Practice practice practice. We worked on chips and the breakside, reviewed and pracitced our plays, and focused on good throws and decision-making while tired. We go to battle next weekend. #choochoo
Feedback from captains: On-field, everything is good. I’m a fairly veteran player and my instincts are right most of the time. Off-field, I should lead more and teach the younger players more.
Practice 3-6 Saturday and 10-1 Sunday. Worked on a lot of things, talked about mental toughness, played lots of slap cup.
As far as ultimate goes, I did not play that well. A lot of turns - rushed throws, bad decisions, just not there mentally. I need to focus on taking an extra second before every throw, even the easy ones. It may feel slow, but I think it will up my percentage. And NO HUCKS unless its obviously the right throw.
Off the field, I killed it at slap cup.
First outdoor practice. It was cold, right around freezing. The air was sharp and painful, there was snow on the ground, but we had fieldspace and our first game is only 7 weeks away, so we went to work. Billy told us a great story about how he played in a basketball game for 5000 fans and hit a 3-pointer with a few minutes left to put his team up by 5, and the whole crowd stood up and cheered for him and it’s the best he’s ever felt, and no amount of drugs or sex or anything can replicate that feeling. He’s been chasing it for 25 years, and that’s the reason he plays ultimate. It may not be the prettiest reason, and it took him a while to admit it, but it’s important to know why you play.
The actual practice was ok. We didn’t improve on too many things, mostly because it was cold and hard to throw, but we did learn a lot about things that need improvement. I handled for most of practice. I’d give myself a 5 out of 10. I threw good around breaks, moved smartly for the most part, had a nice huck to Michelson (1 for 1 on hucks) and got a few Ds (in the air, on a footblock, etc). I also turned over several fairly easy throws and missed at least 1 if not 2 other Ds, got run around and beat upline several times. Hard to say if it’s my fitness, the cold, my decisionmaking, or all of the above.
After practice, went to lunch and played 7 Wonders with a few of the guys.
Practice was supposed to be Saturday, but it got rained out and moved to Sunday. We split the practice up into 4 sections: one for each of our Thursday opponents plus one for us. During our section, we ran through all the plays in our playbook to make sure we have everything down pat. Then we played mini to work on handler movement and stopping it (Cosa Nostra), worked on physical defense and poachy zone (7 Figures), and then scrimmaged with the endzone being closed for the first 40 seconds (CLX). Overall the practice went pretty well. The O line especially played well during the scrimmages, coming back to win the zone scrimmage after being down, and not giving up a single turn in the endzone-closed scrimmage.
Combo double practice and beach weekend. There wasn’t much actual beach going on because it was cold and rainy, but I did jump in the ocean after practice on Saturday. We repeated a few drills from the past (gauntlet, marking), then moved on to scrimmage. We got some good reps with zone because it was rainy and a great chance to practice. O even played some zone to give the D some practice, but mostly O played O. The weekend was somewhat streaky, with O and D taking turns going on runs. Our numbers were kinda low, so we all got to play a lot and get quality reps in.
After practicing all day Saturday (with a break for lunch, Spikeball and full-team Spikejam), we went to Papa’s house for dinner, 7 Wonders and Fishbowl.
On Sunday, we went back to work. It was even colder, but not terrible. After warmups and some triangle cutting drills, my knee felt painful so I stopped playing and switched to filming. Everyone else finished out the drill and moved on to scrimmage. The level remained high throughout the day, though there were a bit more miscues and botched Ds than the day before.
Had practice from 9am to 1pm both Saturday and Sunday. We did a lot of scrimmaging, and I even got some reps on the D line. We also ran drills for endzone cutting and to work on flashing our mark into the lane to stop the continuation upfield. Overall I think it was a very productive weekend. I felt strong on D and mostly strong on O. I think I only had one turnover in scrimmages, and worked well in zone O and transition D. I got my feedback from Butter and he also said that he liked what he saw. His major criticism was for me to cut deep more. I did not do the best job with that today but I will continue to focus on it during regionals.
One down note: Diana hurt herself at the start of scrimmaging on Saturday. We’re not sure what it is yet (x-ray tomorrow), but it’s likely a broken metatarsal. If that’s the case, it means about 8 weeks on crutches and no ultimate (regionals, nationals, mosh, etc). I’m still hoping that it’s just a bad sprain, but if not, it would be a huge bummer.
A pretty good 5-hour practice. We some skills work and scrimmaged a lot. We spent a good amount of time focusing on our redzone offense. We worked on the gravity cut, which turns out to be very hard to defend if you’re close to the endzone. The third cut (to the cone, back across for the break, then force side to the back cone) is especially tricky to cover. If you don’t sell out to get the IO, it’s pretty easy to throw something in that area. If you do, the cut to the back cone is open. Doing this drill on O and on D really let us experiment with making the cut different ways and defending it different ways, and it really proved to me how hard it is to cover (if the thrower is close enough).
After that, we went into some endzone-focused scrimmage. The O line really struggled here, and the D line played very well on D and on O. They were very smooth, only had one cut at a time to each threatening space, and broke the mark very well for goals. The O line had trouble scoring more than 2 or 3 in a row, and often the goals were quite contested. We were very frustrated towards the end of practice.
For our last drill, worked on a bit of transition O/D in the redzone. Here, the success of the lines swapped and the O line crushed it. Maybe it helped that it started to rain and the disc became very slippery, but the O line scored almost all their opportunities and got a good amount of Ds as well.
My takeaways from the practice are:
We were supposed to scrimmage at Penn Park for two hours, but they shut the lights off after about 30 minutes of playing. So we worked on our deep hucks in the dark instead. The cutting practice (the shape, the turn, not slowing down while looking back) was great. The throwing part would have been great but I was rushed to throw the next throw and not being able to see your throw was really weird.
Afterwards, I did the shuffles workout:
Long day of practice with AMP: 9am-1pm, then break for lunch, then 2pm-5pm. On top of that it rained for most of the day, which sapped some of my energy towards the end. I felt great until about 3 or 4, then started to feel drained. I think a lot of the O was feeling similar, and it showed in our game.
I played really well before lunch, throwing or catching most of our goals and only turning over one drop and a huck to Katie. After lunch, I was not as effective with my cutting and had some poor decisions on O and D.
One mistake I consistently make is to not anticipate where my person is going and to allow them to beat me deep. I think part of it is that I need to try setting up differently - maybe facing the open side and dictating instead of facing the person I’m covering and reacting.
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.
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.
Worked on many different things at practice. I was less happy with my performance this time, mostly because of the many throwing mistakes I had. There were at least 3 easy backhands that I should have completed but I just threw them away. Besides that, I played OK. The deep throwing practice was useful, and we spent most of the rest of the time scrimmaging with different formats: zone only, 1 score or 2 turns, double-score, etc.
After practice, Diana and I went to our summer league game. We played Satell’s team. They were clearly lacking their top players and we picked up Mike Gentile. The game was fairly lopsided and we won handily. They had a strong deep game, but they turned it a lot and we capitalized well on most of their turns.
We worked on deep throws and defense in the air, then switched to 5v5 and 6v6 scrimmage, then worked on zone (ATC and 1-3-3). All the drills felt very productive and I liked the pace. We went hard up front in the deep drills, running a good amount of sprints with little rest. Then in the scrimmages, we had enough subs to wholesale every point, so we got a good amount of rest. I felt like I was pretty much fully rested for each point. The zone work and scrimmages were pretty good, though with no wind, it tough to replicate zone conditions. I gave into throwing loopy over-the-top throws a few times even though I would not throw them in a real zone game. Still, it was good to go through the reps. We even played with an extra defender and the O still managed to score a decent number of times.
After watching the videos (1,2) from the 5on5 scrimmage, it’s very clear how effective it is to make big deep cuts. Many of them either turned into goals, or became big in cuts. The big unders may be partially because of our emphasis on playing back-hip defense. I’m curious to see how this works against teams that play underneath defense. Hopefully our throwers can punish them with deep shots.
After practice, we hit up Dre’s uncle’s pool for some swimming and burgers. Then I took a short nap and continued the party at Sara’s: DIY pizza and the USvPortugal world cup game.
Today’s practice focused mostly on training several important skills: upline cutting and defense, around backhand breaks, breaking out of a sideline trap, and the shape of our cuts. We scrimmaged a bit at the end to consolidate those skills and put them into use. I think my cuts and upline stuff was decent (though I got beat in the sideline drill once), but my throws definitely need work. Some of my around backhands are good, some were pretty bad, and my hucks are just awful overall.
After practice, we also got together and talked about team goals and individual goals for the season. Some highlights:
Had our first practice with the final roster. Butter was there but he had just had shoulder surgery yesterday morning so he was not 100%. I took over clapping duties and some play calling when I was in. We worked on the usual things: attacking vertically and to the break side, playing defense, etc. The main new elements were working on Sauce, getting out of a hard sideline trap, and our 3on3 redzone set. The trap work was particularly useful - we do get stuck there sometimes and its good for everyone to know how to get out. I rally enjoyed playing the thrower role (5 for 5 on goals) and also attacking upline from the dump. I also really liked marking Owen. Even though I felt that I gave up the inside break too much, the sideline was happy with the mark.
One thing I did not do well is swing the disc on O. There were a few times where I got caught up in moving the disc up the force side and did not look for the break soon enough. I also got stuck clogging the dump space for Zumba on one play. I thought I was open on a late bailout in cut. He didn’t look at me (which makes sense in retrospect because he was looking at his dump) so I just stood there and called for it. I should not have been there in the first place and should have gotten out sooner.
After practice, I taught Papa how to do backflips on the highjump pad. I was also gonna teach Lexa but she kneed herself in the nose on her first attempt and that was the end of that.
Great practice with AMP. I was a bit hurt so I didn’t go 100% on everything, but I still played a decent amount. We worked on defense for the most part: deep D, under D, etc. There was a good amount of scrimmaging, which is always nice, and the drills were pretty fun and felt useful. Also my throwing on Friday definitely paid off because my throws were pretty good today (except when they were catastrophically bad). Especially in the away cut drill, my flicks finally had enough IO on them to stay straight in the wind. Unfortunately, it did not translate well to in-game hucks. I did have a really nice full-field huck to Diana, but it was just a bit too far :-(
The veteran’s ultisquash fight club committee decided to honor Diana and me by inviting us to their elite game. In attendance: Wheels, Schmucker, TC, Panna, Dre, Raha, us. We played a dozen or so games, all intense and fast-paced. I really enjoyed playing with Schmucker and Wheels. They don’t come out much and I don’t get to play with them that often. Also covering TC was a lot of fun. What a great way to end the season.
I was rather sore after all that ultisquashing, but decided to go to Spinners practice anyway. The weather was finally nice and it’s good to get my outdoor throws straight as early as possible. We spent a good amount of time on drills and working on some set plays, then scrimmaged a lot. We started our first set of scrimmages with a hunger-drill throw to simulate playing after a huck. I’ve never done that before but I really like it. We also played a bunch of 2-minute make-it-take-it games and worked on double-teaming.
I was really tired by the time we started scrimmaging, and it didn’t help that we had very few subs. I thought I played reasonably well and had some good throws and cuts, though I dropped the disc TWICE during the 4 lines cutting drill (where we were specifically trying not to drop the disc by focusing on catching one point of it) and also turfed an easy throw to DBaer because I didn’t pivot.