Sidelines: Eyes, Voices, Energy
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Loading ...Things the sideline(s–don’t forget to split!) can do:
- Cheer
- Watch (for patterns, for weaknesses, for successes, for clues. For example, Pete’s defender is breathing heavier by the second–yell at him to step up and punish the mismatch!)
- Cue (echoing or initiating mark switches on a force middle defense or dynamic mark adjustments, etc.)
- Guide (the old veteran teaches the young rookie where to stand and when to cut from the wing position in the zone. The captain directs the stack to move closer to the disc after a deep pull in the endzone)
- Recover–both oneself (stud cutter needs some gatorade-water after a couple points in a row) and others (bench-riding rookie brings said stud cutter water on the line so he doesn’t crash playing a couple points)
- Bring the energy level up–see cheering.
Building Chemistry: How Do You Do It?
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...I’m still behind on writing for the blog–a week in China and a weekend trip have eaten into my free time to write. Been doing a lot of thinking though (see blog title).
Today’s question, open forum:
How do you build team chemistry?
To put this a little more specifically: how do you take players who are unfamiliar with each other and get them to a point where they work well on the field?
I think that it follows somewhat with off-field chemistry: guys (and girls) need to be comfortable talking to each other about what’s working and what isn’t.
Social events are good to that end, but more particularly I’m thinking about things like practice/training groups–such groupings can make some artificial camaraderie where it doesn’t exist naturally (as it might between roomates, for instance). If I want my offensive handlers to gel with each other, I definitely want them drilling and playing together–but I want them going to the gym together, doing sprints together, too.
Is that too much? Does an emphasis on groups like that (e.g., persistent O/D line splits in drills, practice, etc) cost the overall team dynamic? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
More "Outliers"–Creating a Team Culture
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...In Outliers Gladwell brings up some points considering how arbitrary factors can influence success in a given endeavor (like birthday cutoffs for youth play–an 11-month difference between just before or just after a cutoff is huge in developmental terms), but perhaps more importantly, he delves into, for lack of a better way to put it, cultural programming–how your upbringing and environment (“nurture” in the nature v. nurture debate) have a profound effect on all sorts of aspects of your character, from communication style to how long you are willing to persevere at a given task.
The implications of this alone are significant, but he goes a step farther and talks about changing said programming–with Korean Air, they changed the culture of communication in the cockpit by enforcing English use, as the Korean they had defaulted previously (which, much like Japanese, has in-built status considerations for speech) was encouraging imbalanced power dynamics where the younger copilot would not question the elder, even if he knew the other was in the wrong (which led to a spat of preventable plane crashes back in the ’90s and before).
How do you change an ultimate team’s culture? Specifically, how do you create a culture of work (and, eventually, success), from a team culture that is more laid back? Certainly a large part of it is eliminating the vestiges of the anti-work culture, and this is perhaps the most difficult feat to accomplish. Generally, when you’re talking about getting rid of the slacker (or taking the slacker out of the player) you’re talking about potentially butting heads with your peers, your friends, your teammates. For this reason, I’m inclined to think this change is not one that is easily done overnight–instead, it’s a process that can take many years to achieve fully.
Plant the seed of hard work and perseverance in the young, impressionable minds. Get a batch of bright-eyed freshmen to buy into the culture of work, and while you might not see immediate payoff, perhaps when they’re seniors they’ll have worked hard enough to take a team to nationals. (Perhaps not). Making an impression takes a strong example–as tough as it may be to get, you need strong, hard-working leadership. It may not be possible to get everyone, but if you have an established core of hard-working veterans, that can and will resonate with young players who may be searching for just this outlet. Of particular importance is a team’s senior leadership–outside of a team’s captains, it’s these guys, the vets of the vets, that set the tone, and make the biggest impression on your freshmen.
The goal is to reach a tipping point with your hard workers where so many people are working so hard, the guys on the fringe will have no choice but to fall in line (or fall by the wayside).
It’s not easy. In particular, players need to see payoff for their hard work–obviously winning more games is a plus, but a big win like a strong showing at regionals (or perhaps just making regionals–your goal should be specific to your team’s situation) will go a long way towards creating a culture of success. Once players see that hard work leads to more success, it will become easier and easier to ask that of your teammates going forwards.
At least, this is what I think (and have seen). I think the biggest legacy any group of seniors can leave is the impression they make on their underclassmen. You can’t do it all yourself–you have to create a culture, a team system, that continually breeds success. Anyone can contend for a year–it’s making a Program that really takes work.
Feel free to chip in with your own thoughts and experiences.
The Bness
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...I played B-team last year, and while it was a great time and I did develop a bit, I feel like there was definitel more progress to be had as a player on the A-team (not that I didn’t enjoy the extra play time and limited stud status I had on the B-team).
Cuts have been made again this year, and I feel like the B-team players are again getting shortchanged. We’ve been focusing a lot on A-team development, with all the new players we have (by Socks’ count, something like 60%-ish of the team were not A-teamers last year), and as a result, haven’t been playing mixed with the B-team much, which is currently one of the best sources of development for our B+ players, the guys with dedication and ability that just didn’t make the cut (man, is it hard to make the cut). I’ve had several conversations with people already just expressing frustration or disappointment at being unable to improve at a rate they’d like to.
So how do we work around this?
Obviously you can just have more mixed practicing/scrimmaging…drilling together and the like. Particularly at this point of the season, when the A-team is effectively done playing as a collective until the spring (barring one winter tourney), it makes a lot of sense to get as much development for the B-team as possible. The winter’ll be here soon, and unless you’re really close to Leverone it takes a fair bit of commitment, of “buying in” to the ultimate crowd to see a good B-team turnout. This is particularly important for the freshmen–we need to make sure we get as many invested in playing ultimate and dedicating themselves to improvement now, before the winter comes and the chill winds and lack of consistent practice time leave freshmen vulnerable to other activities and interests taking root and pulling them away come spring.
That works to an extent; with A-quality handlers, cutting options improve tremendously, and the measuring stick for a man defender, mark, really all aspects of play, increase when matched up against an A-teamer. But simply relying on A-team players to be playmakers will only result in having B-teamers who are good at playing with people better than them. You also need to cultivate responsibility and talent in at least some of them for the team to be successful, and I think the best way to really generate that sort of situation would be with a B-team coach.
It makes a lot of sense. It could be as simple as having a couple A-teamers talk strategy and contribute wisdom from the sidelines, though I feel that having a “authority”-type figure would be much more powerful. Even if it’s only in a limited role, I think having somebody who’s in a position of power and really legitimized experience–even the captains could work in this aspect to an extent, though they’re busy with the A-team–looking at the B-team players, evaluating them, and really guiding their development to an extent–would make a big difference.
Perhaps that’s a bit too ambitious of me though. This sport’s really not up to that level of coaching and sophistication. More simply, we could do something akin to what the women are doing with throwing partners, where you have somebody who’s experienced relative to their partner(s) working with and teaching a B-team player, really investing in their personal improvement. Personally I really like being able to toss with somebody, or just be chatting with somebody about ultimate, and being able to point out, hey, if you focus on wrist position when you huck flick it’ll really help keep it from taking a trajectory you don’t want, but I’m not going to walk around instructing everyone I see–it’s just too much, you know? But in a limited role I think most people on the A-team could have a positive impact on the development of the Bness.
I guess that’s part of why I started blogging. It’s really helped me a ton reading stuff on RSD and in blogs about various aspects of play, really got me thinking, and I can only hope to be as helpful to somebody else who’s curious and has the desire to improve.
