Tourny time!...and a coaching clinic?

Tournament time. first one of the year for our college team. it's gonna rock.

our roster...22 deep. 14 first year college players.  the other 8, are essentially the core from last year that traveled to many near savage tournaments together over the past 3 years. we know what playing w/o subs is like. now it's time to play a tournament with subs!

Having this many people scares me. I tend to put a lot of the responsibility of line calling on myself, primarily because i tend to read, think, sleep, eat, breathe more ultimate than anyone else on the team. however, i haven't been able to successfully play AND call lines at the same time. I'm perfectly fine with playing less in order to orchestrate the team better, and as long as the players on the field get the job done, i'm definitely fine. i would love nothing more than to out smart the other team from the sideline while my teammates executed a game plan.

While winning every game and the tournament this weekend is not the end goal. This tournament should provide some very good games for us to test our abilities against teams better than us, worse than us, and probably dead even with us. Last spring, against many of these same teams we lost 3 games by 4 total points.


signed up for a coaching clinic today....although it's not until the first weekend of december, i'm still stoked. level 1 coaching ethics and performance workshop. hope to get to a level 2 advanced strategies and tactics clinic-but that requires crossing fingers and toes that there will be one within driving distance.

definitely looking forward to spending some quality time with my boys this weekend. developing a comforting team atmosphere for everyone was one of my goals for the semester, and it appears we're quickly approaching that.

Schedule for tomorrow:

(0-0)	A1	Vanderbilt Relics
(0-0)	A2	Tennessee-Chattanooga
(0-0)	A3	Vanderbilt
(0-0)	A4	Western Kentucky

10:40:	Tennessee-Chattanooga-Western Kentucky

12:20: Vanderbilt Relics-Tennessee-Chattanooga

		2:00: Tennessee-Chattanooga-Vanderbilt

3:40: Tennessee-Chattanooga-Townson OR Harding

team workout #1

team workout roger and i threw together when we learned we'd only have access to a track last night.

1/2 mile warm up, stretch.

1/4 mile run, 50 air squats
1/4 mile run, 25 push ups
1/4 mile run, 25 burpees
1/4 mile run 40 line hops front-to-back, 40 line hops side-to-side
1/4 mile run 40 sit ups

in our haste we didn't realize we actually did more than a mile. most of our freshmen are in as good or better shape than vets because they've been lifting for HS sports for 4 years.

my workout for the day:
a- steep incline press: 3, 3, 3, 5, 5
b1- db floor press: 7, 7, 7, 10
b2 -1 arm db rows: 7, 7, 7, 10
c1- prone trap raises: 3x12
c2- scap pushups: 3x15
d- side bridges: 3x30s/side


getting excited. free band of horses show tonight in Nashville w/ the lady. then heading to Tuscaloosa tomorrow to observe in the SEC tourny.  Will definitely post my thoughts on that. Can't wait to watch Tennessee up close. Those guys are going to be sick this year. 
Seedings:
1-Tennessee
2-Arkansas
3-LSU
4-Mississippi State
5-Alabama
6-Auburn
7-Tulane

Three

Three days til Regionals.
Three bids to Nationals.
Third overall seed.

Just got word last night that another of our D-line girls will be making the trip, this on the heel of finding out that one of our O-line girls cannot travel due to exams and nursing clinicals on Friday and Monday. We should have  24 of our 27 in Austin(1 girl, 1 guy out due to knee tears).

Refusing to look to far ahead is the difficult part right now. Playing smart, determined ultimate is key in the early games. Texas heat is relentless. 0% chance of rain. Minimal wind. Sunny. Highs in the 80s. Lows in the 50s. 50% humidity.

We're on Jukebox Hero's side of the bracket.

8:45am
Nooga by Nature v. Beta Iota Delta
Cameron Williams v. Conspiracy Theory

Dirty Birds v. Mooseknuckle
Tlacauche v. Jukebox Hero


Mooseknuckle is a young team from Florida and reportedly underperformed at Sectionals. Dirty Birds is a Texas team with ex-Doublewide guys+leftovers of Chewbacca Defense. If we face them it should be an exciting match up since most of our starters are open traditional open players. Conspiracy Theory is a remake of Hang Time from the early 2000s, Mileage men + dallas women. I expect their experience to be a factor early in the day on Sat & Sun, but will probably be forced to play 7-8 games over the weekend(a difficult task for any team).

Goal for us? Win our first two games nicely so that we can throw everything we have at Jukebox in the third round. Winning that game avenging a 3-11 loss at 2009 Regionals would be amazing(and would also put us into the finals against Bucket- meaning only three games Sunday).

15 passenger van.15 people.15+ hour drive.

Party on Nooga, Party ON.

Finding a throw

One of my goals for this season is learning to throw a flick huck. Having already a strong backhand, i realized the need to have a huck on the flick side simply because the majority of teams will force this way. I've also realized that smart teams in the past have figured out that i could throw my backhand much further than flick- even though in most games I can get my IO backhand huck off against a flick force at least once per game. 

Last night I got to actually throw some flick hucks. Starting off with a few in a 1v1 huck drill, then threw a few in our scrimmage. Some of the first few i've throw with a legit mark on me...i had been throwing it for a while, but it wasn't until last Wednesday after practice when I had a freshmen alternate between flat & flick forces on me as i threw some deep shots. 

It definitely still needs work. I need to get where I can consistently drive the disc forward(getting the float out). But, for now, I finally feel like i have the shot to that wide open teammate beating their defender by 10 yards who's 50yards down the field, which is much better than having to dump the disc while my teammate wastes energy getting open deep. 

Fundraiser Hat Tourny Saturday for Nooga by Nature. 11 days to Regionals. 3 days til Seeds are announced. 

Fun with numbers

1: Practice left until Club Mixed Regionals
2: # of practices left until our monthly scrimmage against are league and club veterans
3: number of bids from Regionals to Nationals
6 of 20: teammates in Austin, are also teammates on my college team
7 of the other 14: are graduates within the past 2 years from our team
12: days until South Mixed Regionals
16: hour drive we'll make to Austin, TX.
20: number of teammates who will make said drive

In less than two weeks, Chattanooga takes on the south. I've seen fire in the eyes of my teammates that hasn't been there before, a desire to prove others wrong. To show everyone who we are, what we are and how much more fun our team will have than yours. We have a 16 hour party booked in a 15 passenger van from Austin to Chattanooga, attendance is not optional.

College practice tonight. More marking. Down field defense. we've got ton of athletic young players who will reek havoc on unsuspecting teams. hopefully get  O vs. D situations by wednesday.

practices, rosters, goals

We (UT-Chattanooga) had practice mon & wed. 15 people monday(low turn out likely due to the Monday Night Football double header. Right at 20 people on wednesday. both days we focused on marking the disc- up until this point we had only introduced a general force- focusing more of our time on teaching them the basic structure of a horizontal offense. our forces have definitely gotten better, as has most of the younger players decision making since the first week. the majority of their throws are still lacking across the board...probably due to the lack of time we have put into just throwing. we've shown them how, and most everyone can perform basic forehands and backhands, more than enough still have flicks that blade after 10 yards, but these players are typically talking to our veteran handlers about how to correct this. i need to remember to include some specific throwing stuff in our practice monday.

i've been compiling a roster on google docs, and it was just today that i realized how young we have the chance to be this year - with enough veterans that we won't have to play like a young team.
so far our roster has:
15 freshmen 1 of which has been playing club open/mixed in the south for 3 years, and year round w/ HS & League for 5. 
2 sophmores
4 juniors
4 seniors
3 5th years/grad students
(and we're likely adding 1-2 5th year/grad students in the spring)
looking at this- on top of the fact that we graduated 6 seniors last year is pretty sweet.

Goal setting:
Goal- 1. the result or achievement toward which effort is directed.


What are our team goals? Beating UT (our "rival)? Beating Miami(OH) (our new found tourny friends)? Beating XYZ team because we dislike them? 
While personal effort is definitely being put into these goals, team goals that direct and focus our practices need to be different. We need to put effort into achieving different results...or maybe more focused? results? Regardless of our goals, we, the team, need to come together and solidify what it is that we are working to achieve as a team, as well as individuals. 


To do's: 

1. incorporate more throwing into Monday & Wednesday practice. . . 
2. establish throwing Thursdays to get more throwing w/ freshmen.
3. figure out how to best establish team goals- meet with team & discuss.
4. begin establishing personal goals with all members of the team. 
5. do work. 

The 8th man

The 8th man. . . your sideline.

The sideline should be active, they should be talking. A sideline that only yells "strike" doesn't help the mark much, a sideline that only yells "up" doesn't help down field defense much. Be active. Be thinking about things your teammates on the field don't have the time to. Think one throw a head for them and communicate that to them.

Just because you're not on the field, doesn't mean you're not involved in the game.

Carry a disc.

I carried a disc with me today. Everywhere I went, the disc went.

From 11am til 8pm it was either in my hand, on my computer desk, or sitting next to me. Unsurprisingly, while throwing during a break in night class my throws felt accurate and crisp.

Carrying a disc around is something I did as a freshmen and sophmore in college to get more confident in faking / with the disc in my hand in general. Now i'm placing an emphasis on how i'm holding the disc and visualizing throws and fakes while waking any where on campus. Goal for tomorrow is to do this again and see how it relates to my throws at practice.

Workout:
10 minutes of throwing

The line between good spirit and ultimate

We've all been there, whether it be those fall semester collage tournaments or early summer club tournaments (or any "spirit" tournament in between). These are the tournaments you find shot-ski's, themed teams, and awesome parties. But, what has been plaguing me the past few weeks is the price teams and players sacrifice at these tournaments.

There are a few things in ultimate i cannot stand:
-teams/players being ignorant of the rules
-teams/players getting upset when violations/fouls are called

Where is the line drawn between having "good spirit" and playing ultimate by the rules?