Thoughts.

Patch up the holes in your mark!

Feel free to chime in with other relevant factors here.

I’ve touched upon this with my post about staying on your toes, but I didn’t really discuss how this applies to marking then.

The same basic idea applies though: when you’re shifting positions, in all likelihood you’re getting up onto your toes before you get off the ground, am I right?

A reminder: when I say “toes” I mean the balls of your feet, not the toes themselves. Common misconception that running on your ACTUAL toes works–you’ll wind up hurt and you’re hamstringing yourself, pun intended. It’s the balls–your heels might touch down slightly depending on how hard you’re running, but you’re never resting nor really pushing off your heels so long as you’re accelerating (stopping is a different story).

Take a second and visualize yourself on the mark. The thrower takes a big step to the backhand side, pretty clear windup, she puts her head down…

…and then throws a convincing fake before pivoting back over to the forehand side.

My question: how were you attempting to stop the huck? Is it a hand, an arm, your body that’s in the way? Yes yes, minutate will vary depending on situation and team defensive strategy. We’re talking generic you, no filters applied.

Are you standing still? Please tell me you’re not standing still. PLEASE tell me you’re not the person that makes me slap my forehead on the other side of the tourney complex standing there with a half squat, your butt stuck out, and your arms outstretched. Not to call out a whole demographic, but…rookie women’s ultimate players, I’m looking at you. Get on your toes!

Back to the throw. Are you reaching? Are you leaning? If you’re reaching, you’re toast. If I get a mark to reach on a fake like that I have a field day jacking it to the other half of the field.

Are you jumping over? If you’re jumping, you might be toast here too.

WHEN are you jumping over? If you’re waiting until her head is down and the throw is coming, you’re probably too late. You’ll be in time to force a bad throw, for certain, but to touch down quickly enough and with enough presence of mind to respond to the next throwing attempt?

Here’s what I think:

You move with the step. (Feel free to chime in if you feel differently).

Generally speaking, the only way a thrower is going to get the disc directly past you is if they can throw around you (they can throw through you if you’ve got holes in your mark, which is a topic for another post). The number one way to get around you is with use of the pivot (over-the-tops notwithstanding).

Great throwers don’t pivot needlessly, they just pivot when they know they’ve caught you over committed to the side you’re currently on and can freely pass the other way. You have to counter the motion of the thrower by being mobile yourself, and more often than not this means being proactive with your motion, rather than passively waiting for the thrower to exploit your vulnerabilities.

It’s a fine line to walk between being proactive, being overly aggressive (biting on a little pivot pump-fake makes the thrower’s job even easier than throwing off of one pivot), and getting beaten ’cause you’re too slow. Better still, this dynamic will shift depending on your tools and your thrower’s tools (more than anything short of perhaps the jump discs, size and reach disparities can make a big difference here). Your tall/long-armed wonders generally need to shift less than your shorter types, which tends to work out given that most of us littler guys tend to be a little lower to the ground and more responsive as a result.

Timing on when you move on the mark is crucial, but so is the margin by which you move when you choose to do so. How far over do you need to go to pressure the throw?

For big throw(er)s, you want to use your body to discourage the throw(insert caveat about situation and the consequences of over committing vs. allowing the big huck here). For most other situations, unless you have a clear read on your man or have the ape index advantage of an orangutan vs. a T-rex, I think you want to get your body to around the same alignment as your thrower’s hips. From there, your arms can cover at least enough to make an average thrower think twice (but don’t get caught reaching!).

Let’s look at the difference of this margin in crappy MS-paint schematic form:

This is more of what I’d recommend for a “normal” range of mobility. Blue player is obviously the thrower–I’m giving him something approximating normal pivot range for a good thrower. Red player is on the mark, and is just looking to match up with the hips here. Orange block is Red player’s hands, held close to the body. From this position, there’s some potential for the reach–I’m not saying don’t reach, I’m just saying don’t rely on it and definitely don’t over commit to stopping a throw with it–and that reach is within bounds to pressure your normal throws, stop an IO, etc. Your faster hucks, however, are likely to be deterred a bit less by the threat of simply the reach (again, assuming you’re dealing with a good thrower), and the general trajectory this permits tends to be pretty much what O and D would expect–a fairly decent leading throw with some float and some tilt, which generally goes the O’s way if they’re making good decisions.

That said, if you can move this far and move this far proactively, you’ve got a mark that’s good enough quality to play high-level collegiate ultimate, assuming your marking skills aren’t severely lacking elsewhere.

Now the huck-stopper mark. In this particular iteration I’ve got the mark going out to about elbow position, which is arbitrary but not without merit. You can very clearly see that this cuts off a much larger swath of trajectory–especially if this is a sideline marking position (more on that at some much later point), a throw that has to go this wide and arc that much is far more likely to fall the defense’s way, particularly when you consider that these types of throws tend to be forced into their paths due to last-second adjustment (anathema to successful hucks in particular).

The downside? As I alluded to at the beginning of this post, this generally leaves you overextended. You don’t often see a mark in this sort of position, and when you do, it’s only for a second or a half second (generally aided by a “strike!” call or similar help), just enough to discourage the huck. You can tell with a simple look that the distance to cover both ends of that spectrum easily double the more conservative range–this is why it is important to get to a position like that early, and to be ready to quickly move back to respond to the other side. Be mobile. Don’t even attempt to do this if you’re not mobile enough to get back and do your primary job of not getting (heinously) broken. Chances are, you’re not mobile enough to get in the way quickly enough to pressure the huck, either.

This is the sort of marking capability that gets you an assignment against the other team’s no. 1 throwing threat, that allows your mark to be a lynchpin of the defense rather than simply a very large piece of the puzzle. In short, a game-changer.

With good mobility on the mark, you can take away a much larger swath of the field than a stationary mark can, and perhaps even take away a bit more of the field than the other team anticipates–otherwise known as good defense. Using your mobility as a weapon is the pinnacle, but the base is being mobile enough to avoid getting fooled and used by the thrower in front of you.

Start by getting on your toes. The last thing you should do on an ultimate field is take a break on the mark (pun intended! That might be my favorite one yet. I’m filing it away for future coaching use, it’s so good). (It’s too important to take a break and risk letting down your teammates) Through practice, learn how and where and when to be proactive. With diligence, learn how and where and when you can get away with being aggressive(ly proactive). There’s very little that substitutes for experience here–I can’t give a ton of specific advice here because body types and game situations really can make a significant difference. That said, more basics to come.

UPDATE: Gwen adds some more great pointers on marking in the comments.

Continuing in my UCPC seminar review, Ben Wiggins’ seminar on marking.

It was an interesting seminar–definitely different from what I was anticipating; instead of perhaps an endorsement of well-known marking strategies, or a long list of little tips, Wiggins goes for the marking jugular, so to speak, with a few solid to useful ideas and a few more radical, though potentially very useful, ideas, as well as a fair bit about team defense (of which the mark is possibly one of the most important components, as the mark is the most powerful defensive position on the field in terms of space defended by a good mark). Wiggins’ target audience for a lot of these thoughts is elite-level play, where a defense cannot expect the offense to turn the disc over without considerable pressure, and where the offense will likely score with great consistency nonetheless–where a single turnover or two might be all a D-line needs to win a game, so a lot of these ideas aren’t necessarily for, say, rec league pickup.

I’m going to shoot for more brevity in this post and try to list more than rant.

Simple, useful ideas:

• The notion of “blocking back,” whereby a mark reaches away from the thrower rather than towards them when attempting to pointblock; this allows for a slightly longer window to react to the disc’s movement.
• Similarly, Wiggins suggested keeping the head back as far as possible while marking, to give oneself perhaps an extra split-second to see (and perhaps tip/block) a throw
• When trying to stop a continuation off of a dump/etc., the player setting the mark should take a very quick glance (glance, don’t stare) upfield while running to set the mark–look for a split second, and then process what you see as you run to set the mark, don’t get caught looking away from the thrower
• A good mark will learn which fakes are bad, and will ignore them as non-threats, rather than responding to any movement and letting the handler toy with the mark.
• Finish drills! In a dump-swing drill, for example, the last handler and mark should go for 1-2 seconds as though the handler were trying to continue the disc upfield. Over many iterations of a given drill this gives everyone on the team dozens more opportunities to work on marking per practice.

Less simple, but useful ideas:

• Marking with staggered feet–a bit controversial perhaps, but Wiggins insists it has situational value. Going on the notion of “blocking back,” the side which your foot is back on will have a slightly larger window with which to react to a throw on that side (so one generally wants the foot back on the side of the throw that’s a bigger threat). It also should help with movement toward or away from the thrower to avoid potential fouls.
• A moving start out of a stoppage–instead of standing passively when tapping the disc in on the mark, while the O makes play calls, etc, Wiggins suggests a mark that is moving from one side to the other as the disc is tapped in–supposedly this takes away certain options and forces the O to adjust immediately as the disc comes in, but I’m not so sure of its efficacy. Something to try.
• The notion of “baiting,” where a mark will show one look (say, with hands held as though to stop a high-release, allowing the under) for a few marks/a full point, and then when they know how the handler will throw against this mark, make an adjustment and go for the point block. Definitely a risky proposition in some cases, but against high-level O, a chance like this for a point block is as golden a chance as any you’ll see.
• The idea of always covering the space on field with the mark, instead of the sideline (i.e., having your butt facing the sideline, stopping a backhand when the backhand would be OB anyways): this is common sense to a point, but Wiggins advocates for it to the point where the upline throw, while difficult, is (I think) unacceptably easy to get off. Again, how you implement this would depend on the level of offense you’re trying to D up.

Team D strategies: you’d be better served looking at Wiggins’ materials on the UCPC downloads than my explanation here (UPDATE: note that the link is now broken, with no apparent replacement elsewhere on the internet–my apologies). It’s definitely worth noting that a tall, athletic team like Ego designed their D to force deep throws and use their athletes to their advantage, while a team like the Drizzle implemented a team D strategy that focused more on creating havoc and poach opportunities since they were playing a team that was clearly above their heads. Something to consider when thinking about one’s own team D.

Improving individual/team marks: nothing too revolutionary here, I think. Obviously a fitter mark is a better one. Wiggins suggests keeping stats to assess the quality of marks (yardage allowed), as well as using video. Pickup is a great time to implement new strategies or work to incorporate more elements to your game. It’s important to scheme one’s defense to play to one’s strengths (and/or to dumb down your opponents’ strength). Realize that the best defenders are not always the best markers, and vice-versa. Know who excels at what so you don’t put a line out that’s overmatched on the mark, and realize that good marks invariably contribute to errant or rushed throws that result in D’s downfield.

This was probably the lightest seminar, in terms of relative amount of stuff I might take with me and incorporate. That said, it was still definitely some valuable stuff.

Still in the reviewing queue:

• Keynote by Dr. Goldberg
• Applying Mental Toughness Strategies by Tiina Booth (ARHS coach)
• A Season of High-Level Ultimate by Nathan Wicks (former Brown men’s coach, ’00-’05 (note they won championships in his first and last years coaching them))
• Perhaps a brief bit on the Panel Discussion.

Probably in that order. (UPDATE: check the UCPC label for the other recaps)

Some links to other UCPC reviews:
Lean and Hungry FitnessGeorge Cooke
Jim Parinella