So, I haven't posted in quite some time. I've had a lot of schoolwork and I haven't been feeling well, so I've let myself get a little lazy with regards to posting. There were also some big changes occuring with regards to the team, and I wanted to see how everything worked out before I made any comment.
The biggest change, of course, is that I am now a captain.
Henry decided that he was too busy with various aspects of his life to pay due attention to his duties as a captain. Credit him for being able to eventually see this and step down for the good of the team. I am replacing Henry as captain of Zoodisc for the remainder of the year. And a stiff responsibility this will be. I need to find a time in the coming period to sit down and sort out workout schedules for everybody on the team, follow up on individuals to work out and get in shape, decide which tournaments we will be attending in the spring and figure out how much money the spring is going to cost everybody so that we can get money up front, and do all of the other things that need to happen to get the spring season off to the right start. Whoof.
I'm not going to talk too much about the last week of practice for the fall season. It was pretty similar to a lot of the other weeks that we had this year, and I want to devote more time giving an overview of the Brown Trournament that we attended this past weekend.
As the number one seed in our pool, we were given a first round bye on Saturday. This gave us the opportunity to sleep in (we didn't have to leave until 7:15) and still arrive in time for our first game in spite of the fact that most of the team lost their way (the final road had no street sign and appeared to be the entrance to a cemetary). We had a quick and lackadasical warmup, jumping right into our first game against Wesleyan. Our O line played alright against Wesleyan, though our D line struggled to convert their turnovers. This was partially because we started this game playing a stacked O line and weak D lines. When we kept a couple strong D lines in the game, Wesleyan started to crack and we ended with a solid win. I think the score was 13-9 or so.
Babbitt started playing in the Wesleyan game even though he had not been expecting to play at all this weekend. He had recently come back from the seriously sprained ankle that he suffered at Club Sectionals, but he strained his rotator cuff on a routine layout in a practice drill last week. Kasarah made Babbitt promise that he would not play this weekend and boasted that he would not be able to lie to her if he did play. Babbitt played the vast majority of the points that our team played this weekend - and played rather well - after swearing our entire team to silence. However, Babbitt accidentally let his secret slip to Kasarah less than fifteen minutes after we got home Sunday night. I guess Kasarah was right about Babbitt's inability to lie to her, but at least it doesn't seem as though a weekend of playing caused Babbitt any physical harm.
We went on to play Brown Y, one of the two tryout B teams that Brown entered into their own tournament. As expected, this was an easy win in spite of our team's lack of focus. We turned out a 15-3 win, I believe. No problems. In the first point of this game, one of the Brown kids stomped on the side of my ankle. This wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't the same ankle that I messed up last fall, so it hurt quite a bit. I don't think it limited me much on Saturday, but I woke up Sunday morning with a bad bruise right where my cleat brushes my ankle. It was also pretty stiff, which limited my mobility, so I pulled myself off of the O line for Sunday and only played D points. I was dissappointed to have to do this, but I would have been a liability on Sunday if I'd logged the number of points that I played on Saturday.
Our third game was against WPI, and it should have been an easy win. The weather, however, disagreed. A stiff wind came in off the ocean (which we could see from the fields) and, at times, the sky opened into a monsoon. Due largely to my own poor playing, we gave up an early lead to WPI. I dropped the very first two passes that came my way, both of which were in our own endzone and got shoved in for easy WPI scores, and probably played the worst first five points that I can ever remember playing. It felt like things were spiralling rapidly out of control, but I somehow managed to pull it together and ended up playing relatively well for the rest of the game. This was a very frustrating game, but we dug it out for the win.
The wind calmed down a little bit (though it was still rather imposing) for our final game of Saturday against MIT. Our win against WPI had already sealed our status as the number one team in our pool, but we wanted to end with a win. We got off to a pretty nice start against MIT, taking half 7-4 or 5. However, we waned a little after half and gave up the lead. We pulled ourselves together, stormed for a comeback, and won by two after the soft cap. I think that fatigue was a big reason for our near-collapse in the middle of the game. I played every single point in the WPI game and every single point of the MIT game up until four or five points before the end when I started to cramp. Several other experienced players on our team (Babbitt, Henry, John, Mitch, Ryan) were in very similar situations. We pretty much ran out of gas during the MIT game. Our subs, however, did a fantastic job filling in and putting fresh legs on the field. This allowed us to run through the end of the game and gave us the spark we needed to win.
I really do not believe that we would have won the MIT game without the players who came off of our bench. They say that the pinch hitter is the toughest position in baseball. Pinch hitters spend an entire game getting tight and out of focus, entering only at the biggest moment. They are set up to fail, and the situation is not much different for ultimate players. Playing off the bench in an ultimate game is really hard. Believe me, I have been there many times, it sucks. I am very proud of our young players for being able to come in at the end of the MIT game and contribute.
As soon as our MIT game ended, the skies opened into pouring rain. We drove to the Brown campus and set up in a lounge for the night, using dorm showers and "borrowed" shampoo to wash up after an extermely muddy day. Zach, Josh and I bought some beer at a liquer store, and they gave us free frozen drinks ("It has Alcohol in it!") because they hadn't been selling. Awesome. Each team was given two party pizzas, we got pretty drunk, and then we went to the tournament party. It was an alright night. During the walk home from the tournament party it rained incredibly hard, but it was warm out so it was actually kind of fun. Brown was having some sort of gay orgy/dance called "SexPowerGod", and a lot of guys and girls were walking around campus wearing nothing but the most revealing and provokative of undergarments. SO that was fun, too.
Sunday morning, we started against Dartmouth, who had shared our lounge the previous night. We got off to an early lead against Dartmouth and never looked back, beating them from both sides of the disc. This was an easy win, but we maintained intensity, which was nice, and stuck it to a frustrated Misha (who transfered from UMass to Dartmouth a couple years ago), which was even nicer.
We switched to a field that was running in the same direction as the wind for our next game, against URI. This sucked, because the wind picked up significantly at this time, making this an almost entirely upwind/downwind game. We got a break early on and were scoring easily on our downwind points, so it appeared as though we would trade for the win, when a tipped disc and a sloppy grab allowed URI to break back late in the game. With the cap on, we buckled down and broke back to assert our dominance and take the win.
Bringing us to the finals, against Harvard. The wind was really screaming for this game, so it took on similar upwind/downwind characteristics as the URI game. Playing in these conditions really isn't very fun. The offense fires the disc into the endzone, usually for a turn, and sets up a zone defense to get a short turn for an easy score. No matter how well or how poorly you play, it is so difficult to work the disc upwind that it is hardly even worth trying. Games like that are pretty worthless, and both teams understood that this was not an indication of the matchup that our teams will be in the future.
I broke my nose at the beginning of the Harvard game, which is one of the only longstanding results of this farce of a final game. I was covering my man in the endzone when George Stubbs tossed a scoober over my head. I turned and sprinted towards the back of the endzone to try and make a play on the disc when I ran full on into a Harvard player cutting towards the front cone who seemed not to have seen the disc go up. He did, however, see my in time to lower his shoulder and smash the bridge of my nose. I don't really hold it against him, accidents happen, but it does really suck for me. I spent most of yesterday laying in bed, as the injury just exacerbates the illness that has bothered me for a little over a week, and I still feel pretty hard off.
Anyway, I'll try to post more detailed thoughts about the fall season and the work that will be necessary as we head toward the spring. Sorry about being silent for so long. Hopefully it won't happen again.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Westfield Scrimmage
Ah, yes. Today's scrimmage against Westfield State College. Totally more worthwhile than an average practice.
Not. Most of the team who was actually able to go (11 or 12 players) left by 2:30. I however, have a class that ends at 3:20 on Wednesdays, and today we had a guest lecturer that I couldn't miss. I took Babbitts car and got out of here at 3:30 with Josh and Tim. With traffic, we didn't get to Westfield State until just after 4:30, and the scrimmage lasted until about 5 when it was too dark to see. Fantastic. Westfield State is also not the strongest opponent that we could have found. Scrimmaging them was pretty similar to scrimmaging the B team, but with more driving. I think that I can safely say that we didn't improve one lick by playing Westfield State. It was just one more day of non-ultimate in our pathetically short season. I feel extremely embittered that we don't even get to play this weekend.
Fuck Henry.
Not. Most of the team who was actually able to go (11 or 12 players) left by 2:30. I however, have a class that ends at 3:20 on Wednesdays, and today we had a guest lecturer that I couldn't miss. I took Babbitts car and got out of here at 3:30 with Josh and Tim. With traffic, we didn't get to Westfield State until just after 4:30, and the scrimmage lasted until about 5 when it was too dark to see. Fantastic. Westfield State is also not the strongest opponent that we could have found. Scrimmaging them was pretty similar to scrimmaging the B team, but with more driving. I think that I can safely say that we didn't improve one lick by playing Westfield State. It was just one more day of non-ultimate in our pathetically short season. I feel extremely embittered that we don't even get to play this weekend.
Fuck Henry.
Yesterday and Henry is a Bad Captain.
Another weak turnout at practice yesterday. Which is beginning to just feel rather normal. We managed to be pretty productive, though, running go-to and break mark drills before a scrimmage cut short by impending darkness. I don't feel like I really need to talk about that.
Before practice yesterday, Babbitt clued me in on our status for this weekend's tournament at Yale. We had been planning, as we do every year, to play at the Yale Coffee Cup. Henry told us that he had submitted a bid for this tournament. As it turns out, he did not.
Apparently, Henry's first contact with the Yale captains had been through his personal email account instead of the team's. Why he did this is anyone's guess. It does appear, however, that he eventually decided to forward the string of Yale/Umass communication to the team email account so that Babbitt (the other captain) would be able to see what our team plans are. Things seemed pretty wrapped up until Yale changed the weekend that they would be holding the tournament and asked teams to resubmit their bids. Henry hit Reply on the forwarded email, which sent our bid to his personal account rather than to the Yale captain. Not hearing anything else from us, Yale left us off of their tournament list and it seems like we may be out of luck. Babbitt wouldn't have even known about this problem if he hadn't checked the tournament page to see what Other teams would be attending Coffee Cup. When he didn't see our name on the list, he checked the string of emails and deduced that Henry had completely fucked us in the ass. Babbitt emailed the Yale captains and said that we would love to play if anybody dropped, but I don't know the chances of this.
Henry has stunned me with his lack of commitment as a captain. A captain should be the team's most dedicated player. Henry, on the other hand, seems to among Zoodisc's least dedicated players. He routinely skips practice, and has rarely participated fully even in the practices he has attended. He has, maybe, been a full contributor in five practices this fall. That is unacceptable. Henry seems much more comfortable standing on the sideline, flexing his political muscle by ordering everybody else around. When he has played for us, Henry hasn't demonstrated any desire to play well. In our scrimmage against ARHS, for example, Henry literally had ten or eleven throwaways. Again, unacceptable. He makes some of the worst decisions that I have ever seen out of a player of his caliber, and has the nasty habit of getting on his teammates for failing to succeed on plays of a much higher percentage.
From an organizational standpoint, Henry is a complete failure as a captain. He claims that he wants other players on the team to give input and help make decisions, but he is generally unavailable or unwilling to listen to anybody else. He moves forward with wild plans, only to decide halfway through the process that he doesn't want to finish the job and dumps it off on Babbitt. Several times in this young season Henry has handed Babbitt the daunting task of cleaning up cleaning up the mess that he has made of team affairs.
Take, for example, this current situation. How the fuck did Henry not realize his mistake as soon as our bid arrive in his own Inbox?! How did a lightbulb not go off in his obtuse skull when he received an email addressed to another man? I don't even want to start getting into how stupid Henry must be to make such an inexcusable mistake.
Or how about our own tournament, which we hosted last weekend. Henry handled everything to do with this tournament until four days before the fact when he shoved the whole deal off on Babbitt and gave him the complete responsibility of handling the affair with little to no knowledge of the decisions that Henry had unilaterally made. It was only when teams began dropping from our tournament that we realized that Henry had made absolutely no effort to collect deposits from the teams that had announced an intention to come. Without deposits, other teams had no incentive not to drop out of a tournament scheduled for Halloween weekend.
Or how about Purple Valley, when Henry illogically thought (without consulting anybody) that we would like to stay for the tournament dinner even though we were not staying overnight or attending the tournament party. Had he asked anybody, he would have learned that it was ridiculous to assume that anybody would want to stay at Williams for three or four hours after our game just to eat some shitty tournament dinner. Any reasonable person would want to get home and shower and go to bed, but Henry didn't think of his because he was Skipping The Tournament. Commitment? That word is meaningless to Henry! He then paid for a tournament dinner for 25, which is eleven people more than we actually brought to Purple Valley. Henry just through our money away, but this was no problem for him because he wasn't playing with us anyway.
Or how about two nights ago, when Henry agreed to swing by my house to discuss plans for the team with Babbitt. He said that he would come at midnight, after he got off of work, and Babbitt waited up for him. At one in the morning, Henry called Babbitt to tell him he wasn't actually coming. Is this a considerate thing to do? No, it is a Henry thing to do and Henry is anything But considerate. Or respectful. Or punctual. Or reliable. He is egotistically incompetent, and it is going to be difficult to stop myself from hitting him in the mouth the next time that he deigns to actually show up to a team event. If he escapes physical violence, I should be lauded as a saint.
Henry barely deserves to be a player on this team, let alone a captain. The thought of my impending graduation makes me mourn the end of my Zoodisc career. It does, however, make me rejoice at the fact that I will never again be forced to play on the same team as Henry Brecher.
Before practice yesterday, Babbitt clued me in on our status for this weekend's tournament at Yale. We had been planning, as we do every year, to play at the Yale Coffee Cup. Henry told us that he had submitted a bid for this tournament. As it turns out, he did not.
Apparently, Henry's first contact with the Yale captains had been through his personal email account instead of the team's. Why he did this is anyone's guess. It does appear, however, that he eventually decided to forward the string of Yale/Umass communication to the team email account so that Babbitt (the other captain) would be able to see what our team plans are. Things seemed pretty wrapped up until Yale changed the weekend that they would be holding the tournament and asked teams to resubmit their bids. Henry hit Reply on the forwarded email, which sent our bid to his personal account rather than to the Yale captain. Not hearing anything else from us, Yale left us off of their tournament list and it seems like we may be out of luck. Babbitt wouldn't have even known about this problem if he hadn't checked the tournament page to see what Other teams would be attending Coffee Cup. When he didn't see our name on the list, he checked the string of emails and deduced that Henry had completely fucked us in the ass. Babbitt emailed the Yale captains and said that we would love to play if anybody dropped, but I don't know the chances of this.
Henry has stunned me with his lack of commitment as a captain. A captain should be the team's most dedicated player. Henry, on the other hand, seems to among Zoodisc's least dedicated players. He routinely skips practice, and has rarely participated fully even in the practices he has attended. He has, maybe, been a full contributor in five practices this fall. That is unacceptable. Henry seems much more comfortable standing on the sideline, flexing his political muscle by ordering everybody else around. When he has played for us, Henry hasn't demonstrated any desire to play well. In our scrimmage against ARHS, for example, Henry literally had ten or eleven throwaways. Again, unacceptable. He makes some of the worst decisions that I have ever seen out of a player of his caliber, and has the nasty habit of getting on his teammates for failing to succeed on plays of a much higher percentage.
From an organizational standpoint, Henry is a complete failure as a captain. He claims that he wants other players on the team to give input and help make decisions, but he is generally unavailable or unwilling to listen to anybody else. He moves forward with wild plans, only to decide halfway through the process that he doesn't want to finish the job and dumps it off on Babbitt. Several times in this young season Henry has handed Babbitt the daunting task of cleaning up cleaning up the mess that he has made of team affairs.
Take, for example, this current situation. How the fuck did Henry not realize his mistake as soon as our bid arrive in his own Inbox?! How did a lightbulb not go off in his obtuse skull when he received an email addressed to another man? I don't even want to start getting into how stupid Henry must be to make such an inexcusable mistake.
Or how about our own tournament, which we hosted last weekend. Henry handled everything to do with this tournament until four days before the fact when he shoved the whole deal off on Babbitt and gave him the complete responsibility of handling the affair with little to no knowledge of the decisions that Henry had unilaterally made. It was only when teams began dropping from our tournament that we realized that Henry had made absolutely no effort to collect deposits from the teams that had announced an intention to come. Without deposits, other teams had no incentive not to drop out of a tournament scheduled for Halloween weekend.
Or how about Purple Valley, when Henry illogically thought (without consulting anybody) that we would like to stay for the tournament dinner even though we were not staying overnight or attending the tournament party. Had he asked anybody, he would have learned that it was ridiculous to assume that anybody would want to stay at Williams for three or four hours after our game just to eat some shitty tournament dinner. Any reasonable person would want to get home and shower and go to bed, but Henry didn't think of his because he was Skipping The Tournament. Commitment? That word is meaningless to Henry! He then paid for a tournament dinner for 25, which is eleven people more than we actually brought to Purple Valley. Henry just through our money away, but this was no problem for him because he wasn't playing with us anyway.
Or how about two nights ago, when Henry agreed to swing by my house to discuss plans for the team with Babbitt. He said that he would come at midnight, after he got off of work, and Babbitt waited up for him. At one in the morning, Henry called Babbitt to tell him he wasn't actually coming. Is this a considerate thing to do? No, it is a Henry thing to do and Henry is anything But considerate. Or respectful. Or punctual. Or reliable. He is egotistically incompetent, and it is going to be difficult to stop myself from hitting him in the mouth the next time that he deigns to actually show up to a team event. If he escapes physical violence, I should be lauded as a saint.
Henry barely deserves to be a player on this team, let alone a captain. The thought of my impending graduation makes me mourn the end of my Zoodisc career. It does, however, make me rejoice at the fact that I will never again be forced to play on the same team as Henry Brecher.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Pat Bell Memorial '08
This was not our best tournament ever.
Friday night (Halloween), we had big party at our house. I dressed as a guy who got mauled by a bear, easily winning the "goriest costume" award. Or, I would have won the award if that was a real award. Instead of in my imagination. Pretty much everybody from the Men's and Women's teams came to the party, as well as some people I didn't know. Josh got a keg, and the party went fairly well except Jesse's camera got stolen, which was a real downer. Hopefully somebody just took it by mistake, but I doubt it. People are assholes.
Saturday morning, a good part of the team looked a little worse for wear. This probably had as much to do with the late night as it did the drinking. We got off to a slow start against McGill, and though we played a little better as the game progressed we still lost by a good margin. This was to be the start of an infuriating weekend. We then took on Amherst College, and we pulled out a win in spite of sloppy offense and pourous defense. Alan (who had been one of our only consistant offensive players) went down early in the game with, most likely, a fractured bone in his hand. Our third game was against the alumni team. Again, we went down early, but some good playing brought the game to universe point with us receiving. A drop on an easy pass, however, (bane of our weekend) and the alumni threw the undefended goal for the win. Classic. Game four against Amherst High School was a travesty. We were completely stifled by their zone defense and were unable to prevent their deep passing game. We lost several players to injury during this game, ending with only 10 or so active players. Finally, we finished Saturday against Tufts, who beat us in a similar manner as ARHS. Again, we weren't able to get our offense going and played defense like a bunch of babies. It was embarrassing.
We started Sunday against our own B team. We beat them easily, though we didn't look too sharp at any point in the game. Though we didn't deserve it, the alumni team forfeited their spot in the semi-finals so that we could have another rematch against Tufts. They might as well not have bothered. Tufts humiliated us today just as they did yesterday. Our offense wasn't able to get anything done at all against a defensive zone filled with gaping holes. Our players displayed a particular fondness for dropping easy lead passes that hit them in the hands. Our defenders were constantly out of position and rarely challenged a Tufts cut. It was pathetic. Even though we picked it up in the second half, we still lost 15-5 or 6. Unforgivable. I'm pretty disheartened by the way that these games went.
Part of what makes this weekend so discouraging is the fact that I actually played quite well. I had a few throwaways yesterday, but I played pretty good defense and generally made good decisions. Today, I had no turnovers in the B team game and only two against Tufts (none in the first half). One of my turnovers was on a throw to Ryan, when he had a step to the inside on the defender but wasn't expecting me to put it. The other was on a pretty bad backhand into the endzone, when I tried to pop it OI over the defender to Tim and just floated it too high. I forced a bunch of turns this weekend, got a few poach d's, and threw a lot of goals. In my opinion, I played better this weekend than I have at any other time this fall. It's a shame that I'm just not talented enough to take over a game and win one for my team.
One of our biggest problems as a team this weekend was drops. We dropped a lot of easy passes this weekend, and that just Should Not Happen. It is easy to catch a frisbee. Easier than it is to catch the ball in any other sport known to man. When people drop the disc after working it down the length of the field, it is a huge letdown. When people drop the disc on an easy swing pass eight yards out of our own endzone and the other team just tosses it in for a score, it is infuriating. I don't know how many times I threw a great pass to a teammate only to have it glance off his hands or thwack off of his chest. It sometimes felt as though there wasn't anything that I could do to help my team succeed.
Another big problem was defense. So often, players on our team would just let their men run any which way all over the field. Sometimes, we would trail them in, happy to set the mark after their man caught an undefended twenty-five yard in cut. That is unacceptable. We need to make sure that we get good positioning on defense, staying on our toes and taking an intelligent route to the disc to stop our men from getting the disc and to cut off the throwing lanes. I think that so much of this is just team attitude. The players on our team probably think that they're playing hard on defense, but they just aren't. They need to learn how to sprint when they are tired, and they need to see the space through which the offense is trying to move the disc and beat their cutter to the spot. Defense requires being willing to work harder. Always. If you think that you are working hard, work harder. Individuals on our team needs to learn to be personally insulted every time that their man gets the disc, and I really don't think that many people have this attitude.
I think that this same problem pertains to our offense. So often this weekend, a cutter would make a half-assed little cut. When they do this, it is clear that they don't really want the pass. Our downfield cutters often lacked hustle, and this meant that the handlers had all of the responsibility of keeping the disc moving. That doesn't excuse the mistakes that the handlers made, they should have played better as well, but it does make it really difficult to move the disc down the field. Every player on this team needs to get more active on the field, and I think that a lot of this activity is rooted in a lack of desire. If we are going to win, we have to want to win. End of story. We have to want to get the disc, we have to want to shut our men down, we have to want to score, we have to HATE to be scored on.
I'm in a pretty pissy mood right now, but I can't wait for practice on Tuesday. This weekend should show us how far away we are from achieving any sort of goal this season.
Friday night (Halloween), we had big party at our house. I dressed as a guy who got mauled by a bear, easily winning the "goriest costume" award. Or, I would have won the award if that was a real award. Instead of in my imagination. Pretty much everybody from the Men's and Women's teams came to the party, as well as some people I didn't know. Josh got a keg, and the party went fairly well except Jesse's camera got stolen, which was a real downer. Hopefully somebody just took it by mistake, but I doubt it. People are assholes.
Saturday morning, a good part of the team looked a little worse for wear. This probably had as much to do with the late night as it did the drinking. We got off to a slow start against McGill, and though we played a little better as the game progressed we still lost by a good margin. This was to be the start of an infuriating weekend. We then took on Amherst College, and we pulled out a win in spite of sloppy offense and pourous defense. Alan (who had been one of our only consistant offensive players) went down early in the game with, most likely, a fractured bone in his hand. Our third game was against the alumni team. Again, we went down early, but some good playing brought the game to universe point with us receiving. A drop on an easy pass, however, (bane of our weekend) and the alumni threw the undefended goal for the win. Classic. Game four against Amherst High School was a travesty. We were completely stifled by their zone defense and were unable to prevent their deep passing game. We lost several players to injury during this game, ending with only 10 or so active players. Finally, we finished Saturday against Tufts, who beat us in a similar manner as ARHS. Again, we weren't able to get our offense going and played defense like a bunch of babies. It was embarrassing.
We started Sunday against our own B team. We beat them easily, though we didn't look too sharp at any point in the game. Though we didn't deserve it, the alumni team forfeited their spot in the semi-finals so that we could have another rematch against Tufts. They might as well not have bothered. Tufts humiliated us today just as they did yesterday. Our offense wasn't able to get anything done at all against a defensive zone filled with gaping holes. Our players displayed a particular fondness for dropping easy lead passes that hit them in the hands. Our defenders were constantly out of position and rarely challenged a Tufts cut. It was pathetic. Even though we picked it up in the second half, we still lost 15-5 or 6. Unforgivable. I'm pretty disheartened by the way that these games went.
Part of what makes this weekend so discouraging is the fact that I actually played quite well. I had a few throwaways yesterday, but I played pretty good defense and generally made good decisions. Today, I had no turnovers in the B team game and only two against Tufts (none in the first half). One of my turnovers was on a throw to Ryan, when he had a step to the inside on the defender but wasn't expecting me to put it. The other was on a pretty bad backhand into the endzone, when I tried to pop it OI over the defender to Tim and just floated it too high. I forced a bunch of turns this weekend, got a few poach d's, and threw a lot of goals. In my opinion, I played better this weekend than I have at any other time this fall. It's a shame that I'm just not talented enough to take over a game and win one for my team.
One of our biggest problems as a team this weekend was drops. We dropped a lot of easy passes this weekend, and that just Should Not Happen. It is easy to catch a frisbee. Easier than it is to catch the ball in any other sport known to man. When people drop the disc after working it down the length of the field, it is a huge letdown. When people drop the disc on an easy swing pass eight yards out of our own endzone and the other team just tosses it in for a score, it is infuriating. I don't know how many times I threw a great pass to a teammate only to have it glance off his hands or thwack off of his chest. It sometimes felt as though there wasn't anything that I could do to help my team succeed.
Another big problem was defense. So often, players on our team would just let their men run any which way all over the field. Sometimes, we would trail them in, happy to set the mark after their man caught an undefended twenty-five yard in cut. That is unacceptable. We need to make sure that we get good positioning on defense, staying on our toes and taking an intelligent route to the disc to stop our men from getting the disc and to cut off the throwing lanes. I think that so much of this is just team attitude. The players on our team probably think that they're playing hard on defense, but they just aren't. They need to learn how to sprint when they are tired, and they need to see the space through which the offense is trying to move the disc and beat their cutter to the spot. Defense requires being willing to work harder. Always. If you think that you are working hard, work harder. Individuals on our team needs to learn to be personally insulted every time that their man gets the disc, and I really don't think that many people have this attitude.
I think that this same problem pertains to our offense. So often this weekend, a cutter would make a half-assed little cut. When they do this, it is clear that they don't really want the pass. Our downfield cutters often lacked hustle, and this meant that the handlers had all of the responsibility of keeping the disc moving. That doesn't excuse the mistakes that the handlers made, they should have played better as well, but it does make it really difficult to move the disc down the field. Every player on this team needs to get more active on the field, and I think that a lot of this activity is rooted in a lack of desire. If we are going to win, we have to want to win. End of story. We have to want to get the disc, we have to want to shut our men down, we have to want to score, we have to HATE to be scored on.
I'm in a pretty pissy mood right now, but I can't wait for practice on Tuesday. This weekend should show us how far away we are from achieving any sort of goal this season.
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