Thursday, August 28, 2008

I have a ruined Knee: Pre Admission

"Enjoy you're last few pre-op pain free days!" - Enthusiastic Doctor

Today I had to venture to uni for a 1 hour tute, then straight back home, took about 4 hours. Then I got to drive all the way to Hornsby hospital (another hour or so of travel) for pre-admission!

Did a urine sample, that was fun.

Then a swab test. That was also fun.
"I need to get a nose swab and a groin swab,"
"...What?"
"Tilt your head back," before she nimbly jams a swab up my nose and twirls it around.
"Alright now I need a groin swab, can you lower your jeans?"

She handed me a bottle of disinfectant and instructions on how to wash myself with it before the operation.

Back in the waiting room a happy doctor comes to greet me. Telling me to step into his office with a funny look on his face. He takes me to a ward, I see a chair and a bedside table. He notes the particular lack of a second chair, and asks one of the nurses eagerly "Pass me that wheelie one!" The doctor pulls the curtain around, sits down in the chair, lowers the bedside table to where he can write on it and proudly annouces "Welcome to my office!" and later joked about the lack of resources at the hospital.

While asking me just general health questions I hear someone on the phone in the background, he was listening and looks up with a bright look on his face, "Wow, thats great, the patient we thought was going to die didn't die!" I thought he was joking, by the way he told me, but I heard a bit more and the guy was talkign about how against all expectations the patient had survived.

"So how did you injure yourself?"
"...Sport. Someone ran into my knee."
"Really which one?"
"Ultimate Frisbee,"
Again, more funny looks from him "Well I didn't think that was the sort of sport where you get injured!"

I was faced again with that one time of whether I should bother trying to explain that yes it was a real sport, yes it was taken seriously, and yes people can get injured pretty badly.

"Have you done any drugs?"
"No."
"No pot, smack, cocaine, ecstacy?"
"No."
"...Crack?"

A few minutes later we packed up his temp office and I headed out.

"Enjoy you're last few pre-op pain free days!"

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Gratuitous Faking

Something I see as one of the biggest errors affecting intermediate players is gratuitous faking.

If it was just unnecessary or inefficient, fine, but it's not - it's detrimental.

More than just requiring extra concentration (and it is much harder to look downfield, listen to the stall count AND fake endlessly - maybe not for women, but guys can't multitask) but often the commitment to a fake will cause you to be out of position to throw to a perfectly legitimate option.

Don't make the D's job any easier - fake only if you want to move your marker into a position that is more convenient for you, the thrower.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Friskee's Elite Youth Recruitment and Development Program

Wow, looking at the World's juniors results (http://www.wugc2008.com/team/301 and http://www.wugc2008.com/team/201) which are amazing, Terra have managed to beat both Canada and USA, and checking the stats I've realised aside from HOS we are probably the powerhouse of Australian elite junior recruitment, funny as that sounds.

Phil is successfully building up another promising group at Chatswood who are only 13-14 years old and will be amazing by the time they are our age, and even better when they are older, one of the Xavier got a handblock on our youth nats game against them on Tiger. Our legacy at NSB and strangely the legacy of a lot of NSB's ending up playing frisbee - many of the current Dingos are from NSB (well not that many) there is another group of Ultimate players coming through NSB now showing a lot of promise who recently came second at the NSW schools Gala Day (Chatswood came first)

Our friends at NSG who played Frisbee becuase they were friends with us have now made their own name on the Worlds Scene, Bec Villis and Clare Langford being part of the team that beat Canada and USA as well have successfully started up ultimate at NSG with Nathan and Tiger now being employed as coaches of that team.

As for Friskee, started a few years ago, captained by Phil White the current Australian Junior Captain. In the first season we had Myself, Tiger Webb, Max Halden, Angela Felhnar, David Noble, Tom Tullett, Graham Shilson-Josling, Phil White, Ellie Spark, Mark Evans and a few others I forget. Since then we've also brought to the sport Josh Jacob, Alistair See, Clare Langford and Bec Villis (headhunted - no long on Friskee) as well as Alex Allen and Alex Peters, Peters who didn't want to try out for the Junior Women and Allen who was a very strong contender along with myself, Mark Evans and Graz who were cut at the last cut for the Junior Open team. This season we gained Sarah Hammer and Calan Spielmen, but they came into the sport not through us, we also introcued Loren Viswalingam (not sure if surname spelt right) to Ultimate and shes now off in Vancouver this year as well.

Friskee has been the main source of Sydney juniors who tried out successfully for the Junior Australian ultimate teams. I think what makes us different from the other Sydney Juniors (In-Tents) is that we actually recruited new players into the sport, pretty much all of present Friskee except Phil, Alex P, Ange, Calan and Sarah H who came into the sport through themselves or other people, have come in through Friskee, or Friskee's "Recruitment Program," which was pretty much bringing frisbee's everywhere and a healthy amount of peer pressure.

However we are having slight growing pains, our staple NSL div 2 even though we've never placed better than 2nd last (this season is looking no different) due to our stacked worlds line up will not be allowed another season at div 2, and we would get torn to pieces in div 1 beuase of the number of new people we have on our squad each season. So we're going to have to either split up, or move up a division due to our size, we've also reached the point where we've had to turn down players since our roster was 16 or so people.

The future for Friskee?
Well we need to order some new shirts...

In my humble unbiased opinion,
Recruiters of the year?
Yeah. I think so.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Getting excited about Worlds!

Wow. Spoke to Tiger, lucky guy is seeing all those people we see and hear about playing Frisbee in USA and Canada and hes having a rocking good time.

Just spoke to him and he says less than an hour till they warm up for their first game at 1:30am (our time). This is the first time I've really cared about a team and given a shit about one that I'm not in (I don't really follow/care about any other sports much beyond liking to see Australia win) and damn I'm excited. I relaly hope that Thunder does well.

I also asked about their game against the YCC Seattle club and what happened. Tiger's side of the story was that it was a whole bad team effort, everyone was playing off their game and no one even had a neutral or good game. He said he felt like they could have kept up but didn't.

So all i've done is read all the gossip about worlds, all the usa blogs and australian ones.
This is going to be awesome.

Good luck Australia