A New Season

The fall is always a very exciting time for an ultimate team. It has a vibe so unlike anything I've encountered in any other sport. The ultra-competitive spring season is the championship season - 20+ guys working together for the ultimate (no pun intended) goal. But the fall is interesting and gratifying for other reasons. When practices start, there is an incredible feeling of starting anew. Anything is possible at the beginning of the season. You have a mix of savvy vets, players who are no longer rookies and need to step up, B-team players trying to impress, and completely new players.

There is nothing quite like seeing a freshman at out at the Club Fair, bringing them out to that first practice, and watching them develop over the course of the fall. I love seeing players come up to you, excited about learning how to throw a forehand, or just after getting their first layout D. Everyone has the same chance to make the A-team at the start. And as time goes on, the air gets colder and the wind stronger, and the people who really want it began to rise above the rest.

I've been involved in the "teaching" aspect of fall recruitment and tryouts since my junior year of high school. Personally, I don't really have the patience or desire to teach people how to throw and catch. I have a lot of respect for the players and coaches who are good throwing instructors. I don't mind correcting someone's form or telling them about a hitch in their motion that keeps the disc turning over. But I do it best one-on-one, not in large groups. And, while throwing is extremely important, I think that the concepts of offense and defense are ultimately more valuable and indicative of who can "make it" as an ultimate player by the end of the fall.

I am a huge proponent of doing drills that isolate concepts within a game context. For instance, teaching players about beating their defender in a man-defense matchup shouldn't happen in a vacuum. I like a drill that has the entire stack set up appropriately on the field, with defense, and a thrower with a marker. Then the last person in the stack will cut against their defender until they get open or the thrower looks them off (after about three stall counts). Then they will cycle back into the front of the stack, or become the thrower, or go to a "waiting position" as the dump/dump defender, and the rotation through the positions/stack will continue.

In a drill like this, the player doesn't have all day to get open on their cut, or the entire field. They have to be aware of the two cutting lanes, avoid causing a pick by cutting too close to or through the stack, and realize when a thrower will think that they're open, which is often different than when a receiver thinks that they're open. And for the thrower, it works on their decision-making. A coach watching can chastise a thrower for not throwing to the open man or applaud a no-throw. And alternatively, if an ill-advised throw goes up, everyone will see and realize it.

The same drill can be a defensive drill, depending on the emphasis placed on defensive positioning vs. cutting, etc. Defenders can't be expected to shut down the players they're guarding for all 10 seconds of the stall count in all directions, like some drills seem to expect. It's not a failure if your man gets open deep on you at stall five after the thrower is no longer looking.

And then there is the part of practice that new players look forward to the most - the scrimmage. It's a chance for freshmen and tryouts to show off what they've learned at practice, for returners to assess which players actually "get it," and a way to see what the focus of the next practice should be. The role of the vets in the early scrimmages is to be the handlers and the dumps - bailouts for anyone who gets stuck, keeping the offense moving, and constantly watching to see what points to make on the sideline or before the next pull. I have mixed feelings about whether or not I actually enjoy this. I alternate being extremely frustrated with the level of play or just letting it all go and treating it like a meaningless summer league game or coed tournament.

One of the darker tradeoffs about fall ultimate is balancing the desire to separate the wheat from the chaff with making sure someone doesn't slip through the cracks. I don't know of any veteran or captain who hasn't thought about running everyone insanely hard at an early practice to see who quits and who is actually interested in working and making the team. Weeding out the jokers, hippies, and no-hopers early-on would dramatically raise the level of practice, but everyone is always worried that someone with potential would get swept out with the rest of them. I lean towards the hard early practices, because I'm not convinced that someone unwilling to work hard in the fall will be willing to work hard and commit in the spring when it counts. But looking back at some ex-teammates, I see players who probably would have quit if we'd run them into the ground early. Some of them turned out to be great players. But did we lose other players that we weren't serious or athletic enough for? You never know, but therein lies the dilemma.