Ultimate Frisbee Strategy/Coaching

Drill Baby, Drill!

2009-05-31T13:18:00.006-04:00

Yesterday I attended the Ozone try-outs. One of the girls I coach during the spring season is on the team and three others were trying out. The first drill the team ran to get everyone going was the standard "Endzone" or "Mushroom" drill. The past two years, we've run this well-known drill on Paideia but with a small variation - the goal thrower after throwing the goal, moves to the sideline to receive the disc back from the goal scorer while the next player from the front line steps out to set up a game-like reset* cut (starting 10-12 yards laterally from the thrower, driving up line and then coming back in order to receive the reset).

While I was watching the drill yesterday, every one of the Paideia Girls after throwing the goal automatically moved to the sideline before remembering that the drill was not the same. Seeing how all of them automatically executed an element of a drill without thinking reinforced the power of drills.

I was talking to Tiina Booth at HS Easterns while watching the Paideia Boys play Columbia HS. We were talking about goal setting for games (the Paideia girls set goals for each half of each game). She said that she used to do this but has stopped because it increases the amount of thinking that players need to do on the field and she doesn't want her players to think.

This to me, is the primary value of drills. Running well-designed drills over and over again eliminates the unnecessary thinking that results in mistakes and miscommunication on the Ultimate field. In order to eliminate thinking all together drills must be run to the point where they become boring and feel repetitive. Teams will often try to run a lot of different drills in order to keep players engaged, but the irony of it is that the keeping players engaged only happens when players think and as long as players have to think think your team will not receive the full benefit of the drill.

So, identify the skills and tactics that your team needs. Design as few drills as possible that train those skills and tactics. And run those drills until everyone gets bored with them- while focusing most on the ones that give you highest value for time spent. If everyone is bored with your drills and can execute them with their eyes closed or while having a conversation (or while trying to run another drill) you'll know that the lessons of your drill have become ingrained.

*Just so everyone is clear, whenever I say "reset" I mean "dump." I prefer the term because it doesn't have the somewhat negative connotation that "dump" has. "Dump" also implies that the disc goes backward when a good reset changes the attacking space of the offense by moving the disc laterally, or in some cases, upfield.

The BEST drill for players at all levels

2009-05-20T18:02:00.001-04:00

There are a handful of drills that I frequently use while coaching but none of them do I use more frequently and that have a higher return on time spent than the three-person marking drill.

There are a handful of criteria that drills need to meet to be great. The best drills:
- replicate an element of your team's offense or defense
- provide for a high number of touches to all players
- serve to also condition players
- can be challenging to players at different points in their development
- emphasize solid fundamentals

It is difficult for a drill to meet all of these criteria. When you are drilling a full team tactic that requires a full team or defense there may be only one disc for 7 or more players. When drilling some skills or strategies where you are trying to limit uncontrollables (particularly with players that haven't developed strong throwing skills) you may not even have a disc at all. When drilling a brand new skill or strategy you should probably limit the amount of conditioning as the focus of the drill should be squarely on the new skill or strategy.

Any drill that does not emphasize solid fundamentals should be thrown out immediately. Drills that encourage players to turn the wrong way when receiving a disc, throw to tight spaces, or make bad cuts (like short away cuts or horizontal cuts) should be immediately eliminated from a teams repertoire. I know this is going to come of as elitist, but anytime I see a team running the box drill (where players make short away cuts starting from right next to a thrower) I know that they are being poorly coached. This drill runs counter to every one of the criteria listed above. It shocks me that this drill is still being used. I'm sure if it has any impact at all it is negative.

So back to the three-person marking drill. The drill is straight-forward. Two players (one with a disc) stand 12-15 yards apart. Marker marks the thrower with the disc straight up with a stall coming in at 4. The thrower breaks the mark to the other player. The marker runs to mark the new thrower. This continues for a minute and half (time can be varied) at which point the marker switches out with one of the throwers.

The focus should be on the mark:
- Getting the butt low
- staying balanced: feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart and able to move in both directions at any time
- taking away throws with the feet and body by short, quick shuffling (not lunging) to get into position

And the thrower:
- Pivoting
- Faking
- Staying balanced
- Increasing extension/varying release points
- Not travelling

To increase focus on the marking aspects, this drill can be done with the mark having their hands behind their back so the only way they can take away throws is by shuffling in front of the thrower. What players will find is that considerably more work is done with their legs than their arms.

To increase focus on the throwing aspects, this drill can be done with the marker fouling the thrower. Throwers can learn about how to appropriately call "disc space" and "foul." More importantly, if a thrower can get comfortable throwing the disc while being fouled, they will be composed when they aren't being fouled and even more so when they are throwing to the open side.

Every practice I run begins with this drill. As soon as warm-ups and stretching is over my team knows to get a disc and a group of three. I usually run through it twice with two of the variations but sometimes will run through it three times. In the beginning of the season I typically run it with no hands and then normal. Towards the end of the season I run it normal and then fouling. In 10-15 minutes the team has broken a sweat and gotten in some conditioning and put in quality time on the most fundamental aspects of both offense and defense.

By the end of the season even the newest players feel comfortable with the disc and a mark and are fundamentally sound markers. The more experienced players have expanded their repertoire of breaks on both the backhand and forehand side and have developed additional release points and extended their release points away from their bodies. All players are able to instinctively call "disc space" and "foul" at appropriate times.

A significant part of the Paideia Girls success over the past two years is directly a result of this drill and how productive it is for the time that is invested into it.

The drill is not just good for HS Girls (although I would argue that it is particularly productive here), the Brown men used to run this drill at most every practice back in the early 2000s. It's also a great drill for small groups of players doing work-outs in the off-season as you only need 3 people to get the maximum out of it.

-Kyle

Fundamental Drills for Offense (question)

2009-05-01T11:33:00.003-04:00

Growing up in a straight stack (originally with no backfield reset) offense I feel pretty comfortable stating that the 2 drills that I find fundamental to that offense are the mushroom drill and the 3 line drill. Clearly there are more drills that can be done for a vertical offense, and there are many variants of these drills depending on how you want to run your offense. These 2 drills focus on the two main parts of the offense, resetting the disc and cutting downfield. I can easily explain the transition between those drills to play on the field for a young/new player.

I feel like I've been floundering with the horizontal offense. I can run it just fine, but coming up with drills that teach the basics of the offense has been difficult. Just like vertical I'm sure there are tons of variants of drills depending on how each teach specifically runs their H, but I was wondering what some common drills are that teams use to teach players how to cut in a horizontal offense. Especially stuff that people have tried with new players to get them to see the space created in an H-stack and learn how to cut in that space. Thanks.

Ga St Champs/Coaching in the Gaps

2009-04-25T19:46:00.002-04:00

I wasn't going to post after just one day of the boy's Georgia State Championships. I'm sure many people are currently focused on the college regional battles (I know I am). But after thinking about it there are a few points I would like to make.

The state of Georgia High School ultimate isn't as weak as the girls. While average disc skills were lacking (usually 1 or 2 handlers on a team except for the top 3), the athleticism present was impressive. We (Paideia) managed to go 4-0 and will have another 4 games tomorrow if all goes well (last round of pool play followed by quarters and up). This seems like a lot of games for high school boys on a hot weekend, but everyone else is in the same boat. I'd be happier just playing 2 or 3 games on Sunday.

Pool strength presented an interesting scenario that I can't believe I haven't thought of before. Our JV team (in the other pool) seems to feel like the other pool was stronger. This might be the case, which would mean that we have a tougher road ahead for us since we will see their 2-seed in the semis and their 1-seed in the finals after they have (presumably) an easier game. So I guess it pays off to be in the tougher pool (??) if you feel pretty good about advancing, especially if there are 3 quality teams. Again, I can't believe I haven't thought about this before.

Lastly, I again realized how much I love coaching/teaching during a bye. Our trap zone was not looking particularly good, so during the "bye" for lunch we gathered the guys around, drew up our trap zone, then went shirts and skins while we walked through the transition of the trap a few times. It is such a great time to learn because everyone is cleated up, you have direct references to experiences in the past games to remind people about things, then you can directly apply those lessons to a game where the opposing team doesn't always know what you are doing. As much as I (selfishly) think timeouts are meant for strategic adjustments, I think byes are for coaching (although scouting and hydrating should be in there as well).

Girls State Championships

2009-04-22T21:13:00.003-04:00

I got to coach at the Girls' Georgia State Championships today. The level of play in Georgia is still relatively low, and there aren't many teams. Groove (Paideia Girls) have dominated all of their high school opponents this season, and a good number of the college ones they have played. They are an excellent group of girls with incredible talent. That is why we were surprised to find ourselves down to a combo team from 2 high schools (told you there weren't many teams) 0-2 at the beginning of the game. Our squad was depleted, so we didn't have the handlers that we normally did, which presented a problem. We started on D with the wind blowing pretty strong cross-field. Our opponent ran zone and we fumbled the disc after a number of swing passes. This gave our opponent a short field and the scored. Same thing happened again next point. Our girls were starting to get frustrated. The only time they had been down 0-2 recently was when they were assessed 2 points, so we talked about it really quick between a points and settled down. We scored the next point and then we rattled off the next 12 doing basically the same thing (getting short field through zone and weak passing skills).

When coaching at Emory there came times where it was obvious that we needed to basically huck and play zone because of the wind. When completing passes becomes a variable the value of the field position gained by the huck increases. I'm glad the girls got their poise together and just completed passes the way then know how, but it made me realize that at the lower levels (perhaps with new players) offense is a burden that can really bury a team. It wasn't that our opponent's zone was so devastating that we couldn't beat it, we just weren't completing easy passes and giving them short yards (i.e. few passes) to a goal. Sometimes you just have to jack it to gain as many yards as possible and then hope that you can get a turn over down there so that you get the short field.

It is tough to get players with a bit of experience to buy into this at some point, perhaps because it doesn't feel like good ultimate. After all, how can hucking to no offender with 2 defenders poaching deep be a good thing? Don't we hope to not have to worry about completing the easy passes and playing keep away as long as it takes? Our opponent starting going to the same strategy (hucking) as the game got away from them, which was the right decision in my opinion. Again, I'm glad our girls ended up not having to switch to that strategy, but in the back of my head I kept wondering that if we didn't manage to pull it together and march it down the field to make the score 1-2 and get on defense ourselves would we have been willing to go with the huck & D strategy and would it have felt like defeat?

Lastly, I really can't say enough about these girls. Kyle has done an excellent job coaching them the past 2 (?) years. There are number of excellent seniors graduating this year which will be good for the college game, but the cupboard wont be bare when they leave since there is also a number of phenomenal sophomores and juniors behind them.

Paideia Cup Day 2

2009-04-19T18:03:00.002-04:00

The 2nd day of Paideia Cup is over and was filled with ups and downs. Due to potential downpour later that day the first round of the day was played yesterday. That meant that we went straight to semis today which has us play Columbia HS (Anthony Nunez). Columbia had a tough game against Grady High School (Susie Mercer) the previous day so we knew they were ready to play and prove themselves today. The game was a great game, ending with us on top after double game point (9-8).

A few thoughts on Columbia. Kyle had mentioned their resets being particular good, and that was evident. At first I through it was another instance of our marks being too flat, but the Columbia players knew how to clear the reset and then fill in from the front of the stack. The thrower would almost always throw quickly around our mark hitting the reset and then swinging the disc. Their constant resets made our downfield defense difficult. They also threw what I call the "soft" (inside) break very well. In particular #6 did a good job moving the disc back to the breakmark side with soft breaks. Last compliment (although there could be plenty) is the level of athleticism that some of their players brought to the game. Number 3 (Jordan?) and #13 were just few of a number of defenders that really worked our cutters making it difficult to advance the disc at times. Fortunately we advanced, getting a few Ds after making some adjustments.

The next game against Hopkins (Jake Raisanen) wasn't so lucky. Word on the street was that this team was big and fast, and they lived up to the hype. With a number of players over 6' our short line-up was really going to be tested. In addition to their height they had a number of seniors on that squad, which became evident in the first few points. Our offense struggled to get open against older athleticism, and they forced us into poor decisions by taking away the easy ones. When they had the disc it was clear that they had been playing together for years. They threw deep often, typically to players that had only a step or two, and frequently with risky passes (through lanes and around marks). Almost all of these hucks connected, and what impressed me was the confidence with which they released the disc. During the game I commented that they were throwing the way that I would throw to my oldest friends, where you just know they are about to cut to an area so you throw it early giving the defender almost no chance.

We lost the game to Hopkins 13-5, despite playing very well. Our boys fought hard and did what they could, but we were out matched physically and experientially. I don't think they are attending Easterns, but I wish that they would. I'll question whoever wins the "Eastern" title if they didn't beak Hopkins at some point during the year. I guess that is just part of the wacky Junior Nationals scene.

Lastly, from a coaching standpoint: Both of the teams we played today ran an (at times) isolation based sideline stack offense. Creating the one large lane out in front of the thrower. Our original defensive adjustments were pulling people off of the players in the middle of the stack to potentially help with the isolated cutter. This worked well, but they still would get some devastating deep hucks off. I wondered if we wouldn't have had success with forcing back towards the sideline stack and using the dump defender to frustrate the open side and have them swing the disc to the side of the field with the stack on it. Hopkins probably would have just switched their stack-side, but in the transition we may have gotten them to throw something they weren't comfortable with. Maybe we should have just forced middle.

Paideia Cup: Day 1

2009-04-18T18:06:00.001-04:00

Today was the first day of the Paideia Cup in Atlanta. It is a high school tournament that draws some of the best teams in the south east and up to New Jersey. The field was a little light compared to last year (where a Seattle combo team won it all), but it was still an illuminating experience for this first year high school coach.

We had been to Deep Freeze earlier this year, but it was a first tournament of the season and the competition was still covered in winter sleet. All three of the teams we played today (Page, HB Woodlawn/Yorktown, Red Bank) were well skilled and very intense. All had coaches, and clearly had an offensive scheme of some sort. We aren't exactly the most defensively diverse team out there (we run a zone . . . AND a man), however we were able to make defensive and offensive adjustments that really opened up the games. It seemed like other teams adjusted slowly to our tweaks, but those adjustments were happening. The teams that I've had the most success with were teams that were able to defensively make on opponent change from Plan A to Plan B. We were able to do that today, and it rallied us 3 wins by more than 8 points each.

The competition was very good (despite the somewhat lopsided scores), but it seems like playing against college teams has really paid off. We were so accustomed to getting few chances with the disc on defense that we learned to be more frugal with the disc after an opponent's turn. That was the difference in most of the games today. It wasn't that we were getting tons of blocks, but we didn't give them the disc back after getting possession. It was refreshing to see our players be that intelligent and patient. Our captains also did a (slightly) better job with subbing. We kept productive lines on offense, while getting our secondary players chances to get blocks on defense. As a result it seemed that everyone felt involved and was making plays. Morale was really high, but that is easy when you are winning.

Weather permitting we will play again tomorrow, so hopefully we will continue to play well and take home a title. I'm also hoping that we can teach the team one or two more defenses to try out. There was a time that a good poachy force middle would have wrecked a team.

Coaching at the elite level

2009-04-08T12:39:00.002-04:00

So . . . why don't top level teams have coaches?

I've run into this question often, and while I can easily cite why college and high school teams need coaches (have to develop players with potentially little experience in a short amount of time), I don't know why or if elite teams need coaches.

Perhaps I am just in the dark. I know that Fury is coached my Matty Tsang, but that has only been for the past three years and they have been kicking people's asses for a long time. I think Machine has a coach, but I can't name another team that has a coach (again, I will point to my possible ignorance).

I've constructed arguments around where the knowledge-base is in our sport. The smartest people in the sport are still playing. In some cases those are the younger players in the open division, but even our older/more experienced players are still on the field. Why would a great ultimate mind be trying to coach an open team when they could be playing masters. But surely there are people out there like me who's careers got cut short due to injury, what about those people? Maybe it is the financial commitment? I kind of find that hard to believe since people pay out of their own pockets to be a part of this community (at tournaments, UPA regs, etc.) we've established that we are willing to shell out coin to stay competitive and involved.

An interesting case against my points would be Stu Downs coaching the University of Georgia. Stu is definitely one of the most experienced and smartest people in the game, so it made sense that as his family developed and age (finally!) caught up to him he would stay involved as a coach. But in that case it was college, where the reasons to coach are much more obvious and the effect he would have is obvious as well.

This leads me to a second question: do elite teams even need coaches? My gut reaction is to say yes. A coach can orchestrate the game play, can see what the opponent is doing and create adjustments to maximize his/her team's chance of winning. There is nothing about ultimate that wouldn't benefit from that . . . but then again I've never played on an elite team. Surely those teams already have captains that do the things that I mentioned, so why bother with a coach?

So that's 2 questions I would love to hear so opinions on?

Why do most elite teams not have coaches?
Would elite teams benefit from coaches?

Ultivillage Videos

2009-04-08T12:20:00.003-04:00

I'm trying to live up to a bargain I made the Florida women's coach of posting more. I hope I am not boring people.

I just got 2 more videos from Ultivillage: 2008 UPA Championships and 2008 WFDF Championships. My first reaction was disappointment in the UPA video. They trimmed down to 1 DVD rather than 2, and it seems to be at the expense of content. There was no menu structure for pool play, and you didn't get a chance to see more of the games (even if only highlights). I'll comment them for going back to an elevated camera instead of the ground level cameras that have been used for the past few finals. They even used sideline cameras, which offer some great views of spacing and depth that end zone cameras can't give. Unfortunately the editing left a bit to e desired. The first half of the men's game the sideline cameras were almost always zoomed in on the thrower so close you couldn't even see the dump well. The second half was better, but they we to the end zone camera which was typically more zoomed out. The other problem I had was that the play felt stunted. We didn't see many pulls, and they disc would just magically appear on the field without any idea of what happened before. The commentary provided was good commentary, but it also felt stunted as there was no down time (between points and turnovers) for the commentators to add any color or discussion.

Contrast this with the excellent job in filming and editing for the WFDF video. The pool play and most finals were the same style Ultivillage has employed for the past few years, giving us a few extended plays during a game, but jumping from point to point. The finals (at least the men's) were excellent. There were three commentators (Match and 2 guys from blockstack.tv) that did an excellent job. The video was from an angle and elevated, with multiple cameras so they could bounce around as needed. But best of all we saw pretty much the whole game. The benefit of that, from a coaching standard, is huge. I can sit down the the kids and we can actually see what a team is doing on the field, we can discuss strategy and since there is relative down time between each point we can discuss before we have to start watching again. I would love to spend time this coming Tuesday (Tape Tuesdays) talking about Ironside's implementation of straight stack, but I can't see it on the videos. Or how Fury staged their incredible comeback, but the commentary doesn't add anything more than play by play. Instead we will be watching, and listening to the 2008 WFDF finals and talk about how team USA started calling fouls when they were down.

Hopefully Ultivillage (who I love for making these videos) will cover more events like WFDF and give us more stuff to talk about. I can watch highlights online, I buy the DVDs because I want to watch a full game and see as many of the games from a tournament as possible. I sent Rob an email to see if there was any way that I could get the full film from last years UPA finals . . . we'll see if that gets me anywhere.

Offensive Line-up

2009-03-31T19:29:00.003-04:00

I was talking with one of my players yesterday about what was needed to have a successful offense. At the time he was of the mind-set that you need to have your "best" seven players on the field for offense (even if some of them are prone to turn-overs). This led to a conversation of what people do you need on the field to have a successful offense. We didn't really get to a conclusion before we had to head our separate ways, but I spent some more time thinking about it and I came up with the following:

For our game at Paideia (lets of working the disc with a few hucks here and there) I feel like on an offensive point we need 2 dominant under cutters, 2 excellent handles/resets, 1 dominant deep threat and 2 people to fill the gaps. Those fills are the people that know what to do when the opponent starts to poach and can do the things needed to keep the offense going.
Too many cutters lead to clogged lanes, too many handles leaves the cutting lanes barren. Too many deep threats means fewer under cuts and if we don't have those fills then the small things never get done.

I would imagine as you go from team to team and level to level the composition changes, but it remains important for a coach to think about what he or she needs on the field to score. Most of the people reading this have probably already gone through these thoughts, but it was a valuable coaching experience for our young player who had never really thought about that element of strategy.

Kyle deserves most of the credit for the conversation between my player and I, because it was something I told him about the way Kyle calls subs that really started the ball rolling for this conversation.

High School Coaching

2009-03-27T19:23:00.003-04:00

I've spend the past few months being an assistant coach to the Paideia High School men's team (Gruel) and the women's team (Groove). It has been an interesting and rewarding experience for many reasons, not the least of which is that I am assisting my former head coach Michael Baccarini.

Much of my time has been spent holding a clipboard, finding times to talk strategy and technique with players on the side. The set-up at Paideia is very different than I had at Emory. Much more responsibility falls on the shoulders of the players, including subbing and strategy. The pros and cons of that system are pretty obvious, we have less control of what is going on, but the players develop their knowledge of the game which is valuable down the road.

It is also strange attending tournaments where we know we are at a huge disadvantage. We have attended 1 high school tournament (Deep Freeze) which was the week after try-outs. Ever since then we have been going to college tournaments (Southern and a B-team tournaments) where we know we are at a huge size/speed disadvantage. Fortunately we typically have as many years of playing experience (if not more) than our opponents, but it is tough telling a 5'4" freshman to go guard a 5'11" college junior and protect the open side.

It seems like the athletic discrepancy would force us to improve our strategy, which it does on some level, but the main mode of thought is "go our there and play better." Being a strategy junkie I find myself craving more time to go over the minutia of our offense or slight alterations we can make to our trap zone to capitalize on a players weakness. That leads me to my question for the panel:

What type of coach are you? Are you the micro-managing coach who calls every line and then tells everyone who to guard? Are you the coach that teaches at practice then sees if your babies can swim at tournaments? Lastly, is there a better/worse method of coaching depending on the level you are coaching at? I guess I'll go answer first.

Quick Natties Thoughts

2008-11-04T11:00:00.002-05:00

I might write more later when I recover...but here are some quick thoughts:

(1)Congrats to Jam and Ironside...the finals was really clean, both in terms of not so many turnovers and in the sense that it was noticeably lacking in cheating, and as a result the game finished in something like 100 minutes.
(2)If Dylan Tunnell isn't on the world games team it's pretty much a huge joke. Chain was 5-0 with Dylan and 0-2 without him this weekend....not an accident...completely changes the game when he's on the field.
(3)Josh McCarthy is a very deserving winner of the Farricker award, but I just wanted to give some props to Chain's nominee, Jason Simpson. Jason has a foot injury that makes even walking incredibly painful. He decided to put off surgery until next week so he could be there for his teammates. Despite the pain, Simpson still managed to be able to play a lot of meaningful points at Natties...and as always, Jason exhibited the class and sportsmanship that makes him such a respected competitor. So yeah, KD's right, Boston bias is effing this game.
(4)Buy a Chain Jersey or Disc
(5)Ugh. Really felt like we had a chance this year...gonna take a while to get over this one.

aj

Georgia Declines Conference1 Offer

2008-10-15T19:11:00.004-04:00

After much discussion, both internally and with our friends on other teams, Georgia has decided to decline Cultimate's offer to join Conference 1.

Here are our main concerns

(1) Logistically, Cultimate is in no-way set up to handle the complexities of the series. They simply don't have the proper infrastructure necessary to handle eligibility.
(2) As best as we can tell, the top 25, especially the teams outside the top 15, is more or less completely arbitrary. We're especially concerned about the lack of details provided about teams that are not in the initial top 25's ability to move into the series.
(3) The timing of this is very irritating. With less than 3 months until the start of the spring season, we feel like we are being forced into making a decision without full knowledge of the details. Why could this have not been presented to us earlier? What's wrong with waiting until next year to do this? Right now, Cultimate is all but guaranteeing that the 2009 Season is going to be in a state of chaos.
(4) People remember who wins the NBA Championship...no one cares who won the most ABA Titles.
(5) If Cultimate were just interested in expanding their series from last year, Georgia would be very interested in participating. Why is it so necessary for Cultimate to be in charge of the championship event?
(6) We have serious concerns about the price structuring of this event in future years. Currently, the teams are getting a pretty sweet deal to attend these events, what's to guarantee us that Cultimate won't substantially raise costs in the future?

This in no way is meant as bashing Cultimate, I think they are bringing up some very important ideas and are suggesting many needed changes. It's also quite possible that we would be willing to compete in a Conference1 series next year, if some of these difficulties can be worked out. Unfortunately, as currently proposed, we feel that the Conference1 series will not work out, and the timing of Cultimate's announcement leaves them no time to work through the logistical details.

In any event, for all of these reasons, Georgia will be attending sectionals this year, with the hope of advancing to regionals and beyond. We hope that other teams will join us, but respect that each program has to make the decision that is best for their program.

National Seedings

2008-10-14T20:44:00.002-04:00

Here's my thoughts on nationals seedings:

I think the top 3 seeds are pretty uncontroversial:
1 Sockeye
2 Johnny Bravo (1-0 against Ironside)
3 Ironside

The 4-10 section becomes difficult due to Chain’s loss to Doublewide. Here is how I would handle it:

4 Ring of Fire (1-0 against Revolver, 0-2 against GOAT)
5 Revolver (1-0 against SZ, 1-0 against GOAT, must be higher than Jam)
6 Jam (1-0 against SZ, 1-0 against DW, have losses to Condors and TS, but I think it’s a mistake to push them lower)
7 Sub Zero (1-0 against GOAT, 1-0 against DW)
8 GOAT (1-0 against DW)
9 Doublewide (has to be higher than Chain, 1-0 against Condors)
10 Chain (has to be lower than DW)

11 Condors (2-0 against Truck Stop)
12 Truck Stop (has wins over Jam, Revolver, and DW, so could possibly push them higher them DW, but that just pushes Chain even lower, which seems like an error, 1-0 against Machine).

13 Machine (1-0 against Bodhi, 1-0 against PoNY)

14 Bodhi
15 PoNY
16 El Diablo

aj

UPA Coaching Corp Requirements

2008-09-23T12:20:00.003-04:00

So, I just got an email forwarded to me from the UPA.
Here is what I consider the most objectionable part of the email:

During games at UPA Championship events where field access is restricted, teams with coaching staff are required to have at least one Level I Certified coach in order for coaching staff to have player-level field access.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of the UPA Coaching Corp. I think it's a nice program that is genuinely trying to help develop the sport. But, I think this new requirement seems a bit over the top.

My basic problem is this: It's not enough that I (and many other coaches like me) VOLUNTEER hours and hours of my (our) time trying to teach people how to play ultimate...now I'm required to pay the UPA if I have hopes that by VOLUNTEERING my time, I might help my team advance to the highest levels? This doesn't seem to be the ideal way to encourage people to coach.

aj

Looks like it's gonna be Al over Jim...who knew?

2008-04-11T20:06:00.002-04:00

So, I make a brief return to posting just to express my surprise at the state of the blogosphere. In the early days (pre-ultimate talk) it seemed like most of the blogs were going to follow the Parinella model, polite and respectful. George's blog, Zaz's blog, and Marshall's blog all seemed to follow that model. Even Idris' blog and this blog, which preceded Parinella's blog (and aren't quite as milk-toast as Jim's blog) utilized a similar tone.

But the recent addition of this blog has got me thinking. The new popular ultimate blogs (Match Diesel's and Karlinsky's) have followed the Count's Blog model--they're irreverent and usually pretty funny. Match Diesel's Blog is even sporting the Count's trademark flames.

I thought I was just imagining this trend until I saw Parinella post some of the old T-Man stuff in an obvious attempt claim these new wild blogs as his own.

I'm not fooled though...looks like it's Al over Jim in the battle for the future of ultimatetalk.

aj

...Luke's blog continues to resist categorization.

Open Seeds

2007-10-10T09:55:00.001-04:00

Experience has taught us that the single best indicator for success at nationals is the results of the previous year’s nationals. This isn’t a new idea; we’ve known this for as long as I’ve been playing. What’s interesting is that the previous year’s results have become and increasingly smaller factor in determining seeding. I think there are a few reasons for this: 1) the format gurus (ok, mostly just Tarr) have convinced us that seeds aren’t meant to be predictive 2) we now have access to a lot more regular season results 3) we have been influenced by the method for seeding college – where the amount of turnover makes the previous years results a lot less indicative of success.

Another factor which seems to be completely ignored is when teams bring less that full-strength squad to tournaments. From the standpoint of creating an algorithm, it’s not clear how you account for this. However, in ignoring the strength of the team that actually showed up to a tournament we are throwing away usual information.

I guess what I’m suggesting is that by not considering these two factors, our seeding is not as good as it could be—Chain has been in a pool with 2 semi-finalists the last 3 years. I will say the format at Club nationals is the best at minimizing the effects of initial seeding, but I think it’s naïve to claim that seeding doesn’t matter at nationals.

For these and other reasons, I’ve argued before that it might be time for the UPA to get rid of the prohibition on not seeding a team above a team it finished lower than at a series event.

That being said, here’s my shot at seeding:

The Top 3

Due to the above mentioned prohibition, there are 3 possible ways to seed the top 3. 1)Jam, Sockeye, Bravo. 2)Bravo, Jam, Sockeye, 3) Jam, Bravo, Sockeye. The third way makes the least sense to me. If you’re willing to say that Bravo’s season entitles them to a higher ranking than Sockeye, then certainly Bravo’s 3-1 record against Jam should entitle than to the 1 seed. That being said, I prefer the first seeding. I think you have to give credit to Jam for winning the hardest region.

4
Furious – the team has been in at least the semis for 8? years. Was strong at ECC before losing to Jam.

5
Sub Zero, If Goat wins NE regionals they are the obvious 5 seed, I think there loss pushes Zero up to 5. They’ve had a good season, only losing to teams above them with the exception of 1 loss to Goat.
6-9
6)Boston, 7)Goat, 8)Ring, 9)Condors. I honestly have no idea how to seed this group. Ring is 2-0 against Boston and 0-2 against Goat. Condors has no head-to-head games with this group. I’m gonna go with this seeding to avoid regional re-matches, but I think any shuffling within this group can be justified.

10-12
The three teams in this grouping are Rhino, Doublewide, and Truckstop. Rhino has a four point win over Doublewide, and Truckstop has a one point win over Rhino. I’m going to going to give credit to Rhino for making quarters last year and generally having a slightly better season than Truckstop, despite the 1 point Truckstop win. 10)Rhino, 11)Doublewide, 12)Truckstop.

13-
It’s kind of strange for me to say that Chain should be the 13 seed. This is the sixth year in a row Chain has been to nationals, and this will be the lowest we’ve ever been seeded. This, despite the fact they we’re coming off our best year ever, and added several strong players.
14-16
14) Machine – featuring a bunch of guys who wish they still played for Chain, and some new guy from the west coast.
15) Pike – the comeback kids.
16) Van Buren Boys – we were all a little nervous about the poor spirit in the mixed division spilling over into open when these guys decided to make the switch. After regionals, it seems like our fears were justified.

That gives me the following (obviously correct) seeds:
1. Jam
2. Sockeye
3. Bravo
4. Furious
5. Sub Zero
6. Boston
7. Goat
8. Ring
9. Condors
10. Rhino
11. Doublewide
12. Truck Stop
13. Chain
14. Machine
15. Pike
16. Van Buren Boys

Next Year versus Right Now

2007-05-10T12:02:00.000-04:00

I think it is harder to win a college title that it is to win the UPA championships. It feels like the open and womens divisions of club are inertial. It takes some time for a team to build up some inertia, but after that they can just keep rolling until they run out of steam and get replaced. In the college game you only have 5 years, and you are stuck with the players you have (much harder to transfer than just move cities).

With that in mind I feel that as a college coach I am always thinking about next year. Who is going to be picking up the disc? Who is going to be our defensive stopper? etc. So to what extent should a coach let that affect how they play their players at nationals?

We need to develop our talent for next year, but at the same time we have a good team and could potentially make a run and go deep . . . but probably not win.

My current mindset comes from something that I think Jim wrote about DoG at Nationals. On day 1 you just want to make it to your power pool. Day 2 you want to win one game. That will put you in the semis while avoiding a play-in, and at that point you have given yourselves a chance and it is time to start playing your best. I think at college nationals, if you have a shot of winning the pool you take it, but really you are playing to finish 2/3 and be in a preQuarter game. All the preQs are 2 v 3 games so the talent level shouldn't be that different if you come in at 3 versus coming in a 2. After winning your preQuarter game then you've given yourself a chance to win some big games.

So is the mindset to make sure you win your 1/2 games on Friday to advance then focus on talent development with the other 2/1 games for next year? Does having a large freshman class make the subbing lean more towards development for a future chance at the title? Does having a big senior class mean putting it all on the line with those players to give them their one big chance? How much of an affect does worrying about a strength bid have on the decisions? I know these are all subjective to the team, but I would like to hear other people's thoughts/experiences on the subject. Thanks.

On game tape

2007-04-26T12:40:00.000-04:00

I love watching game tape. Being a mostly defensive coach my goal is almost always to see what offenses a team runs, what they do with their dumps, who their main cutters are (and how they cut) and how they respond to a zone.

This weekend at regionals we will be watching tape on saturday night in preparation for sunday play. I was wondering what other things people have found useful to focus on while watching tape. I feel that game tape us under utilized in ultimate, not only because there isn't as much of it, but more because people either aren't looking for the right things, or aren't translating what they see into coaching points for their players well. Ideas?

On subbing

2007-04-26T12:14:00.000-04:00

I wonder if other coaches think about the psychological aspect of their subbing players when they call subs. We currently have a situation that I am waffling on and the reason why is because it is a situation where I think we should not play one of our best players on offense (reference Idris' post from a while ago?).

I have a player that is very good on both sides of the disc. She is a fast cutter who doesn't tire easily and she plays intelligent D. She is easily amongst our top seven players, however I find myself wanting to take her off of the starting O line because she is somewhat prone to drops. At the same time she also makes great catches at key moments.

My raionale is that she will be much more effective as a defensive starter who is expected to jump start the offense and move the disc on a turn that she would be as an offensive cutter. The team has plenty of offensive cutters, so she would be a tertiary target at best, but aside from that I wonder if her dropping the disc would have a lesser impact if we had already gotten a D.

On offense her drops can seem catastrophic since there is so much more pressure to score without a turnover. This leads to a stressful situation which I think increases her likeliness to drop the disc. On defense, while her drops may be costly, they shouldn't have the enormous impact they do on the other side of the disc because of the idea that defense doesn't have to be perfect. This should reduce the stress she feels and probably improve her catching.

So I guess the discussion I'm trying to start is whether or not anyone pays attention to their players generic mental state when scheming for that player or if people focus on putting their best players in at the most important times? Hell, if any discussion starts on this blog it would be a miracle.

CCC

2006-11-06T18:45:00.000-05:00

So I began my college men’s coaching career this weekend at CCC. After a first round loss to Ohio State, Barrett informed me that the alumni were restless. One loss and the UGA alumni are already calling for my head – a slightly different scenario than when I started with the Emory women, a team that had never won a game at sectionals. In those days, I received congratulatory emails from the alumni following every tournament.

We have only had 1 week of practice and this weekend really made me realize just how different coaching here is going to be. At this point, I could insert some generic comments about how different it is coaching men instead of women. But really, the main difference is that I’m coming into an already established program with a lot of players that already know how to play. My last couple of years at Emory, every player on the team had learned almost all of what they knew about ultimate from me and the other coaches. They all had been trained since they started to play in the Emory system and it was therefore pretty easy to make adjustments during the game. As I tried to explain to Barrett after our first round loss – you can’t really blame me – it’s not my fault Stu can’t recruit. In all seriousness, it is going to be a substantial challenge to convert these players into doing things the way I think they should be done. There is also the question of whether it would be more prudent to just leave things as they are given the recent success of the program. Honestly, I don’t know – obviously my belief is that the way I do things is better otherwise that wouldn’t be the way I do things…but if the team crashes and burns this year I’ll deserve all of the blame.

In general, I was pretty pleased with the level of effort from the men this weekend. They really do play incredibly hard. I think if we can clean up the offense a little bit, we’re gonna be pretty darn good.

My general thoughts about the weekend – Wisconsin is for real. This is probably surprising to exactly zero people, but I was incredibly impressed with them. There man-to-man defense was disgusting and they’re shockingly disciplined with the disc. I haven’t seen the west-coast teams yet, but it seems like right now the Hodags have to be the early favorites to win this year. Colorado also looks really good. The loss of Adam Simon is definitely noticeable, but they’re very big and athletic – they will create match-up nightmares for anyone.

I only got a chance to watch the semis and finals on the women’s side. Emory is greatly improved after a coaching change. Their top end players are exceptional and they have a few solid role players. Of course, I believe their system is strong. Their depth is still a big question though. In terms of the AC right now it looks like once again it’s some order of Georgia, Florida and Emory at the top. On the national scene, Wisconsin looked very good to me. Stanford seems to be in something of a rebuilding year, but it’s Stanford so they’ll be good.

Chain at Nationals

2006-11-03T18:33:00.000-05:00

There will undoubtedly be those who consider Chain’s success at nationals a fluke. Those who think Chain’s run was legitimate might still say that a single tournament is too small of a sample size to draw any worthwhile conclusions. I think both of these criticisms are at least potentially reasonable – let that serve as a caveat for what follows.

I think Chain’s success at 2006 Nationals was primarily the result of two strategic principles. The first is that relentless (perhaps reckless) aggression is a powerful strategy. The second is that the point at which the replacement value of a fresh tier two player exceeds the value of a fatigued tier one is somewhat closer to 60% of points played (for the tier one player) rather than 50% of points played.

In an earlier post, I defended the value of relentless aggression. There my argument was basically two-fold. First, I argued that The Rule demands that all things being equal, a player should throw a longer pass rather than a shorter pass. 2) I also made the more controversial claim the advantageous implications of the huck extend beyond the calculation of giving your team the highest percentage chance of scoring this goal. This claim is based on the fact that once a team believes you are crazy enough to huck at any point they will over commit to protecting the deep cut opening up the underneath. The nice thing about this second point is that it can extend to later games in a tournament/season without your team even having to bear the burden of the additonal turnovers early in a game. I think FG and Sockeye both currently benefit from (2) due to their reputation as mindless huckers.

In any event, we (the blogosphere, although not sure I’m still a member) have had this discussion and I don’t mean to rehash old territory. Another facet of our relentless aggression was an insistence on forcing the disc upfield whenever possible. A dump has to be considerably higher percentage than a 20 yard gainer if the dump is to be justified by The Rule. Honestly, I still don’t think HnH is optimal in perfect conditions, but this year’s nationals was far from perfect conditions. I think that anyone arguing that a possession style offense is optimal in this year’s conditions (with the exception of Sunday) is either bad at math or simply not being honest with themselves.

The second strategic principle can basically be restated as “you should play your studs more than you are now.” Jim posted on this subject with some fictional numbers a while ago, I’m too lazy to find the link now, sorry. At early tournaments this year we had three considerable comebacks at the end of games when we just put in our top 7 for several points in a row. This led us to make the conscious decision to play our studs more at nationals. It sounds pretty obvious, but the current dominant strategy of splitting O/D has led a lot of top players to play only about 50 percent of the points. In most situtaions, your studs could play more than 50 percent of the points without fatigue impacting their play to the extent that it would make sense to put in your next tier of player.

Obligatory AC Regional Write-Up

2006-05-01T11:34:00.000-04:00

Wow. I can’t believe this is my first post of 2006 – it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long since I’ve blogged. My absence is mostly attributable to two factors: 1) I haven’t had much to say 2) I’ve been insanely busy. I do have a few ideas for some new posts though, and Wood is probably getting pumped about some sort of silly coed nonsense, so hopefully it won’t be another five months before the next post. Alright, onto the obligatory regionals write-up…

Coming into regionals I thought that Florida and Georgia were clearly a step ahead of the rest of the region. The format definitely favored the Ho-Dawgs because Florida’s long bench becomes less of an advantage when the finals are the first game of the day. I expected that we (Emory) would be battling with UNC on Sunday for the third bid to nationals. I thought that NC State, Wake Forest and UVA would all be fighting to be alive on Sunday, but probably weren’t strong enough to finish in the top 3. As it turned out, I had definitely underestimated both Wake and State – both teams are very gritty – playing tough D and embracing the power of the long ball.

On Saturday we came out and took care of Davidson pretty quickly setting up a quarterfinals match-up with UVA. UVA is the one strong team in the AC region I have no career wins over and I was a little nervous when we only took half 8-7. We made a couple of defensive adjustments in the second half and were able to finish them off 15-9. Andrea Duran is huge for them and would definitely be on my all region ballot (if I got to vote).

That meant we were matched up with Florida in the Semis. Both teams were relatively clean offensively and the game only lasted 85 minutes – Florida 15 Emory 10. I actually thought we played pretty well in the game, but they were just too good. Florida doesn’t have the superstars that UGA does, but they are a lot more consistent. I could see UGA finding a way to lose in pre-quarters at natties or getting hot and making a run to finals. On the other hand, I think Florida is a very solid quarters team that could make semis with the right quarters match-up.

The biggest news from Saturday was definitely the earlier UNC elimination. Troy posted on RSD about the surprising UNC losses here. I was able to watch a decent chunk of both games, and I don’t really have much to add. I can’t say that I agree that UNC has the regions strongest starting 7, but I do agree that Hack is the scariest all around player in the region. UNC definitely didn’t look to be playing as well as I had seen them play earlier in the season, but you’ve got to give a lot of credit to both Wake and NC State. Both teams did a great job of gumming up UNC’s throwing lanes and then coming down with big huck after big huck. In any event, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t pulling for NC State to take down UNC in the last game of the day on Saturday.

The format on Sunday basically requires you to go 3-1 to claim the third bid to the show. There’s not much advantage to losing in one round over another because you’re going to have 4 games regardless. So, our plan for Sunday was to go with a really open rotation until we lost a game and then tighten things up. NC State jumped out on us early in the first round and put us away fairly easily. We did have a small late game run that helped our confidence for the rest of the day. As it turned out, losing that game ended up being a big advantage. We basically, didn’t have to run much in the first game against NC State, and our penalty for that was playing zone loving UVA rather than hard running (and still fresh) Wake. We were able to get up quickly on UVA and open up the rotation for the whole game again saving our legs. After we finished off UVA, I jogged over to find Wake and NCST embroiled in a classic Carolina style bloodbath, 11-10 game to 13. I found myself pumping my fist with every punt that sailed too long.

Wake ended up pulling it out and so we had a tired NC State next. They went up 2-0, but after a time-out we went on an 8-2 run to take half and never looked back. That meant we had to play Wake in the game to go. We came out playing well and started off 5-1 and I was thinking we were going to run away with it. Next thing I know we’re down 10-8 and we’re kind of scratching our heads trying to figure out what went wrong. I think the hardest time to be a coach is when you’re losing because you’re making unforced errors. It’s just so difficult to know what to say to your team. When you’re losing because the other team is doing something strategically, at least you can tell your team how to adjust to stop what they’re doing. But you can’t really come into the huddle and say, “stop dropping the disc.” Anyway, I’d love to say that I made some brilliant strategic adjustment that gave us the win, but basically we just cleaned it up and pulled it out 15-13. I really can’t say enough about how impressed I was with how much heart Wake showed. I honestly believe we have better athletes and better throwers than they do, but they were able to hang with us the whole time based on just a complete refusal to give up. It was pretty inspiring to watch.

Anyway, so we’re off to natties and I’m pretty pumped. Realistically, we can’t win nationals, so I’m just going to approach it like a two day practice – it will be a great learning experience for my young team.

Random notes/thoughts from the weekend

1) The triple elimination format creates some interesting decisions for coaches.
2) If there’s anything more annoying than unobservant observers, I can’t think of what it is at the moment.
3) I’m not usually one to hype my players, but Celine Sledge has got to be the AC Rookie of the Year.
4) You don’t get 25 out of 26 rosters in on time by accident – so nice work Lindsey Hack and her sectional coordinators (Julia Echterhoff et. al.)
5) AC South strongest (mixed) section in the country this year? All 5 AC bids to natties go to AC South

One Coach's Plan for a Semester

2005-12-19T11:49:00.000-05:00

Idris talked about why frisbee blogs are a good source of information (at the very least, I seem to be getting all my post ideas from Idris, whether that's good or bad), and I agree. I actually think it's a good first step in developing a solid base of knowledge that our sport needs before making the next step.

So...this weekend I laid out the plan for this semester for the college team I coach. I figured I'd post the general outline here, realizing that this is not the best plan for every team (or possibly even my team), but maybe there is a good idea in there somewhere that you can take, or maybe you can use it as a starting point. If anyone has any suggestions for changes/additions, I'd be interested in those as well.

Basics: We have 3 (3 hour) practices a week. Mondays and Thursdays are normal practice, on Tuesdays we scrimmage a local pickup team. We have a pretty small team, with 7-10 guys at practices, so the plan reflects that limitation.

Topics: A list of strategy/tactical points to cover, in the order I plan on teaching. The idea is to give at least one week's practice to each topic. In the past I've laid out how many weeks to spend on particular topics, but this year I've just got a list, if we need more than a week to cover it, we'll take it. Once I feel we've covered it enough, we'll move on to the next topic. The topics are pretty basic. It would be helpful to someday post specific discussion points and drills for each topic. One day hopefully. (Jim and Zaz's book is a good place to look for info on all these topics).

Dump-Swing/Dump Defense
Trap Dump/Dump Defense
Straight stack offense/Man Defense
Brick and set plays/Man Defense
Redzone offense/Man Defense
Redzone set plays/Man Defense
Zone offense/2-3-2
Zone offense/alternate zone defenses

If we get through all that we'll probably just review what we've done so far, or possibly look to add some new topics if need be (H-stack, more zone d's, more redzone setplays, etc.)

Practice Templates: A basic outline that we'll follow at every practice.

Monday:
Warmup
Speedwork (1-5 sprints/shuttles/starts/etc.)
10 Throw (10 flat backhands/forehands, 10 invert backhands/forehands, 10 outvert backhands/forehands, and 10 hammers)
1 Regular Drill (Not necessarily specific to the weekly topic, just working on general skills. ie 3 person marking drill, mushroom drill, throwing drill, etc.)
Discuss Weekly Topic (diagram on the whiteboard, hand out review material, answer questions)
Walk-through Weekly Topic
Weekly Topic Drills/Games
Intervals

Tuesday:
Warmup
10 Throw
Warmup Drill (whatever you prefer, I see a lot of mushroom, but we use a goto drill)
Weekly Topic reminder/team discussion
Scrimmage
Game/Weekly Topic Review and Questions
Intervals

Thursday:
Warmup
10 Throw
1 Regular Drill
Discuss Weekly Topic - answer questions
1-2 Weekly Topic Drills
2-3 Regular Drills
Game (ideally 7 on 7, more likely 3 on 3, hotbox, etc.)
Intervals

What strategy?

2005-12-13T12:10:00.000-05:00

I read this post by Idris, and it got me thinking about the low level of strategy in our sport. Take the idea that it is truly better (and I actually agree with this) to let a team learn how to flow and adjust on it's own, with little structure. This, to me, is a horrible indictment of the place our sport is at currently. In other, more established sports, you learn the fundamentals, how to make the x different cuts required in your sport, the right way to throw a ball.

Maybe I place football on too high a pedestal, but I'd love to have just a fraction of the strategy from football in Ultimate. How hard would it be to have a standard set of cuts, have players run the cuts, perhaps changing them based on a defensive 'hot read'? Is it simply a physics question? Does the disc move too slowly in the air to run a curl or post? I'd like to think we could just add on to the progression idea. I know player x is going to make cut y. I see how the defense is playing him, and know that he is going to switch to cut z. I can then make the throw to z before the player has even turned.

I know this happens, to a degree, at higher levels, but I don't think it's actual codified in the offense. There is so little consensus in our sport about the best way to do things, that we actually teach new players to try different (probably incorrect) things out because we're worried that we're wrong or we simply know that the next team a player is on will likely have a completely different philosophy. I'm not talking about the difference between the west coast offense and the run and shoot. At their core, those offenses are much more similar than what we do team to team, even if we're running the 'same offense.'

Teaching players to play dynamically makes your team better right now, and probably makes your players better over the next few years. But until we get to the point where we can teach players the right way to play, we're going to be stuck teaching them to play 15 different (non-optimal) ways and we're never going to have real strategy.

Strategy in our sport right now is limited to "create 2 on 1's", "get a step on your guy and jack it", "break the mark to get the defense on the wrong side of the field," etc. Maybe I'm silly to think that we can or should move to, "the defense is in an X coverage so I went to the Y hotroute to beat it."

What is the most advanced Ultimate offense out there? Does it work? and how 'advanced' is it really? What are the limitations in our sport that keep us from having more precise strategy?