Southerns Continued.

Anyway, some wrap-up thoughts about Saturday:

We made a concerted effort at Southerns to get more playing time for some of the players who hadn't seen much action during the first two tournaments at Spring Break. I met with Babbitt on Thursday night, when we first got to Statesboro, and we talked about the fact that our team could not meet its full potential if we only played 10 people in every game of the season. I feel this very strongly. We need to sub early in games and early in tournaments because it saves legs for our star players and it boosts team morale. It sucks to travel to a tournament, warm up with the team and get excited, and then stand on the sideline for four games. I know this from experience. And coming into a game in the third to last point, when you've been standing on the sideline getting cold and stiff for the last hour and a half, sets you up for failure. Frankly, I am not a bit surprised when somebody comes into the game in that sort of situation and immediatly drops a pass or gets burned deep. It's almost impossible to be ready to play when you've spent such a long time on the bench. And this scenerio breeds quit in our teammates.

We need everybody on our team this season. Even if there are some players who won't see the field in our biggest games (that's just the way that sports work, sometimes), these players are intrinsically important to the team's success. It's these players who need to show up to practice every day and work their asses off to make the depth of the team better, so that we can afford to play more people in the earlier games of tournaments without risking the entire season. It's these players who need to work their asses off to challenge the team's veterans so that the veterans don't get complacent. I understand that it's hard to feel worthwhile when you spend an entire tournament on the sideline. You get down on yourself, you start questioning your decision to commit fully to the team. But you need to man up and push through that feeling and realize that everything that the starters do - every layout d, every score, every single fucking cut - is only possible because the bench players at practice pushed the starters to work a little harder and get into a little better shape. Without the work of the bench players, practice deteriorates and the team cannot improve.

Anyway, my talk with Babbitt reached the conclussion that we would have to sub a lot more (though certainly not equal subbing - this isn't a fucking communist state) so that everybody comes back from Spring Break in good spirits and ready to work and improve. We devised a system of lines, which we didn't stick to during Southerns but which sort of formed the framework of our subbing system. Put a couple people together who are going to work well, let them learn each other, rotate through other players to fill out the lines.

Subbing in the first three games on Saturday was easy. The first couple teams that we faced were just bad. Even our weakest lines had a pretty good chance of winning against either GOP or Wisconsin B. The third team, South Florida, took such a drubbing right at the beginning of the game that we were never really worried about losing that game either, so it was easy to open up the lines and let the bench players into the game. It's not tough to distribute PT in a 15-7 victory.

The problem, however, arises when we get into games that are a little more difficult to win. Every point seems to take on so much importance that it's hard to get yourself not to put in the best possible line at any given moment, even if this means that some of your teammates aren't going to see the field much or at all. This is just the nature of being a competitive person - you want to win every. single. point. You have to step back, though, and realize that winning points at Southerns has absolutely no intrinsic value. Our games don't start to count at all until Sectionals; until then, all of our games are just practice. We can lose every single game from here until Sectionals, and if we win out from there we are still National Champions. That's just the way that our goofy-assed sport works. Sometimes, in the interest of making our entire team better, we have to concede a point or two so that everybody can improve and so that everybody can feel like they are a part of the team.

It seemed to me that Central Florida was a game where subbing could easily fall by the wayside. They are a pretty good team that has had some pretty decent wins in the last couple of years. They also ran roughshod over their own pool, winning out for the opportunity to face us in the crossover game. We knew that we were in for a tough game, and the aura of competition was rising over our team as we prepared to match up against them.

Before we started the game, I pulled Babbitt aside and reminded him that subbing was important. He seemed a little hesitant, clearly he cared about winning the game, but what really was the point of gunning for a win? I made it clear that I wasn't talking about subbing to lose. I recognize that we always need to have a line on the field that has enough throwers, cutters, and defenders to at least have the possibility of success. Additionally, winning games in tournaments can be important because it gives us the opportunity to play against better teams, whereas a loss might force us to play consolation games against other losing teams. In order to improve, I understand that we need to challenge ourselves by playing quality opponents. The outcome of this crossover, however, didn't make any difference in terms of the caliber of teams that we would face. The winner of the crossover would be the sixth seed in the Championship Bracket, while the loser of the crossover would become the eighth seed. Big whoop. I told Babbitt that we needed to get everybody in the game, even if it meant that we lost.

And I think that we did a pretty good job with this. We weren't keeping strict count of how many points people played, but I'm pretty sure that everybody hit the field for at least a couple. What felt even better was that we won this game. If we had gotten everybody in the game and been blown out, I would have been afraid that some people would have gotten down on themselves, thinking that their playing time lost the game for the whole team. But we Won. We won, even though everybody had the opportunity to contribute, and I think that wins like this are important to our team chemistry. Our less experienced players need the opportunity to get on the field while the team is succeeding. It helps them to build the confidence necessary to keep working and improving as players and it makes them believe that they really are a part of our team, no matter what.

Our win over Central Florida was a big win because it was a total Team Win. Nobody should feel left out of any of our victories as a team - everybody contributes in their own way - but this sort of win just feels different. This sort of win lets every player know that we value their contribution and that they are on the team because we believe that they can be winners on the ultimate field.