The Fields for Worlds 2008

I have just returned from my AFDA endorsed trip to the venue for the 2008 World Ultimate & Guts Championships.

Worlds will be hosted at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. The university boasts some of the Vancouver's best attractions, including the Museum of Anthropology, the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, and the UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research.

I can confirm that field layout that is proposed in the bid document can be accommodated by the venue. There is adequate parking, and it is only a short walk to the accommodation.

Most important of all is the grass itself. The turf is low cut, even and lush, yet on a firm base. Prospective players at this tournament should definitely bring cleats. Coaches and support staff should wear footwear that can cope with some moisture yet has a good grip - you don't want to slip while walking to your team's timeout.

Looking through to where Disc Central will be. Players will have to navigate their way through these trees to reach food, water and marquees.

A blade of the grass, carefully removed without affecting the field's integrity

Looking from Field 6 across to Field 3. Beyond the fence is the Beer Garden.

The turf in the Beer Garden venue will provide excellent suitable foot support after a day's play.

Fields 11 through 14

Guarding the dump

I like guarding the dump. I find it rewarding.

I have 4 positions I can start in: safe, face, tiger and sumo. By position, I mean where I stand on the field relative to the dump.

Let's consider these positions for the situation where the thrower is on the line, forced line. The dump is 5 metres away, level with the thrower (ie not upfield or downfield but in between).

Safe
This is where most people stand. Generally denies upfield cuts. Allows the thrower to turn and dump immediately, with little cutting required by the dump. Most dumps are used to being marked this way.

Face
This involves facemarking the dump, and standing between them and the disc. The dump is equally open if they cut left or right. But they usually have to spend several seconds cutting to get free.

Tiger
For this position, stand downfield of the dump. This takes away the easy backwards pass. The up-the-line cut is more vulnerable. But if you know where the dump will cut and have a speed advantage, this is not a big problem. Additionally, if the dump cuts up the line and doesn't get the disc, the thrower has no dump anymore. This is an aggressive tactic, so I call it tiger.

Sumo
Same as safe, except closer. Real close. If a player is successfully cutting up the line, stand close, with your feet apart. The dump will have to make more of a cut around you to go up the line. In a safe stance, you are usually side-on and moving when they get close to you. Sumo changes this. I call this sumo, as you are trying to look big.

You can work out how these positions would apply in different situations, e.g. if the force was a force middle. Or the thrower was left handed. Or the disc was in the middle of the field. Or a teammate was helping you by poaching in front of the thrower.

I think I might need to change the names - safe and face sound too similar. And I don't know if tiger aptly describes that position.

Lastly, remember that everyone likes to throw backhand dumps. If you want to allow a throwing option, make it a forehand.

Viewing plays online

Freisey prompted me to search for online videos/animations on ultimate tactics, plays and drills. Here is what I found.

• The videopapers I have spoken about before
  
• Java animations of 85 plays/drills, plus the ability to make your own.
  
• Flash animations of a few plays, with the ability to drawn your own "coming soon"
  

Got any others?

Crikey, ultimate can be played by 100 000 people world wide for several decades with elite teams dedicating small fortunes to this sport... but we don't have focussed programs to share and distribute plays and tactics. The textbooks and online tools are only just emerging, taking baby steps. I guess this is usually driven by the dollar in most sports.

A quote

I found a quote from the coach of the just crowned champions of the NBA, the San Antonio Spurs. In a competition with a draft and salary cap to keep parity among all 30 basketball teams, this team has won their 4th title in 10 years. During that time, they have a better winning percentage than every other pro basketball, baseball, gridiron and ice hockey team in the US.

Gregg Popovich:
"We don’t talk about how many games we’re going to win, winning a division, winning a championship, none of that stuff. No goals, none like that. Our goal is to get better every day, to practice every day, to treat the game with respect, and if we can come out every practice and every game, learning something that we did well or that we did poorly, we can go from there. But I think wins take care of themselves."

And Gregg on quotes and sayings:

"...all those trite, silly sayings always made me laugh. Like, “Winners always do this” and “Losers always do that” and whatever the hell it is…you know, “There’s no ‘I’ in team.” They’re so old and trite that it’s just silly. But this quote seemed to just make sense. It had an intellectual quality to it, where I thought if the players really looked at it, it’s not just basketball it’s life. You’ve read it so you know what it means. I think that quote is what it’s all about. That persistence in that quote says it all. If there is a system here, that’s the system."

What quote was he referring to?

"When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before." — Jacob Riis

Baseball and netball and waterpolo and soccer and...

In Australia, the ultimate community has so much room for growth in terms of coaching and tactics.

Consider that until 4 years ago, there wasn't a single accredited ultimate coach in the country.

And when did you last hear an ultimate player introducing a play or drill from another sport? How can we draw on the enormous pool of knowledge, skills, drills, plays, coaching and technology used in other sports?

Here's an example. Here are about 50 basketball plays. And those are just offense plays. Yet they have names, are diagrammed and many have counters.

Where are the standardised equivalents in ultimate (for set-up offence, for endzone plays, for defeating zones)?

I know of ultimate players who have represented Australia in fencing, water polo, ice hockey. I know players who have made state teams in AFL, baseball, basketball and netball.

Its time to learn from other sports.

Goals and accessing them

So I have wandered through ideas about goals and goal setting over the years. Some is here. I haven't found recommendations on clear cut best practice - seems more like a swirling soup of different people's opinions.

But making goals measurable is a recurring point.

Part of that is making them easily recordable and accessible. If you have to log onto your computer, open a spreadsheet, and tab over to a certain column, it is easy to lose the habit of recording your progress. Likewise if you record your progress on page 23 of a folder that disappears under bills, postcards and newspapers - the habit is hard to hold.

You want the goals and your progress to be staring you in your face.

So if online seems accessible, this could be useful: Joe's goals. A website with nothing to learn - just dive in and log your goals.

And for those not regularly online, the paper equivalent is to blu-tac a large paper chart on the wall next to your bed.

I will continue my quest for accessible, practical, easy methods for goal setting and measuring...

Carrots and sticks

So I was thinking about the commonly used carrots and sticks that coaches and leaders use with their teams, during scrimmages.

Sticks

• pushups, eg 10 pushups for your team if you turn the disc over
  
• laps, eg run a lap of the field/endzone if you get broken
  
• yelling, eg "You're slacking, run harder!"
  
• playing time, eg taking a sub if you turn up to training late
  

Carrots

• points, eg 2 points if you score from beyond halfway (to reward hucks)
  
• praise, eg "Sweet dump defense during that last point!"
  

And I couldn't think of many carrots.

So here are some to try:

Yardage, eg if your team throws a break throw, they move the disc 10 metres upfield, then play restarts.

Manpower, eg if they get a block, they can now have 8 players on the field.

Mark ups, eg if they complete an earlier drill better, they choose the markups for a point (who marks who).

Conventions to challenge

Conventions get challenged at the cutting edge of a sport, ie the elite level.

These conventions include those relating to training methods, tactics, attitudes and organisation.

Look at what used to be convention in ultimate, 15 or so years ago:

Once in zone, stay in zone. Stacks are vertical. Be patient against zone O.

Nowadays, these are no longer hard and fast "rules", merely suggestions for beginners.

Here are a few paradigms. I bet a proportion of these will no longer be set-in-stone paradigms, before too long. Maybe teams are experimenting with them right now.

• mark on the open side of your man
  
• stack upfield
  
• don't reveal your plays to the opposition
  
• throw to an open player
  
• look at your dump on high counts
  
• defensive plays are decided before you pull

Its a lot of fun to try new ideas - and its fascinating to see a paradigm be changed.

The distribution of playing time

In an elite ultimate team, how should the team's minutes be distributed among the players?

Note that I have deliberately not used the phrase "how should you distribute playing time" since that assumes the process should be determined by one person.

This article gave me insight.

There is a lot to be gained from keeping everyone focussed on the team's aims, and away from comparing their performance relative to others.

I have always tried to keep stats of individual players away from the players, whenever I have been responsible for them. Team stats I will happily share.

To get briefly political, it seems like this applies to the "how shall we pay teachers" debate in Australia.

For me, the important issue is not who gets rewarded, but where the focus of the people doing the work is - on contributing to the effort, or on how they compare to their neighbour. We know the approach of the US, in the teacher pay debate.

Parinella says (and debate follows his post):

the player has to draw one of the following conclusions, depending on how the subbing is done: either whatever I do has little effect on my playing time, in which case I don’t have to play smart, or I am going to be benched if I make a mistake, in which case I probably should play so conservatively that I’m not going to help the team.

I believe, if you can reduce the focus on "how am I doing" and bring it to bear on "how can I help the team more", better results will follow.

And calling lines most points, where you are disappointing several keen players every time you call them off, seems to push the focus in the wrong direction.

So what are the alternatives?

One is self-managed playing time. If your team plays lots, players should have time to get comfortable with their roles. The coach or leadership should make suggestions to players chiefly in non-crucial tournaments and in scrimmages ("play more zone", "make sure we have 3 handlers on", "play less this game, more next game", "play more on O, less on D"). So when you hit the big games, roles are set and players can focus on cheering and getting ready to play, rather than listening for their name, and not hearing it.

Any exceptions e.g. "our strongest lines will be called in crunch time, or to take half", should be established in preparation games too.

Bottom line is, if you use pay or playing time as the carrot, then you need to devise a better carrot - such as seeing how you contribute to success.

Triggers for transitions

What are all the possible triggers for a transition from one defense to another defense?

• Nominated on-field defender decides
  
• Disc reaches a pre-determined part of the field
  
• Offence makes a pre-determined number of passes
  
• Stall count reaches a certain number
  
• A certain offence player gets possession (eg a weak thrower)

Any others?

Which do you like? Which ones have you seen (and not seen)? I've used the first three triggers over the years.

Up the line

I am a well-known advocate of the dump cutting up the line. To clarify, I mean the dump cutting forward of the thrower, when the thrower is on the line and being forced line.

The advantages seem numerous:

• many defenders are used to dumps catching the disc behind the thrower
  
• catching the disc up the line puts you in the power position (ie you have a 1 second window where you can throw anywhere upfield, including long, since your defender is behind you)
  
• it is a simple way to score when you are close to the endzone
  
• other defenders are often not in a position to provide help defence
  
• it opens up the backwards dump, once cutting up-the-line is an established threat

This last point is one I tinkered with yesterday at the Heads of State training camp. If you cut up the line, and then come back for a backwards dump, you can leave your defender far behind.

I realised that this is generally true only if you go far enough up the line.

So clearly we need a name for this.

When the dump has cut forward far enough that the thrower can throw to them, the defender has to commit to defending up the line.

Basically, the dump needs to enter the up-the-line throwing lane. I shall call this the Wedge (coloured orange in the diagram). It looks wedge-shaped.

To summarise: to open up your dump, Enter the Wedge first. Very Zen.

10 Things instead of Drills

Here is a random collection of 10 activities that are not conventional join-the-back-of-the-line drills. Try one next time you are running a training session. It may spark some new ideas for you. The activities are suitable for most abilities.

1. Modified-scoring ultimate
Scrimmage with a modified scoring system, eg 1 point for a break throw as well as 1 point for a goal. This well help you practise and focus on using break throws (and stopping them). You can assign points for anything you want to focus on: blocks, dumps, hucks, hammers, open side cuts, you name it.

2. Unlimited turnovers
Scrimmage with the offense getting the disc back after each turnover. The offense can repeatedly practise their O, and the defence their D.

3. Play schtick
Schtick uses many skills used in Ultimate. But it is a good change up from ultimate.

4. Play mini-ultimate
Play ultimate - but only one aspect. Examples are offense starts 10 metres outside the endzone, or 4 on 4 zone, or 3 on 3 where the only aim is to dump and swing the disc.

5. Team goals
Have a fishbowl, brainstorm or think-pair-share about what your team wants to improve on or achieve.

6. Play disc golf
When every throw contributes to your score, you work hard at your throws. Try a discathon for a faster activity.

7. Tag
Great as a warm-up or energiser. Helps improve defense. Variations: frisbee tag, stuck-in-the-mud, bullrush, octopus.

8. Juggling
How many passes can 2 people complete in 30 seconds? Using 2 discs? 3 discs? Consecutive passes?

9. Feedback
Organise activities for players to get feedback on their play, and perhaps off-field roles too (social co-ordinator, treasurer, leaders, etc). Feedback can have different formats: anonymous/open, from teammates/leaders/self, one-on-one/group/team, talking/doing.

10. Learn the rules
Hands up if you are confident you know what stall count a contested travel now comes in on? Some ideas for learning the answer are here.

Videopapers

Check out these videopapers on Ultimate.

It is reassuring to see Dan recommends a power forehand, though I would debate exactly where the forefinger and index finger should be in that photo.

And good to see an Aussie in there: Clip 12

Games of fun

Disc games and activities I like to play...

• Schtick 
• Stubby guts 
• Hotbox 
• MAC line
• Blind DDC
• Blind catching
• Frisbee tag
• Warriors and Dragons

Any other good ones?

Hammers

After throwing hammers today, I reckon it is about fingers.

Throw the hammer with your fingertips, not your hand. All the force goes through your fingertips, like you are pushing it.

Yeah hammers.

That is all.