Thoughts.

Dusty puts me to shame, though.

The man puts voice to our collective feeling, though – there isn’t a word there I’d disagree with.

I find it especially frustrating to know that our sport’s history is continually being cast aside each year.  Whither all the coverage from years past?  Whither scores?  A list is nice, but does nothing to convey the flavor of the season.

The organization continues to take baby steps – new site, etc., and it continues to get lapped – see leaguevine.  See the blogosphere.  See RSD, still the primary source of ultimate’s pulse.  Progress is being made, and streaming is good, but we expect to see progress from year to year.  Stagnancy frustrates, and rebranding means little if the substance of the thing remains unchanged.

This sport keeps growing…it demands (and deserves) better.  You know it’s getting bad when you start agreeing with Toad and Gerics…

Given that Nationals is just a few short days away and I made vague promises to a few people personally that I’d “at least get a regionals recap up,” it’s high time I did a bit of blogging again, hey?

Long-windedness has been defeating my posts before they start these past months, so I’ll aim for brevity:

• I wound up playing coed with Ballometrics this summer and for the series after getting cut from Ironside after Boston Invite; had a lot of fun playing with them again, doing the coed thing (where skirt-wearing is par for the course) and being a primary cutter.  As such, all subsequent updates have a mixed bias.
• Speaking of mixed, Ballo had a long run clawing its way through the backdoor brackets to fifth place so I didn’t get to see a ton of games personally outside of the teams we played, so throw that in to my updates as well.
• Scuttlebutt has it that Slow White and District 5 both anticipated the outcome of their finals matchup being such, though I don’t think either anticipated such a large margin of victory for Slow.  Clearly both teams are very talented and deserving of the 1 & 2 seeds  in Sarasota.
• Snowbirds definitely surprised in taking the third bid, though they clearly earned it.  They rely on a solid core of handlers who are patient with the disc and content to dump regularly to maintain possession; they also tend to take fairly well-calculated risks deep, making them tough to force out and difficult to pressure under.  Pressuring their handler resets and generating turns around the disc is perhaps the best recipe for success against them; defensively they’re not overpowering, but generating turns can prove difficult given the consistency of their handlers.
• On the Open side, I didn’t get to see a ton but caught a bit of Ironside on Saturday and chatted with some of the guys briefly before games began.  Their undefeated season speaks for itself, and the talent on their roster corroborates.  McCarthy and Wicks, along with the team leadership have set the tone from day 1 for this team’s hard work toward the only goal worth working for, and they go into this weekend confident without taking their situation for granted, and in peak form are going to blow some very good teams out of the water.
• PoNY gutted out a tough win in the backdoor game against Bodhi; heard a lot of frustration from Bodhi’s side after that game – the feeling was that, rather than being outmatched by PoNY, Bodhi handed the game over with a number of unforced errors (drops and the like).  Tough breaks, but consistency remains the difference between best and second best (to say nothing of the rest).  More on that in a later post.
• Didn’t catch any of the women’s games.   Brute Squad clearly had a good run to their first-place finish, but Bent was disappointed to take third after upsetting #2 Capitals on Saturday and being unable to repeat the effort.
• Looking ahead to the college season, Dartmouth has a lot of enthusiasm this year with an actual head coach (who, unlike this author, actually knows what he’s doing), hailing from Sockeye circa 2004; he brings with him a West-coast style spread offense that has the boys running and gunning.  (Actual quote from a recent practice: “The problem now is that everyone is so open and they have so many options that everyone needs to re-learn how to make good decisions.” Hope springs eternal each season’s start, and hard work is already greasing the gears of this year’s Pain Train.  Hopefully more to come on that front as well in the coming months here…

I’m predicting a solid return to glory for Boston with Ironside and Slow White winning their respective titles – I’ll leave the women’s predictions to those more knowledgeable.  Happy watching!

Apologies on the lack of updates over the past few months.  I’m hoping to be more productive on the blog front soon–certainly by mid-June once finals are over–but some personal updates in the meantime:
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For those of you who are international or not on the UPA’s mailing list, there’s been a massive rebranding and website redesign; check out USA Ultimate (formerly the Ultimate Player’s Association)’s new site.

It’s a long-overdue change; clearly new CEO Tom Crawford and his recent hires are intending to really propel the program and sport forward in a big way.

The trend I’m most curious to follow: will their new forums supplant RSD? (They’re looking for moderators, if you’re eager to have a hand in it).  There remain kinks to be worked out (for one, the lack of e-mail address privacy/username use is a little upsetting), but it’s great to see the UPA-er, USAU–making efforts to create a more interactive and informative site for its members.

I’ve yet to play around with all the features, but I’m definitely eager to see USA Ultimate’s continued outreach.  How do you feel about the whole shebang?

Ironside vs. Chain, Semifinals, '09 Club Nationals. Photo taken by Keegan Uhl.

While the college season is picking up steam, a lot of club players are just getting in gear for the coming tryouts and season.

Ballometrics has been maintaining a fitness list for the past few months (tryouts start soon, if you’re interested in playing competitive mixed out of Boston, drop a line); people are starting to do track workouts now that the land is thawing.

I sent the following to the list about doing pre-season track workouts, which segued into a lot of thoughts on running form. As we still have the luxury of training without the constant performance demand of weekend tournaments and practices, it’s a great time to focus on technique and go into the season not only with a good base of strength and conditioning, but efficient form, as well.
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At Dartmouth we’ve been advocating strongly for our cutters to work hard to set up their cuts: “Seven Hard Steps” is an oft-repeated mantra, a reminder of the time and effort needed to really set up your defender and, equally important, to create space to attack when one plants and makes a real cut.

But I still see bunches of guys who, when forced under, do what I’ll call the one-step cut–one hard step in one direction (usually right at the defender) and then a turn and commit cut in the other direction.

Oldest cut in the book, right? Can work for cutters like myself with a quick first step and good acceleration, but good defenders can keep up with this move–it’s a quick fake setting up a footrace.
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Partially sunburnt: nose, ears, back of neck, potentially forearms & cheeks

Layout D’s made: 1

Times point blocked: 1 (This is why I should never make IO huck attempts)

Days of ultimate: 3

Total Games Played: 6
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Three days of fun in the sun.  I think the roster is a dozen, plus or minus a couple?  Been keeping a regular workout habit over the past several weeks…not quite at 100% yet, but maybe another day or two’s recovery will be enough to get (something close to) there.

Regardless, it’s been far too long for domination.

Time to get Philthy.