I never put on a uniform to play a game.

..... I put on a uniform to win. - Larry Bird

I have never had the desire to impose your will to win on a game more succinctly described than that. Read those two sentences again, and again, and again.

This year, MIT got jerseys early in the season, so a lot of people received jerseys who eventually cut themselves because they couldn't handle the late night winter practices, track workouts, and outside practice on the astro-turf in 25 degree weather. In my mind it cheapened what a uniform stands for or what it means to belong to it.

If I had my way, the jerseys would have been passed out shortly before sectionals. By then, the roster is set, those who still remain know what it means to work for one another, has been through the ups and downs, and understands what it means to take a group of individuals and make it something greater than the sum of those individuals.

In essence, what it is to be a TEAM. Everyone is working to bring out the strengths of each other while letting others lean on them to overcome their weaknesses.

We are in bonus ball time. Every point we win means that we get to play one more point with each other. And, if you think about it, that is really what we are fighting for; to extend the season.

We are going into regionals seeded 8th. Anyone in the top 12 or so could beat anyone. The difference is all about who wants to win. And, hopefully, looking into your teammates eyes early saturday morning will be reason enough to get that fire, that ball of hate for the other team trying to end your season.

Play with your heart.

We come out flat too often. We wait around until we are down 4-0 and then start slowly playing, sometimes, we don't even start until the second half. Don't wait for a reason.....


i could write pages and pages about the difference between wanting to want to win, and flat out wanting to win, but i think al pacino says it best.

http://youtube. com/watch? v=9rFx6OFooCs

That is heart, that is the ball of hate, and that working so hard for every inch of the field for your teammate and brother so you can play one more second, one more point, one more game, and one more tournament with him.

You guys have worked so hard to build back from 2 years ago. Don't throw it away by waiting for a reason to play D.

Work hard, take the extra few steps to set up a cut, step out on your throw, clear hard, or reposition yourself on D.

Don't wait for a reason. Do not wait for a reason.

You already have a reason: each other.

Stomp on their throats. Don't let anyone or anything stand in your way.

Inch by inch.....Tech on seven
-josh

Ramping Up for Regionals....

MIT is busy learning some new tricks for regionals, but mostly, we are working on the same old fundamentals since really, the team that plays their game the best normally wins.

We are focusing on continuation cuts, attacking deep more, handler motion, etc.

The kids have an alumni scrimmage Saturday, practice tuesday, scrimmage vs. sons of liberty wednesday, and the final practice on thursday to go over any loose ends.

On Thursday after practice, I arranged the team to do a workshop with my friend and former Metal teammate, Max Woolf, who is a motivational speaker / life coach. I think this will be really good for the kids to get in the right mindset for regionals.

I think a lot of ultimate, and a lot of college ultimate is basically about who wants to win more. There are a lot of mental headcases in this sport, and the baggage they carry onto the field with them amazes me. I don't want that to be something that holds us back.

-josh

Sectionals Recap...

We rolled into Saturday 14 deep. 3 rookies, 4 sophomores, 2 juniors, and 2 seniors, and 3 grad students (only one in his last year of eligibility (and first on the team)). I think that is the breakdown at least.

We made two even lines, dubbed ingeniously, "line 1" and "line 2", and played each line for 2 points at a time for the first 2 games. The first game was against wentworth. They had a couple dangerous players, but were mostly a young team. We made sure to bookend their good cutter and force their main handler with big lefty throws out, and beat them 15-6.

We then played Bentley-B, and beat them 15-3. The last couple of the points, we played what would be our "o line" against them to get them used to playing together.

We have had several key injuries ankle injuries that have left us with only 3 handlers and missing a couple good O cutters, so this entire weekend we worked on having an efficient O. We focused on moving the disc quickly, communication amongst the handlers, and good hard cuts and clears from the cutters.

We then had our big showdown of the day which was Northeastern. The kids were pretty pumped up to play them since they played them and won in a very close game under the lights a couple of weeks ago at MIT, but the victory was far too close to leave them confident about it. We start on O, score, and then score the next 3 points to make it 4-0.

We go zone, they score with their main handler, piccard?, picking it apart. At some point, their tall fast kid casey rolls his ankle. We trade until 5-2, and then we score the next 5 in a row.

We then go back to line 1 and line 2 trying to play everyone and finish 15-5. Pretty good day for MIT. We played aggressive D. Got a lot of Ds on in cuts either by forcing a bad throw, or by smothering the dump, and we won a lot of the air battles.

We go to olive garden, everyone is happy. It should also be noted that we played on quite possibly the worst fields ever and came out injury free (i made everyone with ankle issues in the past wear their braces), but, we wouldn't have been able to play sectionals if not for those fields.

Sunday...

We come out on Sunday 15 strong with an additional rookie.

We begin by playing Harvard. MIT had a good warm-up, everything was clicking, and they were fired up to start. We come out on fire, getting numerous Ds and bookending their cuts which worked very well for stagnating their flow. We made sure not to let stubbs throw his backhand upwind because we felt we had a better chance at d'ing his long flick hucks. We had numerous players step up and made big plays on O and D for use, and we took half 8-5. Our handlers were moving the disc well, and we responded to the clam and junk well by moving it around and picking apart the holes.

We then start the second half well, but Harvard makes a late run getting to within a break in the cap, and we manage to punch in the final upwinder on a long huck to andrew ji.

We then have a two hour bye. We do our best to eat, get in cars to get warm, and drink, but once we get back out to warm up, the spring is a little lost. We start the game against tufts, and have a couple hiccups and then tufts proceeds to walk all over us. We proceed to look tired, frazzeled, and have numerous unforced turn-overs. At around the beginning of the game, ji bruises his heal and cannot play for the rest of the weekend.

It should be noted that tufts good D accounts for a lot of these throwaways. To date, they definitely have our number, but with that game over, we know we have regionals... and potentially another chance to play them.

Aside: Whatever tufts does as a program is pretty awesome. Their C team is larger than our team.

The 2/3 game is next, and Harvard was looking just as tired as us. We agree to play sooner than the 50 minutes that we were supposed to wait to play that round because both teams don't want to cool down only to have to warm back up. We come out and struggle a little to fill andrew's cutting role. Cody and Phys have done a lot of deep cutting and it is starting to show, our handlers stopped talking and cutting to create space for one another, and we started to have more and more miscues on offense. However, we never gave up fighting, and we still had numerous layout Ds, scrappy play, but on offense our tired legs just aren't getting it done to reward the effort.

We wind up losing fairly handedly. Overall, although I would have liked to have ended the weekend on a higher note, I think the team did very well. We held seed, proved to ourselves that we can play with anyone, and the loses will give us motivation for the next couple of weeks. We have lots to work on, and the team is getting better and better by the day. I am pretty excited for regionals, and since this will be my last season coaching MIT, I want to see the kids I have coached since freshman year be rewarded for all their hard work they have put into building this team in the past couple seasons.

-josh

Ouch....

We got smoked tonight. Tufts played pretty well (we really didn't give them an opportunity to play great), but the biggest opponent was ourselves. The team got weirdly intimidated and played very frantic offense.

Around the endzone, we abandoned our dump-swing, and tried to rely on really hard breaks and bending throws to space.... which never work.

I thought we played okay to good defensively. We had some points where we generated turns on hard man and zone D, but, we quickly squandered those opportunities with throwaways.

We need to work on marking. We aren't active enough. We are either doing the stupid college get really tight and don't move and wonder why you get broken mark, or we are doing the stand at a 45 and don't move and wonder why the huck went off mark. We just aren't being dynamic.

We are currently having trouble adjusting to clam or zone for a few. This is because our handlers are holding the disc for too long letting the D get a good look at things instead of throwing to what is there quickly and having the D adjust / catch up. Hopefully we will clear this up at tomorrows practice.

-josh

Sectionals....

I am back from working in Fairbanks, AK for a week, and MIT is ramping up for sectionals. We still have a ton to learn (starting disc in ho on sideline, getting comfortable with the second and third dump option, zone O with an active mark / off point, bookending D, etc.) and we are rapidly running out of time.

I hope we make it out of sectionals for the sole reason to extend the season because the team is really starting to gel and grow now at a fairly fast rate. It would be terrible if the season ended Sunday (let alone Saturday).

We have 2 practice days (tues and thurs) and 1 scrimmage with Tufts (Wed). Tufts looks very, very strong this year (for our region anyway), and will be the #1 seed at sectionals this weekend.

There are 5 spots for regionals up for grabs, and I really think it will be a dog-fight between 4-5 teams for the last 3 spots. Hopefully we will play well and won't get put into the death-march of a 5th place bracket since we have about 17 players on our team that aren't injured with a large talent spread (think A and B team combined).

This also presents problems at practice having the better players pushed, so I have been having either the coaches, some ironside guys, or some friends and college players taking the semester off from other schools come out to practices. I hope in the long run this is better. Anything is better than having 13 at practice though.

We have been streaky, prone to come out slowly in games and then play catch-up which is really exhausting for the "starters", and I hope starting this week that will change.

should be fun. I hope to update after Wednesday since I get 2 days off of work to try to recapture the time i lost on 30 hours of plane rides.

-josh

The importance of throwing the swing....

I think that completing the swing pass is a hugely under-valued skill, yet it separates the good handlers from the bad handlers, and the great teams from the average teams. There is little doubt in my mind that Jam's success in the finals (and the rest of nationals) this year was due in large part to their ability relentlessly swing the disc and constantly change the field giving them easy, low risk throws.

This year's version of MIT is pretty young and inexperienced, and we really only have two handlers who have played a handler role in our system for more than two years.

With that said, I am having trouble getting across the huge value of swinging the disc. We have worked a lot on dumping the disc (since being able to consistently dump the disc the most important skill you can possibly develop), and we add the swing component into that dump swing drill, but, for some reason, in real game situations we struggle to throw the swing.

I feel there are 3 reasons for this:

1.) Front of the stack isn't paying attention.

2.) The dump feels it is better to have the disc in his hands than the swings hands, so he greedily holds onto the disc.

3.) The dump is slow in the transition from the catch to the throw.

I will address each scenerio:

1.) The front of the stack (in our system, the front of the stack gets the swing the majority of the time) should always, always be looking at the thrower. I can't possibly think of a reason why he shouldn't be.

If the thrower turns to the dump, there are only 2 possible situations that the front of the stack is going to do: a.) be the swing, or b.) be the other dump option if the first dump doesn't get the disc.

Both of these options are easy to see and time if you are looking at the thrower. Always, always be making eye contact with the thrower as the front of the stack. Period. If you always make it a point to do this, you will always be ready to cut.

Nothing is more crushing to a coach than when you see a rookie work really hard to get a great dump throw off that goes to the dump, and the dump catches it and is in perfect position to throw, and there is NO ONE cutting to the break side. Crushing.

2.) Lack of trust with the front of the stack, not being prepared to throw, not thinking about throwing to the break side.

for some reason, especially in tight games, MIT's handlers this year, when they catch a dump, are not looking to swing the disc. They simply catch it, and make no effort to even look to the swing side immediately, some go in-so-far as to pivot back to the open-side.

This, as a whole, helps no one, and leads to an inordinate amount of turns. For one, you are turning back towards the person who just threw you the disc, and he, generally is already covered by the way the mark was set up on him. he is typically clearing out, which forces the thrower to have to either throw around him and his defender to an in cut, or, to hold the disc for an extended amount of time to wait for the throwing lanes to open again. All this does is lets the defense set up again.

If you are a good thrower and the swing cutter for some reason is not, it still should not stop you from throwing that pass. What you are doing is opening up the field by moving the disc horizontally, making the defense have to adjust, and, chances are, you are going to be the dump for the next throw.

A bonus to completing swing passes is that for every swing pass you complete, your mark is going to have to respect that swing throw more and more which will lead to the mark playing off of you more and more to try to stop the around. This will lead to some i/o looks to the front of the stack, some give-n-go opportunities, and easier throws all around.

3.) I think a lot of people think swinging the disc requires break throws. It actually doesn't at all. Most of the time, if a proper dump is given, you will have enough separation where all you have to do is throw a very simple, uncontested throw to space.

I think the trick comes in the preparation. When you catch the disc, you want to come out of the catch and be in proper throwing position, so, if it was force flick, when you pick your head up to look at the breakside, you want to already have your backhand ready to be released. What I mean by that is that you should NOT catch, look, windup, release. It should be catch, windup, lookup, release. this minor difference in the order of those things is HUGE.

Also, remember as well, you are throwing to the space where you want the swing cutter to be, you are not waiting for the swing cutter to get to a space and then trying to drill the disc at him.

I could go into the minutea of which foot to try to come down with first when catching and the angle you should attack the disc, or how to minimize the windup (something my club coach constantly tries to have me work on since I have tennis style backswings which no one needs), but, all you need to do is do what is mentioned above, and completing the swing pass will be really simple.

There are two things that really helped me learn how to swing the disc. When I played on a club team in philadelphia, the captains stressed the importance of moving the disc horizontally on the field and would swing the disc even if we lost some yards on it. They would stop drills if you didn't try catch the dump and come up ready to throw the swing.

The second thing was that I have practiced decoupling my lower half of my body from my upper half when throwing. This helps throwing on the run and I don't have to be fully planted to releasing the disc. I practiced this after reading something idris nolan wrote about him practicing throwing with his non-pivot foot off of the ground when throwing. Try it sometime; it will change the way you look at throwing.

Anyway, I am very hungry and it is food time. We are going to continue to work on this at practice, and I think that the kids are starting to understand the importance of swinging the disc because when they do it, they are starting to score much easier and they are opening up the field a lot more.

-josh

Away I go...

So, yesterday MIT had the last practice i will be at for over 2 weeks (st. lucia here i come!!).

There is still a lot to work on, and we have very far to go if we want to meet our goal of being a regionally competitive team.

The captains and leaders of the team sat down with me and we figured out a game plan for the next couple of weeks.

We need to work on zone offense as we haven't really taught it in full yet. MIT runs a two handler offense (they sort of ran a bad 2 or 3 handler offense in vegas), and we use a lot of handler motion to break the cup.

We have a couple good handler's this year that need to learn the system for it to be effective.

We also need to work on cutting in flow. The handlers are hesitant to throw the swing (note to aspiring college/club handlers, always be that guy who throws the swing....), and the cutters don't cut off of each other well. We have some drills lined up to do that.

The biggest hurdle we face as a team is taking the majority of the team who have played little to no organized sports before and having them see the field, see the patterns, and use the patterns to get d's. Right now, everyone just reacts a step slow.

okay, i have a wedding to get ready for, so, I will get back at this in 2 weeks. with what we are doing to help raise people's field awareness (can you?). Any thoughts on this?

-josh