Thoughts.

Mike Lamb, 3b/1b for the Astros, struggled mightily to hit throughout the first half of the season. He was trying to win a starting job, but eventually fell into part-time duty because of his struggles at the plate.

However, around the time the all-star break rolled around, an injury gave an opportunity for him to play full-time, and coincidentally that was around when he started to hit; he played well and solidified his role on the team.

What’s the moral of this story? Little things make a difference. Lamb started hitting better because he realized that he wasn’t getting his foot down quickly enough. Something as simple as getting the lead foot downa half-second sooner when swinging was the difference between a .230 benchwarmer and a .290 regular.

Likewise, with ultimate there are a lot of little things you can do that can transform your game. Things like keeping on the toes of your pivot foot, allowing you to get around on fakes considerably faster than on your heel. Things like following through with your fingers instead of your arm on a forehand so it doesn’t turn over.

And it extends to all aspects of the game. The difference between a good cutter and a great cutter is the little things he does that really throws off the defender–rather than simply cutting at the right moment, he is always active, forcing his defender to focus on him, taking advantage of any momentary lapse in focus to get open.

I’ve learned a lot just by watching some people play. Look at those players who are exceptional in what they do, study their model, and apply it to your own game until it becomes your own. This is how true progress as a player is made–observation, realization, application, breakthrough.

Not a lot to say. Showed up around 5ish and played a handful of points, mixed scrimmaging with A/B combined.

I had some very solid play, pretty solid D in some instances and having a poor cutter to cover in others…offensively, I executed well on my throws, had a couple real pretty leads, one of which was for a score. Also cut very well–playing with more B-level guys (more significantly, playing with more timid freshmen) means I get a lot of opportunity to cut and really generate O, and I held that up nicely–had some really great cuts. Excuse me for self-calling, but I surprise myself sometimes with hwo quickly I respond and execute on cuts. Having good people handling with the disc of course helps tremendously as well; I’m excited to be playing with Pov and Sammy this year, we had a couple good connections.

Yeah. Short list today:
Good
Execution

Needs work
Remaining focused and consistent, keeping up intensity of play despite soreness/lower-level play

I’m trying to work on being concise with posts; these are easy to keep short, next time I write about some of my thoughts will be the real challenge…

Had a pretty good weekend.

The Pain Train rolled into Williams College to play in Purple Valley; we got some much-needed tournament experience, and also had the opportunity to match up against our perennial regional opposition: WUF, Harvard, and Brown.

Beat WUF on universe point 11-10, lost to Harvard 12-10 after going on a run once hard cap went on, and lost to brown 12-7, also going on a run after hard cap. We also beat Middlebury 13-3 or so.

We played decently, though nowhere near up to potential–there’s still a ton we need to work on, particularly our zone O and D. I’m definitely excited for us to start developing our potential and really playing some smooth, solid ultimate.

Personally, I felt like I played very well–when I was playing. It was hard to just watch the game develop from the sidelines sometimes, especially when the offense was sputtering at some points (I played exclusively D points over the weekend)–I really wanted to be in the game, making plays and helping us out. But I guess such is the nature of the game when you get slotted into a role.

I was very happy with my defense; the men I covered in man D didn’t get the disc very often, and I don’t think I ever gave up any breaks besides dumps on the mark (though I should be a bit more aware of the dump and make that harder); in the zone I played very well, with only a few mistakes in front wall, pretty consistent coverage as a wing, and generally not giving up easy plays. I got to run in the mark for a bit when we played our 2-man cup zone, which was an interesting experience–it’s very free-form, which is wonderful, with great great great potential to shut down an opposing team, but it also means I have to be that much more active and on my toes to shut down plays. Something to work on, I suppose, if that winds up being one of the roles I take on.

Offensively, I need a bit of work if I’m gonna be a D-line handler (which I’m likely going to be doing a lot of). Harvard’s shifting mark (force trap to start, then switch to no dump after 4 or 5 count) really gave me a lot of trouble. I need to get more practice dealing with that, and looking to be a bit wiser with my puts to the dump or if that’s not really viable looking upfield and getting something up there. Other than that, though, I handled myself very well. I can’t think of any situations besides that when I was a liability on O–I definitely am getting a good feel for timing my cuts to generate flow, though that of course requires that I be in the stack cutting and not handling. Only played in zone for a little bit, but aside from needing to be more heads-up to help out handling I worked very well popping, I think.

Things I’ve been working on: my shut-down D is getting pretty good; several situations, in transition or whatever, I covered a man and kept him from getting to where he wanted to, which is a great feeling.
My handling is so-so; I’ve got great throws in flow, I’m really good at getting off a quick swing when it’s there and displayed that several times over the weekend. Generally stayed fairly patient and didn’t give into the riskier passes with the disc.

Things I need to work on: I feel like there were several situations over the weekend where I could’ve contributed to the defense more with some well-timed poaches. I’ve got pretty good field awareness on D, and in some situations there’s definitely opportunity to pull off a good switch or leave my man where he’s not a threat and help generate a turn. This is a bit hard to really work on, but it’s something I want to keep in mind while I’m scrimmaging.
Pressure handling: as described above, I’m not making great decisions in the clutch, which stems from my getting too narrow-minded and not looking to use all of my teammates. I need to work on my field sense on O when I have the disc.
Consistent cutting: I had some good moments cutting and generating flow, but it wasn’t 100%. I have to make sure I’m constantly looking to make that continuation cut.
2-man cup/general zone D: Definitely need to work on getting a feel for the 2-man cup, and I also need to keep elevating my zone D; it was passable this weekend, but I know it can be better–rather than avoiding being a liability, I have to really make myself into a point of strength, generating those D’s or forcing those turns.

So, to list things for me…
Good
shutdown man D
heads-up D on transition
midding/continuation in O

Things to Work On:
Team ‘help’ D
field awareness on handling/pressure handling
consistent focus whilst cutting
zone D, particularly 2-man cupping

So I spent my summer in Japan, studying the language at a University near Tokyo.

I didn’t exactly have easy access to regular ultimate (I had weekly pickup with a pretty sweet group of international people in Tokyo, but it was a long trek–expensive, too, a good $20 to travel there and back–and there were weekends we traveled and such as a class when I couldn’t go play), so I tried to make up for it with a lot of tossing–a good hour or two every weekday, basically. And when I wasn’t tossing, I was doing reading online about ultimate, with particular emphasis on my throws.

And I had an epiphany about my throws. Really, it’s gotten to the point where I wonder how I ever really threw before I figured out how to really throw.

In any case, I feel like I have a good enough grasp of throwing mechanics that I can almost coach it (well, as well as it can be coached, I guess). Some of the things I figured out about throwing over the summer, listed in order of (I think) importance:

-Wrist snap. It’s important to have it, but what’s really game-changing is the timing of it. A lot of newbie players, I think, throw with their wrist snap drawn out over the course of the throw–that is, you’re starting your snap/release prematurely, resulting in a loss of spin, velocity, and a trend towards instability and the airbounce, all not particularly desirable.
Basically, the way I visualize throwing, it’s all a whipping motion. As far as the wrist is concerned, you want to snap your wrist as hard as you can at the point of release–take all the velocity from your arm motion, multiply it with the wrist snap, and then release the disc. A little hard to follow, maybe, but when applied it’ll improve all your throws.
Along with this, you also have the amount of wrist snap to worry about. The further back the disc and your wrist are, the more power you can transfer into spin and thus the further the disc will fly, generally speaking.

-Grip. As far as having control goes, it really starts with the grip. Most people know better than to use that finger-on-the-rim backhand grip, and the split-finger forehand, but I think a lot of people, especially with forehand, don’t get optimal control from their grip. A good grip is tight, and allows for maximal energy transfer to the disc.
For a backhand, it’s hard to beat the power grip in terms of energy transfer, but because all your fingers are tight against the rim it’s hard to keep the disc in a stable line while throwing, so I prefer keeping the pointer and maybe the middle fingers only bent, and the others are extended along the radius for stability (most of your power comes from the spin around that front finger–this is why the finger-on-rim grip is crap).
For a forehand, there’s definitely a lot you can do with the grip. I see a lot of newer players with forehand grips that are far too loose–you can throw the disc, sure, but because you’re not in control of the disc angle on release you’ve little say in the curvature of the disc. It’s very hard to get touch on a flick with a poor grip. I’m a big fan of gripping the disc tightly by means of the thumb and ring/pinky fingers; the thumb should press so hard that it “dents” the top of the disc slightly, and the bottom fingers can be bent or extended, so long as they clench the disc with the thumb. My grip is good enough to the point that I can remove my two “throwing” fingers from contact with the disc and hold it perpendicular to the ground by strength of my thumb and non-throwing fingers alone. Along with the fingers, where the disc rests in the hand is also important–it should be as far into the recess between the thumb and pointer finger as possible, for a good, tight grip.

-Wrist position. This mostly applies to IO/OI throws. When you want to throw OI, you need to tilt your hand upwards at the wrist, and vice-versa for IO. Along with this, your body position comes into play as well–essentially, your shoulders should be in the plane you want the disc to fly in; if you want the disc to fly IO and you’re throwing a righty flick, you should be dropping your right shoulder so as you throw and your arm comes across your body it’s going from your lower right to your upper left, the same sort of arc you want the IO flick to have.

There’s more to it than that, mostly with regards to hucking, and I’m gonna put it into a separate post.

I rant a lot, but I swear I actually know what I’m talking about…

I love ultimate. It is my passion, it drives me to stay in shape, and all sorts of things besides. But why?

I like ultimate a lot for one main reason (everything else that comes is a result of getting involved with the sport or a corollary of this): I know I can be successful with it.

Ultimate’s a great, competitive sport, mind you, but it’s really not even close to any other given sport I could do in terms of reaching the upper tier; you have athletes training for most of their day to compete for one day or over the course of several days every several months. That’s some serious dedication. Ultimate has people who train simply by scrimmaging every few weeks, with perhaps a few bits of “lifting” or “training” thrown in for good measure that are able to perform quite well.
Would I have liked to been blessed with the body of a fish like Michael Phelps? Yeah, but instead I got this short, small-handed, small-footed thing, which doesn’t even float without something keeping it up (most people float naturally; I sink).
Would I have liked to have been a Steve Prefontaine sort of runner, driven to train and compete at the highest level? Yeah, but I’m nowhere near that motivated to run great distances every single day, and nowhere near good enough to run for Dartmouth’s team.
Would I have liked to have been a world-class triple jumper, hurdler, or sprinter? Yeah, but again, I lack the requisite build to project as something exceptional.

I want to be great at something, particularly a sport; I was exceptional in my high school, but unfortunately I hit a wall of sorts advancing to college (graduating a year early probably didn’t help my case, athletically speaking, either). I needed to diversify, find something else I slotted into better, and ultimate is that thing.

I’d already played a bit in my high school years, summer camp, summer league, so I could already play a bit when I got here at Dartmouth, which gave me a leg on a lot of people. And I’m a good athlete; most schools, the best athletes do their chosen DI sport, so I stand out in that regard as well.

And I can continue to stand out as an athlete in this sport. Unlike my other chosen sports, you have all sorts of skill levels and athletes being competitive, which bodes well for my future–there is no single prototypical ultimate player.

I’m hoping for great things, and planning to work towards them. If I work twice as hard as the next guy, I’m going to be that much better when it counts, I’m going to get better that much sooner, and I’ll continue to elevate my game until I find a ceiling.

Right now there’s no limit in sight…

So the Aness is having tryouts this week with Purple Valley coming up.

Should prove interesting; it’ll be a first taste of sorts for the freshmen of really good, intense play, and once the cuts start being made, we’ll have a pretty good idea of how the team’s shaping up for the coming season.

This year is the beginning. Last year, there were a couple hard decisions for the captains as far as who to take and who to leave, but it could be argued were they not playing favorites to an extent they would’ve had a few more roster spots to fill. I’m not saying that’s bad or good, but this year pretty much every spot will have to be won. Obviously you have your returning talents, but there are far more people on the bubble than spots on the A-team, and after that even you have people who think they’re on the bubble (and likely would’ve been in previous years) but aren’t even that close. We’re going to have a very competitive team, in many senses of the word.

Things are only going to improve, too; I forsee a continuing trend towards awesome freshmen and hard-working freshmen who make themselves threats in a year+ contributing to a program rivaling the likes of Brown, where they have a B-team capable of beating all but the best college teams in the region.

In any case, it’ll be interesting to see what calls the captains make. I don’t envy their position, but that it’ll be so hard to make final calls on who makes the team is a sign of great things to come.

Just gotta keep working towards that final goal. Nationals…

Dartmouth’s getting more and more wired every day.

Today, we moved our fuel cell information to the blogosphere. Interesting shift, we’ll see how it takes with the team.

I was talking with Socks the other day and we were just commenting about how much progress the program here at Dartmouth has made over the past several years. We had our bid to natties in ’02, and we’ve only continued to improve since, though allocation of bids means we don’t always have the luxury of a third bid to natties.

With any luck, that won’t matter this year, or for the next several years. But I am getting ahead of myself; we haven’t really done jack shit yet, we certainly need to work hard and continually push ourselves and strive for excellence.

But yeah. You look at the fuel cell system; this is a very new thing for us, only been around for a little over a year now. It’s certainly not perfect yet, but that it’s still being developed and can be improved upon is exciting to me, because I get to be a part of that process (or at least bear witness to it).

But it’s a wonderful step in the right direction for Dartmouth Ultimate; just look at it. By having fuel cells, it already allows for the following:
-gets us working together fairly consistently, and with a standard lifting program (which is quite well-designed for ultimate’s essentials)
-provides a means to organize intra-team competition–3v3 in the winter, cell boot competitions, cells combining for scrimmages, whatever.
-provides a context for intra-team competition, however arbitrary–nothing like being able to claim your cell as having the best stats of the team, or having the hardest workers/best hecklers/whatever.
-acts as a filter for tryouts in the summer/fall, as you get to track a given individual’s progress in the context of their cell.
-gets more people involved. People who are in cells have an additional identity and group on the team, which (depending on cell dynamics I suppose) provides a nice group of people for anybody, particularly A-team callup freshmen, to get to know.
-gets more people in leadership roles. It’s too soon to say, but the cell system would definitely seem to be a valuable means to evaluate leadership ability in addition to fitness.

Things I’d like to see it develop to encompass:
-development. It makes a lot of sense to me to get freshmen assigned to cells at some point and having a specific set of people tasked with helping these freshmen get acclimated at dartmouth, on the team, and help them improve as a player, as opposed to the overwhelming resource of the entire team, or the captains.
This isn’t just restricted to freshmen, though. I feel like, especially since we have the blogs, it’d be a great forum for communication on any number of ultimate-related issues, particularly things to help people with their game.
-play-making. I think this is already showing to a point, but I think it’d be cool to have particular cells work on particular plays/play with each other a ton to get some great synergy with cellmates going. It could make a big difference to have that level of comfort, but I suppose this just comes with playing with the team in general as well. I just think it’d be cool to call “red sox + mideast” as a line, having your golden cut or 3/4, whatever, involving members from the same cell who know each other inside and out.

Okay, so I really only had one legitimate thing I want to see with the fuel cells. B-team fuel cells fall under “development” as well; that’s a whole ‘nother thing, it definitely has great potential as a concept, there’s just the matter of really implementing it effectively.

Today’s practice went pretty well for me. I was late because of work (and will continue to be late because of it), but showed up in time for some cup drill and scrimmaging.

It’s really nice to get back into zone play again. Not that it went particularly well for me (only played in it a couple points, and quick turnovers led to a regression to man O and D pretty quickly), but it’s good to know we’ll be able to start throwing it in games now.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the way I played. It was really really great to have my foot more or less back up to speed after cutting it at the end of my H-croo tenure a couple weeks ago; cutting, planting, and all the other things one would use the ball of the foot in were all normal. I played some very solid D, generating a couple turnovers highlighted by a point block, and also tracked down some mistake throws from the O as well. One thing I need to work on a bit, or at least, something I need to be aware of, is playing deep in the zone. I don’t have a ton of experience doing it, and I got beat by Timmer deep today, not because he was taller than me, but because I gave him position behind me. I definitely have to keep that in mind if I’m gonna be effective at that position, but it’s not of great concern, since my niche really is in the cup, running around and reading the O like a book to shut down their game.

My O, while not my strong suit, wasn’t atrocious. I must have turfed the disc three times on the same throw–low-release, around backhand. I subbed out and played around with it for a while so I realized what I was doing wrong (wrist angle was too low; with the wrist angle higher, the disc rises upon release instead of failing); I feel pretty good about the decision to make the throw when I did, I just had poor execution, so I’m not feeling too bad about that. I was cutting very well; I don’t know if maybe just having shown up shortly before scrimmaging meant I had more juice in the tank than the rest or what, but I got open in all the right places a lot. And generally speaking my throws were very passable, lot of good passes up the lane. I definitely didn’t hold onto the disc for too lot; I probably erred on being a little too fast, which I’ll likely hone as the season progresses. I mostly did a lot of cutting, particularly midding/fill, which I like a lot.

The team’s O as a whole ran very smoothly. It’s really nice to see the freshmen coming along with their games. I’m really excited for them and their potential, they really don’t realize how great they can be. A year is a long time, and you can improve damn fast with the right attitude. Just gotta make sure we give them the best tools in order to make themselves as good as they can be.