Team selections and the Ultimate Results Coaching Academy Conference

The first ever Ultimate Results Coaching Academy Conference has been run.

Melissa Witmer is one of a new breed: an ultipreneur, carving out a career in our little sport. She organised the conference that ran last week, allowing people around the world to watch presentations online delivered by the likes of Tim Morrill, Ben Wiggins and Ren Caldwell.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to deliver a talk.

My presentation was on Team Selections. To give you an idea of what I covered, my topics were:

• Number of selectors
• Planning your work
• Communication with candidates
• Deposits
• Pro­active recruiting
• Gathering information
• Observing player candidates
• Managing information
• Providing feedback
• Announcing the team
• Player dismissal
• Player application form 

If you get in quick, you can purchase access to all these talks, and the handouts, before the price goes up. I personally am keen to watch all the talks that I couldn't this week. If you are a coach or selector for your club, ask them to pay for access. Seems like a good investment for your club. To give you more of a taste, Skyd has a review. And I'll be blogging more about selection this week.

The Wisdom of Crowds

James Surowiecki wrote a book entitled "The Wisdom of Crowds".

He postulates that a diverse group of independent individuals generally make better decisions than even the smartest individual in the group. Even the less valuable members bring new information to the decision making process, and help create a better decision.

His examples include stock markets, web page ranking, car manufacturing industry, sports betting markets and ant colonies.

This concept has a really strong application in one particular aspect of ultimate.

This aspect often has suboptimal decision making by a group that is too small and not diverse enough.

The aspect is: selecting a team.

At several Australian University Games, I have been a selector of the Green and Gold team, an honorary All-Star team that would theoretically represent Australia in an international university competition. The selections are based solely on performance at this one tournament.

This is a challenging team to select. Most selectors have other roles at the same time: tournament director or coach of a particular team. And they have limited time to watch games.

The most useful piece of input comes from the wisdom of crowds.

Here is one way to do it: near the end of the tournament, ask one or two senior players on each team to write a list of the players they would select for the Green and Gold team. Ask them to consult teammates.

Of the eight teams in Division 1, you now have eight lists. And the cumulative information is very valuable.

Firstly, biases are apparent. Each list nominated by a particular team tends to have several players from that team. Obviously senior players see their teammates play more, and overestimate their performance a little. But these biases are easily spotted, once you look at all the lists: Fred may get a vote from his captain, but potentially none from other teams.

Secondly, you gain information on games the selectors never saw. If no selector saw Team B play Team C, yet Team B says there is a worthy player from Team C, you now have new input.

In summary, this voting system is valuable for gathering the wisdom of the tournament. Input is gathered from more games than any selection committee can watch. It is more time efficient. And it highlights biases that captains or selectors (who may be team coaches) have.

If you have to select a team, consider asking a diverse group of informed players for their teams. The wisdom gained may be very eye-opening.

Specific feedback for your D game

Following on from a List of Offence Skills in ultimate, here is a...


List of Defence Skills

Players create defensive pressure by

1. guarding cutters wherever they go (tightly guard deep cuts; guard in cuts; guard dump cuts; guard throw and go cuts)
2. marking the thrower (stop early throws by getting a force on early; hold a force to limit break throws; mark with agility and energy)
3. pulling the disc (throw into the alpha zone regularly; not give up bricks; pull strongly against the wind) 
4. adjusting to where other defenders are (switch; push cutters into crowded places like the stack or someone clearing)
5. moving to defend other cutters (poach effectively when their cutter does not draw them away; clog the open side, break side, deep and under as needed)
6. moving at the right time (run down the field when the cutter watches a huck; defend the dump position early; adjust guarding position early so the cutter doesn't blow past)
7. being athletic (guard quality players for long periods of a game; block swill that is high or wide; outrun cutters; outaccelerate cutters)
8. working within the team D structure (know and use the team's patterns; don't require teammates to change their mark or guarding unnecessarily)

Most of these correlate with stopping the eight things the offensive player wants to do.

With eight categories listed, it is now easy to choose, say, two strengths and two aspects to work on. This keeps feedback concise, but more specific than "work on your throws and cutting".

Suggestions?

Specific feedback for your O game

Giving quality feedback in ultimate can be challenging.

Here is a draft of a list that can help selectors, coaches and team leaders give more meaningful feedback to players than "work on your throws and cutting".

Each dotpoint has some specific examples after it.


List of Offence Skills

Players create easy offence by

1. throwing to teammates wherever they are (throw hucks; throw hammers)
2. throwing to make teammates open (throw break or open-side to favour teammates, not defenders)
3. throwing quickly (throw as soon as an opportunity appears; prevent the defence from getting a mark on)
4. throwing safely (keep throwing completion rate high; seeing where defenders and help-defenders are)
5. moving to make teammates open (clear the break side, open side, deep and under as needed; regularly draw their defender with them)
6. moving at the right time (run downfield while their defender watches a huck; get to dump position early; cut one way then another at the right time for the next pass)
7. being athletic (catch swill that is high or wide; outrun defenders; outaccelerate defenders)
8. working within the team O structure (talk to teammates on field; know and use the team's patterns; don't ask teammates to make hard throws or cuts with your cuts or throws)

With eight categories listed, it is now easy to choose, say, two strengths and two aspects to work on. This keeps feedback concise, but specific.

Try them out on yourself now!

Any skills to add or change?

From the sidelines: The Unselected

The first 13 years of my ultimate career were a bit of a dream run. A number of factors gave me the chance to appear on representative teams for my state and country. I was on University Green and Gold teams, the Dingoes, and was selected to the demo games that have been held at Halibuts, Nationals and Melbourne Hats.

The last 12 months have been a turn-around – I have regularly joined the ranks of the unselected and benched.

Despite being a perspective that hasn't changed my opinions on selection events, methods and selectors, it has given me experience with emotions and thoughts of being on the outside, looking in. Indeed, I regularly considered that perspective when writing the AFDA Rep teams policy and Selectors Manual for the AFDA recently (useful for any team!).

The current example is that I am here in Colombia playing with a club team, Comunidad de Oso. I am a big unknown for Colombian players – overseas pickups are rare here, in comparison, to say Australia, where almost every university and club team has a recently arrived North American player.

Adding to the mix is that in games, every line is called. This a change from the self-managed playing time systems that I have usually experienced. In the past, those times when there have been lines called, it has been me calling them most of the time, as a captain or a coach, so when I do go to the bench, I have at least consulted myself!

So a few poor points in one training and one game have seen me down at the far end of the bench. I have aimed to take constructive steps: get a clear picture from the leadership of their thoughts, dump my frustration on friendly ears who will listen, be present if needed on-field, get some sideline Ds with talking, and get ready and in the right mindset for the next opportunity to show my game.

Let's see how the situation pans out from here...

Growing pains

Down under, we are facing some growing pains.

In the old days, if you wanted to compete in an event, you pretty much could, whether that was league, or playing for Australia. No broken hearts back then, but no World Championship medals either.

But now some of our players and teams who make a concerted effort (time, effort, money, dreams) are missing out. There is more competition among players seeking to play at certain levels: leagues, club teams, demo games, representing Australia, even getting to play the Melbourne Hat.

We have partly addressed or dodged this problem at times as our sport grows: increasing team numbers at AUGs, larger Nationals, more players per team, more Australian representative teams (six this year compared to two in 1998).

And it isn't comfortable to turn away someone when Aussie ultimate is such a social community, the player is a mate, and they are used to playing if they want to.

But I do feel we can move to accepting the systems where teams and players have to qualify to play. It will require bringing more professional approaches into our volunteer organisations: documenting and publicising qualification requirements, using late fees to encourage early payment/deposits, giving volunteers clearly defined job descriptions and responsibilities, writing selection policy, etc.

I've missed on Australian teams and Green & Gold teams. And I know that not all my friends can be selected to represent Australia at WUGC2008.

So how to deal with not achieving a goal which lies partly in the hands of others?

I feel that Americans often embrace the story of the comeback - a player who doesn't make the cut on a sports team recognises that competing for spots makes the team strong, and will work hard to qualify next time. And this is a good thing. Many of their cultural stories and touchstones relate to falling short then getting back up again: Michael Jordan, John Travolta, Al Gore, Apple and Steve Jobs. Writers can even see such stories coming and how they will turn out.

So for the individuals missing out on qualifying for Nationals/making an Australian team/playing Division 1 league, what now?

There are others in the same boat - chat with them.

Get feedback on how to improve your chances next time.

Readjust your goals. If your team doesn't qualify for Nationals, plan for NZ Open, Kaimana, or Walkabout events. If you don't make an Australian team in 2008, think about joining the support teams, or going to Asia-Oceania Championships or Beach Worlds (as some folks did). Or reset your focus on the next opportunity to make that team/tournament.

And keep working.