Field Sense
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Loading ...This thing called “field sense” is, at it’s most basic level, an awareness of space–of open space on the field, motion into and out of space, and what I’ll call “closed” space where there’s congestion or for whatever reason the space is not directly relevant to the motion of the disc.
I’ve already talked about this a bit in the context of anticipating on defense–the “intuitive sense” I refer to is what we tend to call field sense.
How does one develop this intuitive sense? Look here for a nice perspective on the matter (originally found this through Parinella’s blog, by the by). It’s hard to teach, but something that can be developed and intuited with time. You can, of course, offer guidelines to guide this development–your team’s offensive or defensive structure, a player’s progression of looks, etc. But I agree with the premise of the article–loose, free-form play is one of the best ways to develop field sense.
At Dartmouth, we play boot (apparently the San Francisco variation). I’m not going to say it’s directly responsible for the development and success of some of our players…but I will say that the ’08s played a lot of boot over our four years at Dartmouth, and this year our handling corps was anchored by those same ’08s–and any team we played against can attest to the degree of chemistry our handling corps had this year.
Play. Please don’t just play ultimate, either! Boot is a wonderful small-group game. I’ve heard hotbox, goalty, and mini are also very popular, and all encourage the sort of fast-paced free-flowing decision making that you don’t get nearly the same exposure to over the course of an ultimate game. Experiment. Develop a feel for what works and what doesn’t and what you might want to look for. Know what you want, and then find it.
