Amherst College Scrimmage.

Saturday's scrimmage against Amherst College went well. We won 16-14, which is a pretty solid way to start the season. We only won by a couple of points, but it still feels great to start the season with a win. Really, the game wasn't even as close as the score would suggest. Our team controlled the pace of the game, and we were winning until a couple miscues at the end put us down 14-13. We put in a halfway decent D line and broke our way to victory, establishing ourselves as the number one college ultimate team in Amherst. Whatever that means.

Honestly, I wasn't sure what to expect going into the scrimmage. We've been working pretty hard all semester, so I knew that we would be in pretty decent shape, but it's impossible to predict how that's going to translate when we finally get on to a field. It's one thing to be in great shape for running sprints or for jumping up flights of stairs or for doing sets of pushups. It's totally another thing to be in shape to make cuts or play defense or (gasp) to play lockdown defense and then make cuts after we get the turn (which is really difficult, mentally and physically). We have been doing the End Zone drill for a couple weeks now, setting up a single endzone in our parking lot and running the drill for sometimes hours at a time. These experiences really frustrated me; it is ridiculous how long it takes our team to successfully score twenty consecutive goals when there isn't even defense to get in the way. I walked away from each one of those practices baffled by the fact that a large portion of the team seems to lack simple throwing and catching skills. "It's okay," I told myself, "we're just going to have to be patient for the first couple games while we get our skills together." I pretty much wrote this first scrimmage off in advance, expecting it to be (win or lose) a sloppy mess.

But we really weren't that bad. We had some bad throwaways and some drops, but our throwing and catching mechanics were smoother than I ever would have expected. I was really surprised at first, but then it hit me: we don't need every player on this team to throw or catch very often. In a drill, where every single player throws and catches equally often, a few inconsistant players really bring down the completion percentage of the entire team. On the field, however, there are players who make a ton of throws and catches (handlers), players who make a lot of throws and catches (primary cutters), and players who only need to be counted on to make a couple easy throws and a couple catches each game (everybody else). Assuming that the handlers and the primary cutters really execute and minimize their mistakes, the team as a whole can succeed even if some of the players remain individually inconsistant. On our team, we need everybody to learn their roles and play according to those roles. If everybody can stay within their slot on the team, we are capable of some great playing.

Our organization in the Amherst College game actually looked pretty good. The cutters, by and large, did an exellent job staying in the stack (when we ran vert stack) or staying in their lanes (when we went horizontal). And, by and large, Amherst College couldn't stay with us when we stepped out and really made our cuts. Amherst College has a couple of guys who are pretty quick, but their overall athleticism and conditioning really couldn't hang with ours. There was no point of that game where I really felt winded at all, and Amherst College didn't make us have to work very hard to get open. While they aren't the most athletic team that we'll face this season, I think that this scrimmage demonstrated the success of our conditioning program thus far.

I was also impressed with our decision making in the scrimmage. We had very few throwaways and rarely did we gamble on a covered deep shot, both of which have been mistakes that our team has made constantly in the last few years. The few turnovers that we did have were on throws to open recievers that somehow went awry, either because of an execution error on the throwers part or because of a drop by the receiver. I had two turnovers myself: a forehand that slipped our of my hand and flew wide of Mitch, and a backhand that I didn't release quickly enough after crashing through the cup (resulting in an ignoble block - I was scored on by the dump going up line to end a bad point for me). I should have had one more, but Jeff Kelly made a nice play to save my ass. Our D Line's offense also looked pretty good, but at times they were a little stagnant. It was difficult on the D Line, because they often had to play on lines that didn't have an experienced handler and/or lacked a clearly defined primary cutter. In these situations, the D Line handlers dumped the disc backwards between themselves while the stack drifted deeper and deeper as the cutters figured out their shit. Sometimes this screwed us over, but often this bought us enough time to bang out a few up field passes on the breakside to put the disc in a position to score. Overall, I would say that our offense looked solid, even if it was a bit tentative.

Defensively, we could have used a bit more aggression. Most of Amherst College's goals were on hucks, which is unacceptable. We need to spend more time talking about bodying up and forcing our man in, and then taking position under the disc if the throw still goes up. Our deep defence was attrocious in the scrimmage, but at least it gives us a clear idea of the sorts of things we need to work on. We also need to work on staying with our man on the in cut and then going to get the D. Too often in that scrimmage the Amherst College players stood flat-footed and caught a pass on an incut while our defenders stood right behind them and set up a mark. That should be a D-block, every time. Our intensity and focus and desire just isn't quite there yet on defense. Hopefully we'll be able to pull it out next week.

My favorite play of the day: I'll bang it out quickly now, since I don't have much time, but I really wanted to document it. I had the disc and Amherst College was playing man defense. I was being marked by this kid named Monty, who is short but really quick, squirelly, and fast. Sort of the opposite of me. I dumped it to Jeff Kelly on the breakside and Monty made the mistake of laying out on the mark. I suddenly found myself with a good view of downfield (it was wide open) and my man was lying on the ground three yards behind me. I decided that this was the time to score. I sprinted downfield, waving my arms, but Jeff didn't throw it to me. He threw it to Mitch who, for some reason, didn't throw it to me. I kept running, and was pretty much on the goal line when Mitch threw it to John. By the time John threw it to me, I was already five yards deep and I wasn't wide open anymore (I already said that Monty was fast, and he had time to catch up by then). The throw came in high and outside in. I found my spot, bodied up, and skied him. It was great. I hardly ever do that!