Practice
Had a great double practice at glorious Lums Pond State Park. We spent a lot of time scrimmaging and working on the triangle cutting drill. We focused on defense, throwing deep early, and threatening multiple spaces at once. I really enjoyed the triangle cutting drill. I think it simulated game situations well and really let us work on a lot of good habits.
The O-line motto for the weekend was “play with tempo and trust”. Miggs was coming back from surgery, so he provided feedback to the O line. I thought he was very helpful in setting the strategy (even the defensive strategy) and on giving individual feedback on throwing.
The O line won most of the scrimmages over the weekend. The format of the scimmages was this: if O scored the first goal, they would play defense as if it were a turn. If D scored the first goal, the point ended. Also, O never pulled to D. Instead, we would drop the disc in the endzone and then set up before checking the disc in. This was an interesting format, as it allowed the O to score twice before subs, but it also gave the D a chance to score while O was tired. I’m not sure if this gave O an advantage or not, but the O line won most of the scrimmages on the weekend.
On the O line’s O possessions, we tended to run sidestack or ho stack on the pull plays. On D, we ran aggressive marks (flat-no-inside or even straight-up at times) and tight D downfield. Half the time, we fronted the cutters and trusted the mark to take away the easy deep throw. Alex and Diana really punished us for this strategy, so we tried to play back-hip when they had the disc. When Diana came over to the O line, it became easier for us.
Personally, I think both my D and O really stepped up this weekend. Patrick’s article on perfect positioning really came in handy. I spent a lot of time thinking about avoiding parallel foot positioning and I think that helped me respond to cutters faster. I covered Papa for most of the weekend. In the past I struggled to contain him, but this weekend I think I shut him down pretty often. One thing that Jill pointed out to me is that I spend too much time looking at the thrower and not enough time focusing on the person I’m covering. I’ll be working on that later this week. I also felt that my mark was pretty solid most of the weekend and my cutting is getting better as I practice it more.
My main downside is still my throwing. I don’t think I had more than one or two decision errors, but I did have a bunch of execution mistakes. I rushed several throws when my mark was out of position or on the ground, and ended up turning them over. I even got handblocked once. I also overthrew Panna on what should have been a wide-open goal. Finally, I rushed the last point of the last game on Sunday and threw a dicey upline throw when I should have been looking to swing the disc.
Camping
Between Saturday and Sunday practices, we camped at the campground in the park. The forecast called for rain all weekend, but it ended up only raining at night. Saturday was beautiful the whole day. Sunday was grey and soggy, but almost no actual rain fell on us.
At the campsite, we played disc golf and ate a bunch of food. Alex brought a giant steam pot and made a huge dinner for everyone: 15 lobsters and a ton of clams, mussels, shrimp, sausage, eggs, etc. It was the most gourmet meal I’ve ever had while camping. Then we sat around a campfire, drank beer, and played games. It would have been perfect if not for the nasty park ranger who made us pour out the last of our beer. I thought she was gonna be cool about it (we weren’t even being loud) but she was not fun at all.
Diana and I did make one technical error. We set up our tent on a giant tarp. I thought it was a good idea, but I forgot that tent tarps are designed not to stick out past the edges of the tent. This keeps rainwater from pooling on the tarp. So when it rained at night, the water collected inside and most of our stuff got wet. We slept fine (the thermarests kept us out of the water) but packing up in the morning was annoying and drying everything in the evening was a chore. On the plus side, we had tons of dry socks because our AMP socks had just come in. I had them in my bucket, which kept them and most of my other stuff dry. The duffel bag did not stay fully dry, but it did OK compared to Diana’s backpack, which got completely soaked. Lessons learned there.