Strange Cousins From The East

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...

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!

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

JD

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!)

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

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?

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?