YCC Practice 2

Yesterday was our second (and, unfortunately, final) YCC practice. It feels odd to be heading to a tournament with only two practices under our belt, but I think that this practice went a long way towards building team camaraderie and spirit. Fortunately, we will have a chance to play together at Nucci's Cup in two weeks, where we'll see how we gel on the field with our O and D lines, and who can step up in pressure situations against good club players and teams. I think that this last practice was also great for learning each others' strengths and limitations, so we can have reasonable expectations for what throws can be made and caught in what situations.

We started practice with a long jog and I led an abridged version of the warmups that Stanford used all season - abridged mostly because I couldn't remember all of the exercises. We broke right into an extremely tiring drill that emphasized following your throws and communication between thrower and receiver - something that we need to maximize in order to limit turnovers between players who come from different systems. Afterwards, we moved into run-throughs of endzone offense, first without defense and then in a 6v6 competitive setting. Unfortunately, we only had 13 players at practice, and soon after this drill we lost one to heat exhaustion/asthma/difficulty breathing.

We followed up with a lot of tough running and defensive fitness drills that pushed everyone to their limits. But team morale was high and we pulled each other through, even though we all felt like dying afterwards. Then we actually got to practice playing defense on the field, with isolation man defense. There were some incredible battles and great D's, as the same players matched up for many reps against each other. Then we split off into "receiver" and "handler" groups, but the handler group was a little receiver-heavy, since four of the six players not present/playing were handlers. I was put in the handler group, although I'll probably spend a lot of my time downfield in actual games. It felt good to work on handler defense and communication, as well as handler motion on offense.

Communication will be extremely important as we go forward this summer - not only for us but for every YCC team, especially those that are drawing from a number of schools. Teams that are on the same page, or can communicate effectively during the course of a point, will be able to force more turnovers on defense and keep the disc longer on offense. No teams will really be able to "peak" at YCC's ... it's a matter of which teams will have mastered the familiar early-season jitters the best.

We closed out the practice with a lot of intense mini, playing 3v3 games to 3, with turnovers counting as -1 (bottoming out at -2). Some teams could cope, actually getting to 3, but some others (mine included) got ever so close before getting tired and making bad decisions to fall permanently negative. Hopefully we got the importance of limiting turnovers drilled into us by these games, and I think we'll do well in two weeks when we get our first chance to play together as a team. I'd like for us to finish in the top half, but this tournament is not about results for us - it's about gelling as a team, figuring out how our offense and defense can respond to what other teams throw at us, and seeing if we can take the punishment that a two-day tournament deals out.