Australian Ultimate Championships 2009 - a HoS perspective

This Nationals campaign was a long and rewarding one for the young Heads of State club.

Our bronze medals were earnt through some hard yakka and good planning.



Here are some of the features of our campaign this year:

• Our fitness program and training camps started back in November, making it a 6 month long journey to Nationals.
• We articulated our goals for the season, revisited them and measured them.
• Building on previous seasons, we had feedback sessions where players got considered feedback from the team selectors.
  
• We again took a second team to Regionals and again helped turn around games with sheer forceful sideline support.
• Kaimana Klassik (and Hollywood Husak) met HoS.
• HoS also did some recruiting from overseas this year. Stout provided so much to our team in the few weeks he was in Australia - unending confidence, a head sock, humility, backhand hucks, and the desire and ability to guard every star cutter in the land. Check him out accompanied by Queen or Aladdin. And our other Yank, Eric was Mr Versatile Handler when he finally got back from injury. He also is a sideline maestro - unbelievable commitment.

At the tournament itself, I felt we had successes:

• We had carved out clear expectations of playing time, and roles for players.
• Boo Boo was our invaluable statistician and advisor at Nationals giving us valuable live stats on what was working and what wasn't.
• Simple routines for timeouts (and regular use of them) without putting the team into the Chamber of One Person Talking Endlessly
• We enjoyed the routine of getting in the cold pool each evening for recovery, even if certain individuals still squeal
• HoS beat every team we played at least once, except the 4-time National Champions
• Mixing up the defensive looks when our opponents got comfortable
• Providing routine in our warm-ups that rehearsed how we wanted to play (there's that word again: routine)
• Having predictable, rehearsed actions to take when we need to alter lines (for example, bringing certain throwers over to the D line in windy games, using crunch lines at certain points)

Good work for a team with an average age of 22 (sorry lads - with me on board, the average shifts up from 21).

OK, enough patting our own backs. There is a world more to learn in our next campaign: Nationals and then World Clubs 2010 in Prague...

Prague - Photo by pavelm

Starting a season

Last weekend, Heads of State had their first event of the season, a training camp out at Halls Gap.

Our season will culminate in Nationals at the end of April: about 5 months long in total.

Having a camp to start the season is great because you can set your team up for a successful campaign. You've got a whole weekend to work with, and a chance to be with your team without the daily distractions of life.

We set goals for the team, we planned, we did skill and fitness benchmarking, we welcomed and introduced new players, we set expectations for training commitment, and we got excited about what we're gonna do.

If your team doesn't start the season with a plan and expectations that the team knows, you are playing blind.

Ro and Dan atop the mountain we climbed