Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Things I've Learned about being broken

Well I ruined my knee on the weekend and I have learned something about being on crutches for thepast few days...

its a lot like being a very hot woman,

You get lots of attention
People who are not nice to other people are nice to you
People open doors for you and vacate seats
and lastly...
Some people are just plain gay and dont care as much about you as they should.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Just a peek of Nationals

Well got back from Nationals on Sunday night, wow was that an experience.

You know we spent a few months conditioning our bodies and the last week resting for it, and I found out why.

Nationals was 4 days of abusing my body, just about everything except my cardio was put under stress, pain and damage.

My Chest (hurt from bad lay out)
Ankles (Still recovering from a sprain)
Stomach (So much dirty maccas, hungry jacks, kfc, and subway)
My feet (ruined by running as usual)
Back
Knee (someone laid out into it, I'm on crutches now with a sprained knee)
Liver (2 Panadol, 2 Neurofen, for the knee and I'm not sure how much beer on the saturday night)
My Mind (Went crazy waiting in the emergency ward of the hospital to be told "You're knee is sprained, just RICE it... heres some crutches!"

But damn
That was an amazing few days some of the most enjoyable ever. It was so good to be able to play at that level and even come last.

Can't wait till next year.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Nationals!

Nationals is two sleeps away.

I'm going to refrain from making any sort of predictions due to how shocking my Share the Love series picks were, instead here is a list of things to look out for:

  • Alex Semfel (esquire) has informed me that he is going to get a layout block on Jimmy Tod-Hill and sky Piers.
  • The 'pool of bloggers', aka Pool A. Whilst our teams play one another, myself, Semfel, Owen, Rubes and JdR attempt increasingly difficult touch typing exercises. If no clear winner is drawn from this, we move to a foot race.
  • Which (decidedly male) ultimate player will I drunkenly declare my love to this time? My money is on Mike Nield.
  • Tom 'Brazenhead' Watson discovers that there is sound cause for the 'Oh, Canberra? Nah, they haven't changed' rationale. Canberra? Nah, they haven't changed. They will struggle to make the nine-als.
In the meantime I am going to listen to Rage Against the Machine nonstop. See you all at Nationals.

T.

The Buyer Decision Process

I'm doing Marketing 1001 at uni, and its a waste of my $1000 or whatever it costs in fees for the semester. But on the other hand its fun and I get to talk to people a lot. Anyway, I'm studying for the mid semester exam and dreaming about Nationals 3 days away... when I come across this:

Buyer Decision Process

Recognise problem (throw needs to be made)

Information Search (Who is open, who is going to be open)

Evaluation of Alternatives (Who is the best option)

Purchase Decision (here goes the throw!)

Post- Purchase behaviour (reward loyalty) (Look he caught it! I can do that again!)


Funny I thought, each step is what you do when you make a throw, for someone trying to improve their throws, maybe look at each step and see where you fall down, someone who badly evaluates alternatives (looks off cuts) can and be told this and try to change the way they think, someone who has bad post decision behaviour (his fault he didnt catch it) can try and fix their thinking in that aspect.

While on the topic of uni:
(In the marketing discussion board)
lol:
Our marketing group has our speech next week (first group), however one of our participants informed us today that she has disenrolled from uni and hence will not be partaking anymore. That means our group is down to 3 and we need to take into account urgently this fact before next week. I have tried calling our tute teacher with no luck...what do you suggest we do?


Sunday, April 20, 2008

I still really like Buzz

I still really like buzz bullets, they are fantastic to watch play...

even on a game where the looks like a lot of wind (zone and they slip a lot so i think its raining)
they look like they do a lot more middle/high release throws than other teams, up and down wind.

They have some weird ass zone with a crazy changing mark that I swear is man on one side of the field and puppy/fence ish on the other side of the field, so they pop to get free and suddenly all they're doing is clogging, its fun to watch and try and work outwhat they're doing.

Plus i also like them becuase they have a team of utility players that can receive, cut and throw equally, they dont rely on one tall beast to pull down floaters in the endzone, I realy like that communist style of play!

Anyway, this is what sparked this post:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qEgGgAIGNs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyHi2-8ZWnk
Part 2: At 5:24 or so, a buzz player runs out over people chasing the disc, but the sockeye picks it up as the other guy has to struggle back in over all the players. It seems pretty low, but no rules have been broken... again the crowds should try to stay off the sideline!

Monday, April 14, 2008

My findings after lurking

after lurking the ultitalk forums...

noticed a few posts like this

"two even (x/y) teams to Nationals knows"
even is x/x not x/y, x/y is the same as a/b!!! you use the same letter to indicate they are equal! not lower letters in the alphabet!

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Sydney Uni United Front for Alcohol

I recently joined Sydney Unis frisbee club, and finally went along to one of their training sessions run by coach Jimmy, It was a lot of fun, reminding me of the old days of frisbee before we met Phil and had aspirations of Junior worlds and it was just something we did during our lunch times.

Schoolyard frisbee was great, Obstacles like trees, year 7s and teachers. Fouls barely called, stall 7 to make games go faster, huge games with lots of people, endless endzones, uphill and downhill endzones and I remember a lot more foot blocks and hand blocks becuase people didn't really know how to play. Double teaming allowed, no outs unless you threw it onto the road (max lost a few discs being run over by semi trailers because of mark not being able to keep his throws in the school), and even hammers into trees to be caught for scores and the always fun 'Golden Goal' score system that started whenever the bell went.

The best bit of schoolyard frisbee was the amount of crazy and amazing feats occuring so often becuase of the nature of the game, that I've never seen completely repeated. I remember one friend managing a point face block on his thrower only to have it turn into an amazingly mac catch. There was times when the disc travalled about 10m through 3 mistaken macs to end up being a score. The only time i've seen another face block was on max, the thrower had the nerve to call a foul on him after he was bleeding from the mouth from the hit.

The other thing was the no limits on the team sizes, all inclusion style of play having 13 on 13 games on a field that was probably the size of what would fit a 4v4 game on it. There was also the game of soccer or touch running across the middle as well as the year 7s playing soccer or some other sport down in one of the endzones (that was the hard one to score in).

Not only was this great for developing field sense (well I think for me it helped a lot being able to pick out open receviers quickly and throwing complicated throws to dodge obstacles) but more funnily it was really good at showing the people who didnt have it. My friends that had terrible field sense then in the school yard, still have it now, looking off open players and in worse cases not even seeing them. The best thing is now, while people who I thought had good relative field sense (Me, Tiger and particularly Max) still have the good field sense, and those who didn't still make dumb/bad choices at times and had troubles getting over this for a long long time. It was also a good practice area for learning to control the speed of your throws, some people were terrible at catching, if you didn't throw a slow floater to their chest, they would probably miss it, so again this was great for your throwing without pressure.

Back to the present, the past few weeks of training for the Selection Camp were nuts, regionals and the two practice tourneys before that were heaps of hard work. I rested a week after the camp due to an injury and fak training was rained out that monday which saddened me. I finally recovered my broken training spirit and got back into it.

Thats when suufa came along. The trainings were laid back and fun, even had a lay out lesson from jimmy, everyones still learning the dump and stack (we haven't gotten to the swing yet, I expect thats next week) and then came the house party at clares for suufa. It was the first time I had drunk alcohol since new years eve, and Max and Calan were still on the ban since they were still on the team, we were standing around in a group with someone explaining the situation to which he replied:

"What!? Frisbee without drinking? Thats all I asscociate Frisbee with!"
Every week it seems to appear more like a false front for a drinking group rather than a sports club...

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Evolution

So I've been thinking about how I think about defence. Confused? Don't worry, I've got examples.

When I first started playing Ultimate - and now, still, in my league team Friskee, who are about as nonserious as can be - the highest conceptual level my defensive strategies operated on was pretty much 'turn the disc over'. Back then it was usually dumb running and athleticism (relative to old men in parks) that got me the turns.

As players get more serious about defence, the individual strategies become slightly more advanced: baiting your man, intentionally letting him get open, so that when he slows down to receive the disc you are there with the catch block, poaching - a new set of (admittedly riskier) defensive skills complemented by developments in dumb running technology such as not biting on fakes/jukes, recognising height/speed mismatches and calling switches.

The rolling stone gathers some more moss: gradually I became aware of zone and junk defences. These were put on in response to broader trends recognised in the opposition - rather than, say, calling a switch because your man is taller than you, we'd put on a zone because they were short on good handlers or were running us ragged on man. This is sort of the next evolutionary bit, where the transition was made from an individual defensive effort to a collective team strategy.

Where are we now? From what I've read and heard, we're nearly at the stage where, at elite levels, Ultimate is conceptually on par with other sports. Soccer has had its gameplay evolution (from one formation, 5-3-2, in the 1880's, to many, see this link) and continues to develop. From what (understandably) limited outlines I have been able to procure about various teams in terms of their offensive or defensive structure, Ultimate is no longer necessarily about who can run further or faster. Defenses have conceptual aims: recognising strengths in the opposing offence such as near-flawlessly executed set plays (combated by a defence that utilises clam, transitions and junks to dam the flow) or a highly developed short game running from a vertical stack(tips: defensive players clog slightly, making clean cuts harder, and counterbalance with a roaming defensive deep to ward off the easy huck) and, for lack of a better word, neutering them.

When it really comes down to it, Ultimate is simple. I have even supplied a flow chart for your viewing pleasure:



Monday, April 7, 2008

Back to Basics... Learn to catch

Fakulbee in our games have had a lot of dropping accidents, so Kenny gave us some advice on how to catch better, refering us to the catching technique of the Australian wicket keeper, Adam Gilchrist.

He pointed out if you ever watch him, and he was damn good, he always would follow the ball into his hands, with his eyes, even after he had made the catch.

When you do this, you will be dropping fewer discs since it seemed so many of our drops were from thinking we had the catch and looking up for the next pass.

Field awareness is good, but so is catching the disc.
I've been focusing on catching more like this, even with the easy throws.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Dealing with Rejection

Ok, well Wednesday was the unfortunate night where I found out I wasn't on the World Junior's team. It's been a lot harder to get up and get motivated to train and play again.

My last drink was at NYE, looking at photos now I wasn't wearing pants and embarassing memories of running around with no clothes on in front of my friends with other friends, forgetting the younger children around... I guess I wasn't really missing out.

I had a post-Worlds drink stash on my shelf for if I got cut, or after getting back from Vancouver.

Just drank my first drink since NYE...

You know what, I haven't been missing out on anything.

I've been able to work and play the next day so much better, and not wake up instead with splitting headaches. On top of that the damage it does to your body, in terms of your training and longer term to do with your mind.

So its about now I realise.

Nationals... 3 weeks...
Unigames to aspire to, that Usyd team won't be easy to get into it...

Time to get back to training.

I think I'm not even going to have time to drink anyway.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Thunder Announced

So the Thunder team has been announced:
  • Captain: Phil White (NSW)
  • Robbie Andrew (SA)
  • Jake Angelovich (VIC)
  • Alexander Britten-Jones (SA)
  • Lewis Broad (VIC)
  • Ashley Buttons (TAS)
  • Brock Cunliffe (QLD)
  • Michael Dunne (TAS)
  • Peter Eley (WA)
  • Lachlan Gregory (WA)
  • Dale Grixti (SA)
  • Max Halden (NSW)
  • Josh Jacobs (NSW)
  • Jeremy Katz (VIC)
  • Sean Lace (SA)
  • Will Larkin (QLD)
  • Alex Linnertson (NSW)
  • Tarrant Meehan (VIC)
  • David Noble (NSW)
  • Alistair See (NSW)
  • Calan Spielman (NSW)
  • Tom Tulett (NSW)
  • Jackson Turner (NSW)
  • Tiger Webb (NSW)
  • Lochlan Wise (VIC)

I think the only thing harder than waiting for a call that will potentially ruin your year is having to make that call as a selector.

T.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Alex Semfels Journey to Thunder is over

Well I just got the call from Piers, letting me know I'm not in the team.

My thoughts going into the team was that i was good but not good enough to be a receiver or a handler for the team. I didn't feel like Iwas going to get into the team, but I am still pretty cut about it.

The comments I got back were pretty much the same thing, but that I handle better than I receive, but not enough to outhandle the rest of the guys who are trying to handle.

Oh well.

No more trying out for worlds for quite some time, I guess I should focus on uni and quit one of my jobs now I don't need so much money.

Go thunder.

Now im just burning to find out who is on the team!

So sick of waiting...

I had a look at Reubens post about the dingoes and the waiting for the call.

He's right, I'm sick of waiting, right now for 3 days, despite a flurry of uni work and assingments all I can think about is the team.

I'm extremely on edge today, I just picked up the phone, after a few rings my heart beating furisiously as my stomach did little jumps and spins...

Its my mums friend.

I'm sitting here waiting once again.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Funny?

Peter Eley was probably the funniest guy trying out for thunder.

In one of the O team vs D Team games after he'd gotten some amazing D and the O team was a bit down everyone was walking across the fields cheering for their scores and getting onto the line and I heard him say as I was passing (while everyone else was cheering)

"That was really funny when the dog took a shit."