SIF

Strange Cousins From The East

2010-02-18T13:41:00.002+11:00

Eastern Regionals is looking to be surprising this year, for a number of reasons.

Surprise #1: Good teams will miss out.

As has already been pointed out this is the year of no more chances. Teams have been missing out on going to Nationals since Regionals was first invented, this is nothing new. In 2010, for the first time in the East (the South have been complaining about it happening to them for years, and were rewarded for their bitching/participation at Regionals with an extra spot this year) decent teams will miss out.

With four spots not including possible wildcards, the Open division becomes extremely interesting. On paper and on history, Umlaut, Hills and Fakulti can forget about booking flights to Adelaide. I expect the top four spots to be some combination of the two even-split Colony (Sydney WUCC team) teams, Fyshwick, I-Beam and the Eastern Greys.

Hang on, you say to yourself, counting on your fingers - that's five teams!

Welcome to surprise number 1: good teams will miss out.

Surprise Number 2: Fakulti.

What happened? After coming an average of 8th place at Nationals two years running (08: 1st and 16th; 09: 7th and 9th) the current Fakulti team seems to be a mixture of fresh legs and Fakulti players who aren't going to Clubs or didn't make the Colony squad. Led by Rhys Hearne and Cemil Browne, calling this team Fakulti is equivalent to stealing one of Tom Rogacki's cleats and entering it as Chilly at Southern Regionals.

The Fakulti brand hasn't been this maligned since Fakulbee in 2008.

Surprise Number 3: Southside.

Four spots at Eastern Regionals for Womens doesn't seem too surprising. Wildcard have managed to split their hegemony between WUCC contenders and their non-jetsetting counterparts, who on the strength of their big names alone - all eastern Firetails and Mundi's - should both make it. Sand Dunes (Hills/Manly) have quite a good team name, but may not have the depth of throwers required to make it to Nationals. Sugar Magnolias apparently provided the stiffest competition for Wildcard Clubs at Share the Love this past weekend, which bodes very well for their campaign, and fACTory Girls chances rest (largely due to my lack of knowledge of the Canberran women) on finding Vickie Saye, and getting someone to throw the disc at her.

The surprise here is Southside. Yes, they came 3rd in 2008 and didn't really figure in the mix last year, but the persistent narrative going around Sydney is that they are a club in decline, with the lack of a strong player base in the city's South and the dominance of Wildcard's 'hey so we pretty much win Nationals every year, also we control NSW ultimate, you probably want to play with us' recruitment method contributing to their waning. Southside this year have opted to nut up rather than shut up, with returning players Stettner, Wentworth, Moore nee Jarrot, Ryan and Kinneally augmented by enthusiastic fresh blood and team training/bonding camps a la HoS. Here's hoping it works out for them.

Its not really that important but...

2009-11-03T23:36:00.002+11:00

IT WAS SO RIDICULOUSLY HOT TONIGHT PLAYING FOR FRISKEE.

First game of the season, savage for girls and guys, 39 degree day starting at 6:30 was not late enough.

30 seconds into the point your mouth is dry and throat hurts despite not evening doing 2 laps of the field.

10 minutes into the game a 'spirit time out drinks break' is called and Nick who was complaining about eating too much today runs behind the toilet block.

He comes back red faced and teary looking.

"Did you just have a Chunder?"

He doesnt need to say anything. He gives a pained nod and walks onto the line again.

It took a little while but Mac figured out Friskees kryptonite... any sort of zone. Gotta stop doing those shitty high backhands. they dont work as well as I think they will. Threw a Callahn, luckily it wasnt counted (thanks to NSL rules? that or Tigers excellent negotiation skills)

We lost that game to Mac unfortunately. My personal highlight was when I threw probably the 3rd or 4th throw that should have been turned but ended up being mac'd to catch/score (including a huck that Rory touched about 10m from me only to have it mac'd to my original target Nick in the endzone) and Yoann pointed to me (after another lucky assist) and looked me straight in the eye: "You are so lucky."

If I don't get drafted for div 1 I will be joining Evan and some friends on the UNSW div 3 team. Got to play with them tonight and was really happy at how much less pressure there is to perform. I still played my best, but was having a lot more fun than in some other games (well a different sort of fun).

I was disturbed today when my sister said it was 30 inside... and it felt cool in here compared to otuside.

I think that southerly is kicking in... shame my house is a god damn oven.

Happy Birthday, Wanda June!

2009-10-20T13:06:00.006+11:00

It's a widely recognised fact that the Australian ultimate community is bored with standard tournament formats. Hats? Bah. Surf and turf? Humbug. Fantasy pairs? Don't get me started.

What we need is a hat-ish tournament, where all the different months battle it off against one another.

I tried doing this whole list to a pre-2009 uni games standard - max 16 on the roster - but that got too hard and uneven, so now it's down to starting 7's.

January

MEN

Tom Brennan

Alex Britten-Jones

Lee Baker

Rueben Berg

WOMEN

Megan Gamble

Joy Lee

Cath Matthews

February

MEN

Alex Baume

Tim Hordern

Sam Smith

Brett "Sweet As" Middleton

WOMEN

Liz Edye

Greta Hunt

Heather Smith

March

MEN

Nick Dowle

Owen Shepherd

Peter Blakeley

WOMEN

Lisa McGinnigle

Erin Wallis

Blair Sheard

April

MEN

Andrew Moroney

Mike Baker

Angus Keenan

Chris Lavis

WOMEN

Rebecca Carman

Mel Gangemi

Isobel McAuley

May

MEN

Mike Neild

Kendall Thorn

Abra Garfield

Chris Freise

WOMEN

Ellie Sparke

Fee Macrae

Anna Kaineder

June

MEN

Calan Spielman

Matt Hill

Matthew Oswald

Joe Leung

WOMEN

Ash Martens

Tania King

Rachel Grindlay

July

MEN

Dan Rule

Tarrant Meehan

Chris 'Boo Boo' Stephens

Phil White

WOMEN

Loren Viswalingam

Sarah Hammer

Lyra Meehan

August

MEN

Rory Connell

Jonathan Potts

Lachlan Gregory

Jimmy Tod-Hill

WOMEN

Clare Hussey

Ju Birchall

Diana Worman

September

MEN

Seb Barr

Matt Faulkner

Ewan Wymer

Malcolm Green

WOMEN

Nikki Shires

Carol Seeto

Gaby Melo

October

MEN

Matt Dowle

Ant Dowle

Julian Sacre

Stephen 'Cleetus' Johnson

WOMEN

Cat Phillips

Nat Chinn

Yvonne Shepherd

November

MEN

Ken Shepherd

Warwick Shepherd

Tom Tulett

Jake Angelovich

WOMEN

Keah Molomby

Nicky Smith

Clare Gavin

December

MEN

Mark Evans

Mike Tarn

Chris Hill

Alistair Don

WOMEN

Molly Young

Tiffany Mann

Meagan Carraro

What stuck out to me is, despite some months having a far broader pool to choose from, essentially all these teams are competitive with one another. There are a few slightly weaker teams in February, October and December, as well as a few stand outs in January, March and May. I am also missing a few big names - most likely because we aren't friends on Facebook.

Thoughts?

Eiyuji

2009-10-04T11:33:00.003+11:00

While we wait patiently for Hobart it is time to look back on the tournament that was.

A Hard Year

The difference between AUG08 and AUG09 was pretty unreal. In Melbourne last year, the final was basically written in stone between FU and USYD as no other teams could reliably knock one of those two out. All of the semi-finals this year were tight games, as was the final itself.

And it didn't stop there - with the exception of Griffith (who still managed to take Melbourne to universe point, in one of the most exciting matches of the whole tournament!) there were no easy games for any teams. Macquarie, who finished 10th, traded points with eventual 4th-placers Flinders, took a Callahan to go up against Newcastle (5th) and made Ballarat (6th) work for every goal they scored. So the competition was much, much harder this time around, which is the perfect segue into this next bit:

Two Divisions

This year was the first year that ultimate embraced two divisions at AUG. There was a lot of furore about the change, and a lot of it was negative, but the resultant calibre of Division 1, as well as the amount of tight games offered to (most) Division 2 teams, proves that the system is capable of enhancing the integrity of the competition.

The two division structure does need work. Too much changes from year to year (contrast UQ's performance over the last two years) to have seeding or composition of Division 1 dependant wholly on last year's results. This year, things worked out, mostly, although it remains to be seen how much room to move AUS will be willing to give the ultimate community in coming years.

The Draw

The draw was nice. The TOC did a good job with the spastic AUS seeds they were handed, and everyone had an 11am start after the first night's party. My one gripe with the draw was that, in an effort to have less games overall, the repechage, or power pool play, had results from the first round of scores carried over from the first round of scores. Macquarie lost to UWA in their first game of the tournament, so in the repechage we didn't play UWA again, meaning we had to win against both Ballarat and Newcastle to stay in the running.

To be completely honest, I really wouldn't mind this - draws are always imperfect, and anyone who whines about them should have just won all their games to begin with - except for the fact that repechage comes from French, means 'second chance' and ironically did not give a second chance for any teams to have a rematch.

U23

Things are looking promising for this event. Piers Truter was in full notebook mode, scouring the the fields for talent, and found a lot. Andrew Jackson, known to the world as AJ from FU, showed that he can do things that aren't getting layout blocks on Chilly players by controlling the ANU offence all week. UTS, in their hordes innumerable, have a solid player base of tall, fast, athletic runners in Ashley Symons, Evan Sieff and Martin Forrest. Tom proved his fitness by playing every point of every game for Griffith and still being effective by the last day. John McNaughton had to amputate one arm halfway through the final and still managed to catch the last goal in universe point. I'd say things are looking good.

Some Tweaks

The wind was ridiculous all week, so it was good fun to see how teams adjusted.

UWA in particular impressed me by running all their women at the front of their pommy zone (on the mark, points of the wall) and having their men play both wings and deep. The off-points in the wall poached on the dump, leaving very difficult cross-field breaks or floaty swill to their aforementioned dudes the only options for a lot of the time.

Sydney University whipped out the old 'standard zone with assassination' against UQ, with mixed results. Largely, I saw them assassinate John McNaughton for being too effective at shredding their zone, and largely I saw him do what very few assassinated players do against a standard, which is remove his defender from the short deep space to create unguarded options for the wing/deeps. Leaving Loren on the mark to try and not to let aL, Piers, Will Churchill and Julian Sacre do whatever they wanted with the disc was another thing entirely.

Many teams are still stuck in the 'it's windy, let's play zone no matter what' mindset. Playing man defence when the opposition have to go upwind can be just as, if not more, effective, especially when your aim is purely to force a turn as close to your attacking endzone as possible. Griffith and UTS were the only teams to do this consistently that Macquarie played.

AUG 2010

Perth is the venue for next year, and I really don't think that it will be a successful year for university ultimate - the cost of flights coupled with the already ludicrous university packages will deter many, and the lure of U19's, WUCC and U23's will sap at the player base of those frisbee-obsessed enough to splurge on flights there anyway. Here's hoping, though. The Perth kids come out every year and deserve to have a quality tournament on their own grounds every once in a while.

Known Unknowns

2009-09-21T23:30:00.005+10:00

So, the big news from the USYD party boat is that Calan will not be playing AUG this year. While I will admit I am sketchy on the details, apparently he has severe glandular fever and is in absolutely no state to play (so, Monash players, don't spend all uni games saying he should have 'hardened up', because he's a nice guy and he doesn't deserve the smack talk - seriously Monash, why are you guys such jerks?).

Dave Rountree and Alex Semfel are carrying injuries, and as far as I can tell, none of USYD's most excellent reserve players, Aki Lafllin, Philip Yates and Vivek Doshi, are committed to attending AUG, so this basically isn't great for USYD. I hate to buy into this cult of personality that seems to have sprung up around Calan - I don't personally think he would have provided much of a challenge to Alec Deslandes or Joel Pillar if he had been at AUG in 2008, although needless to say he has vastly improved as a player since then - but I'm sure there will be jibes directed at Brett Latham about this issue, I just hope he doesn't take them to heart.

Anyway. All of this got me thinking about uncontrollable events, and how you can adjust to them as a team, or as a player.

Injury

As above. It's bad enough if you get a dedicated role-filler out for the tourney due to a serious injury - as the case may be for Monash this year, with Cleetus out (get well soon Cleetus) - but losing a playmaker is devastating. The sensible way to deal with this is to utilise the player (especially if they're experienced) in a non-playing coach role, or as a dedicated sideliner. Make no mistake - if a player is a good sideline talker, concise, direct and audible, they can get you more blocks than Lego.

The non-sensible thing (at least from an injury management perspective) is to jerry-rig the injured athlete to a state where they can nut out a few points, usually on offence, usually handling. When there's a lot at stake, this approach can work, as it did for Owen and HOS this year at Nationals.

Of course, if an injury isn't so severe that it takes a player out of action entirely, but does effect their game, the onus is on the player to do a lot of things they're not used to (ice, stretch) to make the injury less of an issue.

Weather

Anybody who played Nationals in 2008, or NSW Mixed Regionals in 2009, or Melbourne Hat 2008, or [insert tournament with atrocious weather conditions, be it wind or rain] will know that there are some games where the weather plays an unfairly important role in determining the victor.

As a team it can be hard to adjust - there is only so much throwing you can do on the sideline improve accuracy in wind or rain - especially if you lack solid handlers. The benefit to zone defences, and teams that have practiced them, is notable.

So what can you do? Win the toss, for one. Positional play becomes important in wind, as does forcing flick options once conditions become wet. Reeling out junk defences - or conversely, reining them in, if all you're doing is letting their three Worlds-level handlers work it calmly up the field - are all options.

There's also another bit about weather, which has nothing to do with wind or rain, and that's climate shock. Taswegians playing in Perth have a substantial fish-out-of-water factor, and it's up to them (or Brisbanites playing in Canberra in winter, etc) to find some measure of comfort, whether it's donning thermals or drinking water like it's going out of fashion.

The Opposition

This is probably the most important of the 'known unknowns'. A wise man (who I think was Ken Shepherd) once said:

See them? That's the opposition. This is us. And the thing is, none of us have any control over what they play, or how well they play it. The only thing we're in control of is ourselves, and there is nothing stopping all of us from playing the best we can here tonight.

The key point to take from this is, your team won't be able to exert any control over how well their opponents play. In the Victorian Mixed Regional Championships just past, Tribe by all accounts did a great job of capitalising over a cranky Cranky, a team who was not playing their best ultimate, by any stretch of the imagination.

There are no magic bullets to this one - or if there were, and I had them, I would be raking in the dough working for the AIS, not fumbling through a uni degree working at a pizza joint and running a sneaky ultimate blog on the side.

The best you can do is to do the best you can do, as players and as a team.

It's The Fucking Catalina Wine Mixer

2009-09-19T15:05:00.003+10:00

AUG 09. Let's do this.

The teams:

Sydney University

This is the team that other universities wish they had. USYD have a much stronger male line up this year - while they are missing Alex Baume's cutting prowess, they managed to pick Calan this time, which has given them a much-needed tall, fast, athletic receiver who can also throw and maybe defend Alec. Their girls line would be a tad weaker - having lost Tara Carraro and Heather Smith - were it not for quite handy pick ups in Sarah Crossie and Maya Mileck.

Will they live up to their potential and take home the gold? Who knows? They suffered last year from some tactical errors (no Calan, relying on pommy zone to generate turns when it really really wasn't) and somehow managed to turn most of the other universities against them. If they don't implode, they will medal.

Oh. And their coach is apparently ditching them for her wedding rehearsals from Thursday onwards. Tough break.

Newcastle

This is another pretty broad team - perhaps lacking the Nationals/Worlds experience of USYD, but most of their players I recognise from previous university campaigns if not tussles against I-Beam. They've lost a potent receiver in Dave Jarrott, and it will be interesting to see how their game changes. As far as their girls line goes, they've lost some dead weight with Daniel Clenton being unable to afford the trip, but will have the usual Sugar Mag connections between Liz Dodd, Ellie Sparke and Tegan Sneddon - although it doesn't look like they'll have much more than that.

I think bronze is a good final placing for these guys. Ellie is carrying injuries into the tournament, and they're just lacking in the star power the other semi-finalists are packing.

UTS

Ah, what could have been - UTS are probably the club with the most potential in university ultimate, but one year on, they're still falling short of the mark. Focusing a lot on the 'fun' aspects of ultimate (social leagues, team parties) has done wonders for recruitment and retention of their player base, but they are struggling to produce any stand-out names. Picking up Antonia Melo and Rachel Grindlay has helped fill the girl-handler void, but it may be a case of too little, too late.

UQ

Is John McNaughton's AFDA number really 1753? Wow - he really joined early.

As a list of names, this is certainly impressive. They didn't really need much more than Julian Sacre and John to make semi's, but they've also got Alistair Don and Piers Truter. As far as females go, Blair, Bree and Megan Barnes are all players who can expect to win most match-ups at a university level, although there seem to be a lot of very high AFDA numbers in their ranks - could mean weak links, could mean American imports.

There are going to be very few teams that can stop UQ's big names from doing whatever they want. Barring freak injuries, Harold Holt-style disappearances during lunchtime swims or Al and Piers running out of strapping tape, this team should make the final.

Flinders

The lack of Alec and Erin could have spelt their downfall (picture a confused Joel Pillar drawing team strategies on a whiteboard and giving up in frustration because 'huck to Alec' and 'one-two with Alec' aren't allowed) but they picked up Brett Middleton, who sources say is 'all right. A bit flat chested, but all right'. Flinders aren't really a one trick pony. Sean Lace, Scott Middleton and Ben Foley all add a bit of depth to the side, although Sarah Pillar may struggle to hold the girl's side together all on her lonesome. Smallish roster, too.

Semi-finalists for sure, the rest is up to them.

BUUF

So Dan Rule and Timill have made a pretty decent Opens team, realised only too late that the format of AUG is mixed, it should be interesting to see how that works out for them. To be fair, Amanda Eastwood is a great player, and she'll have Greta backing her up. Also, I'm assuming Sarah Talbot is Simon's sister, or wife, or possibly sister-wife. I wonder if she's good looking.

UWA

Having lost the Elder Eley and Glen "Chook" Fowles will hurt them, for sure. Who is going to throw swill at Kendall Thorn? They've picked up Peter Eley, who will surely get some blocks and promptly throw it away. Let's be honest: UWA are a wildcard, pure and simple. The only thing anyone knows for certain is they're bound to be good value, both on the field and off. Should be interesting to see the WA women's contingent (S-J Robinson, Danya Meakins) assert themselves after a strong Nationals campaign.

Griffith

Expect improvised junk defences, silly pivots and some surprises from this team. Seeded 12th from 12 in division one, I can see this team beating their seed on the strength of their one good handler and his ability to tailor an entire team around his skillset. Apparently they have a Tiina Booth-tutelaged American import, as well, and I expect they'll give the party a pretty good showing.

Monash

The possible loss of Stephen Johnson to ACL damage really does put a dampener on this team, who already had to deal with an injured Sebastian Barr. This team has a lot of proven talent, as their convincing title at Southerns shows. Hopefully this year they have less games decided by universe point - I think last year they had four or five. Pre-bad news, this team had a sure place in the final of AUG, and now I'm sure they'll be able to get there, but they'll all have to work that little bit harder. Looking forward to seeing them in action.

Macquarie

Such great heights! We are carrying a lot of injuries into this campaign. The men are mostly B-grade Fakulti players (myself, Rory, Nathan Wong, Yoann) and beginners, the women are Gamble, Monica Chang and then the usual suspects and beginners. A great team when playing well and gelling together, nonetheless I think our hopes at a medal are pretty slim. Massive squad though. Also, check out where we're staying!

The Gong Show

2009-08-31T16:13:00.003+10:00

This weekend was NSW Mixed Championships, in Wollongong.

The real winner of the tournament, just as it was last year at Nationals and Melbourne Hat, was the weather.

This was the first time I'd ever played with Abra, and hearing his particular brand of leadership and inspiration first-hand was pretty sweet - he's got a substantial background in sports psychology, and his constant mantra for the weekend was to forget about the uncontrollables (the wind) and focus on what we could change - namely, our own game.*

Obviously, though, in conditions like the ones we had - consistently strong wind, with bursts of stronger gusts from all directions - the ultimate degenerated and came down to which team could reliably throw upwind. Spider-Pig, with three of the ten people in NSW capable of throwing forward that afternoon - Pottsy, Kenny and Pete Gardner - triumphed over a pretty valiant effort by Pie Wagon.

It was interesting to see how different teams adapted, both offensively and defensively, to conditions. Positional play became important, so roller pulls and huck and zone got pulled out by nearly everyone. There were a good few teams still playing man defence, which worked fairly well because it takes away the 1-2 undefended passes zone defences traditionally give an offence.

Offensively, again, there was a lot of hucking to gain ground, a lot of messy ultimate. Spider-Pig had some great fast break connections from Pottsy to Marcus Hayward before the defense could set. In the final, Pie Wagon used a lot of break throws into defender-less space, and some very competent female handlers to have threatening targets downfield against a zone.

So that's that, really. I'll write more as I learn it.

*He had another mantra, but it was mainly about how Fakulti had ruined whatever potential Mark and I might once have shown.

Celebrations and Inward vs Outward Directed Control

2009-08-10T17:42:00.002+10:00

For my own excited news, Sydney Uni announced their AUG's teams and I have been lucky enough to be selected this year. I am definitely excited about this, though it scares me how soon it is already, only 6 weeks to train up. The trials were stressful, turned out finding out today the roster size is 18 didn't need to stress toooo much but it will be interesting to see what Sydney Uni chooses to do with this new change.

This semester I'm doing two fun/arts subjects Management - which is how to make people do things for you that they don't want to do, and International Business, which is about how to recognise differences in cultures and making changes in your own behaviour to make the most money possible.

In Ibus, they are teaching us various perspectives on ways to catergorise cultural differences. One example discussed today was inward directed control vs outward directed control.

This concept is based on the way people react to their environments. An inward directed control is more about making their environment change to solve their needs, while outward is about how to work/adapt well to the environment.

One particular area this shows up in how competition, particularly sporting is approached. And inward directed person would have little concern on who their opponent is, aiming purely to just overwhelm them with their own ability. A person or team that is inwardly directed would care quite a lot who their opposition is and aim to believe success is oriented around knowing your opponent and finding their weaknesses and exploiting them.

Obviously both of these things would be ideal to have, but I think often people will fall into a habit of one or the other. Sydney Uni in particular I feel in the past has been too much inwardly focused! Hopefully this year will be different.

I am so excited.

Need to get motivated?

2009-07-22T01:42:00.002+10:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myDYE49KPlQ

I watched this around 1:30am.

The first thing I did was go for a run.

This is one of the most powerful and hard hitting things I've seen in a while.

The Distant Future, The Year 2000

2009-07-19T17:43:00.002+10:00

Today, I managed to acquaint myself with a few of the things being touted as sort of the future of throwing in ultimate, or at least (I think) the future of fundamental training.

Compass throws are designed to let the player throw anything regardless of his balance or pivot. For this - you can do both forehand and backhand sets - imagine your pivot as a direction on a compass with north directly in front of you. Throw with your pivot foot at each cardinal and ordinal direction (so clockwise from in front of you: N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW). That's a compass set.

Ninja throws are a set of throws that focus on both (each is a separate set) low, wide and high releases, as well as touch throws (ie soft throws for someone to run onto) and quick zippy throws with as much torque as possible. Ninja throws are designed to give the player more points of release and be generally a pretty unstoppable dude. Today we were doing them in repetitions of ten, both forehand and backhand.

In Australia, we are getting this information from Victorian players who visited Seattle and went Jedi Padawan on Sockeye and Voodoo, the top two men's clubs in that region.

Is this the future? Maybe, maybe not, but I'm pretty sure it should be. As far as standardised throwing drills go, currently we're sitting on 100 throws and the breakmark drill. These two new sets, the Ninja and the Compass, are really good in that they, if standardised by club teams and the playing public, would eliminate bad throwing habits, chiefly getting lazy with release points or staying inside your comfort zone of balance.

Moving faster towards a goal

2009-06-26T20:54:00.003+10:00

I finally added myself to the SUUFA AUG's mailing list. An email listing fitness and timetable for the next couple of weeks has really spurred me to get my training back to frisbee focused. In poker over the course of a tournament you will be required to change gears from low aggression to high aggression and risk as time goes on, its time to change your image, mix up your play and get in the money.

For the past 9 months I have been preparing a solid base to build up on. I've been doing strength for running, cardio sessions and impact exercises on the aim of being simply able to run, jump and play frisbee without being in pain. I think I'm almost there, and its time to shift my focus from acheiving a recovery, to reaching a state of fitness to be proud of.

I think I've done a good job, and now its time to change gears.

Tomorrow I will run a short triathlon. 5.25km run, 22.5km ride and 500m swim. I'm going to time it and run it again in a month, I'm aiming to do it in around 80 minutes. In the next month I need to start focusing again on Frisbee specific fitness. This will involve a lot more sprints and high intensity interval training as well as cutting and throwing.

I need to build up my core strength more, and get my throwing back to game quality. Its been a while.

Its holidays and I'm going to have a lot of spare time, getting my fitness and frisbee ready for AUGs trials will be a huge focus of my time. Hell it might even be time again for a fitness diary.

So by the time July 27th rolls around I want to be able to have the fitness to play one game of frisbee savage, and feel good at the end of it. It seems small compared to what I used to do, but it just shows how far I have to go.

I also want to be able to spend 2 days in a row riding cross country around Stromlo and Majura. I am to ride from my place to manly dam, do 2 laps of the dam and get home, which is about 35kms with 20kms of cross country riding.

Hopefully I'll have reached these goals by the end of the holidays when AUG's tryouts roll around.

Falling in love on Mount Stromlo

2009-06-24T11:42:00.002+10:00

I spent the weekend down in Canberra. The new bike I bought a couple of weeks ago, I've finally been able to take off the road and down some serious trails and tracks.

Saturday was spent around Mt Stromlo, I have never had that much fun climbing up the side of a huge hill, and the downhill was amazing. The track is amazingly well designed and the whole place is immense fun. I even had a try at the 4x track, lost control, an old man laughed at me and I landed hard in my seat. The second day was spent dodging trees flying through Majura pines forest. I rode my first see saw, did my first jump across a gap, and did the steepest downhill (more of a drop than a hill) without hurting myself too badly, it was an amazing feeling.

The weekend unfortunately the amount of fun you could get was directly proportional to your fitness. We did about 30km's of cross country on the first day and I couldn't walk at the end of it, which was a shame since that only took us around 2.5 hrs. So there is something to work on before I get back out there. Next time I think we're going to head up with a trailer and 8 bikes and take turns shuttling eachother to the top and just taking the downhill. I look forwards to it, that feeling of flying is pretty damn good (and the times when you are actually flying).

Its funny, its things like Frisbee and now mountain biking that have been a reason for a lot of my travel around different parts of Australia that aren't sydney. The more I go out makes me realise that sydney doesn't have it all. Melbourne has been great fun for Frisbee, and now learning that there isn't a decent mountain biking trail unless you're wililng to drive at least 1.5 hours out of sydney to find it...

Fitness wise, its time to get back into doing some harder agility and stops and turns. I am happy to have gotten my 2.4km run time down to 11 minutes, but this is still 2 minutes slower than where i want to be, but a good improvement from the 14:30 it took me the first time. I had a fun session at the gym yesterday with allan and evan. Started with a good run, did legs (still sore from canberra), one shoulder exercise, watched Evan do a painful drop set and then did some core stuff.

Started with some pushups then tapping the guy opopsite you on the shoulder, then just crunches, side crunches, leg kicks, supermans, plank and then one where you keep your legs straight, lying on your back kick them up and someoen stands over you and pushes them down. Good core session, quick shower then hop in the pool.

After the swim evan commented 'you're a lot better at that then you are at running.' its a shame there isnt more swimming involved in frisbee. I remember being able to do a squad session of 400m warm up, 4x100m on 1:30 30 secs rest, 8x50m on 40s 20 secs rest, 12x25m usually doing stuff like zig zags stop and starts etc (with shorter rests) then another 200m cool down. This session was 300m warm up, 4x100m on 1:45, 2x50m on 45s and then 100m cool down. It was funny, I was the most unfit person on the team, but looking back on it now beign the least fit person on that team was still a huge achievement to be anywhere near those guys. Its a long way to go!

So I finally got added to the suufa aug emailing list, and it looks like its time to get back to frisbee. Its been a long time and I've almost gotten used to not being able to play frisbee its not somethign I've been longing for so badly, I even want to try some new sports like hockey or basketball. Someone said to me the other day after I told them this 'hey all you need is one game and you'll remember why you loved frisbee in the first place.'

A Guide To Recognising Your Saints

2009-06-13T13:33:00.005+10:00

This is a post so people stop asking me who writes this blog.

This is me (Tiger).

This is Alex Semfel (the other one).

This is someone called Alex, but he doesn't blog on this website.

This is what we look like while we blog.

Diversification

2009-06-13T12:42:00.002+10:00

Its been more than 14 months now since I've played Frisbee in a more than heavily incapacitated condition. Going from training 3-4 times a week for the Fakulti nationals quest, and at the time world juniors aspirations training has left a big gap to fill that has taken quite some time to work out.

Things were slow at first as I came to the realisation that its called cultimate for a reason. My whole social life, sport life and even the good part of my uni-life was centred around ultimate frisbee. I made the choice slowly to try and get away from it. So a couple of things changed, and a coupe of things didn't. Involvment never dropped to 0, I came to a few suufa training sessions, went to all the socials, still dude all my stuff as treasurer of suufa (I am the only person in the admin/exec body who has never played on a suufa team at any point in my 1.5 years of suufa and 1 year as exec).

Last night I had a dream about playing waterpolo with my friends against some crap team, but it'd been so long since I'd played it felt like I was just starting again struggling with basic ball handling skills (picking it up quickly off the water) but we won anyway. It reminded me that there is other things out there that aren't just frisbee.

I still went to unigames for a holiday in melbourne with a good friend Simon, and got to see the most painful final ever. Suufa who had pumped themselves up the whole tournament finally faced a challenge, combined with only a supporting crowd of me, simon and bretts mum left suufa feeling a little unloved.

I went to melbourne and had the most amazing week of friends and food in a new city and some very excellent road trip adventures. I also managed to score a melbourne had tshirt for volunteering.

The road to recovery started out very slow. Walking quickly would often pull my hamstring it was so weak. I remember sitting on the physio bench and him telling me to try and tighten my quad. I looked at it, and tried as hard as I could but there was just no connection between what my mind wanted and what my leg was doing. One of the first exercises (after trying to straighten my leg out and flex quad) to conquer was lying on my stomach and lift my heel upwards like I was doing a quad stretch. I couldnt get it off the ground and had to use my other leg the entire way for about 2 weeks until i could get it halfway unassisted.

A few weeks later I was on a bike, and hitting the gym.

I remember the first time I'd gotten my heart rate up because of exercise since being injured. The familiar feeling of my lungs burning, and legs screaming to stop came back. It was tough, and it hurt. Then came the flood of endorphins when your tired body wakes up, you stop and just smile and enjoy the feeling. I was buggered, I remember I got home, barely able to walk up the stairs and fell asleep on the ground after saying hello to my dog.

A few months later with my friends cheering me up, I went for my first run since before surgery. There is photos on facebook. I was meant to do 7-8 60% runthroughs for about 30-40m. I had to stop by the 5th one becuase Id pulled my hamstring. I still had a long way to go, but this was an important step.

Another trip to the physio, he congratulates me on my progress. Not only is my left leg the same size as my right now, both my legs have bulked up and my strength is a lot better. "For the next 2 months we need to focus on agilty, strength and rebuilding your confidence," I'm now im up to jumping, turning, side stepping and pivoting.

With the increased confidence of not getting injured, I asked a friend to come ride around Manly Dam mountain bike trail with me. It'd been about 2 years since I'd done it because my bike was stolen and the person I rode with had left sydney to move to ANU.

Evan comes with me for my first ride in a long long time. The ride is challenging, and scary. My feet slip off the pedals in several of the downhill bits as I scream bouncing up off the seat holding onto only the handle bars. I go over my front handle bars once, and off sideways once. Evan goes over the handle bars twice. I have this image of him coming down into the creek he pulls the front brakes too hard (terrain looks like this: http://nobmob.com/system/files/images/333-3344_img.preview.jpg), and doesn't lean far enough backwards. For a moment he realises he is fucked as his back wheel lifts, and he jumps over the handle bars. I am thinking to yell at him to keep running forwards as his bike bounces down behind him.

I get to the end of the trail and realise I miss this. I also decide to get a new bike. Deliberation and $700 later, I'm set up with a sweet hard tail, got some sweet disc brakes and ready to take on the world. Evan is there yelling at me, "Come on, 3 more, I can tell you are digging deep but you are almost there!" As I painfully push through the last 3 pushups after a drop set of dumbell rows.

My friend Allan ran a half marathon with Evan, and some triathlons this year. One day they call me out before exams 'Hey come do a power circuit of northhead, meet at Evan's at 4:30,'
'Sorry man I gotta study,'
'Shutup and get over here, if we can get there soon enough we will see the sunset,'
'Okay fine see you in 30 minutes.'

Evan lives in Clontarf on the side of a big hill. The ride down is really fast, the ride up is not. The feeling of burning comes back and lungs grasping at whatever oxygen it can reach. This time though something different is there. The sense of achievment as we sit a top Northhead looking out over the city and inferior southhead I recall the familar feeling of team bonding of going through the pain of fitness training together. It's all coming back.

The day after exams, I'm heading to Canberra (on the 19th of June) and meeting up with my mountain biking friend and hitting up the excellent trails around there, its something to look forward to. On a group trip to Lake Mac, we're bringing bikes and heading into Ourimbah State Forest, and the Awaba mountain biking trails.

A few days later I'm going up and over hills that usually I'd have to stop on. The sense of achievment and improvement makes me feel good.

Evan comes over for a throw, I ask him to give me 10 hucks to catch, and do two sets of death runs (back and forth between cones sprinting catching and throwing a disc at each end). At the end of it I feel sick in the stomach. I realise how far I still have to go.

Tiger asks me again "When are you coming back?"
Middle of July, I'm allowed to start playing again if I do my rehab properly.

I don't know how people like Nikki Shires manage to do this more than once. This ACL has been nothing but grief, and even when I do get back it will never be as good. The dick who nailed me at Nationals mangled up my cartlidge and I had to get it removed. I don't know if his inconsiderate and retarded move that hospitalised me should be something I deserve to be bitter about or not.

I watched terminator the other day and heard that iconic line:

"I'll be back."

Drugs in Ultimate and Improvement

2009-06-03T23:10:00.003+10:00

I was speaking to Evan (who has just entered a marathon) about GU, that high energy carb stuff you take during marathons and stuff so you don't pass out and die since you need something like 3000 calories for a run, but you can only store around 2000 before hitting the wall, so you need some sugary supplements.

Recently was also Youth Nats, I saw some photos which looked like fun. Tiger told me a story at Gala day the North Sydney teams were still using "North Sydney!" "TIT YEAH," as their cheer, which warmed my heart and reminded me of 2007.

It all reminded me of our excellent coach Mike Baldwin, who successfully created what was later identified as "a well oiled dump swing machine," thanks Mike Baldwin, you are probably one of the best coaches I've had.

The other thing he did happened on the last day of youth nats in 2007. For us, it was day 4, 2 days of the training camp and then 2 days of games. For kids who hadn't played beyond a 1 day tournament before, day 4 came as quite a challenge.

Mike Baldwin rocked up with some aid.

First was some of the GU stuff, I don't know if it really helped but its chocolatey goodness was well appreciated. The cool bit was when Mike rocked up with a large jar of 500 pills. He recalled his adventures playing frisbee for Masters (I think?) and that this was called the 'chemical stretch.' He handed out the little blue pills. They were anti-inflammatories like neurofen for his back problems earlier in his life.

My knee recovery is going nicely, I bought a new bike to take a ride around Manly Dam and Mt Stromlo (in Canberra with a friend) as soon as exams are over after my other bike had a fit after I got airbourne a couple of times going around the Dam. I'm worried that I have to be game ready in 3 months time, and able to be good enough to show my value in the Sydney Uni side for AUG's before then. Time to start training harder.

The main thing I've been focusing on is my 2.4km run. The first time I ran it (about 2 months ago) it took me 14:30 and tonight I ran it in 11:00. I want to get it down to around 9-10 minutes. Physio has also instructed me to get some sprints in, touch and turns, running figure 8s and lots of jumping. My knee still niggles at me...

AUGs training here I come.

OTT

2009-05-23T08:00:00.000+10:00

At Nationals, I saw about five goals (and a lot of excellent leading passes) thrown in a pretty unconventional way.

High release throws literally over the defender.

Usually a mainstay of zone offence, this sort of throw I saw pulled out more and more by the elite teams (Fyshwick, Chilly) against a man defence situation, relying generally on the downfield cutter's defender concentrating too hard on the person they are guarding and not the disc or the current thrower.

Spotting height mismatches (or defenders with no read on the disc) and subsequently throwing an overhead, or any other high aerial pass seems to have a stigma of being unprofessional or low percentage. In Vancouver, Lewi Broad (6"4?) marked by a 5"3 14 year old boy from the French juniors team, spent a whole game clogging the endzone yelling 'put it high!' and got in trouble for ruining our offensive structure. Was he in the wrong? All he was really doing was recognising a situation where a high throw into space would have ensured a goal.

Augmenting routine and repetition (the same boring offensive structures every club team in Australia learns by rote) with awareness of empty space on the field and a willingness to be unconventional offensively can lead to reward - not just beating a favourite, but becoming one.

For Future Reference

2009-05-21T08:00:00.002+10:00

Ultimate is truly unique because it is self-refereed, right up to the World Championships.

If you're anything like me (and many of the people that read this blog probably are me) you can probably hear yourself saying the above words to family members, co-workers, teachers, people who eat dessicated coconut silently only to later throw mandarins at you during junior training camps and new players.

The biggest problem I have with referees is, they are only human and are just as liable to make mistakes in their calls as anyone else. Whether having one person with all the power making one set of mistakes on-field is preferable to having fourteen different people all making different mistakes at once remains to be seen.

Regardless of how this issue pans out over time, one thing ultimate could absorb quite happily and easily would be the video referee, for selected calls where it is possible through the magic of technology to be more or less objective. In-bounds/out of bounds calls, disputes as to whether the disc is up or down, arguments as to whether they landed with their back foot first...

Who could possibly have a problem with that?

Getting positive (or NLP and YOU!)

2009-05-19T21:12:00.002+10:00

The other day at SUUFA training we practiced some zone, both offense and defense. The first error I made was putting all the experienced players as handlers. I forgot they should pop and then other people should handle. But this little thought did cross my mind as I was busting that that zone to bits and running an unstoppable stone wall of a cup.

I'm now slightly able bodied and can sort of jog around, so I was able to handle for a while. (Before I realised I should pop) I had the issue my handler buddies not pushing up on the wings when there was a lot of dead space, as the defense zone was overcommiting strong side then the disc was on one side of the field. I tried yelling and pointing frantically but realised how ineffectual this was, so I thought what can I do in this game situation without actaully stopping the whole game and explaining it step by step.

My thought process:
Problem: Left and right handlers do not push up wings in dead space.

How do I fix this? Well I learnt this by having someone yell at me to move up the sideline into open space. Is this an option right now? Not really.

Solution: Throw leading passes in front of them to the point they can barely reach it. They will have to run onto it. Eventually I hope that they will run forwards for it, before I have released it, knowing that it will come there.

Sure, this makes sense when I think about it, rather than making them try to move before I throw the disc, I will just throw it to where I want to throw it and make them get it. After a few swings the left handler still didn't get it, but Christine the right handler did. Unfortunately so did the defense and I got too greedy and it was d'd.

It made me think a little bit afterwards... and thinking. Can NLP(Neuro-linguistic programming read: communicating with the unconscious mind read: hypnosis) be applied to frisbee and other training situations?

People know about Pavlov's dog. A dog was fed food every time a bell rang. When the dog heard the bell it woudl salivate in anticipation for the food. Eventually they could just ring the bell and the dog would salivate without the food actaully being there. This was NLP in practice.

How could this be applied to humans? (Aside from subtle hypnotic suggestion)

I read a book called "Ace on the River," by Barry Greenstein, a famous poker degenerate (www.barrygreenstein) one that I particularly like. His book, unlike many other poker books was about leading a successful poker lifestyle, rather than just playing the game well. It made me realise about 3 chapters in I do not have the character needed to be a really successful poker player. One of the reasons this is for is that I do not have the ability to have the confidence to gamble. eg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_cze-w4sCA simply put, I would not be able to put $9000 on a bluff, and deal with someone calling with nothing except a draw to a high card. It takes a lot of guts / ridiculous amounts of gamble to do something like this.

Barry in the opening chapter introducing his book recalls one of his reasons for his confidence at the poker table was from playing cards with his mother as a child. I think it might have been rummy, but he always recalled winning when he played with his mother. One day when he was older, he was watching his mum play his brother and saw her hand. It was then that he noticed his mum could have made the winning play, but didn't, instead letting his brother win.

In this case, Barry's unconscious mind has no reason to feel fear while playing games, because it was trained to always win, this has helped him do what seems like crazy things.

So could this sort of NLP training be applied to frisbee training? Of course it could. In fact it already is used everywehre. We use it all the time, its why we congratulate beginners and players for doing something as simple as making a catch or a good throw. The reason although we don't think about, is to associate good feelings to good play. In this way we are communicating with a person's unconscious mind. When we make someone feel good about a throw, we are teaching the persons limbic brain (the one between reptillian which is pure instinct and the neo cortex which made us smarter than all the other animals) that the physical action of throwing the disc in that manner or catching in a certain way is the correct way to do it, even when the person doesn't consciously understand what they are doing. That is why we don't think when we catch and throw most of the time.

So when you're team mates do something good, congratulate them. When you see someone do a perfect throw, make them feel good for doing it. Use this encouragement until success and performance are an expectation every person in the team has in themselves. Harness and create that emotional attachment to success in your team mates, it will help them be driven to improve and succeed.

Clubbed to Death

2009-05-15T08:00:00.000+10:00

Prague is vaguely on the horizon of quite a few groups of players.

Among the rumours I have heard concerning how many bids in which divisions Australia will be allocated and which teams are interested, a thought occurred to me.

We haven't yet reached critical mass in the player limit of Australian ultimate. There are no defined 'mixed' players and there are no defined 'opens' players.

The playmakers who dominate in Opens or Womens ultimate in the first half of the year, go on to dominate in the Mixed side of things six months later. This is all well and good (well, actually, it isn't, but that's another blog post) but it does leave some clubs in a bit of a pickle when it comes to competing in the World Ultimate Club Championships in the Czech Republic next year.

Where will Chilly be, if Gack plays for Vintage? (or vice versa)

What will happen to Kaboom if Max and Jonno play for Fyshwick?

What will happen to HoS if, say, Rueben and Owen play for the spookily mysterious second Victorian mixed team wishing to compete at Clubs?

Just something to think about.

So, What Now?

2009-05-13T21:06:00.000+10:00

Hooray! As everyone knows, or should know, I hate Opens because it makes me feel small and insignificant, Womens because I'm still somehow not allowed to play it, but my statistically average height makes me feel bigger when there are three women on the field so Mixed is my niche.

What is everyone doing for the Mixed season?

Firstly, the venue: Hobart. As a player I would love to avoid the 'it's too far, it costs too much' excuse that having Nationals in Perth gave us. Frankly, if you didn't go to Nationals in Perth, you are probably the only people who can actually afford going to Tasmania in October, and you have no excuse. Flights (return, admittedly from Sydney) are sub-$200 if you book smartly.

So now. Let's take a look-see at who is going.

Vintage: As defending champions, they have an obligation to attend. Victoria is close to Tasmania, and they want to go to Prague. I'd say they'd be coming back in 09.

FAF: Nobody tells me nothing.

Kaboom: Are these guys interested in Prague? With three full teams last year, I'd say there are bound to be at least two teams from the ACT this year.

Spider-Pig: If the casual league rumours about Tim Gee forming a team are true, I would say Spider-Pig are back. Whether or not they use this moniker is up to them.

Smurf: Who knows? Not I - if they are back, they've lost Pottsy (probably a boon) but maybe also Erin Wallis (would she be playing for Canberra?). How is Joel's shoulder?

Great! Sugoi!: Last year, the Northern region played host, and had their quite considerable (ie, proven ability to make the finals) talent diluted across about five teams. It will be interesting to see what sort of combinations arise.

YOOOUUU!: Definitely the people having the most fun all through last year's tournament, I hope they reform. They may (or may not) have trouble getting the same amount of interstate support, if JmcN is tied up playing for someone else and JD is playing for WA. (see below)

Western Australia?: Sublime surprised everyone with a devastating, speedy game at Nationals, and Kaos, Perth's second women's club, finished the tournament unexpectedly high. WA didn't represent at mixed nats last year, but with the kind of talent they have floating around now, they'd be silly if they didn't show up.

Friskee: Who?

Save the Environment

2009-05-09T18:23:00.000+10:00

Courtesy of Nathan Stacey

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2006/oct/29/features.environment

Make sure you read through to the end.

Party On, Wayne!

2009-04-28T22:58:00.005+10:00

So the Nationals party.

Wasn't great. Or was it? Depends who you ask, really.

Basically, there was a great big main chamber housing the dance floor, toilets and bar. The only lights were the strobes from the DJ set, and the only sound you could hear was the extremely loud music. This made it pretty much impossible to do anything other than get really drunk and dance. It was essentially a rave in a prison that got shut down early.

So, naturally, every Sublime player I talked to said the party was great fun.

Others outside the functioning alcoholics and JD (who I'm guessing, based on Sublime A's 17-3 loss to Firestorm the morning after, was by that point non-fuctioning) have different priorities in a party.

And for most tournaments - uni games/mixed season tournies, youth nationals, open tournaments - it's pretty easy to cater for the crowd that you know will attend. Nationals is a bit different. With the vast amount of different players coming in - Masters players who all have kids, injured players (or straight white males) who can't dance, juniors who can't drink - there really has to be something for everyone.

Ultimate players are generally pretty easy to satisfy, though, and catering for everyone really can mean just having dinner, a dance floor, and ample seating. And lights. And heating if it's cold out. And cheap beer. But other alcoholic options too, some of us don't like beer.

Maybe we aren't so easy to satisfy after all.

Chicks Mate

2009-04-18T12:07:00.006+10:00

I left out the Women's division of my Nationals preview because I don't really know any of them well enough to make jokes.

Sporting Team Box Athletico United

Are looking very good this year, coming off ridiculous (15-2, 15-3) victories over a split Wildcard team (and everyone else) at Into The Wild earlier in the year. However, this is also a team that lost to Honey at Southern Regionals (edit: I stand corrected, see comments section for further details). If they play to their capacity, they will win Nationals this year. Either way, Hussey and Joy are still the cutest couple in Australian ultimate, and I wonder what the Hillsong fanatics from the Hills club make of their immoral, sinful union.

Wildcard

Wildcard are pretty boring to write about. Of course they'll make the finals, of course they are an odds-on favourite to win, of course Rachel or Tom will read this and treat me with (yet more) hostility. They should rename themselves 'The Eastern Australian Firetails' and just be done with it, really.

Sugar Magnolias

Now that Pottsy isn't coaching them, this team should perform admirably. They will definitely improve on last year's 9th placing - and not just because there are only 11 teams. They have a good mix of superstars in Lisi Jarrott, Katie Bradstock and some fighting-fit Kings, not to mention a solid backline of uni and junior standouts. By my reckoning, if they don't party too hard and aren't too buggered having the second smallest roster at 14, they should place around 3rd.

Honey

This is the Honey team we (eventually) had to have; one that is capable of breaking into the top of the table. The usual Honey Worlds folk will duke it out with some imported skill (Gretchen Sites) and gangly uni talent (Bec Wallbridge). This has been a big season for Honey, with a lot of their members playing Kaimana, as well as multiple lead-in tournaments. Let's hope it works out well for them.

Factory Girls

Vickie Saye is one of the most impressively watchable players in Australian ultimate. Erin Wallis, too, has either really stepped it up to become a quite dominant handler this year or possibly she already was one. It's at this point I cease really having knowledge about teams besides one or two big names... Good luck to the Factory Girls next week!

BUSH

Combining Southside and Tasmania, this team is solid. The combination of Carlie Ryan and Ash Martens is enough to put this team inside the top eight: their subsequent depth could see them rise further.

One Week

2009-04-15T23:18:00.002+10:00

So, Nationals. Here is what I think about every team I know about.

Heads of State

Pros:

Size of roster. There's no denying that sheer legs can make a massive difference come crunch time.
Sweet pick-ups, including Tim 'Raging Bull' Booth and Michael 'Stout for Callahan' Stout.
Rueben will probably be the only person at Nationals who knows the rules.

Cons:

HoS implosion factor. You all know how this goes - the Chaddy Paddy crew start believing their own hype, play like ass (down 4-1 against Fakulbee? Really?) and wonder why they aren't playing a final.
Hotheaded, emotional team. There is only so much calming influence Owen and Rueben can provide.

Chilly

Pros:

Gack. He's back.
Rest of the roster are probably capable of throwing to him.

Cons:

While they do have the depth expected of a top-tier team, they are obviously reliant on Tom. If he is shut down, or injures himself, or is still a little on the unfit/ineffective side, what then?

Fyshwick

Pros:

Dream roster - some of the best names in Australian ultimate at the top, and tail end that is, relative to some other teams playing Nationals this year, far superior.

Cons:

That's exactly what everyone thought about Barefoot last year, and they came 12th.

I-Beam

Pros:

The two Lavis's have the same haircut now, it's impossible to tell them apart when you're calling the line. Not sure how this will work in their favour.
Besides their usual big names, their peloton of not-yet-big-names (Rhys Clenton, Shaun Hardy, Chris Hill) are really pulling their weight this season.
Picked up Gav. Well, that's handy.

Cons:

Tats is playing, but from what I have seen he is playing in a pretty diminished capacity. It will be interesting to see how the team adjusts to this.

Karma

Pros:

Large (19) roster.
Have the two players most likely to elicit 'where did THEY come from?' moments from the opposition - Alec Deslandes and Alex Britten-Jones.
Lots of creative (and I suspect false) middle names on their AFDA rego.

Cons:

Robbie Andrew.
Lack of faith - none of the three Karma players I spoke to had any hopes of making the semi's.
By the standards of the teams they are competing against, their teams lower end will struggle against tough opponents.

Sublime Antisocial

Pros:

Home ground advantage.
JD.
Assembled the hugely-underrated cream of the West's crop.

Cons:

That 'crop' has 11 players. That's gonna hurt.
If you're looking for a Messianic pick up to save the day and win the final for you, Cupcake ain't it.

Firestorm

Pros:

Some say John McNaughton has the best throws in Australian ultimate.
John McNaughton says Buzz has the best throws in Australian ultimate.
Solid receivers (Julian Sacre, Dan Young, some Neild guy) to catch what are arguably the best throws in Australian ultimate.

Cons:

Could crack under the pressure. While solid players, there is a lack of big game experience in a lot of the roster.

Fakulti Y

Pros:

Kenny.
Sweet Danish pick ups.

Cons:

Injuries and sickness are effecting roughly half the team, only a week out. Let's hope this clears up.

Fakulti X

Pros:

The two Petes - Gardner, and Blakeley.
Some of the most promising young blood in Australia in Max, Calan and Phil White.

Cons:

Injuries currently taking out a lot of their top tier players.

That's about it from me. See you in Perth.

Static

2009-04-02T18:30:00.003+11:00

Taking stats is becoming an increasingly important part of the game of ultimate.

Statistics (generally - goals, assists, turnovers, blocks) are used for selection, as well as areas to improve on once teams have been selected - to a defender 'we want to see more blocks', a handler 'less throwaways'.

In Vancouver last year, the scorekeepers took stats, so by the time the tournament reached the finals stage, it was pretty obvious to any teams who had an internet connection who the main throwers or receivers were (as was the case with Japan or Terra) in the teams they were going to play against.

Stats by themselves aren't the be and end all. I'm sure everyone knows that one player who might not throw the goal, catch the goal or get the block, but still contributes incredibly to the team. Is this more to do with the limitations of the quantifiable, or rather insufficient data?

Who knows.

Here, though, are some stats I would like to see taken more in Ultimate. I've probably plagiarised some of them.

Type of score: forehand? backhand? overhead - hammer or scoober?
Number of breakmark throws/number of times mark is broken.
Throws upfield vs reset (dump) throws.
Average time disc held per possession (we could find out who all the disc hogs are).
Total time played per game.
Number of dump engagements (or lack of dump engagement before a preset time, the standard for most teams seems to be 4 or 5).
Throws upwind/throws downwind.
Average stall count achieved on defence.
Distance gained (cuts).

Physical and Mental Training

2009-03-28T12:39:00.002+11:00

In Singapore every male citizen unless they are willing to pay a $75,000(USD) exemption has to take part in a 2 year compulsory Military service. Every boy in the country can strip an m16 in 20 seconds.

Sitting on the Maze Green at uni this week with a Singaporean friend was definetly one of those conversations I will not forget. The way he talked about his time in national service and the things he told me about it were very interesting, and made me think about training in a different way.

Before you get posted to different units (eg if you will be a pilot, or be part of the creative and performing arts unit) every person goes through a 3 month basic training camp. Most of it is just fitness. It was just the whole wake up at 5am, go on some ridiculously long run, do a lot of push ups, chin ups and other body weight exercises eat and then move to the 'mental' training part of the day which he basically said was a brainwashing session about how good the government was.

However the physical training had a double use not just for making them into fit machines, but as well a large aspect of it was the mental training side of it. He told me a few stories about it. The first one he recounted is quite often you were given impossible tasks like they were sleeping at the top of a 4 storey building and had to get to the top and change from battle order suit (battle outfit incl webbing, ammunution, rations etc) and get into their dress clothes in a minute, if they don't they have a push up penalty. Obviously this is an impossible task but every time the crowd would be waiting at the bottom in the half pushup position and take a 20 pushup penalty once they were done. It wasn't uncommon to have days of 1000 pushups. He said there were given a lot of pointless and impossible tasks like this one that they were penalised for if they could not be done.

They went on ridiculously long marches in their I think it was called full battle order which is basically everything they would need to go to war for a week which ends up being about 35 kilos of gear. This would be up to 30 kilometre marches on some occasions.

Every week on Friday there was a fitness test which included pushups, situps, chinups and then a timed 2.4km run. If by the end of boot camp you didn't pass this test it meant coming back on saturdays and sundays until you were fit enough to leave bootcamp and then get posted elsewhere.

His last 'fitness' story was a week called 'Hell Week' which I think was reserved for the elite commando units. It was a week of hell. They were given 30 minutes of sleep a night and went on a 5 day journey combining all the 40 km marches with 35kilos of gear, fitness testing everyday, pushups in ridiculous numbers and the rest of all the fitness.

It was at this point I asked him "how?"
"When you get to the second or third day you know that if you just keep going that time will fly. Eventually you will just fall into andunconscious state that doesn't know how to stop."

"What if you can't do it?"

"The whole point of this that there is no 'can't.' You cannot say no. You are asked to stupid, repetitive pointless things but you cannot question what you are asked to do. The whole point of this is to prepare you to just accept and do, there is no choice in what you asked to do, you just have to do it."

He told me part of the elite commando training was torture training. One aspect was drowing. They would have to perform the fitness test and at the end of it while they were gagging for air officers would grab their heads and dunk them underwater for 2 minutes. At the one minute thiry mark they would let the person up coughing and gagging for air and then shove them back down for the last 30 seconds. Unsurprisingly people did die during this procedure and there was calls to the government to stop this brutal training. The government responded that this was not for the regular solider, but the elite of the best. The sorts of guys that were expected to bring down a battallion in a group of 3.

Luckily my friend was transferred out of this unit into creative and performing arts and is exempt from the yearly fitness tests (that everyone else has to do, even out of the army) becuase of a slipped disc in his back, he laughs though pinching the fat on his stomach and fondly remembering his 8-pack and once solid body.

So what was the point of all this physical training? Those impossible tasks that no person could complete, were just there to teach them how to obey as part of one unit, and learn to master their body.

He said a lot of it was to prove to you as an individual what your body was capable of. In the first week of bootcamp you couldn't imagine yourself doing what was asked. By the end your body was resiliant and capable of things beyond the imagination.

The Kids Aren't Pop Song Reference

2009-03-11T21:00:00.002+11:00

So for those of you not in the loop, the structure of Youth Nationals has changed this year.

Rather than being held in Sydney, as it has every year since 2005, it has split up into two regional championships: East, which is basically the Open/Women's Eastern and Northern regions, and South, which is everywhere else.

This is a change for the better. Given the recent explosion in youth ultimate, continuing to hold Nationals in Sydney would have turned the event, which is really about development and recruitment, into a stifling exercise. It's hard enough to justify the expense and hassle for a junior to get to Sydney from Melbourne, let alone kids travelling from Perth, Darwin and Adelaide.

It's also a step towards my junior development-related Final Solution - regional youth tournaments acting as the basis for selecting merit teams from each state to compete at a roving Youth Nationals event every year.

If you're a player or coach I'd encourage you to get involved. Volunteer to help out at regionals, coach a youth team, or just teach your younger siblings how to forehand. Every new face to the sport could be the next John McNaughton or Ju Birchall.

BC Invite

2009-03-01T22:04:00.003+11:00

So the BC invite is done and dusted, kudos to the Canberrans for organising such a high standard lead-in tournament featuring teams from all the regions of Australia. Having all those teams in one place that wasn't Nationals was really a massive step in the right direction for elite ultimate in Australia. I mean the party sucked but that's not really a big deal.

However:

Chilly had no Gack, Firestorm was more of a B team featuring John and Chris, Vicky Taylor's wedding took away half of the players from the Southern region and Sublime were actually Southside, so it's hard to make predictions for the Nationals season.

Still, Fakulti had a good tourney. Fakulti Y (Fakulti Dowle/Shepherd/Yorston) won all their games but lost a quarter final knockout against Fakulti X (Fakulti Blakeley/Liddicoat/Gardner). This was X's only win, and was shockingly reminiscent of our scrimmages at training where that always seems to happen.

Results were something like:

Sublime

I-Beam

(I don't think they played a 3/4 placing game)

=Fyshwick

=Fakulti X

Fakulti Y

Chilly

HoS

Firestorm

It's looking pretty even. Chilly and Firestorm's rosters at Perth are going to be much stronger than the showings at the BC Invite. Fyshwick really only have to tighten their screws, and HoS were missing a few and didn't seem to be playing at 100%. I-Beam are looking good if their legs can hold out (the final was a blowout, work on that fitness Newcastle) and Sublime could honestly go anywhere.

Fakulti are still going to win, though. Equal first.

A new beginning for the old

2009-02-28T10:53:00.003+11:00

Sydney Uni's oweek has just finished and the first week of uni is about to start. Suufa had a club meeting last weekend just going over plans for the year. More people, more tournaments, and more teams (with more spirit) were the main things on the agenda, as well as the super 3 year plan. Its really good to be working with a bunch of people so dedicated to improving the club and the game, a lot of planning and work went into o-week preparation and recruiting was (in my opinion) the best by far out of any of the sport clubs, mostly becuase suufa was willing to do the things the union said we couldnt, like walk outside of our stall and hand out pamphlets.

There was few new recruits but there was a few things I noticed and had Brett point out to me as we spoke about it during out learn to play session (with free pizza and drinks on the thursday afternoon).

The first thing I noticed at the learn to play was the amoutn of experience showing, there has been some successful high schoo development coming through. there was 5-6 peopl from my old school north sydney boys, i ran into a couple of girls who when asked if they knew what ultimate was their reply was "We already had too much at highschool." They were from north sydney girls. Brilliant.

There was a lot of people who could throw reasonably well and I asked a few ofthem and the common one was 'oh we used to throw a frisbee around at school but it was lighter than this one,' and a lot more people know what this sport is. Even my sister who had some americans come to her school in year 8 can throw a forehand now becuase of that, there is going to be a lot of talent coming through in the next fews.

Most of the people who have joined were not completely new to frisbee, with some experience and knowledge of the game before.

oh yeah.

At the learn to play we had a few fun games, brett calls 'hey all in for the spirit circles!'

"A spirit circle is something we have at the end of every game ... "

At the end of one, i over hear someone in an american accent: "I've been playing ultimate for 4 years and I've never been in one of those." as he walked away laughing and smiling.

One Size Fits One

2009-02-12T23:21:00.003+11:00

A major factor in the development of your skillset depends on your base athleticism - specifically, height. I think a lot of people overlook this. A lot of training for ultimate could be more efficient if players are willing to think about their physical limitations, and how it will effect their game.

Players of different height should approach areas of ultimate differently, especially at a more elite level where nobody is aware of where their opponent's strengths lie.

Consider breaking the mark, as both a tall person and a short person. As a taller player, you are going to have more reach and a wider pivot, making both the forehand I/O break and the step-around-the-mark-break-backhand that much easier.

Taller players have longer limbs, and can use their wide pivots and extensions to break the mark easier. When practicing throwing they should focus on this. Conversely, shorter players who do not have the luxury of simply stepping around their marker should instead focus on speedy pivots and greater balance to get their break throws off.

When it comes to cutting, the difference is a bit more psychological: as a BFG, the defense is going to view you as a bigger threat long. Play on this to get easier in cuts. One advantage of being fun-sized as a cutter is that you are hard to see in peripheral vision. This comes as a great advantage, particularly when trying to get open as a dump or a primary wing, where the guarder's attention is most usually divided between you and the disc.

I see a lot of shorter players trying to adopt skillsets that suit the taller folk or vice versa, where really it's more worthwhile to develop a style of playing that will work for your body type.

Hiding those deep down urges...

2009-02-10T18:47:00.002+11:00

Perfect. Dealt aces on the button.
UTG limps, MP raises.
Check again for aces. Yes, still there, always three bet aces.
SB calls, you sense danger. UTG calls... MP calls, you sit nervously in your chair for a moment, this hand is not so dreamy after all.
Flop is ten, jack, queen suited.
You cringe as SB raises, UTG all in, MP calls.
UTG just pulled a near perfect squeeze on you, and besides that probably has the goods.
Top pair top isn't looking so good right now. Don't go broke with aces.
Hide the disappointment, its an easy fold. (utg villian was 22/18 for anyone that it means anythign to)

Later that day, you end up at a frisbee field, stall count is on 2, against moderate winds, shortest, slowest, least athletic person has managed to cut stupidly deep of his man, who happens to be the fastest, tallest, most athletic person on their team. A gust of winds pick up as you hear the word '3' and you cock your wrist back and the wind tugs at the disc causing it to flutter in your hand. You stop for a moment as you realise this probably isn't the best spot to make a move. '4!' This is an easy dump.

Being the complete degen you are, you're back at a poker game, its 4 handed, meaning you can open raise about 40% of hands pretty safely. The dealer min raises to 2 bb, sb folds and you are sitting on king queen off suit. Dealer has been playing junk all night, making nonsensical money losing plays. This is an easy spot to raise or call. But as you look at your cards you feel a little a shudder down your spine and for some reason you throw your cards away without thinking. You are startled by the way you had no thought in this decision. You look up and see the other person wince at your play and angrily flips over kings. Completely dominated you were 9:1 to lose and would have been in huge trouble if a king had hit. Good fold.

The next morning is day 2 of the tournament, you broke even last night and are in a happy mood looking forwards to getting onto the field. A short warm up and you're in, line is called you're handling. Max is primary cutter, he cuts in towards you, makes eyecontact and gives you that wide eyed smile screaming to you "I know what you're thinking right now, whatever you are thinkign just do it!" You smile back as he busts deep. You pull the disc back ready to go and suddenly you get a little shudder down your spine, you see Max busting deep but something isn't right. You decide to throw the disc, but not that long huck everyone else is expecting. Max plants his foot down and cuts hard back in, he doesnt even get 2 steps before the disc lands confidently in his hands.

Frisbee is still a very young sport, and the nice thing about it is really anyone can get to a high level of ultimate as long as they are able bodied, willing and commited to training hard and improving their game. Its good in that some sports your physicality will restrict your level of competition, Lee Baker from the mixed team and Chilly from Melbourne who billeted me one juniors camp told me how he used to play State Volleyball as a spiker but was too short to advance any further. He is by no means a short person, but still too short for volley ball.

Frisbee is a long way off getting to the stage where your coach will be trying to add a 0.3 degree tilt to your wrist when you throw, and I always think its a fun experience to compare and contrast ultimate to other sports to see what can be gained.

I am reading a book called Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blink-Power-Thinking-Without/dp/0141014598/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1234256083&sr=8-1) and is just about those 2 second snap judgements that people make for reaosns beyond their control, some are bad, some are good, but the whole point is at the moment we have little control over our response.

In sport we train to turn the game to a point to where the optimal decision is the one that we always make, and we train our bodies how to do this, and we do drills to create situations that when we see them in a game we are to respond in a certain way. The whole point is to get to a stage where our unconscious can take over the thousands of small decisions the body can throw perfectly without us needing to put any thought into it.

Gladwell recalls a story of people trying to learn how to forehand properly from some perfect tennis star. (apparantly) people are too often taught to roll their wrists over the ball when they hit forehands as some tennis pro believed that was how he gained his killer forehand. Reality was that he was turning a total of a third of a degree when contacting the ball, and people tryign to turn their wrists as they hit overtook some ridiculous percentage of tennis injuries of people trying to imitate this. Funnily, the tennis player didn't really know how he was making these great shots, his unconscious mind had taken over and he had no clue consciously how he was doing it.

I remember being told by someone at some time that it is harder to unlearn something than it is to teach yourself something new.

Equally are those times when we see someone cutting deep, they are busting their guts and you know they deserve the throw, but you also know you relaly cant take that risk then before you realise it the disc is already up in the air and turned, and you are scored on for double unhappiness.

It can be really hard sometimes to fight these urges we have, and so often they can be correct...

Time to find that perfect balance!

Torture

2009-01-28T21:20:00.002+11:00

Torture gets a bad rap these days, with the UN generally being wussy girlymen about the issue, there's so much talk about it but very little scientific analysis of the benefits it can bring to your ultimate game.

Recently I've been working long days (12+ hours) and then hitting up club training. For this sort of day, I get up at 5.30am and stay up all day. Last week as I was meandering around the field finding it tough to mark even the most inexperienced of players through the haze in my brain, I realised this feeling was familiar- it's the feeling most players usually experience on day 3 or 4 of Nationals, when the mind is exhausted and mental focus becomes that much more important, and tougher to achieve.

Mental endurance, or focus, is a key skill in ultimate, but most people are vague about how to practice it. While I wouldn't advocate sleep deprivation due to its ill health effects, if you are finding your weekly league games or beach pick up a little too easy, try running sprints beforehand and then staying switched on.

Do you ever get that feeling?

2009-01-13T22:57:00.002+11:00

You stand there poised on the line waiting, your body is warm, ready and willing.

You have been preparing for this moment for the past 4 months, and it has been on your mind every day since.

You think back to the past week. The strained strength sessions, the drawn out burning feeling in your lungs as you push through the last minutes of that cardio session legs screaming at you to stop. Then the cool pool sessions as you gently pulled your body through the water.

The past few minutes a slow jog to get your body moving, those familiar stretches you have done witout thinking, done so many times before. The encouragment and warm words from your friends.

You know its time, you lunge out with your first step the soft grass below your feet as you reach out with your next bound.

The flashes of the past dash across your memory, the throws, the dives, the hucks, the drops, the time you thought you werne't going to qualify for natioanals and your whole team wanted to cry, and that sweet time you pulled down a huge grab from the lofty heights of the sky.

You get into your rhythm and breathing.

Your team mates shout out words of encouragment as a smile crosses your face.

I did my first straight line run today since april 26th around 1pm, it was an amazing feeling.

Alex Semfel's Training Report Week Ending Thurs 8th Jan

2009-01-09T18:03:00.002+11:00

Went to the gym, had a good session with some painful cardio at the end followed by the crappy uphill bike ride.

Went to the gym on the wednesday for a last spew session with the PT that came with the gym membership, learnt how to do a bench press and a few other weird exercises that involved the bar bell, some chinups and did all my normal leg exercises with some added core exercises (crunches, knee raises, lower back extensions, plank) the pt yelled make me try some chin ups (the last few assisted) and I am currently in a lot of pain unable to lift my left arm up.

Thursday was interesting, went and saw the physio.
In about a week I can finally officially start my straight line running at the moment for the next week i have to do some impact/agility exercises which are forwards and backwards bouncing on my feet, side to side stepping (jumping) side to side stepping with a block in the middle to stand on and 2 legged jumps 4small 1big as well as 1 legged hops. i also have to do plenty of quad stretches.

after a week of that time to hit the park do 2 laps warmup (soccer field I guess) then a full warm up of the legs then about 8-10 30-40m runthroughs at 60% speed.

it sounds like nothing, but im beyond excited about getting to do this.

physio also gave me a physical bruising of my itb? through his painful massage. feels good now though, a lot looser.

Alex Semfels Training Report Week Ending Thurs 1st Jan 2009

2009-01-01T18:31:00.002+11:00

So christmas is over. I am now 10 kilos above my april weight and I'm pretty sure with a lot less muscle to go with it. My rehab has been going reasonably well, my quads are a lot bigger and my hamstring that was grafted is now existant which it wasn't a few days ago.

At the moment my training program at the gym:

10mins warm up on cross country machichine
3x10 sets on 8 plates (not sure weight)
3x10 sets 40kgs on leg press
3x10 squats with 2x20 pound dumbells
3x10 lunges as above
3x20 steps as above
15minutes cyclying alternating each minute between sprints and easy riding.

for upper body
3x10 on each side 30pounds bent over something idontk now what its called
3x10 25 pounsd dumbell benchpress with back and neck on a bosu ball (or whatever they're called)
3x10 30 pound bicep curls.
3x10 on each side wood chop 4 plates (not sure weight)

the 27th had a good spew session, cyclced to dee why, then home then gym, did all exercises as above except woodchop and cycling, then being speaking about waterpolo tried to do one of my old training swims, i am extremely out of shape aimed to do:
400m warm up
4x100m on the 1:30
4x50m on the 40
4x25m on 20s
400m cool down.

what i actaully did was
200m warm up
2x100 on the 1:45 15 second rest
4x50m on the 50 20 second rest
4x25m on the 20 30 second rest.
200m cooldown

i tried to have as much focus on a good strong, even stroke (I used to be a lot weaker on the left) and the same for my kicking, also having my head up and a few changes in my stroke i spoke to a friend abotu who used to swim a lot and still plays waterpolo about getting the most power out of each pull back of your arm which involved facing my palm towards me earlier than i usually would.

also really focused on reaching out as far as i could with each stroke.

i was pretty disappointed about how far my performance has dropped since i was training a lot for waterpolo

showered, changed and rode to freshwater beach, and back home over a giant hill that hurt.

felt really good afterwards, i havent pushed myself like that for ages.
hopefully it wont be long till i can start posting improvments.

i had a chat with a friend who used to be quite the swimmer who just reckons first get to the point of comfortably swimming 20 minutes freestyle with perfect technique then start to mix it up as you see fit and expand on that, but do it 4-5 times a week.
im not sure i can be that dedicated.

Suggested Improvements To AFDA's Rotational Policy- or, how everything is better with UNO

2008-12-29T02:37:00.002+11:00

This is one of Max's ideas:

The AFDA rotational policy is good, but it could be fleshed out and improved upon if it was played with UNO rules.

Skip - self explanatory, could mean an end to the 'Nationals? Nah, it's in Perth...' years.

Reverse - remember that time you just wish Mixed Nats could be in Brisbane again?

Draw 2 - the region must field two competive Nationals-standard teams at in a single division at Regionals before they can host Nationals. Could put regions other than East in a spot of trouble (that's a blatant lie, and I retract my previous statement)

Wild - the party?

Has It Really Been Two Weeks?

2008-12-25T12:47:00.002+11:00

Gosh!

My excuse: Melbourne Hat, staying in Melbourne a week afterwards and Christmas have really caught up with me.

Alex, on the other hand, is now a successful investment banker, whose super is making positive returns in a time of economic crisis - all that is keeping him busy.

So anyway, wishing you all a very merry SIFultimate silly season.

Stay tuned for many belated '08 In Review' updates.

Love,

SIF

Interrupting Set Plays

2008-12-08T08:00:00.000+11:00

There are two times in my playing time where I've worked out, as a defender, a set play.

Once was the Youth Nationals final in 07. Any word called out starting with 'J' meant an up the line dump cut, usually to score. The other time was at league, where the line call was set so the person I was guarding downfield was only ever trying to cut openside then breakside, never deep.

This is one of the easiest times in ultimate there ever is to get a D. And it's not because knowing what they want to do you can shut it down completely- the opposite in fact. Once you've figured out a set play and it is called, your defence is in the unique position of knowing exactly what the offence is going to do for the next disc movement or two.

For the first example (the up the line dump cut) you could bait the up-the-line through body positioning, but be prepared to sprint at a dime up the line because you know that's what they are looking for. If all goes according to plan, the thrower is left on a high stall count with his dump taken away from him. If it was a dump cut to score, you now have a defender right in the cutting lane taking away most of the openside options.

In the second example (recognising the line-call/the pattern your mark is cutting at) some things I experimented with:

guarding the openside cut completely but leaving the breakside cut relatively open - this caused a turnover because the person with the disc was a weaker thrower who cannot consistently break the mark but attempted it anyway because that was the set play.
guarding the cutter openside and poaching in the lane - disrupted a fair amount of flow.
sticking with the cutter openside, positioning myself behind him by a few inches so he still has to run at 100% and could not slow down onto the disc. For the defence, this is a good situation: a thrower who would not normally throw to a semi-guarded cutter has a much greater chance of throwing to him now, even if he's guarded well, just because that's what the line call was. Doing this I caused two turns.

There is a lot of known unknowns in the game for a defender. Recognising a set play is one of the few times that you will know beyond a reasonable doubt what the offence is going to do and, rather than defend against exactly that possibility and return to the world of unknown factors (where is my person cutting, where does the thrower want to throw) I think it could be helpful to instead insert yourself into their set play as the dude who gets the D because somehow, miraculously? he knew what the offence wanted and denied it.

1 scientifically proven way to instantly improve your ultimate ability

2008-12-06T08:12:00.003+11:00

Its skins.

They are scientifically proven to increase blood flow by exactly 23.4% (with at 70% confidence level) proven in the Skins Lab located in USA. They also improve speed and responsivness of muscles by exactly 14.3%.

With stats like these I don't know why everyone hasn't bought a pair.

Oh wait now I remember. They also have a large chance of making you look like a knob.

I dont know how this happened but when I see people with skins I think ok he's either really good, or really bad. There is no middle ground with skins, you either deserve them or you don't. You have to earn the right to wear skins.

Whats that? You think your 5 year old playing club kanga cricket (not even rep) needs skins? Good call. I know he will reap many benefits as soon as he learns to run in a straight line. (not to mention needing a new pair every year or so)

I remember going to table tennis try out school. There was a guy with a $150 paddle. He beat me 11-8. I had a paddle no foam or the soft grip so its easier to spin that you buy in packs of 4 for $10. A friend of mine (a sporting prodigy so thats a bit unfair) beat him every single time they played with a paddle that did have foam (once) but was now peeling on one side and missing half a handle. I remember thinking, no way is that guy anywhere near good enough to respect the difference between a $20 paddle (a lot better than a $2 one) and one that is $150.

I forgot. I remember why you buy skins now. 100+SPF.

Shit. I'd better get a pair asap. brb.

Pigeon Holing

2008-12-05T22:52:00.003+11:00

At various stages in our playing time, we are labelled and sorted and put into little boxes that determine pretty much where we stay. Tiger is a defensive handler, Alex is an offensive receiver.

Confusingly: what box you are put in can vary from team to team. I played mixed nats this year purely as a cutter, which was a pretty confusing departure from the norm for me.

Is this practice of pigeon holing beneficial? For a beginner joining a team for their first Nationals season, it can simplify their role and make what is expected of them much less daunting. What about when a player reaches this awkward ambiguous plateau that is 'intermediate', or even 'advanced'?

It is really only at the elite level where a player in the handler box would be useless trying to fit in the receiver box. And really, what's the point of working on just your strengths? Work your weaknesses, as well- if there's one thing a team will never run out of need for, it's versatile players who can fill more than one box on the field.

Quoting Verbatim

2008-12-05T08:00:00.000+11:00

Something that Ken Shepherd, who is my captain in 'elite' div1 league this season, said tonight:

'The most important skill in any sport, right up to the international level, is self-motivation. There is nothing - nobody - here tonight stopping you from playing at the highest level you are capable of.'

I can't think of many people this advice doesn't benefit.

Finding yourself.

2008-12-04T09:18:00.003+11:00

In my down time (straight lines jogging after christmas!) I haven't really been able to do much except watch and throw and unfortunely I haven't been able to throw properly. The main down is that I can't pivot or use my left leg a lot meaning its harder to use my whole body to make the throws.

However, I have decided that I want to be significantly fitter and better at throwing by the time I do make a return to ultimate, which has left me a lot of time trying to find what throws I need to improve and what I want to focus on to get better.

In reality, this has just ended up being a lot of frustrated throwing sessions in the park with various different people. One thing which has been a good thing but also a bad thing for me when I was throwing was that I feel comfortable throwing forehands/backhands etc from any height, angle or point of release, which is good becuase it allows me a lot of flexibility and with the exception of hucks, I feel like I'm pretty confident I can almost any spot I want with any throw I want, fast or slow etc.

Recently I have been trying to get flat hard forehand hucks (mine are too high and loopy but I am happy with their speed and point of release low and wide), decent flat hard forehand throws (again too wide and loopy, I want more speed on a shorter throw) and low wide backhand hucks since I can only huck backhand comfortably from pretty close to my body, which is sort of useless when there is a mark.

When I started to really focus on one throw at a time I realised something. The people I used to think were no good becuase they only had 3 throws, one forehand, one backhand and one hammer, the sorts of people when you see them fake a low forehand you know if you just hold your hand at about their hip/waist on the forehand side they cannot throw a forehand even if they are faking that low one, have all the throws that I wanted. They have their bread and butter throws, they couldnt do some shoulder height outside in backhand, or throw a perfect blade over the wall into the receivers welcoming hands, but if they get that open forehand tehy can make that same perfect throw every single time. The point was they had the throw, the one throw they do better than me is the one throw I need the most.

This left me wondering, trying to find my own style of throw that I was really comfortable with, throwing with different people trying all sorts of different things, I still haven't found anything that just clicked. I'd throw with Mark, who since getting back from Europe has really improved his flat/inside out forehands, I look at it looks like he steps out but has his body over the disc when he throws, give it a try, that feels ok, so I keep throwing like that for a few days. I end up going to the Queenscliff manly beach pick up, throwing with Matt Oswald who does some little squat forehand balanced over his centre of gravity, thats working for him, so I try that too. That feels okay too, but its not right. Along comes Waz Shephard, he does a few pretty looking forehands, throwing from bit more of an upright stance elbow relatively close to the body, and what do you know thats not too bad either. What worked best? I don't know and I'm still looking for a throw that I'm really comfortable with. I'm still struggling.

Its weird, I saw that ultimate frisbee dvd (the one that comes with the frisbee ultimate disc) and then thats how I learned to forehand, there was no feedback, no real instructional guide or the guidance of a coach, even worse I became the one to teach most of my friends how to forehand without being able to throw all that well myself (but hey, nsb produced a few solid players that year).

It was a lot different to the way I learned how to shoot in waterpolo. In the first season we were given a book full of waterpolo and team sport wisdom (i made a couple of posts from the book on here) and in it was a sumamry of how to make a solid top shot, in front of the goals from say 5-7m away. It had 6 photos and a clear description of why each step was crucial I still remember it now, use your eggbeater to stay level in the water, ball behind you, left leg facing the goals hips facing 90 degrees away, leaning forwards using your legs and other arm to form a tripod in the water bend at the hips, kick hard, get up out of the water, twist from your core, to your shoulder, elbow and finally powerful wrist flick. Each photo was precise and perfect, offering the perfect guidance for you to know when you had the right throw. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA4uQxGlU-I&feature=related - Slo-mo mikasa ad showing most of the things I just said (except underwater))

So this affected the way I trained. I remember just throwing over and over again at a goal till finally it just clicked. There was a lot of ways to throw, I'd scored a lot of goals and a lot of things had worked, but when I knew what I was truly aiming for and what it was the moment the ball flicked out of my hand I knew I had found my throwing technique. The improvment was amzing, I remember the moment it clicked, trying to do bounce shots (shots that bounce off the water) in a pool. One particular throw I got up high, twisted my body, yanked my arm forwards and suddenly it just happened I added that bit of wrist snap I'd been missing and I could finally pull off that shot. Was it perfect? Not even close, but I knew I'd done it right.

Back to Frisbee. I still dont know how to throw a forehand or a backhand.

There is no uniformly accepted way to throw. We know all the things we need spin, speed, angle of release but everyone does it differently. Sometimes I feel like I have it, but then I try it again, see somethign else and wonder if thats even the right way to do it. It might have been the perfect technique for me 2 years ago throwing in the park with my friends, but I won't ever know.

I am still looking for my perfect throw.

Eye of the Beholder/Stealing from Women

2008-12-03T08:00:00.002+11:00

Watching more experienced players can be extremely beneficial if you know what you're doing - often at league when there is a complete beginner on the team I will tell them that they should watch this or that player to see what they can aspire to be one day, even though this might not be the best advice to give an inexperienced player. A beginner might look at Owen and say 'wow, he is wearing a lot of zinc', whereas a player who has some sense of the game might come up with different conclusions - 'he's shutting that guy down completely', say, or 'the agility in his footwork definitely helps him when he is cutting, I should emulate this'.

Anyway. Watching others is a good avenue to explore if you want to improve, and so I wanted to decry the benefits of one particularly underrated resource in Australian Ultimate - elite female players. Why is it so much better to watch an elite female handler over an elite male one? Simply, I see the top shelf of women's ultimate having less of an emphasis on brute athleticism (speed, height) and a definite edge in terms of technique. Playing against the Firetails three or four times this year convinced me, if you want to watch a game and pick up some higher-order skills, check out Hussey's backhand, Sarah Wentworth's cutting or Lisa McGinnigle's aggressive mark. Dude's ultimate is just guys hucking to guys skying guys anyway. Yawn.

Leaving Small Ponds

2008-11-28T15:21:00.003+11:00

This is an ego post, written quickly at the behest of a friend. Sorry.

For almost a year now, the only exceptional aspect to my ultimate career - the thing that made me stand out most - was the fact I was a junior, and eligible to compete in junior events (Youth Nationals, Junior Worlds). So, I've done all that, had my Worlds campaign where I matched up better than I had expected against most but still pretty middle-of-the-road-y, but my time in the junior's spotlight has passed.

Intermediate Male Syndrome, or IMS, is a disorder that I would say effects 20-30% of male ultimate players. It occurs when the big leaps and bounds forward in terms of playing ability (both fitness and skills) become less and less frequent and progress is plateau'd. Where once small efforts - the occasional run, doing a set of one hundred throws once a week - made a big difference, now even large exertions result in minimal noticeable gain. Obviously, there is a high temptation to, once this plateau is reached, basically just say 'fuck it' and be content with being average: IMS comes into the picture where players who have reached this wall have disproportionally large egos and misconceptions about their ability.

Why is this an issue for me? I'm leaving the small pond, and now the choice is mine as to whether I bust my nut and improve, or putter about on my present course.

Sometimes I Wish I Had An iPhone

2008-11-23T15:41:00.002+11:00

Or at least a smartphone with internet connectivity so I could update this blog on the fly.

I have had at least 4 good ideas for posts on the bus travelling places or out at parties discussing ultimate, but they escape me at present.

Oh well. I've been injured; expect regularish updates once I start Opens season training/speculation.

Friskee I miss you so...

2008-11-19T14:25:00.002+11:00

At 12 weeks post surgery if I have been doing my rehabilitation properly I am able to start running in straight lines (circles is too much). I've been doing one legged squats, lunges, some weird bridge thing on my back with waist off the ground and just holding that on one leg, wall sits, some hamstring stuff and plenty of stretching. Unfortunately I was meant to do that 4-5 times a week but I think I've only been up to 3. This could mean its a while till I start running again.

I also went on my first cardio session since Fakulti pre-nationals last training session at Rozelle with crippling hill sprints. I was just doing laps around a grass field on a bike at a pretty hard level. Afterwards, my legs hurt, chest was burning, felt a little sick and head hurt (not enough water I guess), in short it sucked, but it was nice to know that its at least an option for me now.

Tuesday night was Friskee, our 17 man roster cut down to having only 3 players on our team who are on the roster actaully arriving at the start of the game. Myself and Nobles sister Cat picked up for the first few poitns till we had enough to play savage with only 1 pick up. Played 3 points, had two pulls (thanks max!) and 1 assist from a stupid throw to hammer in the endzone. Admittedly I thought they would have no bid since they were all facing the wrong way and off balance, but that said it was still a fairly bladey forehand into a crowd of people. Hammer managed to catch that one uncontested.

Fun game was against special sauce, tiger turned up had a bung knee. I could empathise a little. Pottsy turned up, his blade count was at least 2. Interestingly I did learn places where blades actually aren't a bad choice in that they're easy to throw and fly quickly in a way that hammers and scoobers dont. Also saw him doing weird chicken wing pulls.
Interesting.

Friskee will also be welcoming Mark and Loren who are back from their adventures overseas! Hooray!

Self Improvment

2008-11-08T10:58:00.002+11:00

I think someone who thinks about their game, what they liked, what they didn't like and discusses it with their friends and thinks about it is someone who will obviously bring a strong mental game to the field. It's pretty annoying for me to see the dumb athletes, people I see with amazing skills and speed, but they like like lost space cadets, clogging the lane, making dumb throwing choices ruining set plays.

So with that in mind, I know Tiger and I used to have a lot of bitch/discussion sessions about how we as individuals and as a team played as we had those long drives back from ELS hall back to the beaches.

However, this post is less about Frisbee and more about me being pissed off at losing 10% of my miniscule online bankroll and getting stacked 3x in 20 minutes. (Stacked means to lose your entire chipstack). No I'm not upset about losing the $5 or whatever it worked out to be, but in the same way you didn't lose money after you lost League, it still can feel pretty shitty to get mopped on the floor by a team you know you should have been beating. I am a winning Online player, which is good since I play poker and don't lose money, but variance still hits me and here's 2 hands that affected me a lot when I played, the second one I got annoyed at and made me play poorly for a few hands. But here is my discussion of these hands.

The hero (me) is a1214.

***** Hand History for Game 7517978927 *****
$5 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Friday, November 07, 07:51:25 ET 2008
Table Table 126376 (Real Money)
Seat 8 is the button
Total number of players : 10

a1214 posts small blind [$0.02 USD].
kentuha777 posts big blind [$0.04 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to a1214 [ 9d 9s ]
Maler81888 calls [$0.04 USD]
yeaah11 raises [$0.24 USD]
DaObnoxious1 folds
Fless555 folds
andry00 folds
DaObnoxious1: :)) looooooooool
a1214 calls [$0.22 USD]
kentuha777 folds
Maler81888 calls [$0.20 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Ks, 6h, 9c ]
a1214 checks
Maler81888 checks
yeaah11 checks
** Dealing Turn ** [ Qc ]
a1214 bets [$0.36 USD]
Maler81888 calls [$0.36 USD]
yeaah11 raises [$2.17 USD]
a1214 is all-In [$1.36 USD]
Maler81888 folds
** Dealing River ** [ 9h ]
yeaah11 shows [ Th, Jh ]a straight Nine to King.
a1214 shows [ 9d, 9s ]four of a kind, Nines.
yeaah11 wins $0.45 USD from the side pot 1 with a straight, Nine to King.
a1214 wins $4.34 USD from the main pot with four of a kind, Nines.

First thoughts about this hand were making me laugh for that terrible bad beat on the guy on the river who played, but beyond that there is a little more behind the hand. (I have removed the stack sizes from both hands since I was showing to a friend but in all cases I was short stacked around $2 when the rest of other players were $2-$7. The guys I got in tangles with were typically $3.

The first raise from yeah11 I took personally as a blind steal, but I hadn't played many hands from him but I didn't know what sort of range of hands he was playing, so I guessed that he was strong. So if he was strong, why did I call with 9's? Pocket pairs gain their value from hitting well disguised sets in the flop. When calling a preflop raise with pocket pairs (even as low as 2) a lot of the time you will be an underdog HOWEVER the value comes from implied odds. You will hit a set (3 of a kind where you hold a pocket pair as opposed to trips where you have only 1 of the card with the pair on the board) or quads about 11% of the time. Clearly if I am calling 16 cents into a pot of like 34 cents I'm only getting around 2.1:1 on my money which is a bad call, BUT the implied odds of me taking his entire stack are what matters. How do you calculate implied odds? Simply I made a call of 16 cents, with the intention of winning his entire stack if I hit. Simple way to check if the persons stack is 15x the amount you are calling, in the long run you will make money from this play. (You will lose 9/10 times but the 1 you do will you will win 15x your investment which is a netgain of 5x your call)

On the flop, I was out of position so I had to act first. I was pretty sure the 9 giving me a set put me way ahead, and he did raise preflop so I was hoping he would continuation bet on the flop or hit the king and raise. There very few straight possibilities, no straight chances and I was going to bet against he didn't have a set over my set (trip kings against my trip 9s) so I checked. Maybe I should have raised but unless he was an idiot he wouldn't have called a raise with a gutshot straight.

Turn card comes a queen giving him the gutshot straight and best hand. I raise the pot, I'm happy with this raise, one person calls, and my villian raises all in. I snap called. In retrospect I should have thought maybe one little bit longer about what he could have, another set? two pair? straight? But I didn't. So this call turns out was a bad one if I put him on a straight. Why? Well I had to call $1.36 to win a pot of $2.98 which is only 1:2:2 on my money and since I was only about a 20% favourite to win (board could pair = 9 outs + the other 9 = 10 outs = 20% to win aprox) I would have needed to be getting 5:1 on money to make this a good call.

I should have folded that. Either way, I rivered a 9 and beat him down. My bad. Analysis? I was happy until the turn in how I played. However the chances of someone having a straight over a set everytime that happens means I would be ahead in most situations, just unlucky here.

The following is what I said to my other possibly more serious other poker playing friend(min buy in buying into a table for less than the table maximum to reduce risk, but it also means you have the potential to win less):

I GUESS THATS WHY YOU NEVER MIN BUY IN LOLOLOL RIVERED HIM

3 hands later I had to send him this message:

LOL OWNED :( LOST ALL THE MONEY I AHD ANYWAY:(

Dealt to a1214 [ As Ac ]
a1214 raises [$0.12 USD]
kentuha777 folds
Maler81888 calls [$0.12 USD]
pserg777 folds
DaObnoxious1 calls [$0.12 USD]
Fless555 calls [$0.12 USD]
andry00 folds
shirl1989 folds
** Dealing Flop ** [ 3s, 4c, 6h ]
a1214 bets [$0.39 USD]
Maler81888 folds
DaObnoxious1 calls [$0.39 USD]
Fless555 folds
** Dealing Turn ** [ 2s ]
a1214 bets [$1.26 USD]
DaObnoxious1 is all-In [$2.71 USD]
a1214 calls [$1.45 USD]
** Dealing River ** [ Js ]
a1214 shows [ As, Ac ]a pair of Aces.
DaObnoxious1 shows [ 5h, Ad ]a straight Two to Six.
DaObnoxious1 wins $6.41 USD from the main pot with a straight, Two to Six.

Hero is me a1214 and villian is DaObnoxious1.
This wasn't so bad. I got a little unlucky here, but bad play exposed me to this bad luck that I shouldn't have done. Looks like I had aces in early position, my first raise of 12cents is only 2 big blinds, I should have raised at least 16 cents. Ace's is a great hand heads up, but loses a lot of its value against multiple people. Using pokerstove (a hand analysis program) I can see that against a5o and 2 random hadns aces is only a 65% to win.

On the flop I bet 3/4 of the pot. I'm happy with this raise, it makes 2 people fold and I get one caller. Knowing his hand now, from his behalf that was a bad call hes getting like 2.2:1 on his money on an open straight which is about 24% to win by the river, 16%ish on the next card, meaning he needed 4:1 at least on his money to make that a good call in the long run assuming I wouldn't bet on the turn. HOWEVER to his credit, he was getting amazing implied odds. His chance to hit is only 4:1 but if he does hit he will probably get a lot of money (in thise case my entire stack). I bet out on the turn, and he went all in. I looked at the board thought I was safe then he went all in. This is probably where I made my mistake and shoudl have folded. I remember reading an article that basically said never go broke with 1 pair.

I went broke with one pair.

New age coaching? Be THE better player

2008-11-01T12:35:00.003+11:00

I was reading an article on self confidence and the author had an interesting little coaching tale.

He spoke about people needing to be comfortable with themselves and their abilities, but people often cant tap those abilities or importantly don't realise what they're capable of doing, and hence never gain the confidence of being able to or even attempting to reach their potential.

He recalled a story, he was in his college basketball team, he wasn't the best player in the team, in retrospect he thinks that although he thought he was the worst on the team, in reality he was not. But that would change.

One day, the coach tried a new idea what sounded like one of what Piers called in 2007 at the juniors camp an 'experimental' phase. They were having a practice game and the coach said to them "Each of you I am going to assign you another player on the team and you have to play the way you think that they would play," Naturally the game was chaos.

The main character of the story however was assinged to play like the best player in the team. With that task on board he thought, hey fuck it I'm not that good but this is just a practice so I don't care.

Needless to say he shredded that game and the coach told him later, if all he had to do was to tell him to pretend hes the best player on the team, that he will do that every single game. What changed? His skills certainly didn't improve over that session, but his confidence in his own game and HOW he used what he had, had changed.

....

So how does this link back to team dynamics and ideas? I think it was an interesting concept telling your team to play like others on the team. First of all you need to have played a lot with those people and be pretty familiar with their playing styles. So you would need to be a very tight knit team. Secondly, it is also in a way a team building exercise and an individual

So the first thing I imagined, hey what happened if I got asked to play like someone on my team. Phil White maybe? Well for starters I'd have to be an awesome precision point hucker, extremely fit with a sick read on that disc and ball crushing ups, as well as being ruggedly handsome. But then I started to think more about HOW the person plays rather than what skills they have. More about the choices they make, the people they throw to, the times they cut, the times they jump, break, throw, cut and even lead others. I think this was the coach's aim, to get people to really think about their team mates and how they can form stronger as a team.

So obviously you aren't going to be able to copy somones raw physical ability, but thers other things you could really emulate. Can this be applied to improving peoples weaknesses?

No names mentioned but there is two players on friskee, if I was to act like them, I imagine in this exercise a lot of people would become caracitures of eachother to really emphasise their gripes (or appreciation) of certain players.

Two people come to mind that I think could benefit from this.

Player one: "Oh look a perfectly good huck, I have the throw to get within 30cm of my runner. My runner has a huge lead, and on top of that can sky the other guy if it comes down to it. I'd better not take this throw."
Player two: "Oh man looks someones trying to cut deep I KNOW this is a good throw. Breakforce huck? that could be hard FUCK IT. HUUUUUUCK BABY"
"..."
"sorry guys, my bad."

I reckon both players could definetly benefit from this experience.

But could teams actaully benefit from a mess around game like this?
Maybe. But it'd be hard.

08 in Review: Mixed Nationals

2008-10-24T10:19:00.003+11:00

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.

Managing Your Downtime

2008-10-23T12:51:00.002+11:00

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.

Extreme Parenting

2008-10-20T19:47:00.004+11:00

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?

Sugery Adventures: 1 month on

2008-10-12T22:06:00.002+11:00

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.

Fresh Bwudd

2008-10-07T10:34:00.002+11:00

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.

Usage

2008-10-05T12:36:00.002+11:00

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.

Rotten Technology

2008-09-27T09:01:00.004+10:00

I've always thought that www.afda.com was pretty neat-o.

There's quite a lot of good info that's pretty easy to find. Especially when compared to the UPA and WFDF sites, which either confuse with labyrinthine user-unfriendlyness or lack any in-depth information.

But I'm me - a committed, relatively technological ultimate player. Half of the fun in having a website for ultimate players is making sure that the stark utter newbies are catered for.

I have some issues with the site. Finding events is not immediately obvious, and there are usually discrepancies between tournaments found through the Calendar and Register pages.

The big issue I have is that it does not look professional. It's the face of the organisation, as far as a beginner can tell - everyone ends up there at some point to register themselves, and it's pretty unashamedly outdated, even compared to the UPA.

Look at the difference between this and this. Surely we can give David Colls free league fees at Albert Park social for the rest of his days if he spends a month or so updating the national website and its regional counterparts to match what the VFDA have.

Scoober?

2008-09-22T12:50:00.004+10:00

This throw is neglected at worst, heckled at best. I suspect this attitude has something to do with it having a silly name. It's also one of those words that look a lot sillier when you type them- like muff, or episcopal.

Regardless, here are some good reasons why the scoober is (not 'always', just 'a lot more than people give it credit for') a good option.

It is, by virtue of its throwing action, a quick release throw on the backhand side. This is useful - a quick release backhand is a much more difficult throw which not many people have consistently.

For an upside down throw, a scoober has a pretty gentle flight pattern, even in wind. Hammers are thrown with a lot of downward motion, leaving them especially vulnerable to blading or buffeting. Scoobers are thrown more at a 45° angle, are a little inclined to float up, but still are more stable.

The crowd loves the scoober.

In man offense, as a breakmark throw, the scoober can hit the deadzone directly behind the marker. No other throw can do this without first getting the mark out of position.

Surgery Adventures: Operation day till post op day 1.

2008-09-09T16:44:00.005+10:00

..."Pay special attention to the ANAL region... FOR MEN: SCRUB the SCROTUM thoroughly" (Exact directions on Pre-Op wash instructions with capitalisations and all)

At 6:20 in the morning I woke up and looked at the clock and realised I'd set the alarm 1 hour too late and had 40 minutes to get to the hospital (which was 45 minutes away). Gave my body and in particular my 'anal region' possibly the most thorough cleansing session possibly of my entire life as per the detailed instructions given to me with the wash (the most intense cleaning session was the night before since I had to wash night and day. No food and water since midnight left my mouth pretty dry, mum freaked out and we hopped into the car and went to the hospital.

Arrived at the admissions ward, nothing exciting happened there. I saw the funny doctor from last time I was there except I think he must have been at the end of his shift very tired looking, big bags under his eyes. Was greeted happily by one of the nurses as 'the organised boy!'

Bagged all my clothes, put on some gowns, shaved my leg (and he was a she, she said hey babe take a walk on the side) and got introduced to the anasthethist. Stuck an IV into my hand, it stung a bit, told me there was going to be 2 doses one to relax me and it feels damn weird you feel cold from the inside but your skin is warm to the touch, the other to knock me out. "This one is just to relax you" and my head started spinning, my surgeon walked in with a grin on his face and a blood stained gown, "All done here you'll go in, in just a moment!" I blacked out around there.

"Do NOT make any important legal decisions within 24 hours of being under anasthetic," - Your rights and responsibilities at hospital guidebook.

Woke up a few hours later, mouth was dry, overall feeling like shit, wanted to throw up, head was spinning. In response they fed me an ice cube.

I threw up when I got to the ward and pretty much just felt like arse until midnight (it was about midday when I got there). The nurses who came and attended me were all very friendly caring and genuinely concerned (or seemed it) about my well being. I had two older women who were probably the funnier nurses who came up to me and firstly asked "How come you have lighter eyes by dark hair?" I told them how I was half asian, they commented why my sister had light hair, I said I didn't know. They asked me if I had a girlfriend and proceeded to give me relationship advice that amounted to:

"Make sure you get a girlfriend before you leave uni, becuase when you leave you will be lonely and not be able to find anyone since all the couples get married 2 years after uni so you'll have to wait till they divorce to move in. My son had a great girlfriend for 2 years, but then they broke up and he left uni and now he's lonely. Don't end up like my son. He's lonely. "
"See look at her, (Pointing at the other nurse) she didn't meet anyone at uni and now shes single!"

Room aircon was screwed up, so the room was really hot, and the guy next to me as friendly as he was when awake, sounded like he was dying or in severe pain judging by the way he snored. Around 10pm I hadn't 'passed urine,' into this small milk bottle sized and shaped container with a sloped and elongated neck which though being about 7-8 cm across my dad still joked "Ah bad luck son, still won't fit." It was too awkward to use and I couldn't go until the nurse came in and threatened "You realise if you don't pass urine for 6 hours we have to use a cathetar,"

A cathetar (I dont think thats spelt right but it is pronounced like that) is a metal rod they stick up your urethra and into your bladder to ease the process. It also hurts as you can imagine, to have a piece of metal shoved up your urethra. I was scared into peeing.

I impressed myself with a 1 litre effort of urine (the bottle had measurements) which would be the first of 3 litres 'passed' into these bottles (the last time it almost overfilled) I was pretty proud.

Morning finally came, the sickness passed and breakfast arrived. A few doctors came in, checked the bandages for bleeding (It had bled a bit the day before and was redressed) a few more doses of antibiotic into the IV and I was told I just needed an X-ray and then I could go home. This was about 7:30 and the x-ray was at 2:30. I ended up getting out at 3:30. I also got to ride a portable toilet seat and use the toilet! how exciting! and my first shower in the portable toilet seat as well. Exciting stuff.

Physio came and gave me some stuff to do taught me how to use crutches and I sat and read for a few hours.

Mum arrived and carried me home.

Physio is tomorrow, I have an exam on friday and monday, hopefully I'll be able to get to uni.

Hooray,
This is the most relieved I've felt in a long time, finally out of the hospital and back at home, and for the first time since April 4 and a bit months ago finally know where my knee is going and that I can actaully get better rather than being in a constant state of dull pain.

One question I had a lot was after reading my file (with a puzzled look)
"..."
"...So you hurt yourself playing frisbee?"

I have a ruined Knee: Pre Admission

2008-08-28T17:45:00.002+10:00

"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!"

Gratuitous Faking

2008-08-20T21:57:00.004+10:00

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.

Friskee's Elite Youth Recruitment and Development Program

2008-08-05T18:16:00.003+10:00

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.

Getting excited about Worlds!

2008-08-03T23:50:00.002+10:00

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

Mental Game

2008-07-25T22:51:00.002+10:00

Tiger was telling me about how he didn't feel quite ready mentally like he knew it was there just it hadn't struck him.

For all the juniors and rest of Australians (mostly Juniors) who are going to represent. I wish everyone the best of luck and good health no injuries etc...

Reminded me again of that glowing gem waterpolo handbook:

Effective Preparation for Competition
Effective preparion for competition is a matter of luck for many athletes. Maybe this, maybe that and lets hope that ti works.

For Elite Athletes however, control and consistency are the hallmarks of their preparation.

Would Keiren Perkins live in hope that allw ould come together at the appropriate moment on finals day for him to win Olympic Gold?

**Successful atheltes have well developed competition preparation SKILLS

**Skill is not something you are born with you are born with ABILITY

**Ability is transformed into skill with PRACTICE

Some atheltes are fortunate enough to have so much ability that they need only limited practice to acquire effective skills. For most athletes however, including professionals, considerable practice is neccessary before they acquire these consisten preparation skills.

Effective mental peaking is an acquired skill - acquired with preparation and evaluation.

1/ ATTITUDE
A successful athlet views competition as a challenge and a chance to reap rewards from the hard word and dedication. Their focus is not only on the outcome but the process of the contest. Winners have a balanced attitude between the competition and the realistic goals which they have set.

2/ CONSISTENT ROUTINE
Athletes need an established routine which they can utilisde automatically to have them peaking at the right time. This routine can sometimes take years to refine.

3/ READINESS - NERVES
Obviously it is important for athletes to have the adrenalin pumping, to have high energy for competition. The skill in preparation is controlling the gradual increase in arousal so they can peak at the right time.

If they peak too early they burn precious energy - if they are under aroused then they may find it too hard to compete at the right intensity. Preparation skill should include short term techniques to either pump up or calm down.

4/ SELF CONFIDENCE
A confident athlete is composed, relaxed with a high degree of certainty. They strive to reduce uncertainties or doubts as well as being completely realistic about their chances.

They should be willing to let go of worries, doubts about wether they have trained long and hard enough. They should be focused on the fact that the competition is now - the moment of truth.

5/ CONCENTRATION
Concentration literally means to focus all attention onto those factors that are most appropriate to performance.

However, the duration of concentration is limited so that it is neccessary for athletes to pace themselves before competition. Relax both physically and mentally and have the focus of attention gradually narrow as teh competition comes closer.

The most common forms of disruption to concentration are external ones, such as friends in the crowd, or internal ones such as negative thoughts. The most effective method of blocking out these disruptions is by focussing on something that will assist performance an by deep breathing or using a buzz word.

Summary:

** Effective competition skills are developed over time with planning and practice.

** Athletes should continually fine tune their organisation and concentration routine.

**They need to become skilled at fixing their attention at each appropriate moment.

**They need to develop the instinct to pace their physical and emotional build up.

**They need to be willing to accept their current standard and trust themselves.

Finally they need to achieve that fine balance of:

**Striving for a good outcome
and
**Focusing on the process.

STAY WITH THE PROCESSES UNDER PRESSURE AND TRUST THAT THE OUTCOME WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF

Here's Looking At You, Kid

2008-07-22T22:47:00.004+10:00

So, we all know how to bust a zone.

(If you don't, consider this)

An entirely different problem is working out where to put people of lesser experience when running your zone offence. This is a scenario I'd imagine quite a few teams have to deal with in the uni season (and to a lesser extent the mixed season) of Australian ultimate, as there are always new recruits who have to learn as they go, a fair amount of experienced-but-not-superstar players, and generally not that many World-class athletes who can demolish one all by themselves for the entirety of the tournament.

So:

What seems to be the temptation in the teams I've played with is to stick the inexperienced players as wing/deeps or popping, and have the experienced players as handlers. Consequently, a lot of teams of this skill mixture generally have an okay time dumping and swinging, but their middle of the field really fails to engage and so they have a harder time scoring. Here are some alternative mix-ups to this formula, assuming a mix of 3 experienced players to 4 not so experienced, and a zone defence that is not overly impenetrable.

The Risky
Have three inexperienced players handle, two experienced players popping, and the remaining one good one not so good players act as wing/deeps. If necessary, have one of the experienced poppers receive the pull and pass it to the handlers.

The Pro's:

The inexperienced folk get more disc time than they normally would, increasing their confidence and handling ability.
Once the disc gets to the experienced poppers, they will have the confidence to give-go or look for decent upfield options. Most inexperienced poppers, once they get the disc, just give it straight back. Basically, once it gets to the middle, expect the zone to be broken permanently.

The Con's:

It's not called 'The Risky' for nothing: three inexperienced handlers could spell death if they are caught in, say a sideline trap.
Much more pressure on the experienced folk (poppers) to bail out in situations like a high stall count or aforementioned trap.

The Talk Show
Place one inexperienced player as the axis handler, with the other two handlers being experienced/inexperienced respectively. Poppers and wing/deeps are made up of one good and one not-so-good player each. The idea generally is that, just as a good zone defence revolves around a lot of on-field communication, so does this zone offence! The experienced handler is there to guide the other handlers, and the popper/wing-deep pairs have one experienced player each in their to guide the other one.

The Pro's:

The inexperienced players are getting lots of advice as events occur, as opposed to after the point or on the sideline where recalling the situation may be difficult.
Equal spread of experience all the way down the field, to ensure continuation and flow.

The Con's:

Relies heavily on calm, measured and timely communication to newbies, which can be quite difficult in the heat of the moment. (Think 'Turn to face your dump, Sarah.', not 'SARAH DUMP DUMP DUMP!')
Once again, new folks handling presents a little bit of a liability. Make sure the experienced handler is prepared to work to give the inexperienced handlers safe, easy options to reset the count.

Not Happy Jan

2008-07-15T10:14:00.002+10:00

Woken up this morning by a call from the Physio.

I tore my ACL, and need surgery.

Boo.

The Kids Aren't All Right

2008-07-14T23:31:00.004+10:00

Youth Nationals is a very different event to Opens and Womens, and it's a very difficult to satisfy the interests of all involved.*

Junior Worlds players are the driving forces behind most of the teams, so ensuring their attendance is pretty vital. But in a Worlds year (which come twice as often for the little tykes) fitting them in the actual tournament is testy: you are competing with training camps, as well as the usual school/uni timetables. Hosting Youth Nationals at a date that does not coincide with a training camp means excessive travelling/money/effort/time, whilst hosting the event at a date that does coincide with a Worlds training camp runs the risk of the event being a complete write-off.

There is also the question of what we want out of Youth Nationals: should it be focused on development, or high-level ultimate, or both? If it's the continuation of the Sydney-Victoria (or Sydney-Sydney) hegemonic ultimate then by all means, hold the event away from a training camp somewhere in Sydney or Melbourne. In terms of development, though, there are two major complications I can see that prevent Youth Nationals from reaching its full potential as an event on the ultimate calendar:

Recruitment infrastructure: currently, the majority of players are there on a friendship circle, word-of-mouth basis. At this year's event, one team was there because of the ultimate program in place at their school. That is where I see the future of youth ultimate's recruitment - high school. Especially in regards to states that do not have historically strong youth development (here's looking at you, TAS/SA/WA/QLD/NT) and weaker (or geographically less fortunate) players who have not been snapped up by club teams in their respective states. At the NSW High School Gala Day, a 'Merit Team' is selected from the best players. This team serves no function, at present. Imagine if the merit team from the SA High School Gala Day were selected to compete as a team at Youth Nationals - the words 'representing the state' add a lot of legitimacy to a sport like frisbee, and you could bet parents would be more willing to shell out the cash if this were the case.
Pricing. Last year, we got a hat, a disc, two days of high-level coaching and two days of ultimate for about $80. This year, we got two days of ultimate, a hat, a disc and a party for $75. Unfortunately, swinging the tournament fee either cheaper (for development, talking $20-50 just for fields for two days) or more expensive (for discs, hats or social events) runs the risk of alienating either entire teams of prospective new players (as was the case this year, with the cost for just the tournament being prohibitive enough to ensure at least one team didn't attend) or the hardcore travellers who want the extra tidbits to show for their journey.

So that's about all I can think to say on the matter right abouts now.

*This isn't a dig at how youth nationals was run this year or last. I had an absolute blast this year, Lisi did an incredible job and was amazingly patient and deserves to be thanked with a big big hug if you see her in Vancouver. Also, the party venue was amazing- it had showers, a movie theater, a sound system and more hot pizza than the hungry youth crowd could eat.

Day 2 Youth Nats

2008-07-12T18:45:00.003+10:00

Well, today wasn't really as good as Day one.

First game against HOSY half our team was away getting the youth nats medals in neutral bay, we lost they played very well and we played horribly, we lost pretty badly.

Second game against Chatswood well spirited fun game they have al ot of surprisingly good up and coming kids I think Eshan was the best of the new group of CHS kids. We won that one.

Last game against Big Mac Small Fries, fun game they surprised me with how well they handled just they had no real strong receivers to back it up and we won.

Semi-finals were HOSY (1st - Undefeated through round robin) against Discgraceful (4th) and In-Tents (3rd) vs PUMSAT (Princess Unicorn Magical Sparkle Action Team) (2nd).

Hosy won their game and PUMSAT vs In-Tents was probably the worst game for us all tourney. In-Tents took 15 minutes to make the first pull, meaning it was only a 30 minute match, time cap score was 5-2 (In-tents) 6-2 game to 7, we lost i think 7-4 or 7-3. They played about as well as they did the last game, but we played a lot worse. Noble played for them that game and made some excellent throws. He has improved a lot as a handler. This game wasn't anywhere near as angry as the last game, there was some extremely bad calls during the game but everyone on PUMSAT had no heart since the start of the day. Tiger probably gave them another 10 for spirit.

The highlight was probably a catch from tom tullet managed to catch some crazy blade throw completely vertical on the trailing edge with his knuckles facing towards his body (if you can imagine the crazy position you would have to be to get a lay out catch in yoru hand with your knuckles facing down and towards your body on the trailing edge)

After a quick chat with Discgraceful there was no 3/4 play off.

HOSY vs In-tents was a great final HOSY dominated with their awesome lineup, Lewis Broad pulled some awesome forehand hucks and not so good backhand throws, Buttons and Tarrant were solid and great. Jake-as was huge. Lochies were strong stringy receivers.

Lex was absolutely amazing pulled probably the best and most beatiful d's of the entier game with some hectic layout blocks. he is going to be a huge asset for Thunder... as long as he doesn't injure himself!

I think the only bad thing about this youth nats was probably the timing.

For most of the worlds players on our team it was something none of them really cared about as much as the non-worlds players. For the worlds players it became a tourney that was just exhausting and could injure them, so they had much different expectations to the other players on the team and its pretty hard for a team to play to its potential when half of its players dont give a crap about the outcome. This was reflected by the lack of girls games where sydney was too injured.

Good tourney, good fun, well organised and the last youth nats for a lot of us.

I am a mean bastard who should not play Frisbee... on the upside though...

2008-07-11T23:20:00.004+10:00

Day 1 of Youth Nationals...

All the worlds players were groaning in pain saying how much they weren't looking forwards to playing and how no one was taking it seriously and how bad it was going to be becuase they were all sore and not wanting to play.

First game against G-Stanes the u/17 champs pretty quick easy game. We put all our newer players on, Dan was a surprisingly good cutter, Evan was getting some sweet D's, Hingo was throwing well, our pickup Dan Clenton was throwing a bit tooo much (he stopped in the next games when he stopped stuffing around).

Our game against In-Tents as usual another game with absolutely no rivalry at all, not many foul calls but a bit of dirty play (but nothing was called) 2 things really annoyed me was their first pull of the game was so bad that they were able to hit it down, annoyed me becuase it would have gone about 5m towards their endzone if he had left it. A quick look at wfdf rules I can't find the penalty for interfereing with the pull beyond:



Interference: No player on                                 the throwing team may touch the                                 throw-off in the air before it is                                 touched by a member of the                                 receiving team.

The other one that annoyed me was there was a giant pick that left one of our players bleeding becuase he got decked, and so someone called pick on it. In-tents had managed to get a long throw off the pick and started complaining and swearing, I was pissed off, I saw Graham swearing at us I yelled out in the most ironic comment of the day "Come on show some fucking spirit!" (very angrily) before people laughed and pointed out Graham didn't know what happened. I felt bad and apologised to him at the end of the game.

They also tried to call a Dans winning score out who left a large skid mark from a slipping cleat whose mark started and finished in. Surprisingly it was Jackson who called it in. Thanks Jackson.

Lex again did some amazing layouts, Peley got some sweet D, Tiger is laying out a lot more, Calan surprsied me with some very good one handed sprint catches into fast throws and was a solid game.

Funny thing is, it was probably all a 2 way thing and I just see one side.

Last game was against Discgraceful, all our newer players and pickups played fantastically it was a very fun and a lot more spirited game we won.

I'm thankful there is no zone in this tourney becuase on today when it was windy and full of inexperienced players woudl have torn apart our team.

see how it goes!

youth nats party was fun
nathan is an alcoholic.

Tomorrow is the rest of the teams including HOSY who I'd tip to see in the finals and chatswood then semis and finals.

Go PUMSAT.

My mean funny for the day:
Nathan made a sweet bid for a disc, got absolutely decked by another player laying out into his legs, and it looked like a very painful hit, I think i said something like "HAHAH OUCH THAT LOOKED PAINFUL THATS EXACTLY HOW I GOT INJURED BUT I CAUGHT IT"

Friskee!

2008-07-08T10:56:00.003+10:00

I couldnt help it, I went along to a game with Friskee and came on a few points...

It was a sad reminder of what I'd been missing out on.

Played a bit of zone handler, I was happy with my throwing and catching. It was against the bad beats and they had a pretty solid line up. (When everyone arrived... we started playign 4/2 with them only 4/1). It was probably a good experience for our less experienced players running into their zone.

Seeing some of the guys on my youth nats team come up against their first semi decent zone, I found out why they don't allow zone in youth nationals, it would completely invalidate a lot of inexperienced players despite their athleticism and disc skills.

Thanks to Bad Beats for letting us pick up about 4-5 players...

We had 2 new girls come along and play Bella and Laura, Bad Beats were very friendly and nice to them I think it was a good first experience at a competitive game of frisbee.

It was also Mark Evans last game with Friskee before he goes away to Europe and England, he did a couple of very nice catches, his pulling was pretty solid but his hucking wasnt too good that game. It was also the first game I had a chance to play on the same field as Brett Matzuka, hes a very fun guy to play with, has lots and lots of crafty handler moves and very friendly. Unfortunately the points we did play were sort of short... probably because I could play close to zero d due to my knee still and not running at all.

Came away with a few assists I was overall happy with my hucking, bad choices at the time (he wasn't really that open) on a few of them but they still came off. Equally there were some very good choices and good throws that became dropped pancake catches... I also tried to huck a backhand as a fast break throw off a turn, a mark come on at the last moment and i didn't follow through properly and threw a huge inside out backhand blade, funny thing was the 3 offensive guys becuase 2 misread it managed to completely box out Tim Gee to give mark a relatively easy catch. I guess thats totally buzz bullets style hucking blades to make position matter more compared to height!

Simon Talbot also made a guest star appearance since hes here for ECC's, was fun having a bit of a chat with him, and he had some very nice faking happening when he went on for a guest star point with 100% completion and points scored when on the field.

I also had my first taste of an assassination zone since our first season of friskee (no one has used it against us for a while) and this time it was me that was assassinated. When I realised I tried to stay behind the disc, and then started running around sort of directionless just tryign to keep my man away from the action.

Brendon the fantastic cool and all around nice guy Frisbee player came and had a chat to me about it saying why I was assassinated (passing to girls) and what I should have done, which was basically just keep moving and try and pop to stay useful and mess aroudn with their zone.

I really like it when people teach me very important stuff like that!

At the end of the game had a chat with Brett and Alex Allen about the future of ourselves in frisbee with a very positive outlook!

Thanks to bad beats for a very fun game with plenty of pick ups, pretty good spirit i think.

Damn.
I forgot the score.

Catching the disc on the leading edge.

2008-06-19T15:54:00.002+10:00

Was at the park throwing with Nathan and Hingo today.

I noticed a lot of Hingo's catch's he was dropping were deflecting off his hand and ending up 3-4metres away.

I thought about it, and realised it was because he was catching on the trailing edge rather than the leading edge.

I tried to explain it, but it didnt make sense so I stood a few metres away from him asked him to throw the disc to me, and put out my hand to just stop the disc. Once on the trailing edge, it would spin off my hand and land a few metres away, and once on the leading edge, straight into the ground.

It made sense after that with the nice little demonstration. So then I made him swap roles he had to mac the disc to let it spin away from him and also stop it so it would fall straight down.

A good way to teach the concept of leading and trailing edge catches I thought!

VICTORY FOR SEMFEL WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

2008-06-19T02:03:00.003+10:00

WOOOOOOOOO

Its 2:05 am, Thursday 19th of June and I'm happy.
I just played 6 hours straight of online poker.
Played over 400 hands....
Outlasted a field of 2700 players to come first.

Had an EXTREMELY lucky start - some idiots quadrupled me up in a single hand.
My lowest point was about 8 big blinds, with my top being 4 500 000 chips (from a starting stack of 1500)
Played a very good middle game, adapting to my opponents (weather they're idiots or not, tight/loose etc)
I had awesome patience. (6 hours of it)
I played sort of badly after a big hand when it got to Heads up, the last hand was probably a bit too much of a loose play, but I did go in with an advantage and won.
I never went to any show down an underdog (i was very happy with this)
And funnily my biggest pay offs weren't aces (which i got 3x over the night, but never won moer than 3bb off anyone since bb and sb folded to small raise...

I played position very well.
Played a solid tight aggressive game.

So what did i win after 6 hours of grinding?
$15!
... could have worked for an hour to get that.

Warm Fuzzy Memories - The Bum Shower at Nationals

2008-06-14T12:55:00.003+10:00

Just remembered this nice little one...

The second day of Nationals was the really wet and really muddy one. It was raining all day, puddles were huge, mud was knee deep, layouts were awesome and everyone fell over getting stuck in the mud as they tried to turn around too quickly.

The end of the day though wasn't so fun still cold and wet, showers packed full to the brim mud dirt and grass somehow managing to get into everything...

I remember walking into one block seeing a long queue and leaving as Tiger told me enthusiastically "Hey come check out the bum shower!"

What it turned out to be was a punch of guys washing their clothes in a big puddle on some concrete behind the block from runoff from one of the rooves, as they all cramped up shivering underneath the runoff trying to get a good shower as everyone undressed and got closer together...

Pretty gay.

Focus, Now

2008-06-10T19:45:00.003+10:00

A problem I have not just in spades but in buckets and other, more ergonomic and practical containers, is losing focus, and disengaging from games I am playing. This is a problem- often it will not be the more athletic or the more skilled team who prevails, but simply the team who wants it more. Being engaged - being focused - is a large part of this.

Unfortunately, there isn't much of an on/off switch to competitiveness in the human psyche, so I thought I'd share a sort of drill that helps me out when I am trying to switch on.

Get two discs between two people, one person each with one disc. Stand a short distance apart, and throw the discs between one another. Aim chiefly not to drop any discs, and to keep your throws on target. Done properly, at no time should any one player have both discs.

I find that this exercise demands nearly complete concentration. Which is good, if focus is what you are lacking. The best part is, it can be done quickly on the sideline for a few minutes until you feel in the zone.

Okay, Now You're Just Being Selfish

2008-06-10T19:13:00.003+10:00

Back in my first job at Pizza Hut, folding up the pizza boxes was an art form. In total, there were eleven individual folds to make for the flat piece of perforated cardboard to become a rigid box, and one of my managers was amazingly skilled at folding. In the time it took me (and I was in no way slower than the average- if anything I was slightly above it) to do one stack of boxes, he could have filled the entire store. Watching him fold boxes was almost magical - he was so good at it, yet at the same time I questioned the ultimate purpose of being so very, very good at something so very, very trivial.

There is a special facial expression that accompanies this mixed emotion of awe/pity, and it's the same expression I see on people's faces when I tell them that I am going to represent Australia in frisbee.

So, where we are at the moment, in Oz: ultimate is a competitive amateur sport. I'm a paragon of unathleticism, and yet I manage to make it to events like Nationals to play alongside or against people are truly world-standard.

And recently a sense of selfish irony has hit me: despite all the efforts I make trying to get people to get into frisbee (at uni or for league) I really don't want the overall standard of play to rise much higher. I don't want ultimate to be an Olympic sport, or be recognised as legitimate by all the normal folks out there.

It's not just a fear of how chumped I will get by actual legitimate athletes who play the game, it's more a fear of how the game itself will change to accommodate its growing professionalisation: it's so fundamentally reassuring to turn up to day one of Nationals and see hundreds of people in the carpark who are there because they want to be there, because they love the game. The moment people start playing for the paycheck, I'm going to play dischoops.

The Luckiest Unlucky Streak of My Life.

2008-06-03T22:07:00.003+10:00

I have missed an opportunity to play NUFL 1 and 2 becuase of my ruined knee which would have been am amazing chance to improve to my game and get some awesome frisbee experience. I missed out on ECC tryouts which would have been awesome fun, and I have missed out on that team.

I have lost a lot of my fitness, I was the fittest I'd ever been coming back from Junior's training camp asnd Kai's crazy fakulti fitness and worst bit was I wanted to run more than ever on day 4 of nationals, the first time I've wanted to run on the last day of a tournament...

Im not sure I'm going to be ok to properly try out for Usyd's unigames team or train with our new youth nat's team.

On the other hand, I have played a bit less poker recently but have had the luckiest stream of cards over my past 100 hands that I cannot believe (100 hands is very very short term and is no where near enough to let your variance even out in terms of having shitty hands and getting your share of good hands.

In the past 100 hands, I have flopped quads two times, along with several flushes, full houses (with junky hands) and a happy variety of top two pairs and triples. The quads though is unbelievable.

In the past night, which would have only have been about 45 hands over 3 hours I was dealt pocket queens, pocket 10's pocket 2's (flopped quads - unfortunately had folded preflop becuase of too much action in front) and pocket aces, as well as flopping a full house off big blind and a flush.

Really its the quads that blew my mind, the rest can happen often enough but the quads is crazy.

So I guess despite the bad luck of getting ripped up in frisbee losing all my fitness and missing out on some awesome games... other things get lucky.

Marking Time

2008-06-02T19:10:00.004+10:00

So it has been brought to my attention that most of the Sydney juniors suffer from a mystical disease known as 'weak mark-itis' whereby we hold extremely weak marks.

Hah. I scoffed as I was informed of this. My marks are fantastic. I have never been broken in my entire ultimate career!

But it's true. I did always hold a weak mark. Or, perhaps 'soft' is a better term for it - weak kind of implies that I get broken a lot, and while it certainly happens, it is not like I am failing at my basic imperative of holding the force. By a soft mark, I mean:

I will giving disc space, possibly a little bit more.
Not biting overly on fakes.
Keeping my hands low, and relatively static.

I believe this is serviceable, and in my experience of being marked it seems this is how most people do hold a force. However as a thrower it really does not put very much pressure on, if at all. Depending on the size of the person marking this way, a throw will not have to be released with much pivot, or very low, effectively ensuring that all the throws made from this sort of mark are at a high percentage.

There's a lot more that you can do as a marker to pressure the thrower into resorting to lower percentage throws without compromising some basic tenets:

Never intentionally foul the thrower.
Never lose balance (sprinting too hard to the mark, layout bids or committing to fakes).

Get a lot closer. Really bump and grind. See if you can't make babies with their team strip. In Australian ultimate (perhaps because by and large aggressive forces are not held) 'disc space' and 'straddle' are not calls one often hears. If they are not going to call it, exploit. Essential etiquette: tell them after the point to call it. Same goes for double team. That's really the only 'revolutionary' adjustment I have had made to my personal marking technique, the rest is stock standard. Hop around on your toes, flash your arms across to stop throws. You know. The usual. Without a doubt, a mark of this kind makes it a lot harder for the offense to play inside their comfort zone.

But there are also some things to watch for. That extra 10-30cm of distance you are closer makes you a lot easier to break. The thrower can step forward (even only slightly, without fouling you!) to deliver a punishing I/O throw. The O/I flick blade (if the thrower is competent enough) is extra punishing because, at such a proximity, all the thrower needs to do is extend his or her arm slightly behind and around the mark. With this in mind, my tendency would be to shade slightly more to the break side than I would with my standard mark, while really watching to discourage that I/O flick break with your pointblock hand.

Your D-Line Is Not Your O-Line

2008-05-22T00:18:00.006+10:00

This is sort of a mesh together of my experiences playing for Fakulti at NUFL1 and browsing over slides from UCPC.

Your D-line is not your O-line. Sounds really simple, but has pretty far-reaching implications. For a team like Fakulti - and, I'm presuming, any elite team - the offence (don't matter if it relies on big hucks with massive takes from 6"11 playmakers or a speedy in-cut game like Buzz) is worked out. Tweaked. Taken apart, worked with, tested to see what works and what doesn't. It can take weeks or a season or many seasons to find out what works best for your team and their skillsets. You'll find that D players will participate in this O structuring, and it will rub off on them. But:

Your D-line is not your O-line. Ultimate is all about recognising weakness and exploiting it. For a defence, the biggest single weakness to exploit is the seconds immediately surrounding a turnover. The regimented, start-from-the-stack, lets-call-a-play (could be an isolation, could just be 'horro') option merely gives the opposition the chance to adjust and recall how to play defence.

I can recall two contrasting experiences with the same club in the same season: Fakulbee, at Nationals, calling an isolation play after a turnover and getting nowhere, is one, whereas Fakulti, at NUFL, using the fast break and scoring 5-6 goals with almost sickening ease. This isn't just because one team was better than the other - the iso play was working, after all - but because it shows two approaches to a D-line offence; one static, one dynamic.

Ben Wiggins has some slides up on the UCPC website. I wasn't at UCPC so I have no idea what they actually meant or what he said to describe them, but the important lesson I learned from them was about converting with your D line. The D-line should exploit the fast break. That doesn't mean a speccy huck to the endzone with marker on the disc, either. It just means getting the disc moving as quickly as possible, with the aim being to catch the opposition's O-line defence off-guard. That isn't all: the D-line should look for - or at least consider - options a disciplined offence would not necessarily choose: the breakside hammer to the endzone, high floaty break throws to achieve power position, the works. Unconventional, unorthodox methods of moving the disc achieve a greater degree of viability precisely because your defenders are not defensive players.

Once play becomes stagnant and starts to resemble the ho/vert stack of your O-line, it doesn't mean your team isn't going to convert, it just means that the advantage you were given is now nullified.

T.

Playing Outside your Competitive Environment

2008-05-17T19:27:00.002+10:00

Last Wednesday was the Sydney Uni interfaculty Ultimate Frisbee Comp, I didn't really get a chance to play properly becuase of my injury, but still got to fat handle for a game and a little bit before my knee started playing up and I stopped.

Signed up for the Economics and Business Faculty, there was two people who played on my team who had played frisbee before and we played against Arts Faculty which had Mike Tarn on it and a few other people who had played before.

I played a little bit Arts vs. Education. Education was basically all PE teachers who were very athletic but had very little disc skills, I was a bit disappointed at how Arts played despite their frisbee experience. Education had huck and hope, lay out d's and and straight line speed. Arts had experience, cleats, and Mike Tarn (whose could do pretty much whatever he wanted becuase of the level of play) However before I left education had started winning. With their fast give and go's, and getting D off Lazy arts players.

I was really disappointed at the lack of adaptability at the time. I saw one guy with cleats against a guy without cleats, several times he saw the guy fall over becuase he just stopped and turned around. Still the arts player would start his cuts from very far away, and try and make one straight cut with no fakes towards the disc, becuase of the distance he started away. The education player could not turn but could beat him in a straight line race, and got so many d's without the arts player realising how to abuse his strengths. Arts had used a huck to a runner strat becuase of lazy defense against Econ and Business and still against education used it again despite educations height and straight line speed, this didn't work, when it would have been so easy for mike and one other player to move the disc up the field with just some good handler cuts.

Then again, probably thinking too hard for what wasn't all that serious of an occasion. It's like those times when I mark people in Frisbee that are so much faster than me, but I'm still able to keep up with them since they never realise that they are quick enough to just beat me in a footrace every time and so never abuse this. The same goes for people who have amazing turns, or a lot of height. Some people don't take what they are given.

So I guess its still take what you are given...

The highlight though was the Law faculty vs. Science Faculty, although this was a middle game being a knockout it effectively became the finalsince the other side of the draw had no competition on it.

Law featured names such as Simon Baume, Dave Rountree, and Sam Schroder (spelling? I think thats his name) and some other very solid players I forgot the names of. While science was fielding players like Brett Latham and Pete Liddicoat. It was a great game to watch. Science struggled as Pete was trying to lace his cleats up as Brett cried at him to hurry up becuase Sam was hucking the crap out of them.

I never really had a chance to see Pete play in a sort of unrestricted way without the constraints of teamwork and so on. Sure, I saw him winning at Nationals playing for faculty, but really that was uninteresting, dump, swing, safe secure passes, very clinical offense and solid defense... extremely solid play, but in some ways uninteresting to watch.

This on the other hand was about taking stupid risks and watching cool stuff happen. It was always Sam on Pete and I never really saw how well Pete could throw until then when it was basically just Pete hucking to team, or Sam hucking to team.

I noticed a lot of inside out,extremely wide reach low forehands and one fake that I found beutiful. There was a turn in the Law endzone, someone tried to take advantage of using the fast break by cutting deep (his defender was too far away becuase he was so far behind on the turn) expecting a huck to come quickly from Pete. A little miscommunication and Pete hasn't realised the hilariously open cut and so walked patiently over to the disc. Sam realised and put on a hard straight up mark.

Pete tried to stretch out wide for the inside out flick. Sam bit hard... no huck.
Then Pete seemed to for just the perfect amount of time, stretch out that little bit further that said "If you don't bite, I'm going to throw it, if you do bite I'm going to throw it" just holding the disc out there. Sam bites. Pete with his great balance and reach is able to step back across for a full wind up backhand. There was no doubt this time what he was going to do.

Great throw...

Chicks Mate

2008-05-12T13:30:00.003+10:00

Last weekend some Thunder boys (Phil, Max, Lex, Jackson, Josh, Sali and myself) and some star recruits (Eshan, Sam and Xavier from Chatswood High School, Luke from Thunder 06) were punching bags for the Women's team, the Firetails. This involved playing them in a game to 17.

Let's get things straight. I like women, and I really like women's ultimate.

The Firetails are a way better team than BLAMP (our name when we played them). We managed to pull out a win 17-16 (thanks Lisi). I think a lot of this was due to them not playing at 100% for fear of injury, and the fact that they'd been training extremely hard for the whole weekend. Most of BLAMP had fresh legs.

The Firetails have some very solid players. Though I was very impressed with perennial standouts Diana Worman and Liz Edye, also I'm going to have to single out Jo McClellan and Belinda Kinneally. The juniors were not supposed to be playing at 100% but I'm not (really all that) ashamed to say that marking the latter two really took it out of me. I'm tempted to blame it on my lack of fitness and rib injury making it harder to breathe deeply, but regardless of the reason those two girls were really tough to mark and kept up a good standard of play even though they must have been ragged from the end of the weekend.

On a slightly more important scale, I was really impressed by the Firetails team game. They played a very aggressive straight up defence, and their sideline let each woman on the mark know what was happening without flooding the air with useless yelling. There was a lot of intelligent switching from their end, which I really liked. They really worked us on some iso/sandshoe/feldy type offences, and after about an hour of gametime (after which most of us were out of sprint juice, somewhat negating the physiological advantage we had over some of them) their man defence was pretty strong.

I'm not sure exactly what they wanted to work on, because I'm not in their team - I should have asked! - but I really wanted to see them let loose their long game. They generally did not throw it long against us, unless it was to Mama or a blatant mismatch/no defender. It wasn't a huge downside to their game - what they were doing was working well enough, after all.

T.

Plagiarism, and Geelong

2008-05-07T09:00:00.003+10:00

At uni recruitment drives for Mac ultimate frisbee, my 'tactic' was, for the first few days, throw a slow forehand to anyone walking near the sports tent who was wearing any sort of athletic shoes, thus testing their reflexes. If they caught the disc or dodged appropriately, I would approach them and ask them to play ultimate.

After day one, I ditched this tactic in favour of throwing hammers into crowds and at hot women.

The question I got asked quite a lot when meeting folk at Nats was 'so what sport did you play before frisbee?'. (soccer, for those of you playing at home). So here is my list of sports and what, in my limited experience, they can bring to potential ultimate players.

Soccer. It brings fitness, footwork and has a similar stuttered sprint-stop-jog pattern of play.
Netball. Girls who play netball don't travel with the disc, generally have wider pivots and better balance, but also generally have a truckload of injuries. Rapid change of direction is suited to Ultimate, but avoid juking! Netball helps the vertical.
Ice Hockey. Brings field sense, insane leg strength for both sprint juice and vertical. Unfortunately brings the bad habit of full on contact when going for the disc.
Athletics. Seem obvious? Undoubtedly, the fitness is a big plus. However, I know quite a few decent marathon runners who just can't adapt to frisbee. No point being able to run 100% on day four of Nationals if your 100% is someone else's 30%.
Field hockey. Fitness, yes. Vertical, no. Field sense, yes, in a big way. The decent amount of hockey players that have turned to frisbee that I know seem to have an intuitive grasp of concepts like the stack, and zone defence. Whether this is because of their hockey upbringings or their athletic nature I don't quite know.
Basketball. If someone has played basketball, recruit them. Chances are they are tall, fast, can jump and catch. Like netball, most do bring injuries with them.
League/Union. League is probably more suited to Ultimate than union, just in terms of body type. Ultimate, being non contact, doesn't need the bulk of union but the sprinting and dexterity required to break through a line of defensive players translates very well in terms of cutting.

Now the big sport (at least for Australian frisbee players) that I've left out here is AFL. In my experience, it is the sport that frisbee can best steal from. It requires a lot of fitness as well as ample sprint work, encourages huge leaps and reading the disc. Like basketball, generally played by extremely tall people. Which is why I'm very excited about Geelong going from pick up to established league! A lot of people who play frisbee, myself included, are not natural athletes. In development for the next generation of Ultimate players, I'm stoked to see what Geelong can bring to the table in terms of players who not only could succeed in Ultimate, but who could succeed in a legitimate sport.

Examples of this in a juniors context: two guys on Thunder are from Geelong, Jake-as and Lewi. Both of them are consummate athletes, and definitely have the most potential to go far from anyone on Thunder. It's not just about genetics and physiology - though that supports them in spades - it's also about attitude and commitment. Phil White is our captain, and he is a phenomenal player, but I'm yet to see him get angry or fire up. He is a consistently amazing and consistently quiet team player. Tom 'Cupcake' Tulett is the opposite. He plays perfectly for his height (I think he's 5"6?) and can fire absolutely any of us up. He gets too emotionally involved - Barefoot syndrome - and sometimes can't cope when the chips are down.

Lewi and Jake-as sit somewhere in the middle of these polar extremes. They fire up, but I'm yet to see them lose their heads. When Fakulbee were up 3-0 against Heads of State in pool play, they kept their wits about them and played well. Jake seems to be a bit more nervous, and Lewi seems a tad more inclined to egoist ultimate, but they are both very good, and better yet, still have so far to go. Can't wait, Geelong.

T.

Sydney League - A Mixed Bag?

2008-05-05T10:41:00.004+10:00

Pun in the title courtesy of Owen "Dad" Shepherd.

In Sydney, the largest Ultimate league is the Northern Suburbs League, with four divisions of roughly ten teams each. It is mixed, as are most leagues in Sydney.

The Dingoes aren't playing League this season because they have a crazy amount of other trainings to do. Thunder and Terra are discouraged from playing 'social league' and it doesn't count as a run as far as our training requirements go.

I often wonder why attempts at opens and womens leagues haven't really taken off. NUFL aside, afdastalking tells me that apart from the Brisbane Women's League and the proposed Premier League in WA, there aren't any Opens/Women's leagues this year, and the Brisbane league only had 20 players, about as much as were playing the pick up in Geelong (I will post about why Geelong excites me later on).

Now, I can understand why a mixed league is so popular during the mixed/uni season, where tournament formats are mixed - the Mundi's have a sort of rep team in division one this season, which makes sense in this, a worlds year - but it seems odd to me that there aren't even any efforts to have an open or women's league operating during Nationals season.

I was trying to think of reasons why this is so: is it just a case of (understandable) administrative fatigue? I remember some folk trying to run a women's league last year sometime (I registered as a beginner as a joke) in Sydney but it didn't take off, due to, I think, lack of players. So I can see why the powers that be would be hesitant to try again. That isn't the only sort of fatigue at play here - teams like Fakulti are training 2-3 times a week during the season, so perhaps asking folk to shell out another weeknight away from HSC/uni work/actual work/relationships with people is a bit much.

Or maybe there are larger forces at work here. Australian ultimate may still be experiencing 'growing pains' at a Worlds level, but when it comes to the schism between Mixed and Open/Womens ultimate... er, there is none? Roughly half the players at Mixed Nats last year were Nationals players, and with the exception of JD I can't think of a single person who prefers to play mixed, and even then I may have just made that up. Why is this relevant to Sydney league?

To use a scientific term, aussie ultimate is too squished. Trying to fit a proper opens season (complete with league) as well as a mixed season for the same group of players in one year is too much. There is not enough time, there are not enough people, and those people don't have enough money to make it work. What we have at the moment is viable - regionals, the odd Share the Love/April Fools tourney that are mostly neglected, followed by mass convergence at Nationals - and will probably be our best option until either people start getting paid to disc, or the numbers reach breaking point.

T.

Eat My

2008-05-02T12:15:00.004+10:00

Shorts.

I saw a lot of them at Nationals.

Fakulbee wore GAIA shorts. These cost $38 (they had a design on them, usually they're $34). Like most GAIA things that I have come in contact with, they were durable, comfortable and easy to put through the wash. As a slight downside, they are extremely heavy when wet or stained with mud. Also, going to put it out there, just a tad expensive?

I've never actually seen anyone wearing VC shorts, I don't think, but at $25 they're certainly a tad cheaper than GAIA. My previous experience with VC has been one of unbridled enthusiasm. They have excellent customer service, and they're definitely a bunch of really cool guys committed to upholding the Canadian stereotype of overly nice and informative. Feedback on their shirt material (which I really like, although it feels a bit too heavy even whilst dry) has pretty much been positive except the designs chafe.

Patagonia. Firestorm wear this, and I first experienced it last year when Robbie rubbed his Firestorm shorts in my face - although if you know Robbie and how tall he is, he was probably just trying to walk past me. Like other Patagonia items, they are extremely lightweight even whilst wet or muddy, and extremely comfortable due to their silky nature. However, like other Patagonia items, they can apparently chafe over time and are sometimes more rash vest than sports gear, while being (ironically) slightly less durable. $22 team price, $44 individual (!).

Five Ultimate: now this is one I want to try. Team Box wore these, and I'm not ashamed to say I spent most of day one and two trying to stroke Team Box players. It feels almost unnaturally soft, and according to their players had no durability issues throughout Nationals. Easy to wash, as well, and cost only $15 for a base short (so closer to $20 for numbers/design). Tempted to label this as the mithril of the ultimate gear community.

I'm not really going to draw conclusions about anything here because all of the above companies make really fine gear, I just thought I'd collect some observations from the frisbee community and do the obligatory 'gear blog'. Keep in mind Aussie readers that you'd have to jack up the price for each team member by maybe $5-10 to cover overseas shipping, which is usually somewhere along the lines of US$100-200.

T.

Nationals? Seeding.

2008-05-02T11:23:00.004+10:00

Based on everything this year, Nationals can only get better for me. I'm not slagging the TD's or anything, they did a great job, but I was injured in the lead-up, played terribly and was woefully unfit, then got injured on the second day. And there were (gasp) personal reasons, too.

As it is I don't really have any observations to make about the game itself, other than how a lack of fundamental training can really hurt your skillset, even if its only from a month's absence. I hadn't picked up a disc in a month because the throwing action hurt too much and subsequently all my throws were rubbish, even in no wind. The image of pro basketball players sinking hoops all alone for hours despite their proficiency springs to mind: these skills are called 'fundamentals' because they need to work no matter how fatigued you are. Unfortunately, we're not at the stage where we are paid to throw around in the park for hours every week, so most of us have to have a different sort of motivation.

Something else I took home from Nationals was how silly the seeding system seems to be. Granted, it works as well as a seeding system can be expected to for most years. But all of a sudden threepeat winners Chilly split x/x and HoS are seeded 1st. Everyone save HoS realised that they weren't going to retain their #1 status through Nationals (this is not slagging Heads of State, they are a great team, and while they did manage to give Fakulti the closest non-finals run Fak had at 15-9, they were never going to beat them) and they ended up 5th, which is a hot showing by the boys nonetheless.

It seems like the AFDA went through a lot of trouble to create an objective seeding system that works. By and large, this is what happened. However, the 'everyone knows everyone' nature of Australian ultimate seems to be a pretty good call for the use of a subjective seeding system (as was used for the women in Eastern Regionals: the seeds were just guesses based on who was in what team, and the guesses were 100% accurate) in years where it is clear that basing Regional seeds for Nationals on past performance isn't going to be the most accurate way of doing things.

Unfortunately no seeding system - objective or otherwise - can cure the Barefoot syndrome: lots of good players, but they don't win any games!

T.

SiF Logo

2008-05-02T09:34:00.002+10:00

Was thinking about calling our div 1 team SiF
Which would also mean we would need some kick arse shirts (even just iron on prints)
So I made up a quick logo:

Logo design is something that can take a disgustingly long time to come up with. the simple Friskee Heart logo I made for our shirts took a few days to work out, the colours, what we wanted on the design and other designs I came up with that are now gone took way too long considering the simplicity of the Friskee Heart final product. Hell even that UPA logo took some crazy amount of money to make.

Well heres the final product.

Things I've Learned about being broken

2008-04-29T18:06:00.004+10:00

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.

Just a peek of Nationals

2008-04-28T22:07:00.003+10:00

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.

Nationals!

2008-04-21T22:57:00.003+10:00

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

2008-04-21T22:40:00.003+10:00

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?

I still really like Buzz

2008-04-20T01:27:00.004+10:00

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!

My findings after lurking

2008-04-14T01:06:00.003+10:00

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!

Sydney Uni United Front for Alcohol

2008-04-13T14:12:00.003+10:00

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...

Evolution

2008-04-08T19:33:00.004+10:00

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:

Back to Basics... Learn to catch

2008-04-07T00:10:00.003+10:00

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.

Dealing with Rejection

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

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.

Thunder Announced

2008-04-03T14:18:00.004+11:00

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.

Alex Semfels Journey to Thunder is over

2008-04-02T19:31:00.003+11:00

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...

2008-04-02T17:55:00.003+11:00

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.

Funny?

2008-04-01T19:24:00.003+11:00

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."

Little Things From Camp Thunder

2008-03-31T18:30:00.004+11:00

There are a couple of ultimate-related tidbits I'd like to share with you from this weekend.

Playing with the Dingoes was the most helpful experience I've had in Ultimate. My team had Matt, and Kenny from Fakulti, Denya? (don't know who he is), Tatts from Newcastle and Tim Booth from the Gong. Here are some things I learned:

On the mark, your hips should be perpendicular to their hips. This makes break throws much harder to accomplish than what I see as the 'standard' marking position where folks tend to edge around more to the front/45 degree angle. Also, this just in from having to mark a Dingo handler: stay balanced on the mark. For shorter folks like me, keeping balance involves moving about on the mark entirely on your toes and not lunging with your arms and upper body, as this will put you off balance. The taller you get (as you get bigger/longer than the person you are marking) the more lunging you are allowed to do, as it becomes increasingly unlikely that they will be able to pivot around your body.
The benefits of having a communicative team on defence have been expounded forever, but sometimes as a defensive player in a man on man situation, your best friend is the offensive team. Despite my best efforts on D, the Dingo I was marking was getting open (hell, I'm just happy I stopped any of his cuts) but his team weren't clearing out so his 10-15m open cut didn't get rewarded at all. Conversely, if you are on offence, you don't want this happening to you. Take a second or two before cutting to look and see where players are on the field and where they are cutting. And, importantly, look at who is cutting - a tall receiver sprinting long is probably doing just that, whereas a shorter handler type sprinting long is more likely to be cutting out and then in.
Be wary of the up-the-line dump cut. While it is possibly one of the easiest and best ways to get into a power position, it also cuts off any other upfield opportunity and eliminates the possibility of the conventional backwards 'safe' dump. Although in a situation where the dump has cut up the line and the defence has stuck with him, a quick 180 by the offence for the safe backwards dump is a good option, too.
Pommy: the points in the wall don't want to be cutting off the dump option - leave that to the defender on the mark - but instead they want to be cutting off the swing. As I saw it and as I played it, 'cutting off the swing' as an off-point in a sideline trap generally meant a poaching style of play quite distant from the rest of the wall, very nearly a man defence situation. 9/10 times, poaching in this manner (sticking in between the disc and the swing) stopped that throw, and handicapped the offence something fierce. There's a very easy way to get around this though, and I was annoyed when nobody on offence adjusted: when the off-point is repositioned thus, the wall is no longer as effective at containing. Crashes are far easier, and there are even (for a skilled handler) several throwing lanes that normally would be stopped by an off-point in a tight wall with no gaps suddenly made available.
All weekend I was being consistently chumped on by taller, fitter and faster 14-16 year olds. The '10 juniors team is going to be very, very strong indeed.

Those masters...

2008-03-31T12:25:00.002+11:00

Just stumbled upon this:
http://www.revolutionhealth.com/healthy-living/mens-health/gym/stay-fit/exercise-aging?msc=A62902

get fit and stay fit!
depressing though, I wont always be this young and energetic :(

Camp Memories ...

2008-03-30T22:12:00.003+11:00

Camp memories, before I forget them.

I wanted to try and mark handlers on d a bit more since I seem to know where they go a little bit more (plus they usually run less)

I was marked up against buttons probably about 20m outside of the endzone around the middle, force backhand.

No clean cuts are coming in, and I'm thinking dont get broken by buttons, dont get broken by buttons, as hard as it is to do, he breaks all day long.

Its about stall seven, when I feel this brush against my neck touching my hair coming over my right shoulder, his right hand forehand side. its too low for a hammer so I think what the hell was that.

Blade, back right corner, straight past my head over my shoulder high release.

I mean damn, thats creative handling.

Also, the 1km run and then throws was probably the second worst feeling ive ever had from fitness training. sore and wanted to throw up then had to throw test!