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!