What to do when you’re bored in class, or, Cutting Schematics
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Loading ...I’ve been doing this since my freshman year, and I didn’t realize until recently what a help this can be for the burgeoning cutter-type (or really any type).
I’m going to give a fairly simple picture demonstration of what I mean. For me, at least, it’s absolutely perfect for those times when I get bored in class–the margins of the pages make an excellent setting.
So, Cutting Schematics(TM?):
Start off with a fairly simple field setup. Start with the basics–one thrower (the O), one mark (the line, indicating which way he’s forcing).
In this case, we have a force flick.
Then….
…a straight stack, complete with dump set up slightly upfield (your team’s offensive set may vary). Note that I’m only adding two extra defenders here–for this particular cutting schematic, we’re only concerned with the last guy in the stack and the first dump. This particular schematic is working through a situation where the handler cuts upline…
…while the last cutter in the stack, recognizing the imminent power position, sets up a continuation with a good, hard in cut.
When the handler gets the disc in power position…
…the cutter, whose defender is at this point chasing him and likely not in a good position to defend the deep (or at least compromised enough that it can be attempted), plants and makes a good deep cut into the space he’s just set up–heading straight backwards to leave a lane for the huck to go into, rather than flaring out into the lane and making the huck more difficult.
It’s that simple. I’m positive I’m not the only one who does this, but I’m also fairly sure that there are lots of people out there who could make good use of it if they knew to.
Other situations you might want to consider using a cutting schematic in:
- As a general thought experiment for situations you don’t normally see/aren’t used to yet–what if the force is straight up on the mark? What if your man is forcing you out to the point that you have to run around him to get in? What if there’s a poach in the lane? What do you do if you’re the second-to-last in the stack and the power position huck doesn’t come?
- For handler cuts–again, run the various situations through your mind. When do you throw a juke to get open effectively (i.e., at a position where the throw to you is easy to make)? When do you clear out, hard?
- Defensively. What situations should you expect to see when playing a force-middle defense, when you’re guarding a downfield cutter? What sorts of adjustments do you have to anticipate making to compensate for these situations? When are the situations in which a smart poach can get a D? When are you most vulnerable, and why? When do you have to just buckle down and beat your man?
It’s very versatile as a tool to guide visualization. I’ll elaborate on the general notion of visualization and how it’s one of the most powerful tools you can use to improve yourself in any sport (e.g., ultimate) in a later post.
Yale Cup ’08 (4/5-6)
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...Another trip to New Haven for Yale Cup; the last time I’ll ever play there.
A Friday night rainstorm had the TD cautiously postponing Saturday’s games until noon start time–contrary to the 9AM start listed on the score reporter, these were short (1:15) rounds, meaning any team that came out flat to start their games would NOT have much time to make up the difference…
…guess who came out flat to start their day.
Game 1: Vs. Williams
Williams continually frustrated us to start, taking advantage of our flatness–we had more than a few drops, throwaways on deep looks that, while not terrible looks, had too small a margin of error. Williams responded to our generally unsuccessful deep game by putting it up whenever they could and wherever they could. Granted, they had their fair share of turns too, but in my years of playing against Williams they’ve always shown the ability to pull down the fringy stuff with more consistency than most (though they tend to be pretty hopeless in high wind–the fringy looks become near-impossible ones with more frequency). Our D line only got a few turns throughout the day, and when we did they threw a very poachy man D set on us, forcing us to stay on one sideline with their mark so the poaches wouldn’t get burned. Were we to meet them again, we’d be better prepared to beat it.
5-11.
Game 2: Vs. Wesleyan
Well, losing to Williams is one thing. But we still couldn’t get it up for Wesleyan. We continued to have trouble connecting on the deep looks, as our O line handed out turns like it was Wesleyan’s birthday instead of treating them like the red-headed stepchildren they are. To be fair, our D line didn’t capitalize in conversion as much as it could’ve either. Yours truly did make some plays though:
(Yes, that’s a skirt. Yes, it’s golden. I had just gotten it that morning courtesy of Ms. Rohre Titcomb of Five Ultimate, who I had been nagging since I saw one at Vegas to bring me one. Real scandalous looking, but real money, too.)
After going down early, we battled back to force a universe, but couldn’t finish the comeback. We at least were showing signs of progress at this point; we went into the bye resolving to work harder through the rest of the day.
8-9.
BYE
Watched the women roll Wellesley. In Sam Routhier’s words, “I read Mackey’s blog and he’s all ‘The women are awesome,’ then I talk to Tien and she’s like ‘We’re okay.’”
The women are awesome. You heard it here first, and will continue to hear it here. I mean, holy crap. They won Yale Cup.
Game 3: Vs. UVM
UVM’s looked pretty legit this year–granted, they’re not the class of the region by any means, but ever since they played us tight at sectionals in the fall my impression of them has been that they’re really turning a corner this year. I couldn’t tell you if that’s spurred mostly by seniors with chemistry or what, but they definitely have the potential to surprise.
That said, we came out and really took it to them to start. They played pretty loose on our resets and we had a dump-swing-continue offense all day. Second half we loosened up our rotation and UVM actually battled back with a couple breaks, but we fortunately didn’t get into the danger zone before we closed this one out.
11-9.
Game 4: Vs. Brown
We got UP for this game. Finally returning to our underdog mentality, we kept the pressure on in this game and never let up, opening with two quick breaks. However, for all the trouble we gave Brown with our pressure on the resets and keeping them from hitting their primary deep option, they frustrated our offense with zone-to-man transition and converted on two more breaks to even it up before scoring a third as we called a time out. We came out firing and kept the intensity up, playing tight, hard defense, generating turns, and converting breaks. Probably the highlight of the game was Socks point blocking Vandenberg on a huck attempt–he wound up, and released the backhand straight into Socks’ outstretched arm. Priceless.
10-7.
A Night at the Routhier’s
Basketball. Batman Begins. Lasagna. Sweet, sweet slumber.
Game 5: Vs. Amherst College
We played pretty well in this game. Not 100% Dartmouth Ultimate, particularly at the very beginning, but we got up to speed before too long. Amherst liked to huck it. Like, REALLY liked to huck it. At one point I was covering a guy who was basically in the endzone with the disc maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the way up the field, pretty close (but in front of him), and they put him. He did come down with it, to his credit, and we learned our lesson from thereafter–dictate in, regardless of how far out the man is. And they stopped seeing success with their huck attempts, and we put this one away without too much difficulty.
13-6.
Game 6: Vs. Harvard
In quarters? Whoops. Guess this is what happens when you finish third in your pool. Harvard gave us a bit of trouble in the now-windy weather, throwing a box zone (4 man cup, 1-3, etc) with an extra man on our primary handler. This forced us to make some long over-the-top throws, which were fairly wide open–but again, with the wind, they weren’t sure things. It also didn’t help us in the early goings that despite there being 5 men around the disc our handlers’ general disinclination to go over the top meant trying to work it and giving Harvard short turns to start. Defensively we got our fair share of turns. I was covering Zirui, probably Harvard’s most explosive cutter, and he got his fair share of touches but wasn’t unguardable after a couple points to figure him out. Likewise we can match up well with most all of Harvard’s studs–despite going down early, we really battled back at the game’s end, with good old-fashioned man D really making Harvard work for every score they got.
9-11, but we wore Harvard down enough that they looked dead against Middlebury for 3/4 of their semifinal loss to them. I think Dartmouth can claim an ultimate (pun intended?) victory here.
That ended our Yale Cup run. Somewhat disappointing, in that we didn’t play particularly inspired ultimate outside of the Brown game and mid-late against Harvard. However, the weekend was probably the best result we could’ve asked for in terms of making progress heading into regionals. We’re not complacent. We’re ready to work again, and we’re motivated to work ’til the very end.
Watch out.
Spring Break! Part 4: Southerns, Day 2 (3/23)
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...We returned to the fields for a second, windy day with the same resolve we brought on the first day–play complete games, work every point, and leave open no possibility that a slip in focus would be cause for our downfall.
Game 5: vs. Williams
We came out with our zone gellin’, and in the high wind (the game had a decided upwind-downwind dynamic to it) WUFO had difficulty responding. As a team that loves to put it up deep and really play for the jump disc (or take the opportunities to make hucks that are run discs if those are there), relying on their athletes, forcing them to mull around and beat a zone, particularly in windy weather where simply trying to make a play deep is more problematic, was decidedly outside of their comfort zone. We opened up a fairly large lead and never really looked back, eventually shifting out of our primary zone set when we had a comfortable lead and continuing to generate turns by virtue of hard work in our man and secondary zone sets. We won this one 15-6, a great start to the day.
Game 6: vs. Ohio State
A really solid team, overall. We threw our zone with some success in this game as well, though we definitely wound up shifting more towards man as they worked it out (memory’s a little fuzzy here–this is what happens when I put off recaps for a couple weeks due to a start-of-term project). There was a LOT of tension in this game, tempers flared. At one point the game was maybe 11-9, 11-10 us and we thought hard cap was on–we scored the presumed extra point, shook hands, etc, apparently having agreed with OSU’s “coach” on the cap whilst the captains presumed we had a couple extra points to play–lots of dispute and some angry words between players later and we agreed to play to 14. Yours truly kept his composure of course; our very next point I was in on D and we forced a high stall count pass, a swing across the field…the disc carried out of bounds and one of our players caught it on the sideline as an OSU player was sprinting up, and, insisting that he had a legitimate shot at throwing a greatest (more heated exchange, debate on the trajectory of the disc, where it would’ve landed and where he would’ve needed to go, etc), we sent the disc back. I was covering their primary dump, who had been clearing out at a high stall when the aforementioned bailout was thrown. Having followed the disc, I was now behind him relative to the disc’s position on the other sideline, but rather than giving a “hey, I think we were here” bit and re-establishing my position, I figured, eh, I’ll start behind him and sprint past if the throw goes up. Sure enough, disc in, the throw goes up and I get the layout D on the line, getting our heads back in the game and out of the call as we convert the break and capitalize on the next point as well to end with authority, 14-10, rather than simply stemming the tide of an OSU comeback after our early lead.
This was also the game where, when going up for a disc in the endzone, I got hit from behind on my way up (I think Graham was behind me?) and flung upwards into the air. There’s a picture out there somewhere–I was flung upwards and forwards, feet first, essentially going from jumping to make a play to riding down a slide away from the disc as 4ish other guys are making a play some 5 feet away. I came down pretty hard–I hung a lot longer then I’m used to, but fortunately I’m fairly used to landing from great height at this point–and landed pretty squarely on my ass, also catching myself with my left wrist. Had I been flung more forcefully I’m pretty sure I could’ve broken it–instead I wound up merely sore for the rest of the day. Southerns Injury Count: 4
Game 7: Vs. University of North Carolina, Wilmington
If the OSU game was tense, then this game was simultaneously tighter and looser–UNCW gave us a hell of a game, with both teams battling back and forth throughout, but despite their reputation (and the attitude of several of our players in the previous game) we came into this game calmer and more prepared to defuse tension, and so wound up keeping our composure and minimizing the volume of heat exchanged.
Like I said, this was a tight game–we had moved to different fields at this point, and the wind had subsided a bit in addition to now being a crosswind instead of upwind/downwind, so man defense won the day. Our handler D set us apart from UNCW, as the relative ease with which we got our resets contrasted strongly with several of the tense situations we forced them into (and capitalized upon). We battled and were up, 12-11, before UNCW scored to force universe. We marched it up the field before a cross-field strike to Bonesaw in the endzone sealed our win and punched our ticket to the finals (!).
This game’s injury, the fifth and most serious of the weekend, saw me getting taken out by a UNCW player. Dominant cutter-type, pretty athletic build–and apparently pretty heavy, as lil’ ol’ 135-lb me was floored upon impact. I was sprinting for a swing as the disc was in the air. He was apparently just standing there (I didn’t see him at all, I was looking at the disc after all). I called a foul. He (and a couple teammates) protested on a couple counts, at one point trying to tell me that I wasn’t going to be able to make a play on the disc (had the discussion dragged on much longer, I would’ve been 50:50 on dropping a “my top speed is higher” line for the second consecutive spring break), but I stuck to the argument that:
a) a foul is any contact that affects continued play (getting floored would constitute an effect on continued play)
b) if the foul affects the play on the disc, then the disc either goes to the fouled (in a circumstance where the catch would’ve clearly occurred sans foul) or goes back to the thrower (in circumstances where the result is unclear. Rules Blog, go!). Ergo (“Ergo! I don’t know what that means, I go to a state school!” -one/several? UNCW players, as reported by sidelines) foul, disc goes back since they contested.
I don’t know if we scored or not, but I didn’t play the rest of the game (I did finish the point though). I was worried for a while that I might have dislocated or subluxated my shoulder. At any rate, I was icing after the game’s end and still icing as we began our game against Tufts in the finals. Southerns Injury Count: 5
Game 8: vs Tufts
Of course. Of course we travel all the way to Statesboro, GA, and play not one, but both of our regional rivals also at the same tourney. The Northeast is back on the rise, if the presence of two NE teams in the finals is any indication.
We went down early. It was pretty apparent from the get-go that both teams were fairly tired from their earlier games. Tufts has a good system, but they definitely still had some work to do when we saw them. We had a lot of miscue/misexecution turns that they capitalized on early, but they had their fair share of throwaways too–several of which were predicated in the late-game by their poor resets (combined with the way we play dump defense, they really didn’t have much there). I was watching from the side all first half as we went down (score was…8-5? going into half? 7-4 or something perhaps?), but after a brief chitchat with the tourney’s trainer (“Yeah, it’s a muscular thing. If you had a dislocation you wouldn’t let me come close to doing this with your arm. It’s tough with the way you throw the frisbee, but if you can deal with the pain you’re OK to play”) I jumped back in. I can’t authoritatively say that I helped–I promptly threw away two backhands thanks to my shoulder (localized to the deltoid, I had trouble with placement and touch on the long backhands) and a third turn besides, but I CAN authoritatively say that I threw the winning goal, a short scoober to a wide-open Carson in the endzone.
All in all, a very good tournament for us. We kept our focus high throughout, kept our energy up, and overcame several challenges on Sunday, most notably dealing with the tension between us and OSU and being down to Tufts in the finals. A great way to cap off our spring break, and a nice dose of confidence heading into the spring season.
(team picture coming at some point…)
Spring Break! Part 3: Southerns Day 1 (3/22)
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...You win some, you lose some. Sometimes you win ‘em all. This was one of those times. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Day 1 was pretty straightforward for us, with several games that were not terribly challenging and our hardest game coming from Northwestern, which we still won 13-9.
More on each game:
Game 1: vs Rutgers
Ariel (hi, Ariel! Thanks for introducing yourself at Folly. You may be the only reader I have outside of people I already knew) was really Rutgers’ only threat to do anything dangerous with the disc, and we did a good job of putting enough pressures on the handlers and downfield that he wasn’t able to hurt us to any large degree. We had a fairly open rotation at this point in the day as I recall. We went into the weekend wanting to play a full weekend of ultimate, never mailing it in against any team, and we did so successfully all day Saturday, playing two complete halves against Rutgers for a 13-5 win.
Personal note on this game: maybe late in the first half, I got kneed in the calf playing defense. I know, right? Kneed in the calf, what/how the hell? I turned more quickly than the cutter as he changed direction (I was behind him) and he kneed me.
Southerns Injury Count: 1
Game 2: vs Northwestern
We played NUT twice around this time last year at Ultimax, narrowly winning our first meeting and comfortably winning our second. This year we were better prepared for them, jumping out to a lead fairly early on with a few breaks and a rock-solid O-line in the first half (i think we went into half up 7-3 or so). Second half, we stumbled almost immediately out of the gate, as our O-line was broken straight away and gave up another break right afterwards, letting NUT creep back into the game and making the second half a bit more passionate as NUT tried to get themselves amped up enough to get back in it. We kept our composure, however, and our D-line (my D-line) got the breaks back as we went 6-6 in the second half to close out a 13-9 win.
This game, I was covering a particularly body-ful NUT cutter. I play pretty good body defense these days, getting in the way of the deep cut, but this guy instead of running around me, or trying to set me up somehow, would invariably move out into a cutting lane before stepping into me, often with an arm pushoff, and heading in. I kept warning him about the foul possibility there, and when I finally did call it he flipped out, giving me sass about “[I] was moving so it’s a foul on [me].” I countered with the fact that a) his pushoffs were taking away my capability to make a play and b) his elbow caught me in the throat on the foul call in question and we agreed to disagree. (Southerns Injury Count: 2) He came and spoke to me after the point and we reached an understanding that was much better than the somewhat contentious exchange we had on-field, so that was a good way to settle things before stepping back on the field against one another and a really great move on his part to come talk to me after the point.
Bye: Got lunch, watched the Discomfort Trolley. Man those guys develop. Some great freshmen waiting in the wings…
Game 3: vs LSU
We played these guys at CCC, and they were about as impressive then. We went into this game really focused on improving with every point we played, and our commitment to playing hard defense really showed in this game. Layouts all over, several layout D’s, and a point block by yours truly. (According to Dermo, later: “I was covering that guy for the second time, and after he got it the first time I was like, ‘this time I’m DEFINITELY going to get a layout D on you on the in cut.’ And then you went and point blocked the handler and beat me to it. Thanks a ton! Now I’ve got to get a layout D in the next game, I haven’t gotten one yet today!”) Incidentally, I also layout D’d Dermo’s guy at a later point.
This was the game, I think, where I had a layout D attempt that missed (you ever get those, where you’re right on top of a guy, but the disc is placed juuuust so so that you can’t get the D without laying out entirely around the guy? That’s what this was like), and as I got up after the bid, Chase was running past following his man and his knee caught me square in the back of the head. Southerns Injury Count: 3
Game 4: vs. Ohio
Another game we went into with keen focus and came out of as 13-4 victors. We really opened things up in the later stages of this game as I recall. I don’t remember a ton of specifics about this game (I’m getting some cognitive confusion here with Ohio st, whom I have very clear recollections of and who we played on Sunday). At this point in the day we threw a bit more zone (also in the LSU game) with very good success. Having a consistent group of people who play zone D together really enhances the chemistry and effectiveness of a teamwork D like that.
No extra injury for me in this game, thankfully, though more came on Sunday. More on that in the next post…
Spring Break! Part 2: Follywood (3/17-3/21)
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...One part hat tourney, three parts scrimmaging/B-team tourney. Lots of wind, which was better than windless and gnat-filled.
Beach Houses. Beach. Ahhh, Beach. Sun, lots of sun. Lots of sunburning.
A wonderful week.
Ultimate-related components:
Hat Tourney
A pretty good time, though the wind really hosed the level of play. It’s a lot tougher to be a ballin’, play-makin bomb-thrower when the wind means that precision throws are tough and completions depend as much on the capability of the cutter as that of the thrower (in contrast to calmer conditions, where I could place throws such that the receiver’s ability is relatively less important).
Of course, I’m no Alex Crew, whose (mostly) unstoppable flick, upwind or downwind, carried his team into the finals and ultimately to victory. A “5″ on the 1-5 scale, indeed. Did I mention that he’s single?
Follywood Proper
B-teams had two squads, each playing a couple games a day I think. They didn’t place terribly well, but they made a shitton of progress in just a short while. Especially fun to watch friends of mine who’d never played ultimate before come on spring break and go from recreational tosser to on-field baller.
A-team, we(as well as the women) had a few scrimmages. We wound up playing Arkansas, Carleton GOP, and Oklahoma…we beat GOP pretty handily, were tight with Arkansas (I *think* we may have opened up a bit more of a lead late that game, but I can’t recall if we actually won or not), and dropped one to Oklahoma in some pretty windy weather as our glaring lack of outdoor experience manifested in numerous short turns. A good swift kick in the nuts to us, we spent a fair bit of time afterwards getting back to basics, working on throwing, doing some general zone work with specific situations, and dialing back in our dump-swing.
So it was that we left Folly feeling more confident in our ability to play in conditions. A half-day’s road trip later, and we were off to Statesboro for Southerns. More on that next time…
Spring Break! Part 1: Terminus/Georgia Invite (3/14-16)
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...aka “You spin me right round, baby, right round, like a (frisbee/tornado) baby, right round round round…”
aka the first of two Dartmouth tournament wins over the course of spring break.
As you may or may not be aware, Atlanta was smack dab in the middle of some nasty storm action during the weekend of Terminus. The weather cut games (and the tournament) short; a 2-hour delay followed the first two rounds (we didn’t have a game scheduled ’til the third round, and had only just finished warming up when the horn send us packing) and the tournament ended with a whimper as there were two more shorter batches of play before weather again forced games to a halt, this time permanently. Even polo fields have their limits.
Terminus Game 1: vs. NC State
Granted, our one game against NC state was shortened/interrupted by weather, but we played hard, they played hard, and we won 8-5 against them, making us the first team to beat them since we met (and beat) them at CCC in the fall. Maybe we just match up against them better than any other team out there they ran into in the intervening time. At any rate, with our 1-0 record on the day and our win being an upset of the tournament’s top seed, we went to bed Saturday night as the self-proclaimed winners of Terminus.
Sunday saw us heading to…somewhere. The name of the park escapes me at the moment, but it was a good hour and a half away from our hotel–at any rate, we played with several of the teams who were in power pools and were looking to salvage a weekend having come all the way to Atlanta. We were set to play three games but wound up with two, as Wisco-Whitewater left early to return home. The two games we did play, though, provided tight games and definitely made what had looked like a lost weekend into a productive one.
Georgia Invite Game 1: vs. Georgia Tech
Or simply “Tech,” as they often referred to themselves. This is a week+ ago’s recollections, so my mind’s highlights have faded. We won by a couple points, on the strength of our defense as always. Tight downfield defense and lots of pressure on the resets leads to a lot of turns.
Personal highlight: at one point we had a turn where I laid out in a failed effort to catch a dump pass. My defender, seizing the opportunity, immediately takes off deep while another Tech player runs up to the disc to huck it to him. He puts up a long floater into the endzone–at this point I’ve already gotten up and begun to chase maybe 3-4 steps behind. The disc sails into the endzone, and the Tech player is all but prepared to reach out and catch the disc, when I catch him, making a chest-height layout at full extension for the D. Definitely my best successful defensive bid in a high-level ultimate game. Other teams were apparently talking about how fast I was afterwards, which is pretty sweet. Yes, Cabo/Socks/others who scour my blog for self-calls, my top speed was higher, and yes, this is a shameless self-call. Like you’d expect any less.
Game 2: vs. Minnesota
Duck, duck, gray duck. Why gray ducks? Damned if I know. Why are we the pain train? It’s all arbitrary.
In contrast to the last game, in which we were in control from the get-go (I do believe we started off with a break against Tech), Minnesota caught us off-guard, with very quick disc movement challenging our marks with the throw-and-run. They jumped out to an early lead, but we battled and battled and battled our way back to force a universe point which we lost on. Despite the game’s result we were left with a pretty good sense of what we’re capable of, and it definitely affirmed the resolve and belief in the team to come from behind in any circumstance against any team.
Our third game would have been against Wisco-Whitewater, another team that’s right at our level and would have made for a great game, but they rolled out to head home.
After the day’s games, we drove to Charleston for a week of fun in the sun. Expect a short Follywood recap followed by a longer Southerns recap (the short version: we won!), potentially in two parts, over the coming day or two.
It’s gonna be one hell of a spring!
Injuries and Ultimate
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...So, I went to a reunion for my fall’s senior seminar yesterday–we had a good class, maybe 15 of us total, and we got to travel out to San Diego for a neuroscience conference there. We all got along pretty well, so we decided to have a reunion and our professor came too, with a slide show he had prepared.
The slide show had pictures of each of us in turn with one or two distinctive quotes–one of our students, an overachieving junior, was quoted with “Hey, I read 10 extra articles on today’s topic, even though they weren’t assigned, and I have about 70 or 80 extra questions to ask you so…can we talk after class?” Hilarious, coming from a professor.
Anyways, his quote for me (since I often spoke to him about ultimate rather than anything relating to our shared field of study) was “Check it out, I just did a search on PubMed for ‘Frisbee’ and there’s actually an article on it!”
Naturally, I immediately checked PubMed afterwards and found said article, published in 2006.
If you’ve ever wondered just what kind of toll this sport takes on one’s body, this is a good article to read. Of note:
- 88% of the 135 players surveyed had missed playing due to injury, and half of all of the players had recurrent injuries
- 65% of the 135 reported ankle injuries at some point
- 53% reported knee injuries at some point
I don’t know if anybody cares to look up statistics from other sports to compare, but those all strike me as pretty high percentages.
Try and take care of yourself.
2/8/08-2/10/08 Vegas, Baby, Vegas.
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Game 1: vs. University of Northern Texas
It was pretty apparent that we’d been playing indoors for a couple months. UNT is a moderately decent team, with decent disc motion, but by and large this team won by chucking it to their big receiver(s, though only one of them did any major damage against us). I’m sure they worked it up a few times, but by and large my recollections of their scores were on hucks to matchups–not open cuts necessarily, just straight-up throwing to the tall guy. And hey, if it works well enough, can you fault them for trying?
At any rate, we had a number of errors emblematic of the indoor-outdoor transition; floaty throws that can work in ideal, still indoor conditions that outdoors are mis-placed and D’d. Several drops. This may just be me, but I felt like we were all kind of getting used to not only playing in conditions again (albeit relatively calm conditions at this point), but also to playing in cleats again. My legs spent the better part of the weekend re-adjusting to cleats, though I suspect there was more to how I felt than that.
We dropped a tight one, lost by a point according to the Vegas Score Reporter (which is woefully lacking in detailed updates, by the way). Not a particularly satisfying result, given the way we played, but we were pretty confident in our potential coming out of the game, having outplayed them in every way but just failing to get an extra break or two to get the W (granted, were we rolling the way we’re capable of, we could’ve suffered a few extra breaks against us and still won).
UPDATE: we actually lost 8-10. At any rate, it was a close game.
Game 2, vs. Whitman
Up from (t)here. We put things together a lot more successfully in this game. In contrast to UNT, which was dominated by a large cutter, Whitman’s main threat was a handler-type, which we’re much more capable of dealing with. We were in control of this game from the get-go and never really let up, winning 12-6 on the increased consistency of our play (Whitman, incidentally, would later go on to play in the Quarterfinals of the championship bracket against those silly boys from Harvard (hi, McCarthy!). Funky format, eh?).
Game 3, vs. Wesleyan
Not a ton worth recapping here, we rolled this game 13-4. Lots of fly plays by lots of fly folk, our defense was pretty suffocating here as we got several D’s short and forced several throwaways/drops as well. Props to some of our rooks for stepping up and playing well this game as we opened up the rotation. I handled a ton in this game, a trend that would continue through the weekend. I also felt REALLY good this game. I don’t know what it is–maybe playing under the lights (this game came 3 rounds after our last, started at 5 PM), as I’ve had good games at Vegas before under the lights. That Vegas sun can be draining. At any rate, I need to figure out how to get to that state consistently, because in this game sprinting pretty literally felt as easy as jogging. Probably the fastest I’ve ever felt on an ultimate field.
Interlude: Night 1
Incidentally, the first day of Vegas also happened to be the first day of my life as a 21-year-old. We hit up the strip in style to celebrate–somehow Cobbles managed to secure a stretch hummer. A “20-person” vehicle, we got by on about $5/person squeezing something like 32 people in. Oh Schmidt, Crew can stand under my umberella, Leah is crazy…lots of fun sing-alongs on the ride. We then hit up the Tropicana to check in on our alums before rolling over to the MGM to hit up the casino. All in all, not a bad way to spend one’s 21st.
Day 2
Game 4: vs. St. Olaf
The golden “O” on their jersey elicited thoughts of Oregon, but they sure didn’t play like ‘em. They had a few successes, mostly running deep against us (probably my two best bids in terms of athleticism were trying to D hucks in this game). I don’t have a ton of highlights in my mind about this game, we played hard and we won by a comfortable margin. Personally, I kept handling this game, trying to improve my positioning…in terms of energy, in contrast to the previous night, today I didn’t feel like I had that extra gear–by no means does this mean that I’m slow, but it does mean that I have to work harder. It’s a lot less taxing to handle than cut, though, so that helped balance it out.
We took this game 13-6.
Game 5: vs. Humboldt
After a bye we played Humboldt. These guys had numbers on their shorts, so you knew they thought themselves legit. And indeed we battled through the first half, more or less trading points ’til half. We had a lot of inefficiency scoring here–we were, as usual, getting the turns, but getting the disc in once we got the turn proved a frustrating task at times as we struggled all weekend to find the balance between taking our shots and playing conservative (it really should’ve tilted more towards the conservative end, given how many of our deep throws–to open cutters as they may have been–wound up poorly executed (again, a sign of our largely indoor experience these past months). We took half and went into our huddle with a sense of fulfillment. We weren’t playing up to potential.
We came out of half and slammed the door. Our O never had to take the field as we shut Humboldt out in the second half. We got our turns–short turns, long turns–and we got the disc and put it in. I think this one wound up something like 12-6 or so?
Game 6: vs UCSUV
or whatever they’re called. The guys in black. Due to a mix-up what we had previously thought was a bye had been changed into a game, so we showed up to this one late and UCSE had informed us that, sad as it may be, the rules had “required” that they assess 3 points. After a bit of bitching and a bit of intervention and apology for confusion from the TD, we started with a clean slate (though still with maybe 1/3 of our roster showing up after the game had started due to the late memo re: game start.
Undaunted by the confusion, we instead came out with a fire lit under our asses, breaking UCSDeeznuts on our first or second D point and maintaining a one or two-point lead through much of the first half. Despite their being a hack-tastic, call-happy team, we kept battling and though UCSN tied it up at points we had been consistently up on them for most of the game. In the end, we wound up losing on universe point in a hard-fought match, with our sidelines as vocal as they’ve ever been and the energy displayed on the field keying perhaps our best game of the tournament as we lost 13-14. Despite the loss we knew we had the stuff to run with this team, and even having given it our all we knew there was still more room for growth and plenty of opportunities in the game to have really taken control. Up from here.
Highlights:
-Robinho with one of the nastiest layout grabs I’ve seen from him (or anyone) for a goal early on
-Dermo with a huge layout D, following which he was taken out by a UCLV player and got a black eye (best part of which was the player attempting to call a foul on the play, after Dermott had clearly gotten the D well before any contact and if anything, the foul was on him)
-Graham being a dominator cutting, with more than one domination deep.
Lots of great signs from the team in this game, bodes well for the future of the team and of the program.
Interlude: The Dartmouth Women
They were amazing, quite simply. Thanks to the large number of byes in the format we had plenty of chances to watch them–I’m blown away. They are SO good. So many talented players, handlers, cutters, defenders, you name it. Forget how well we did and how promising our season looks–THEY are the real deal. Typically Princess doesn’t put it together ’til just before regionals, but this year they’re already gelling and they’ve still got MONTHS to fine-tune. That’s a real scary thought.
Day 3 (we all crashed hard Saturday night)
Game 7: vs. Colorado
Losing to UCSF dropped us from the championship bracket of 16 to the so-called “ninals” bracket of 8, along with a few teams whose presence outside of the championship bracket was surprising (namely, Colorado, Florida, Oregon, and to a lesser extent, Illinois and UCSD). We squared off with Mamabird to start our day. As was the theme throughout the weekend, we played decently well, getting our turns, but failed to capitalize enough to take control of the game. This was a fairly tight game throughout–I think Colorado went up on us early but we hung tough and got our breaks back. The final score of 10-13 could have easily been 11-12, as the game was capped at 12-10 and an execution error on O led to the turn and the final score. By this point in the tournament I was starting to hurt–I had re-tweaked my ankle in a collision at the end of the UCSOB game yesterday, and was playing with an ankle brace on Sunday–and in this game, I got cleated going for a sky at one point (I got skyed, or rather, out-positioned) in the knee, which had me playing with a Charlie horse for the rest of the day. Rather than talking them up or asking out, I chose to play through it all, figuring that this was as good a time as any to work on my mental toughness and to learn how to play through it, with pretty good success I’d say.
Game 8: vs. Davidson
Not sure what to say about this game. Unlike Colorado, where their success was based in part on their superior athletes (though we still got our share of turns), Davidson did not have anything too impressive or intimidating to them. This game was again hallmarked by offensive troubles, as we gave the other team far more opporunities to score than we should’ve–as a team that likes to chuck it (like many of the teams we faced), we got our chances with the disc but each time they get the disc is another 50-50 shot at a quick score, so offensive efficiency is crucial to keep them in check.
I personally had a great game–I got to cut more often in this game to good effect. Thanks to my having handled all weekend I still had a pretty good bit of gas left in the tank on Sunday despite being beat up. I finally started getting my cutting groove back on O, and defensively I feel as thought I’m making pretty good strides on containing the deep threats and really dictating with my body positioning. Somehow we still wound up losing this game, 9-13, leaving us with a sour taste in our mouth as our ninth game was a no-show.
Game 9: vs. Oregon
Apparently their ego was too bruised from prior losses to finish out the bracket, as they pulled not only out of the 15th place game with us but also out of the game before that with UBC. Unfortunate, as we were really looking forward to a ninth game to get back into a groove and finish on a strong note. Personally I was feeling amped to push myself for one more game and really get to the edge of my physical capabilities for a weekend’s worth of ultimate, but so it goes. My ankle and knee certainly didn’t mind the earlier break.
Overall, a very successful weekend for the program. We’ve seen flashes of brilliance out there, gotten a taste of what this team is REALLY capable of, and that ceiling is still a ways up there–and with that ceiling so far we STILL managed to do as well as we did. Makes a fella really excited to bust his ass over the next few months and take this program to new heights.
Haven’t done this in a while, but general thoughts on the good and the bad, personally:
Good
- Defensive positioning, generally–still need to get better at pouncing after dictating my quarry to cut in, but I was very happy with my defense this weekend.
- Conditioning in a general sense–stayed strong all weekend, despite getting a little banged up. Never had to ask out of a point, though I did generally play fewer points/game than in some tournaments
- Health. The ankle made it ’til the end of day 2, and the knee never acted up on me (the Charlie horsed knee was the left, not my usual right nemesis)
Needs Improvement
- Handler positioning/cutting/mindset. I’m getting a better sense of where I need to be, but I need to develop a stronger drive to get to that position as the disc moves–I find myself following the play too often.
- Cutting sense. Particularly in points where I have to be the man cutting, I need to get a better killer instinct and take over the way I’m capable of. Additionally, a goal of mine going into the weekend (that I didn’t get to work on since I was handling) was to get a better sense of anticipation and timing for my cuts so that I’m getting open at optimal times. Still need more opportunity to do that.
- How my body works. I’m not sure how or what led to me to feel as good as I did in the Wesleyan game, but I need to figure it out and apply it consistently so I can be in top form when I need it most. I can play well enough when I’m not in top form, but there’s another tier I can yet reach.
