tempe bound

Wow. My first tourney on "grass" (Tempe in January = a lot of brown) since Labor Day 2007. W0w again. Lots goes through my head. Sure, I've played plenty of games since then, but not that much. Winter and Summer leagues with a stellar record of course, but probably never more than 5 straight hours of play. This is two days. And while there was some talk of working out, it didn't get very far. I hit the stairs up from the reservoir a few times, but I never was pushing it. That's what I find the hardest now -- just actually caring enough to try. One long league game by itself can be tough, this will be 7 or 8 games. Thank goodness we have a few previous world champs besides myself. Ones that still play, you know, the Fall Season. Throw in the Team USA tryout kids, the UPA champs, you start to see why although I might be out of shape, I'm not too worried about the result. I hear we even have a beach stud -- might be very helpful on those sandy fields.

Any team that plays us needs to focus on one main thing -- be the team that plays us the last round on Saturday. It's a key round. People are focused on important things like lasagna, The Library, hot tubs. The greater Phoenix area has a lot to offer. Apparently, there is even surfing in Tempe! Surfing's probably our #1 nemesis in this difficult last round. Maybe people are thinking about golf, there is loads of golf in the region. And imagine the distraction that is the Super Bowl. What if we run into some Cardinals fans that think we should throw every pass like a Kurt Warner bomb, but in thumber form? Who will be our Larry Fitz? Do people think that will help our chances in the last round of the day?

Yes, those were my last round concerns. But I figured, hopefully, the local and/or UPA insiders on the roster can set the schedule up in just the right way to get us through that evil round. And then a few minutes ago, after all the good things I've ever said about Tempe, I look at the schedule and they have us playing a showcase game. A showcase game? In January!?!?! Unbelievable. I guess it makes sense. This tourney was always about the late finals under the lights on Sunday. But that damn Super Bowl has all the locals running the show ready to bail ASAP on Sunday. And they still want their showcase. So elite pool #1 and #2 play a last round game -- please, pull up a chair to the sideline -- on Saturday night. Well, Big Sweet Onion Co., this is your huge chance. For your sake, I hope you make it count.

Sunday last round is a whole different ball of wax.

how to handle a blowout

there was a bit in the news last week about a high school girls basketball game which was won 100-0.  The coach of the winning team wound up losing his job over the incident, or maybe because he refused to back down against opposition to his team's scoring.  i read a few articles about it, and i must say that i didn't disagree with the coach all that much.  now i wasn't at this basketball game, so i can't speak to how exactly it was played or how anyone's actions were "unsporting", but the 100-0 score does not indicate a lack of sportsmanship to me.

the days of these types of blowouts in ultimate are limited now, with the proliferation of elite divisions at nearly all tournaments and elite-only tournaments.  however, they still come up at sectionals for many nationals-level teams, and in my college days as well as during the condor successes around the turn of the century blowouts were commonplace.  these games can be equally uncomfortable for the team that is being beat as it is for the team that is winning.

the black tide and condor teams that i played on had a similar method for handling these games.  basically, we would play the game as well and as hard as we could.  that was what we owed the opponent, whether that opponent was a nationals-level team, or a pickup team of below-average players.  the question was, is it more disrespectful to beat a team 15-0 when playing your hardest, or to beat them maybe 15-2 but with lefty points, or all upside-down passes, or stupid defenses that didn't show respect to the opponent?  when given this choice, we always chose to play our hardest and best.

the side benefit is that it is dignifying for the opponent.  if they get a goal but are under the impression that you aren't trying, they get no pleasure in that.  but if they get a goal against the regional or national champion who is playing hard, that is something they can take with them, something they've earned in the game.  i would occasionally have an opponent ask why we were playing so hard, or ask us to let off a little bit, but my response was always that we wanted them to see our best.  i think this occasionally ruffled some feathers, but for the most part i think the opponents were grateful for the chance to see a successful team playing well, to learn from the experience, and to feel like they earned whatever it was they got.

i think the coach of the high school team should have couched his support for the score by explaining that he had put his reserves in, but out of respect for the opponent he asked his reserves to play their hardest and best, so that if the other team got a basket it would be one that they deserve.  now if those reserves were hoisting up 3-pointers and running the fast break, that would maybe be an issue, but having the reserves play hard, execute and do their best is only fair to both the reserves and the opponent.  

learning to play

most competitive club players have probably used the last few months to explore other forms of exercise rather than training for ultimate.  for me this means doing basically anything and everything that doesn't feel like training.  this means jogging, playing hoops, surfing, hiking, tennis, etc. the one of these that i've been doing a lot lately is playing hoops, and it has led me to an interesting awakening about my hoops ceiling.  

now i stopped playing basketball when i was probably 12, and then picked it up again about 8 years ago with some frisbee guys and others.  i didn't have any skills or fundamentals, but i played good defense, liked to jump for rebounds and had pretty good court awareness.  in the last few years i've been picking up more skills and learning a bunch from talking to people who played and also from watching others.  i've gotten to the point where against shorter or slower or less-athletic players i can get a lot of boards, display a low-post move or two, maybe get a couple put-backs or even hit a mid-range jumper.  but when i start playing against better players i get easily boxed out, i have trouble securing the rebounds that do come to me, i frequently lose the ball in the post, and my shot never seems to fall.  i have this understanding that i'm not quite at that level, but i hadn't figured out what the difference was.

this last week i was in a lunchtime game and there was a guy who was about my height and build, didn't strike me as particularly athletic, but was clearly the best player on the court.  when the ball needed to be pushed, he pressed it on a fast break; when a great pass needed to be made, he always made it; he had an extremely reliable jump shot, burying four three-pointers in my team's short game against his.  it turned out that he had played division I basketball at a low-end school from a mid-major conference.  i did a little research after the lunch game and it looks from his statistics that he largely rode the pine for this school.  but here he was controlling this lunchtime game, with what i had previously viewed as some pretty competent basketball players on the court, including many who seemed bigger and faster than him.  i was impressed, and realized that i would probably never have his ball-handling, shooting or passing skills, even if i was playing pickup basketball for a few hours every day of the week.

this got me to thinking about ultimate and how i developed skills to get to the top of our sport.  we've all been out to the pick-up ultimate game where there's the guy who is pretty good, maybe even runs the show out there, but for one reason or another has never made the local elite team.  see, these people who play pick-up are not so different from me playing basketball.  they're good athletes, they have decent field sense, they may even be able to break the mark or huck really well.  but the difference between these players and the ones on elite teams, and the difference between me and this guy at basketball, is that truly good players have done the drills to reinforce the basic skills and fundamentals so that they can execute all the time.  

this guy at the pickup game probably used to do more hours of drills in a week than i have played basketball in the last year.  when i was in college ultimate i was playing in a very controlled situation for about 15 hours a week...when there was no tournament on the weekend.  these 15 hours would probably include about 8-10 hours of skills practice.  now, when i get confronted by a tight mark, i have the fundamental footwork to step out and deliver a pass.  that guy at the pickup ultimate game hasn't seen a good mark, because nobody at pickup plays that way.  he hasn't had to make hard buttonhooks, or worry about his defensive positioning, because he's more athletic that most of the people in the game.

i think what i'm tyring to say is that if you want to improve, if you're trying to work your ultimate skills up to a point that will get you beyond the pickup game, and onto the best team in your area, you're going to have to do more than play.  you need to find a group of people who are willing to work on their skills, even if it's not the most fun thing to do.  playing pickup can build a lot of bad habits because you don't have to work on the fundamentals to succeed, but at the top level you have to have those skills built in as second nature so that you can spend your mental energies focusing on the higher levels of the game.