Friday, October 24, 2008

08 in Review: Mixed Nationals

Mixed nationals was a blast.

The first thing that struck me was how much had changed in a year. This year, for better or for worse, heralded the demise of the 'party team'. While there were social teams who did not intend to win (Hills) and teams who partied all night (D-Rex, YOUUU) there was a genuine sense of competition, even in the play-offs for 17th, 19th and 23rd. Is this a good thing? Maybe. In future it's going to be harder and harder for inexperienced players (especially men) who get into ultimate in the lead up to uni games (second semester, after the open/womens nationals season) to continue their passion at mixed nationals. Or, translated into terms relative to my life, the me from one year ago (or any other archetypal 'no-skills-except-enthusiasm' player) would not have been able to find a spot on a team that qualified.

Club loyalty was a big thing, too. Yes, Booty were missing and spread variously through Victorian, South Australian and Queensland teams, but I predict them back next year anyway. LOG!, Lounge Lizards, Hills, MUCUS, FAF, sCAPEgoats, Spider-Pig, Pie Wagon and Special Sauce and Flycathers all returned (or got knocked out at Regionals). I am even informed that Vintage was pretty much a resurrection of 2005's Point of Entry (which I'd know nothing about because I was studying for my year 10 school certificate and didn't even play ultimate then) and are planning on playing World Clubs in 2010. Moreso, UQ Lovers and RuBi were extensions of pre-existing mixed clubs (formed, in this case, from university). Even more swellegant, the way their development is going, Kaboom looks to be the Fakulti of mixed ultimate, bringing three (count them! three!) clubs to mixed nats. Howdy doody. Mixed ultimate isn't quite at the standard of club ultimate, but it's sure getting there.

I would like to know what happened with the trial runs of commentaries from last year. Did we decide that they were not popular enough? I thoroughly enjoyed that service, and I think it would have been useful, both for the people not in Brisbane and even for some of the people that were: on FAF's first day of the tournament all of our games were on the same field, right next to frisbee central. However, the stretched-out satellite arrangement of the fields means that I didn't find out how some other teams had gone until after the final on the third day.

The party was excellent. A lot of people complained about being denied entry or being kicked out but common sense should generally prevail in this situation: have you ever been to a club, anywhere, for any party, that allows severely incapacitated drunks to get in and stay in? Just because it's a frisbee party doesn't mean that it's not a licenced venue. The venue was pretty accessible, played a good selection of music, the alcohol wasn't too expensive, the party theme was broad enough to be enjoyable and there was a lot of space to sit down and talk relatively quietly. I'm going to chalk it down as a big plus - I could get drunk, hit on women, talk to guys and crank that like Soul-ja boy all night and really what more does one need?

Final Standings:
1. Vintage
2. FAF
3. Kaboom 1
4. Spider Pig

What is there to say? The final was pretty uninteresting, and I felt bad for the crowd who were watching. FAF were pretty shagged, so were Vintage. Gak was rooted but still outperforming FAF's defensive attempts to lure him into making any massive mistakes. Kaboom were such an impressive team the whole weekend long, with Keah and Holmes clocking in outstanding performances in both games we played them in. So did Ash, and Maddog. Chumpy was solid and as much as I love Tom Watson, he needs to reel in some of his options which resulted in advantageous turnovers to the opposition. A slightly depleted Spider-Pig managed to play well up until the point where it mattered - their semi and play-off, as far as I have been able to gather, was an exercise in not living up to your potential as a team.

5. Smurf
6. Sugoi
7. Tribe of Miniature Horses
8. YOUUUU

I ended up watching a lot of Smurf's play (games against Vintage, I think against Flycatchers? Possibly New Zealand and then against YOUUU) and the addition of Pottsy to the male line-up of Alec, Brett Middleton and Joel Pillar clearly helped. Their girls were a key part of their offence, which I really liked. Erin Wallis is quite a nice person although I think she thinks I'm a dickhead. Sugoi! What a surprise. Show's what Owen's firing up can do. Tribe performed outstandingly for a team with nobody over 6", special shout out to David Knight who always plays very well but nobody seems to notice. YOUUU. The big challenge for them was always going to be what would happen when they lost a game, which they did and judging by the results couldn't get back from. Much more infighting, frayed nerves and injuries than I expected.

9. Pie Wagon
10. Newcastle WD
11. Black Sheep
12. Flycatchers

Pie Wagon and WD eked out a Newcastle Ninal, which was good of them. Strong performances from Pie Wagon's imports, as well as the Lavis brothers (both of them) on WD. Rhys Clenton is rough around the edges but should be a massive asset to Thunder '10, whereas the lack of any solid handlers on the Flycatchers line (I'm sure Sean Lace tried, but he is still a massive gay) definitely would have hurt them throughout the tourney as winds picked up and junk defenses got rolled out. Black Sheep played pretty one-dimensional offence, but if it ain't broke don't fix it and clearly they didn't fix it. Er, or something.

13. Hills
14. Kaboom 2
15. Scapegoats
16. Mind the Gap

I'm running out of things to say because I hardly saw any of these teams after day one but Hills pulled out a strong run for a social touring team, Kaboom 2 fit neatly where I expected and Mind the Gap were really hurting throughout the tournament (first, no Nield factor on day one, then no team on day 3). Calan Spielman seems to be the hottest thing to come out of Sydney Uni thus far in 08, and sCAPEgoats benefited from having him on the team.

17. RuBi
18. UQ
19. D-Rex
20. Hand of God

RuBi lost half of their go-to's on offence for the 3rd day, but still had some legs to beat UQ in a very windy, scrappy game. D-Rex went well for a team that partied as hard as they did. I know absolutely nothing about Hand of God, but well done to you sirs and madams.

21. Lounge Lizards OR LOG!
22. Lounge Lizards OR LOG!
23. Gong
24. Kaboom 3

There was only so much Nans and that other dude (American? Tall? You know who I'm talking about) could do for Gong. Not a bad team at all, but a fitting result given the rise in standard between 07-08. Kaboom 3, spirit winners, ensuring that Canberra gets a showing in nearly every bracket and well done to them, whereas I didn't even know Lounge Lizards were at this tournament. LOG! were missing Buttons, Mike Baker and Ash Martens, and this is where that gets you.

That's about it. More of these '08 in Review' to come.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Managing Your Downtime

People get injured in this sport. You play long enough, you play hard enough, you are bound to experience a major injury at some point.

Denial and anger tend to be two big stumbling points - get over these, and we get into the productive things that you can do when you're out of the game.

Become a coach: sounds simple, and that's because it is. Spend the time you would be playing ultimate teaching others how to play the game. I am not sure what the situation is in other states (though I would love to know, if the AFDA admin folk have any idea please give me a yell) but there is definitely a shortage of instructors and a high demand for coaches in high schools and universities in NSW.

Read a book: I recommend Ben Elton's Stark.

Analyse the game: paid for a tournament that you won't be able to play at due to injury? If you're anything like the average ultimate player, I'm going to bet that you have learnt most of your skills through playing and training. While you're out, why not go to Regionals or Nationals - pick a team or a player that have something you'd like to bring to your game and take down notes.

Volunteer at a tournament: everyone loves volunteers and tournaments couldn't take place without them. I am sure your local TD would have no objections to your helping out.

Focus: if you're anything like me then you probably let ultimate get in the way of other commitments, like family, non-frisbee friends, cleanliness of house and finances. Use your downtime to apply yourself to anything you've been missing out on.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Extreme Parenting

I read and saw a few things that compelled me to write them down. I have begun my rehab bike riding and I was just doing repetitive laps around the park. I saw a father (I assumed) with two kids probably about 8 and 10. The father was making them run sprints between some cones, I imagine for soccer or thugby.

It reminded me of another time I was in a park, it was Tunks Park in Cammeray, down near the water they have an exercise eqiupment park with bars for chinups, raised things to do situps on and so on. There was a crazy dad there with 3 kids probably 10,8 and 7 or so and he was sending them through a full on work out routine, all of his kids did more chinups than I could do at that time. The other thing was they were clearly not enjoying it at all. The dad was full on into it with the whole yelling motivation at his kids despite the pained looks and tears in their eyes.

The last little story is a friend of mine, as a child he was whipped into sports and is one of those extremely talented nuts that can pick up a sport and become an expert at it in no time at all. He was in year 6 when he peaked his career being 5th in his age group on the National Tennis scene. In year 7 the testerone of puberty kicked in and his rebellious nature came out, told his mum to piss off and gave up tennis despite his amazing talent.

Since then I saw him absolutely tear so many opponents to pieces, he was beating the zone reps in table tennis, players who felt they need $100+ bats to improve their play, he was beating them with an old one he'd found at home with the rubber on one side missing and the foam coming off on the other. He became a qaurter back playing grid iron, had a few runs playing rugby, beat down his state level opponents who were training 4 times a week tennis opponents at our Crawford shield. the next year bored of tennis came down and represented our waterpolo team being part of our second victory in waterpolo in 17 years against Melbourne, and in his last year bored of those sports played squash but lost his temper against their Victorian state reps and smashed up a racquet that belonged to the PE teacher. To top it all off he was always in kings playing 8 court handball at school...

Interestingly he was one of the least motivated sportsmen I'd ever played with he was remarkably talented but completely unmotivated. He had amazing potential but as soon as there was serious commitment to the sport (beyond turning up to competitions and winning) he was so put off the sport that he would drop it immedietly.

The other is a child success story.

In year 8 I started playing waterpolo for school, the last open team called themselves "The bogan patrol" and had bright disgusting pink speedos with their team name to go with it. They were some of the most talented players our school had seen for quite some time winning the Crawford Shield waterpolo for the first time from Melbourne in 15 years, getting to regionals in state knockout and coming second in the zone competition. We were a bunch of kids looking to get out of the summer heat. Tyler Martin started that year in year 7, and with some amazing leadership and skills from him and our extraordinary coaches brought us to once again reclaim the waterpolo win from Melbourne, win the zone comp and getting Kinkumbered by a bunch of bogans at regionals in the state knockout.

He was extremely talented a great team player, extremely patient with all of us, and although he was small in year 7 when other teams would triple mark him and laugh us while they tried to score on us using headers (extremely hard in a pool), he filled out as he got older. And eventually represented the Australia in its under 19 opens waterpolo team. He currently players nationals league as well.

Both these guys were childs sportsmen but there was a huge difference in their training and motivation. Both would surely owe a large amount of this to their parents. Both the success and their failures. With many frisbee parents now having kids, I wonder if any of them will force their kids into playing and training, or if this will ever happen. Or are people going to be nice and let their kids play whatever sports they want?

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Sugery Adventures: 1 month on

I was just sifting through my physio papers and realised I haven't been at 100% since the end of March this year when I rolled my ankle. I had to just strap it up and play on it at the juniors camp and through nationals was just a lot of tape.

So it's been a while since I've really been able to play sport properly.

Though 1 month on things are looking good. The first 2 weeks after the surgery were pretty rough, especially when I had to get back to uni.

Now though walking is no longer such a painful challenge, I can now dress myself without pain or difficulty, I can bend my knee back to about 100 degrees, do squats, ride at the no resistance level and my hamstring is now strong enough to lift my leg.

The funniest part of it was probably being on peak hour buses and having an old woman get up for me. It was probably the nicest thing someone did for me that day. It was also funny becuase last time I was on crutches the people on buses were assholes pushing and shoving when I clearly have an issue walking without crutches.

I'm now doing squats down about 3/4 of the way to 90 degrees, wallsits that are pretty far from 90 degrees, 1 legged sqauts barely down at all, as well as hamstring and calf stretching.

One of the hardest exercises that I got was that I had to lie on my stomach and lift my leg up bending at the knee using my hamstring like I was doing a quad stretch.

It surprised me and scared me the first time I was asked to do this I was too weak to be able to lift the whole way (more than about 15cm off the ground) i had to use my other leg to help it up.

its a lot stronger now though.

the other weird one was i have to do quad contractions that is I just sit down with my legs out straight and try to tighten my quad. It was a huge psychological barrier, the muscle was there, not very developed but still there and it took about a day of just sitting there trying to make it happen. It was a very strange sensation feeling so disconnected from my quad that I could not contract it at will.

I was again surprised at the number of people who have torn ACL's one of the SUUFA exchange kiddys Jimmy is about 4 months post op and was reliving many of the experiences through our conversations (and telling me what joys I had ahead) and recently spoke to Elsey who I found out also tore his a few years ago.

So the Physio bills are stacking up, I need to get into a gym and an exercise bike soon but being too lazy. Better take better care of myself...

In the mean time I have been occupying myself with Treasurer work from Suufa, went down to melb on a short holiday and watched the last 2 days of unigames saw Suufa's final defeat to Flinders, which was a shame since it was only the second game I'd seen them watch. It was a little painful being on the sidelines I think Simon Hyatt (my travel buddy and Suufa secretary) and I were the only Suufa supporters... and Brett's mum. What I saw was a defense that could not shut down Joel and Alex who liberally threw over and through the Suufa wall, a couple of very good overloading on the deep defender with Joel on the disc, splitting the deep while the wings were biting in too close down the sides offering no help on the huck. Apparantly the Suufa offense was nothign that it'd been all tournament but from what I saw they were struggling not being able to throw through or over the wall and a dropped energy by the end of the game. I was later reminded of this with the 40-0 victory of Manly over Melbourne storm that even professional athletes can get hit by the nerves and of course how amazingly important a teams morale can be.

I've also been playing a lot more poker since I can't do anything else, had a savage session of 5/10c blinds with friends from $5 buy in up to $22 in 4 hours of solid and down $17 in the last 30 minutes getting unlucky not becuase I got bad hands, but I got really good hands I couldnt let go of. I've also made a return to competitive gaming after 3 and a half years, playing COD4 with a 15-5 victory with c[_] over Ministry of Gaming.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Fresh Bwudd

What happens when Pottsy passes away in a freak gasoline fight incident? What do we do when Simon Farrow loses all will to organise after Naremburn Council removes the lights entirely from Naremburn park without telling him?

Where do we go for volunteers?

Get 'em early, get 'em young: universities are huge resources. Surely someone on the AFDA has a list of all the little yet nonvital things they want to do but haven't been able to due to lack of volunteer resources - 'update the AFDA front page', 'hold more beach tournaments in summer', 'buy milk'. Coming back from AUGs I was almost sickened by how much passion and drive there was for the sport from people all over Australia: these are future accountants, computer programmers, advertising agents, engineers and alcoholics. Why not put them to work?

The best part is, it's a two-way street: the AFDA wants things done for free, and starving uni students are looking for anything to beef up their resume or talk about in job interviews.

With some exceptions (Max and Ewan's appointment to magazine editors is the big one) I don't really see the Young Turks being utilised to their fullest extent. There are three positions vacant on the NSWFDA board, even with Frank and Nikki both holding two positions. Of course there's lots to be said against putting somebody with little experience in charge of something, but it's got to be better than the current system (which in my markedly limited worldview seems to consist of overloading a small group of people who are already time-poor and doing too much for no money).

My idea: state universities co-ordinators (or development officers? or even a new position that hasn't been invented yet - heck, everyone loves a business card) liaise with university team managers/coaches/captains periodically to see if there isn't any raw talent that can be put to use on the AFDA's backlist of random menial tasks. At first the AFDA can provide free league frees as an incentive, then as the talent is drawn further into the frisbee community, a good dose of Catholic guilt will probably do the trick. It's that simple and it takes less than an hour's worth of typing all up.

Too late I recognise this all sounds too familiar: I am poaching off this entry from Simmo.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Usage

Why do we use zone defence? We use zone defence if the other team is much more athletic, has weaker throwers or if it's very windy.

These arbitrary considerations for zone neglect some things:

Part of what a zone defence accomplishes is the tiring out 3-4 of your on-field players while giving at least 3 players on the other team (the handlers) a rest for the point.

Also there is the illusion that in wind, it is far harder to break the mark than it is to throw open side (up, down or crosswind) to a guarded cutter. This is flagrantly untrue.

Playing against Monash and Flinders on days 3-5 of uni games this year made me wish for points where I could just walk the disc in playing against a zone. Over the course of a five-day tournament zone defence becomes less and less viable.