Your defensive mindset

Each time you play defence, you should have a focus for what you, as an individual, plan to do on defence.

There are many factors that influence your choice: previous points in the game, what your leadership has set as a focus, what the offence is trying to do, who you are guarding, and what your personal strengths and weaknesses are.

Some guarding tactics are:

• cover my player cutting under
• cover my player cutting deep
• look to be a help defender on deep throws
• look to be a help defender on short throws
• stay physically really close to my player
• clog the passing lanes
• interfere with the offence's set plays

And there are marking tactics too:

• stand off the thrower
• bait a handblock
• force to make the inside break harder
  
• force to make the around break harder
• hold a constant force
• move around with the thrower as they rotate to find a dump
• hassle the hammer
• go clown-crazy hyperactive
• change the tempo of your mark (from a passive, flat-footed stance, to an active, moving stance as the count increases)
  

Know what you want to do. Smart defenders will think about what approach they can use, reflect on how it worked, and adapt.

Just chasing your player around the field produces seven games of one-on-one. Team defence is far more powerful, and it starts with individuals having flexibility in how they play defence.

Hint

I like how every time I am writing a new post for this blog, I see a link next to "Posting" and "Settings" that reminds me to "Layout".

How to present to humans

I have an amateur interest in graphic design.

I figure that this ties into ultimate. Ultimate is quite the grassroots sport - the players are the administrators, coaches, referees, and recruiters. And when it comes to recruiting, you need to communicate clear ideas to the ultimate community or wider world, often through print, powerpoint, websites or video.

Most of us have zero training in design. If we design something, we just dump the information into the Word document or PowerPoint template, fiddle with a couple of borders or pictures til it looks a little nicer, and go with it. Passion for your topic will partly make up for lack of expertise!

But if you would like to really make your message more powerful, a few simple principles can make a big difference. And help you stand out from the crowd.

So from one of the blogs I read, Presentation Zen, I thought I would share an intro to presentation design and delivery.

It is a short pdf, that is a great reference for when you design your next PowerPoint, poster or flier for ultimate.

If you have to give a presentation, talking and visuals, and you decide to use PowerPoint, then you need to learn about Really Bad Powerpoint (and how to avoid it), from Seth Godin.

We can do better than this.

The biggest idea I took away was knowing the difference between what an audience member hears in your presentation, what they see in your presentation, and what they physically take away (e.g. a handout) from your presentation.

These three things should be very, very different, but with a cohesive overall message. Using the advice in the above pdfs, preparing your materials will actually take less time.

Personally, I have sat through too many lectures this semester where the lecturer shows slabs of text on a screen, read the same slabs of text, then hands out those same slabs of text as printouts. Has this happened to you?

I may as well print them out and read them at my own pace at home (and have actually taken that option regularly)!

If I give you my presence and attention, make it worth my time to be there!

2008 Uni Games Part 3 - the point differentials

In Part 2 of my Uni Games review, I looked at the five teams with the best point differential per game.

Team A: +7.9
Team B: +5.4
Team C: +4.6
Team D: +3.5
Team E: +3.5

These teams were, in order, Sydney Uni, Flinders, Monash, UWA, Adelaide.

Most folks guessed Sydney at the top correctly, then it was a mix of correct and incorrect guesses.

Here is a graph. All game results and the graph are here. Scores came from AFDA.

The teams are ordered left to right by where they finished the tournament. So Flinders (1st) is the left most column, Sydney (2nd) is next, then Adelaide, Melbourne and so on all the way across to QUT (19th).

The point differential measured here is good predictor of ability, in a single number.

Let's look at an example. Deakin had 5 wins and 6 losses for the tournament. Meanwhile La Trobe went 5-5. They seem pretty close? I mean La Trobe only finished one spot higher. Actually, La Trobe was losing games to the best teams by only a few points, and generally thumping low teams. While Deakin never got closer than 6 points to a top 8 finishing team.

The point differential shows this: La Trobe +3.1 and Deakin -2.6.

What else do we notice?

Flinders had a point differential of +5.4, lower than Sydney Uni (+7.9), who had swept through all their opponents more easily than anyone else. So Flinders' win in the final can be considered an upset, given Sydney's scoring ability.

Melbourne Uni, the team that finished 4th, finished higher than point differential would predict, while Monash finished lower (7th). Melbourne's one-point victory in the quarterfinal (the single game that changes final position the most) over Monash was responsible for that.

Point differential isn't strictly comparing apples with apples. Some players get injured. Some teams rest their stars for parts of games. And the teams did not play all other opponents.

What is consistent is that the top 8 teams played 3-4 pool games, 4-5 crossover games against strong opponents, and then 3 games against strong opponents. So comparisons between them are pretty reliable. Latrobe, Deakin, Murdoch and Ballarat had a different run, playing 3 weaker opponents to finish the tournament. La Trobe, in particular, feasted on RMIT and ECU on Thursday (15-2 wins both games) while the top 8 teams were playing strong opponents.

The remaining 7 teams had weaker opponents for the majority of the tournament.
 
A glance at the graph of point differential does show 9 elite teams though, that matches well with subjective observation at the tournament.

And the graph does point out how much better ANU were than their final finishing place of 15th.

Is point differential useful? Well, next time you are at tournament and want to predict the outcome of key games such as semis and finals, check out the scoring margins from previous games. There will always be occassional upsets, but on average, the team with a higher point differential goes through.

2008 Uni Games Part 2 - the stars and the final

I only got to see some of the players in action at AUG, but I was impressed with BJ and Karen on Adelaide. Chris Lavis, Ellie Sparke and Tegan were guns for Newcastle - a team I thought would do strongly in the semis, but never made it. Twiggy was a standout for UWA. And Gamble was potentially the best player at the tournament.

I was really looking forward to watching Sydney Uni in the final. I hadn't got to play or watch them all week during their undefeated run. Plus I coached them for over four years, so I have lots of connections to the club. The game itself was a surprise, or it least it seemed to be.

The Sydney Uni team that had walked over every other team at the tournament wasn't to be seen. Flinders got on top and never let up. Sydney Uni couldn't stop the Joel to Alec connection, either by 1) stopping Joel catching the disc, 2) hassling Joel's throws with the mark or 3) guarding Alec up field.

They clearly didn't have anyone who could do 3), and the zone they used wasn't as useful as, say, a straight up force for acheiving 2). But failing to do 1) was a mystery. Joel doesn't have a single healthy leg joint, and barely made a strong cut to get the disc. Sending one or maybe even two strong defenders after Joel would have at least pushed Flinders to change their offence a little.

The way Joel threw over the zone to a running Alec irrespective of the defenders made me analyse how I have played against zones. Perhaps this is a new tactic I will try: float looping throws to an elite receiver who is running straight line cuts upfield, and bank on the receiver skying the static zone defenders. I can add it to the list.

An elite male thrower with some targets will trump a deep team in the mixed competition of AUGs. Check out the history: Joel Pillar, Johnny Mac, Matt Dowle, Pete Gardner, and Jonno Holmes have lead their teams to almost all of the last 10 titles, irrespective of who had the deeper team or better women.

Perhaps the surprise wasn't Joel's team triumphing, but why they lost to Sydney in the pool rounds.

Now on to some team stats.

You can compare teams by looking at the points scored for and against them.

The AFL shows this as a percentage (%), ie points for divided by points against, multiplied by 100%.

The NRL shows this as points differential (PD), ie points for minus points against.

The NBA shows this as a differential (diff), ie points for minus points against, divided by games played.

Since teams at AUG 2008 played different numbers of games, I'm going with the NBA format.

The best five teams' differentials at AUG 2008 were:
Team A: +7.9
Team B: +5.4
Team C: +4.6
Team D: +3.5
Team E: +3.5

Your challenge: guess who teams A, B, C, D and E are.

Post your guesses in the comments.

In my next post, I'll reveal the team's identities, and explain more about the strengths and weaknesses of this stat.

2008 Uni Games Part 1 - my personal rollercoaster

This week just gone I played at the 2008 Australian University Games in Melbourne. It was an amazing rollercoaster of a ride, and one of the most memorable ones ever. I entered the week thinking it would be another enjoyable tournament, with a little more excitement than usual, and came out of it emotionally and physically hammered (in mostly satisfying ways).

Uni Games should be old hat for me: I have attended 8 out of 11 Uni Games or Uni Championships, as either player or coach. Across the years, the teams I have been on have won medals of every colour, or come close. Every year I meet old friends and make new mates.

But this year was incredible. My team, Monash, bought into the team vibe in an big way, from their enthusiasm for warming-up to their constant cheering of each other. The rookies and veterans both inspired me with their dedication. There was banner-making, dancing, cheering, glowsticks and team dinners. We had an Indonesian fanclub.

My teammates improved in amazing ways through the tournament. On Wednesday morning, I was grinning in delight to myself at their ability to consistently execute a warm-up drill in the blustery wind. A warm-up drill!

We all put a lot of energy into preparing, playing, cheering, and recovery. Not to mention a bit of partying. After playing limited field time in my previous two tournaments, I played a lot at this one, with fatigue only really hurting my play in the last few points of Wednesday and Thursday afternoons.

My team played five nail-biting last-point-wins games during the tournament, including a 6 point comeback win over UWA. Exhilirating and exhausting. We lost only two games all week, by 1 point and 3 points. But they were the wrong games - we finished 7th out of 19 teams.

We invested a lot into this team, and I wanted to see my teammates rewarded with a good finish for their effort, but it didn't happen this time.

After such effort and to miss out on the semi-finals, my mind has constantly been replaying those little factors in those 2 losses, and pondering the what-ifs. Normally I am pretty good about accepting a loss and moving on. After the 2005 Nationals final (scoring 4 consecutive points with Fakulti to draw level with Chilly then losing that last point on a hail-mary throw to Gack), I was at peace. There were two good teams, we had our chance in the last point with the disc, and I was proud of our efforts. No regrets.

Likewise after losing the 2005 World Games final. We had only 5 turnovers in the game. I didn't throw or catch a goal, but was proud of my team's efforts and my performance. That silver medal was a big accomplishment for Australian ultimate.

Those Uni Games losses though: a heavy weight. The support that Monash gave each other during the week is a mighty salve though.

We must be cool

Look what image is being used to sell Apple computers these days...

 

I guess their marketing department thinks we're not PC. And that we play in jeans.

"But I thought we would..."

Sometimes you experience several lessons on a topic before you feel you learn something.

I think Worlds 2008 gave me a few more lessons on a topic I thought I knew, but actually have much more to learn about.

Expectations.

Each of the six Australian teams at Worlds had to deal with unexpected surprises. Things that threatened to put a spanner in the works. In fact, the ones I am thinking of are six very different surprises.

The teams got to North America... and boom!

Events happened. People reacted. And for some teams, the players weren't clear on what should be done, or what others expected to happen.

Setting expectations is a key task for a coach. There are numerous ways to do this.

• Have a team meeting at the beginning of the campaign. Ask players what they want out of the experience. What would be unenjoyable? What would be exciting? What are the risks?
  
• Draw on past experiences. Discuss what happened last year with leadership.
  
• Group discussion of scenarios. Print out simple, realistic scenarios on slips of paper. Discuss in pairs, then come together to discuss as a team.
• Meet with coaches of other teams and find out what they have experienced, and how they plan.
  

You need mental toughness, but you also need systems. What have you seen go wrong? What steps have you taken that will ensure your team knows what to do if the wheels fall off?

Getting functional

I am really interested in doing more functional training.

Here's one quote from this book: "In functional training, it is as critical to train the specific movement as it is to train the muscles involved in the movement."

For instance in Monash's training today, we incorporated sprints with turns (for cutting in the game) and skipping (for jumping in the game).

We then did the kill drill, for a full body workout and to condition the body to throw when fatigued.

I think I really have to go make that weighted disc, even it is a hack job, and not useful for throwing...

End the dump squad

If a team has swung the disc across the field twice (across and back), it hasn't gained ground. Unless there is good reason to do so (e.g. it puts a strong thrower in position for a big gainer), you have risked turnovers without heading to the place you want to be: the endzone. Ideally your offence is structured so this happens a small number of times.

And I feel this is best addressed at the origin: beginners.

For the beginner, they need to build the confidence to throw forward. Being regularly urged into a 3 metre back pass by a nagging veteran is not useful. Each mistake throwing forward helps them throw better. If they can't complete simple forward passes more than 50% of the time, they need lots of throwing practice. But that is a steep learning curve they will quickly rise up.

Training beginners to only look for a backwards pass makes them predictable, limits their throwing range, puts blinkers on how they see the field (and don't we all want better field vision?), and discourages them from looking to break the force.

There are few games where a beginner is playing, and it is critical they throw their safest pass every time. If they are in a game, it is probably a good place to develop their throwing skills.

The backwards dump has its place as a reset of the offence, but only as an occassional tactic.

What's in a name?

I like how Australian representative sports teams have nicknames. In ultimate this gives you more identity.

At Worlds 2008, I was playing with the Dingos. But someone from, say, France was simply on the French Open team. Having a nickname makes your team more iconic.

Our Aussie teams are Southern Terra, Thunder, Dingos, Firetails, Barramundis, Taipans, Crocs (World Games), Salty Crocs (Beach Worlds) and Wombats (Asia-Oceania Championships).

I thought I would dig out some team names from other sports. I'm sure you can guess most of these sports if you are Aussie. Dear foreign readers - think of it as a cultural quiz.

• Hockeyroos, Kookaburras
• Rollers (gold in Beijing!), Gliders (bronze in Beijing!)
• Boomers, Opals (silver), Emus, Gems, Boomerangs, Pearls
  
• Kangaroos, Jillaroos
• Wallabies, Wallaroos
• Matildas, Young Matildas, Olyroos, Joeys, Socceroos
• Steelers (silver in Beijing!)
  
• Diamonds

Generating spin

Over at The Huddle, Paul Vandenberg talked about generating spin to throw further. He mentioned being able to flick cards sharply which can improve backhand snap.

I was reminded that we had a competition to do this at the Mundis fundraising Trivia Night. Most people, frankly, weren't very good. I think I'll bring a pack of old cards to AUGs...

The other key part to generating backhand spin is cocking the wrist back. Ken does it like crazy. He can throw a soft 5 metre pass with some major revolutions on it. I feel I can do this too, both forehand and backhand, but I lose the snap on my hucks. So I have made it a focus of my pulling practice. When that pull comes out with extra snap, the disc flies beautifully.

Mental skills

Elite coaches recognise that at the top of their sports, athletes need a large toolbox of psychological and mental skills they can draw on: adaptability, the ability to only focus on the controllable elements in the immediate present, the ability to manage emotions, mental stamina and self-confidence.

And like the physical skills, these mental skills are trained. You may luck into individuals with these skills already well developed, but you can be pretty certain that a majority of the athletes holding up medals at the Olympics this year trained their thought processes. You cannot tell an athlete to be "focussed" - it requires ongoing teaching, communication, review and appropriate challenges.

I enjoyed reading how one coach, Bob Bowman, deliberately exposed his athlete to hiccups, hurdles and pressure. He didn't comment when he noticed his athlete forgetting to take equipment to a key event. He damaged other equipment so it would be faulty during a race. This was all followed up with constant communication with his athlete about how to manage adversity.

So at the Beijing Olympics, when his goggles filled with water mid-race, and with the unbelievable expectations of winning eight golds on his shoulders, that athlete, Michael Phelps, swam on to claim the fourth gold of an eventual eight. He had faced pressure before and knew it well.

Bob Bowman has been crafting the skills of Michael Phelps for years.

And I am keen to learn about the training of Zhang Juanjuan of China, who won the Women's individual archery, to break open the 24-year long stranglehold that South Korea had held on the event. Her quarterfinal opponent was the 3rd seed - a South Korean. Her semi-final opponent was the 2nd seed - a South Korean.

Her finals opponent was the number 1 seed, reigning Olympic champion and Olympic record holder, South Korean Park Sung-Hyun. Zhang defeated her by a single point. Quite a story for someone who used to suffer target panic.

Has your team been trained to handle a wet disc, lost cleats, small fields, late transport, changing opponents, missing players, broken limbs, cyclones and anything else that happens?

The stars of Worlds

Strap on your helmet, fasten your seatbelts, we're entering Stats World...

Here are the player statistics for WUGC2008. I have put the data online as a spreadsheet too, for anyone to analyse. It is a list of the players, in order of goals caught plus assists thrown, per game played.

You can pull some interesting stories out of these numbers, despite their limitations.

Lets sift through this data a bit to find the stars of Worlds 2008.

Firstly, Juniors should be in a separate category. The junior divisions are still mostly uneven playing fields, with a wide range of abilities and athleticism on many teams. Some junior players will go on to become superstars but don't show it now, whereas the older divisions have a bit more "what you see is what you get". Many of the non-North American juniors have only been playing for 1 or 2 years.

So we'll pull them out of this list, and put them in their own category.

Now to the level of ultimate played. The big stats from players on weak teams are less representative of elite play. There is a decently sized pool of players who could throw or catch numerous goals playing with weaker players against weaker teams. But only the best can do so on a strong roster in the top pools. So I have pulled out players whose team finished in the bottom third of their division, an arbitrary cut-off point (I'm all ears for a more objective method for filtering out weak games).

Those left behind are the stars.

Somewhere down the track, WFDF may put in the manpower to track who plays which point, and we can get more reliable goals per point (GPP) and assists per point (APP) stats, as opposed to the current per game stats. Actually these current numbers are not even true GPG and APG stats as we don't know who sat out games in this list.

In this statistically measured future, I feel we need a scaling factor to account for the far larger number of possessions a player starting a point on O faces compared to a D player.

Alternatively, we need to separate the stats into Goals per Offensive Point (GPOP) and Goals per Defensive Point (GPDP), and likewise for assists.

I'll finish with some questions.

How good an indicator of player performance is points plus assists per game? I did a simple comparison to subjective opinion in 2006. The Australian selectors for World Games 2005 picked 6 men from across the country in that year. One year later, 5 of those players were in the top 6 Australian male scorers at World Clubs (I'll try and put those stats online soon too). That's a solid correlation. I am certain we can find better measures though.

How does Ultistats show this info? Does it have different stats? I can't remember what it showed when I last used it.

And lastly, does this list have anyone at the top who looks ridiculously out of place?

I believe it passes the "laugh test".

Rank	Division	Team	#	Name	Goals	Assists	Points	Avg
1	Open	JPN	12	Yohei Kichikawa	23	35	58	5.8
2	Masters	GBR	80	Merrick Cardew	23	29	52	4.73
3	Masters	NZL	46	Gary Jarvis	5	44	49	4.45
4	Open	JPN	10	Masahiro Matsuno	23	20	43	4.3
5	Masters	NZL	47	Shane Vuletich	20	26	46	4.18
6	Women	JPN	8	Sanako Inomata	12	29	41	4.1
7	Open	CAN	7	Michael Grant	21	19	40	4
8	Women	AUS	14	Diana Worman	20	22	42	3.82
9	Women	GER	44	Sara Wickström	14	24	38	3.8
10	Mixed	CAN	98	Brendan Wong	28	10	38	3.8
11	Open	VEN	11	Pablo Saade	5	32	37	3.7
12	Women	COL	37	Andrea Trujillo	15	22	37	3.7
13	Women	AUS	2	Lauren Brown	28	11	39	3.55
14	Open	SWE	17	David Wesley	31	8	39	3.55
15	Women	JPN	9	Eri Hirai	31	4	35	3.5

Footwork

Sure, you can improve as a player by getting faster, throwing further and jumping higher. But if you have a capacity to learn, working on simple unnoticed skills can make a difference too. Like footwork.

I can think of 6 instances where good footwork can give you an advantage.

When catching a pass on an in-cut, twist in the air so as to land ready to throw upfield. Basically you are performing a 180 degree turn as you catch. Only use this when you know the defender cannot bid on the catch, and when you are catching at less than 50% of top speed.

When popping, step in past a cup or wall from the blind spot of a defender, to receive a short pass from the thrower.

When catching a simple dump or swing pass against an approaching zone cup, jump a little to catch the disc, and stick your pivot foot out as you land. The defence will come up to mark where your torso is, but you can step back wider than they predicted, because your pivot foot is already stuck out.

When you want to keep a catch in-bounds, toe-drag. Practice. And watch Rueben.

When guarding a cutter, slide step, rather than turning to move forward or back. Avoid turning your hips and shoulders until you really have to.

When cutting, decelerate in a straight line, turn, and accelerate out in exactly the opposite direction, retracing your last 4 steps. There are still Worlds reps out there who don't use this simple vertical cutting skill in a game.