Played a few games to 5 at the Duck Pond before the thunderstorm kicked us off. Spinners season is done, so all those guys came out. Also a new girl named Claire. The games were good but the weather was really muggy, so it was kinda rough.
Played a few games to 5 at the Duck Pond before the thunderstorm kicked us off. Spinners season is done, so all those guys came out. Also a new girl named Claire. The games were good but the weather was really muggy, so it was kinda rough.
4 hours of practice at Edgely. We spent a lot of time scrimmaging with a focus on defense. We tried several poachy defenses, different marks and downfield positioning. We also spent a little time on reading/catching hucks and throwing deep to women. My defense was not the best and I turned over a wide-open away throw to a girl. I was better on offense: cutting was pretty smooth and I threw a nice huck. Need to work on fitness and quickness more.
Played a game against Raynor’s team. We jumped out to an 8-4 lead at halftime, but then lost our focus and the game (16-14). Our O looked pretty disorganized during the second half. We weren’t getting good cuts and our dumps were not clicking. There were moments when we played really well, especially near the endzone. But overall, not our best game. Personally I threw away way too many discs. I really need to learn discretion if I’m gonna handle.
After games, we did Ben’s 25m shuffle workout. We ran 8 shuffles. I ran each in 25 or 26 seconds. I also did 30 burpees over the course of the evening: 10 after our game, 10 before winning the fields, 10 after.
Played a bunch of games to 5 at the Haverford Duck Pond. Mostly AMP people, a few Bitmapers. We played 4 on 4 the whole time. Overall I played OK, same story as always: too many turnovers.
The legendary Poultry Days tournament. Camping, carnival, chicken, beer, partying, chicken, ultimate and lots of chicken. The team names are chicken-themed, dinner is chicken and even the brick marks are chickens. The weather was awesome all weekend and the level of play varied from really low (I think we bageled our first opponents) to top-notch (finals was Team USA vs Team Canada). We had a relatively easy Saturday, only facing one team (Breasts and Thighs) that really gave us a game. But we pulled out a win to finish the day 5-0 and earn a first-round bye on Sunday. We also fit in a game of SpikeJam and many many games of Spikeball.
After games, we hosed off, got dinner and watched the USA vs Canada showcase game while drinking tequilla mango smoothies and spikeballing at halftime. The rest of the night was approximately this: cricken/middlebury with Duke, brief visit to the carnival for beer, return to fields for the dance party, back to campsite, bed.
Sunday started off with a big breakfast of bagels, biscuits + gravy, and fruit cups. We won our first game was against Tad’s Pitt crew, then lost to Breast and Thighs in quarters. It was windier that Saturday and we struggled against their zone. After being knocked out, we played an extra game against Canada’s U23 team. They went up 4-1, but we came back to win 11-9. I hit my head on the ground on a layout D early in the game and sat out the rest of it.
Overall, a great weekend.
Played my first game of Mercer A League this year. We played Illuminati in a pretty easy game. We won 15-4, then played some more pickup after the game.
Then BenJ and I ran a modified version of the shuffle ladder workout. We ran 4x6x25m shuffles with timed rest (2x,3x,3x,2x the time it took). Apparently this is how the workout is supposed to be done, so what I did last time is not quite right. After the sprints, Weeks, Garret and Jack joined us for burpees (200 total: 50 for me weeks and garret, 30 for ben, 20 for jack). Then we chilled, played some cups and went home.
Place two cones 25m apart. 1 rep = 6 cone-to-cone sprints (150m total). Time each set, then rest X times your time, where X is the number of reps in that set.
My times are in parens.
4 min rest
5 min rest
Finished with 30 burpees
Played a one-day round-robin in Baltimore. I had two turns (both high-release backhands) and two or three Ds. I didn’t play much because I’m still trying to rest my shoulder. As a team, we played pretty well against weaker teams and not very well against AG. We struggled to move the disc to the break side (something we’ve been focusing on a lot this season) and we didn’t do a good job taking away their deep shots (we emphasized this before the game started). We gave up fewer deep goals in the second half, but only broke them once, which wasn’t enough.
Something I’ve been noticing lately is how really good teams are very efficient on offense. They often score in just a few throws, especially against weaker opponents. But with AMP, even when playing a worse team, we rarely score quickly. Everyone is open, but we get a lot of short-gain in-cuts. Maybe this happens because we’ve been emphasizing moving the disc laterally, or maybe we just don’t look for the deep shots as much. But something just doesn’t feel right.
Started doing some burpees this morning, but then realized that my shoulder is not ready for this yet. Need more rehab :-(.
Played one of the most ridiculous tournaments ever. Most of the teams we played were pretty weak, but our last game on Saturday was against a bunch of GOAT players and some strong women. They didn’t play the best defense, but when you’re scoring every point on O in about 6 or 7 throws, you don’t have to. Besides that game, we won the rest easily.
I also played in the showcase game, which was North America vs The World. We had two girls from Sweden, a guy from NZ, two guys from Australia, an Asian girl, a Russian guy (Toli) and a few others. I don’t remember who won because the score wasn’t very important, but I’d say we won in terms of silly and showoffy play. One point, I caught a high layout D on the first throw that was almost a Callahan, then turned and threw a Rochester for a goal. Definitely a highlight of my ultimate career.
Played a good summer league game. We worked on dumps and stack spacing. Our offense started out pretty poorly and we were down 8-2 at half. But we came out of half strong and tied the game at 9s. After that we traded points the rest of the way, always down 1. Facing a hard cap at 17, we got the break to go up 16-15. They scored, bringing it to universe. We played patiently, but then turned it. They worked it up to the endzone and called a timeout, but could not convert. We worked it back the other way and punched it in.
After the game, we did 8 shuffle-into-sprints. 5 were same direction shuffling, the last 3 were opposite-direction shuffling. After that I did 20 burpees, then 14 more with Jill and Nasc.
+15 burpees for the burpee challenge.
10 burpees yesterday, 20 today. Plus Diana and I threw in the park for 20 minutes.
Played in our first summer league game. We were missing some of our best players (Ellis, Diana, Cat) so we didn’t do very well as far as score goes, but we worked on some important things. Our handling was pretty solid, our girls were better than theirs and everyone got a taste of zone. I’m looking forward to this season.
Played 7 games at Bellcrack - 4 on Saturday and 3 today. I did not play well in the first game on Sat. Lots of turns. But after that, I played well. Not a lot of Ds, but I also didn’t play that many points. I think I accomplished most of the goals we set out - attacking the breakside, moving the disc horizontally, dictating and playing back-hip defense, being aggressive, taking appropriate risks. I got the pLei of the game on Saturday and then again in our last game on Sunday. I also threw Diana a fun goal. Life buddy win.
Lessons:
Improvement:
Threw with Diana for about half an hour. We did 10-throw and then played the step-back-if-you-make-it throwing game. It should be called tug-o-war because you’re trying to step back and get the other person to step forward.
Scrimmaged for a few hours at Lower Merion HS. We played 4-2 ratio for the most part, with some 4-1 at the end. It was a good workout, though I busted my right heel pretty badly. I hope it heals (punny) by Saturday.
We won the finals of indoor spring league 36-34. That score is pretty deceptive though. In the first half, we opened up a huge lead. I think we were up by more than 10 points at one time. Then in the third quarter, we stopped playing nice and easy and they started scoring 2 for every 1 we put in. In the fourth, they went on a run, scoring 4 or 5 breaks in a row to bring the score within three. We called a timeout, regrouped, and got back to the nice and easy mentality. We held our lead to close out the game.
Had a double-length practice today. We had over 40 people there. Did a bunch of drills for marking (esp straight-up) and breaking the mark. We also worked on a sequence for getting the disk off the sideline. We scrimmaged for about 3 hours total, which was awesome. After practice, we went to Percy Street BBQ for some delicious brisket and beer.