sMITe! 2010

This was a great year for sMITe - we had a solid (though small) core of returners, and lots of amazing first year players who were able to step up and fill big roles. We had first year players be primary cutters, be (fake) handlers, and even play deep deep. They all threw upfield by Regionals and were able to dump fairly consistently, which is actually a big step up from last year's team when our offense was built around the dish.

That said, I do wish we had had more experience on the team - not so that we would do better, but so that the newer players would have more role models and see the structure of the game more easily. It's hard to learn to play a certain way if everyone is learning it, too, but dropping in 1 or 2 newbies with an experienced line would let them fit into the offense/defense more easily. Don't know where to stack? Just get in line with everyone else. Don't know when to cut? Your teammates will yell at you when it's your turn.

Our defense, I think, has actually suffered quite a bit from not having an experienced offense to play against. We still chase because we can get away with that at practices against ourselves. We haven't learned to anticipate the flow of the disc on defense because our cutters are still figuring out their timing. When we played a team like Williams (really really impressed with them, btw) who had great flow, solid dump/swing/continue and up the line/short away continues, we weren't able to stop them. We were repeatedly caught out of position because we weren't anticipating where the next cut was going. Sure, this takes experience, but I strongly believe that you get what you practice, and in our case, our practices just didn't have consistently good offense flow to defend.

Williams actually somewhat reminds me of Godiva's offense 5 years ago - very conservative and rarely struck deep (I can't remember who, but one of my Brute teammates or coaches told me to just front them because they never looked deep). They were very good at their offense, but because they didn't use the deep option, they also didn't defend the deep as effectively and Brute certainly took advantage of that. We're very lucky to have solid handlers and huckers so that our newer players all know how to cut deep and have been learning how to read the disc, which means next year, all the blades Michelle puts up will be caught! (just teasing, Michelle)

This was the last year for 4 of our players - Karen, Smeri, Amy and Agnes. Agnes had a breakout spring - she has developed a really big scary mark, and great field sense - her timing is impeccable, and in the past 2 tournaments, I cannot remember a single time that I thought she was clogging, or in the wrong space, or positioned improperly on defense. Pretty great for a 2nd year player! She has one of the hardest work ethics on the team - even when she was injured, she came to every practice and worked on her throws for 2 hours. She takes our feedback well and I can see her working on changing her play on the field based on what we said. We're going to miss our zone mark!

Amy has become a solid handler with consistent throws and beautiful dump cuts for resets. She doesn't make flashy plays, but when she is on the field, the offense flows a little bit better because she is doing all the correct things. This type of player is easy to overlook, but her quiet movement on the field is what helps the offense glide smoothly.

Karen I get to still coach because she plays for Hatch! Except for weird flick huck flubbing during the Harvard game (I hear a sprained thumb is to blame), she plays with a joy and intensity which is always fun to watch. She never gives up on a disc, O or D, and she had several great plays last weekend where I really thought she wasn't going to get there, but she proved me wrong. Yay track workouts.

Smeri...dith. Oh I am going to miss her. She tells me that she's never going to play ultimate again. (I hope it's not all my fault!) She has become an extremely versatile player - she can handle, she can cut, she can huck, and she's faster than everyone! I am reminded of a younger Rana Suh when I see her play - that girl that you just don't know how to guard because you'll just be beat either way. She continues to just get better and better, and I wish I could see what a few years would do, but alas, she's way too hard-headed to be swayed.

So ends another year of sMITe. Much has changed, and the future is bright. We're getting at least one experienced player (Claudia from Brandeis) and hopefully the HS girls choose MIT. In the meantime, it looks like most if not all of our players will be doing summer league, so I'm expecting big things next year!

back in the saddle

here's the plan:
- sMITe regionals/season recap
- tryouts planning and evaluation of players
- fitness

but right now, it's off to ultimate. game against wuwu and (shhh!) celebrating shuangy's birthday on tuesday!

Boston Invite 2009

(oops, forgot that I hadn't finished posting this yet. sorry for the delay!)

After several weeks of practices and cuts, tryout season in the NE traditionally culminates at the Boston Invite, where the new players can demonstrate their abilities in a tournament setting.

This year, Hatch brought 25ish to the Invite, with 3 people not able to attend, and a couple who could only come for 1 day or play a few points. We were a little low on handlers, which was particularly problematic during the last game of the tournament when people were starting to drop.

Overall, I was pleased with how we performed. We had difficulty initially just getting into a groove, and I think we were struggling to move from practice-mode into tournament-mode. However, after some regrouping before the start of our second game, we went out and executed our game plan, with much improvement both on offense and defense.

The biggest areas that we need to work on are endzone offense, vertical offense, and dumping. Pretty understandable - in the 3 weeks of practices, we did a little review of those, but not enough to really change the way people play. And overall, we certainly spent more practice time on defense than offense and it showed - our D-line would get 5-6 turns each point (go D!) but that's a lot of times to turn it over again. Oy.

I do think we have a ways to go on defense, too, though - both man-ish and zone. We have been trying to work together on defense, which needs time playing together in order to build our trust and communication skills, and that sense of what our teammate is going to do. I also did notice a lot more help D being played at the Invite, which I think is the natural evolution of ultimate defense, as teams adapt to try to constrain horizontal offenses.

We made final cuts at the end of the tournament, and we've got 24 players - 9 handlers and 15 cutters. I am thrilled at the quality of our players - I look at the lines that we can put out and there is a lot of firepower. The hard part now is just to get them to work well together, but unlike last year, we'll have a full 3 months of practices to gel.

Tryouts Day 8

Wednesday was review day. With so many people at practices, it's been difficult getting enough playing time for everyone, and I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page going into the tournament. I'd sent out a summary prior to practice, which I hoped would help decrease confusion on the field, and also catch up those who had missed some practices. Furthermore, I started putting people on O/D lines so that we could start building some chemistry between players.

We first worked on horizontal defense again - it'd been a while and I also wanted to try formalizing it a bit more. We tried straight-up to trap on the mark, and bracketing under/away, and I think the biggest difficulty was figuring out where we should be in the spectrum between strict man and zone. Wednesday was a little more zone-ish than I would prefer, with people guarding spaces rather than taking a person, and then switching. The mark I think was also too much for us at this point - to have to think about switching, and then also have to deal with a non-constant force... well let's just say we let a lot go. For this weekend I'll probably do one or the other, but not likely both together unless we're getting really comfortable at it.

Clam was the other defense we worked on since about 5 people weren't there for Sunday's practice. I was impressed by how much faster we were able to review it. I am also bemused by how many people had never even heard of it - not just not been taught clam, but just did not know about it as a defense. Well, the revolution is a-brewing. I think we'll start seeing it more in the college teams around here, b/c it's a great D at the college level.

****

For the Invite this weekend, we'll have 26 players. I'll be calling O/D lines, though the lines are definitely not yet set, and I'm sure I'll be moving some people around. We'll be working on all the things we've been practicing thus far, and probably some tweaks as well.

Schedule: http://upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=36&id=6536 Seeded 12th overall.
1st round vs Salty, 2nd round bye, 3rd round vs Virago, 4th round vs MissCONNduct. Then crossovers.

Weather may be foul, but if you're around, you should come out and check out the ultimate anyway!

Tryouts Day 7

Today was rough. Wet enough that the disc was slick, windy enough that throws and catches were difficult. And then we played clam.

I've written before about my plan for this team: I want to mold these individuals into a cohesive unit, wherein the whole is much more than its parts. We've been working a lot on team defense recently, what with zone for the past week and horizontal defense before that. Today we came back around to team defense vs a vertical stack, but not as a willy-nilly switching defense on the fly - we'll play clam as a stepping stone towards being able to react as a team, but for now we need the structure that clam imparts in order to get us there.

We'd done a little bit of switching defense against a vertical stack a couple weeks ago, and it was pretty bad. But with the work that we've been doing since then, everyone has gotten a whole lot more comfortable and competent at switching effectively.

We had some trouble early on in the middle, and I think the hardest thing for people playing there was to remember to trust the mark. Protect the I/O lane, and don't follow people to the around side - pass those off to the break side defender and trust that the mark will not let an easy break off.

We also need to recover more quickly from a break. We should be thinking of it like any other break pass - push to the break side on defense to seal it and stop the flow on that side. Give up throws to the open side if needed - the clam is glorious when the disc gets trapped on the line, so let it get there.

People really picked up on how to play clam much more easily than I'd expected. That's not to say it's perfect - we'll certainly give up some easy scores next weekend playing this. But we're learning, and at the end of the journey I'm confident that we'll have become quite a formidable opponent.

****

We made our second round of cuts after today's practice. We had about 40 people still on our tryout list, and we'd like to get to 22-25 for the final team size. It was a difficult discussion - I could see potential and desire in every one of our tryouts, and they're improving so much that I want to hold onto all of them! But at the end of the day, we had to be realistic about who has the strongest chance of making the team given the talent that's present, and we had to let some great people go.

Tryouts Days 5 and 6

Saturday's practice was zone defense. We went over a basic 3-man cup zone, both force middle and trap, against a 3-handler set and a 2-handler set.

Most players have a background that they could use to allow them to play within this zone D, which was probably a welcome break from all the communication and switching work that we've been doing recently. However, I did want them to use the skills we've been working on and apply it to zone as well - you should always be thinking about who the threats are, and working together with your teammates to contain the offense. There is a lot of talk that needs to happen between the different positions, and I feel that was the part that was lacking most on the field.

Responsibilities:

- Deep should be talking and switching with the short deep and the wings (and vice versa).

- Short deep talks to the middle of the cup and the wings.

- Wings talk to the deep deep, short deep, and cup

- Sideline should be talking to everyone on their side of the field, especially the deep and the mark.

On offense, we have to adapt to the type of zone that is being played. For instance, with a tight cup, it makes more sense to try to swing the disc wide across the field in order to have an open look up field before the cup manages to catch up. For looser cups / 1-3-3s, we do better when the handlers crash the cup and break through the middle.

For trap situations, well, we'd ideally not get into that position to begin with. Handlers want to stay off the sideline and should keep targeting the break side to avoid the trap. If the disc does go to the sideline, we need to look to the middle quickly to move the disc before the trap sets up, and have people set up as options in the holes of the cup.

Tryouts Days 3 and 4

It was horizontal week at Hatch tryouts - worked first on the offense, then next practice on defense.

Last year we had taught the horizontal by running a pattern of cuts, but I felt it was too constricting and that people were getting hung up on when/where/who cuts, as opposed to seeing the spaces and flow. This year, I tried going the opposite route first - to explain the general principles of ho, and see if the players through repetition would be able to start getting a feel for how to cut.

It almost worked. We did start having a lot of nice cuts and continues, but people were not maintaining a disciplined stack distribution, nor were we getting both in and away looks for each throw. Part of this is that some of the tryouts have never played in a horizontal before - and it certainly requires quite a bit of field sense - and also that people have just not played together enough to get a feel for each others' preferences.

We switched halfway through to teaching a set of rules for cutting in the ho, which enforced the idea of always cutting when in the spaces, and also to give options for each thrower. This was better because it allowed newer players to have a framework and be able to cut with more confidence, and I think it wasn't so defined as last year so there was more freedom for those who are comfortable cutting in flow.

For Wednesday, we worked on defending the horizontal. This is trickier than in vertical, because the Ho is designed to isolate 1-on-1 matchups and to allow any cutter to cut both in and away. It works best in the middle of the field, where there is opportunity to throw to both the force and break sides, and without a huge sideline taking away the space.

Therefore, defensively we want to do the opposite - maintain a strong mark to shut down the breaks, and push the disc to the sidelines, giving up some yardage if need be. We also want to play more help D and do switches instead of relying on defenders to shut down their cutter by themselves.

It was difficult at first for people to widen their view to include more than just one cutter, but we got there. We had some really nice switches happen during the scrimmage, and it actually looked a lot more like a zone than a man defense, which is exactly where I'd like us to be - bridging the gap between strict 1-on-1 and zone.

This was a hard week for tryouts. We introduced a lot of new concepts, and also made people change the way they play. But I am really impressed by how willing everyone was to try what I was teaching and how much they were able to improve in two short practices.

We also made our first cuts after these practices, and it was difficult. There's so much potential; I can just see how good these women are going to be in a couple years (or less). I look at them and I want to keep them all!