or likewise going backwards–in either case, the defender is not in a position to stop the next throw, which sets up a dump-swing style offense or a deep offense (hence the “running game” of the dump sets up the “passing game” going deep or side-to-side). This is the level of dumping which most good teams have; I’ve seen many a team that works the upline dump VERY competently, setting up a very powerful deep offense. Less common these days is the team that really works the width of the field, but your Harvards and Dartmouths will still flash this style with some effectiveness.
- The skillful dump. Taking the competent dump one step further, this is dumping not just for a reset, and beyond the dump as a building block for your offense. This is the point at which the dump becomes a FEATURE of the offense–the degree of thought and setup that goes into the positioning ensures that (almost) every dump puts the receiver in a position to further the offense. This is the sort of thing that Frank of RSD fame would often go on about with his ambidexterity rants and the like. Being able to run the give-and-go, for instance, not just as a every-so-often technique, but as the basis for your offense (see Minnesota and their often super-quick resets and movement–I don’t know that I’ve ever worked so hard on defense for so little gain), makes it a very potent tool, and can absolutely destroy teams unprepared to deal with it (which is, interestingly, becoming more and more the norm as teams fall into the glamour trap, opting for the big plays and the big players over the big fundamentals).
It’s all about raising the level. I don’t care who you are, you’re not going to go very far without at least competent resents (and you’re not going to thrive unless you can raise it a step beyond that–or you happen to so outclass your competition otherwise that you can make up for it).
If you’re a burgeoning team–high school, club, college–you MUST emphasize the fundamentals. You might key in on the flashiness of it all, the big hucks, the huge plays, but keep in mind that more often than not 90% of the highest-level games are anything but–just good fundamentals, solid cutting, hard defense, and GOOD RESETS. Model yourself after the “boring” parts–the plays that look easy, because they’ve been practiced and polished to seamlessness–and you’ll more often put yourself in a position where the flashy plays actually make a difference, instead of becoming a footnote in your recap of the blowout loss to stud team x.
More on fundamentals next week.
Typical boring offense… and I love it.
I’m more for dumping on 2-3 in most cases, even 4-5 seems too late to turn to the dump for me.
Good post. Momentum hucks off of upline resets are one of my favorite throws in the game.
I’ve been trying to encourage players on my team to dump early, but an inadvertent side effect of this has been a lot of new players *only* looking dump after they make a successful cut. This usually gets the disc back to someone with better throws, but it also discourages continue cuts and does nothing to build their in-game throwing confidence.
Jackson,
I’m with you on the 2-3 dump. I tend to play my best O when I dump early and often and “do it with my legs, not my throws”–a reminder that was tougher to remember as I moved up the depth chart on throwers at Dartmouth (particularly this year when I shifted to full-time handler and felt some extra pressure to make plays).
The best decisions tend to be the ones made in those first couple seconds.
BFU,
I could definitely see where that’s a hindrance to “normal” development, but consider the potential of setting up an offense that features those give-and-go dumps. It might not make you a grade-A team to put the bulk of the offensive load on just a couple primary handlers/cutters getting the majority of the touche, but I’ve played more than a couple teams that feature one player VERY successfully using a similar strategy.
You might also encourage those continuation cuts to be made, even if the thrower isn’t prone to making the cut, simply to start some motion. The defense certainly can’t take it for granted, and a good in cut in turn will set up a nice secondary cut deep–and hey, if the thrower’s looking dump, the disc might wind up in the hands of a hucker in time for that deep cut to be effective.
As for building in-game confidence making continues…how about developing that confidence on the swing throw? Alternatively, I would think a well-designed drill (one-on-one man D drill with rotating throwers) would be a good building block to that end.
Jackson,
One more thing: Last year on Dartmouth we had a “booooring (ultimaaate)!” Call-and-response to remind our offense of exactly that. Contrary to popular belief it was never to show up the other team (though we certainly didn’t complain if our opponent got flustered).
It’s so hard to encourage the basics and keep them in sight when your team can roll through many opponents just relying on matchups, but the focus on developing your system rather than relying on big plays makes for much better consistency. See: Williams Ultimate for an example the big-play O.