Today.

We had a pretty tough stair workout today. It was quite cold this morning, which made me move practice indoors. It warmed up in the early afternoon, but I'm still glad that we had the workout that we did because it was pretty darn cold by the time that practice ended. I also think that workouts like stair workouts are important, as they work muscles that we wouldn't necessarily work through sprinting (further building our explosive power) and they aren't as brutal on our knees. Personally, three consecutive days of parking lot workouts completely wear down on my joints. I know that several other members of my team feel the same way. Stair workouts are the hardest on my shin splints, though, which aren't feeling so hot.

We did the same stair workout that we did the last time that our entire team convened at Lederle (not the workout that we did the Friday before last, when only Babbit, Tim, Ryan, and I showed for a makeup workout and we let ourselves go rather easy). I believe that I posted that workout on this blog a few entries back, so I won't waste my time and yours by rewriting it. Suffice to say, it was a pretty extensive workout, and I'm quite tired. Hard workouts are important, but we've worked ourselves into suitable enough shape that it's starting to take a long time to get through a practice that is difficult enough to tire everybody on the team. I suppose that being in too good shape is never a problem that I can really complain about, but it does make for longer practices.

Having a strained rotator cuff is annoying because I can't do pushups until it has had a chance to heal. In the meantime, I have been holding a six inch leg lift during the time that the rest of the team is doing a set of pushups. Additionally, as a team we hold thirty second six inch leg lifts as our recovery between sets of pushups. Therefore, instead of doing four sets of twenty pushups and three thirty second leg lifts, I have to do seven six in leg lifts in a row. That's a pretty good way to shred my abs, and that's before we even start our ab workout! Henry commented, not complaining, that our ab regimen might be a bit excessive. That may be so, but I'd rather have excessively strong abs than excessively weak ones. As long as we are continuing to run hard and stretch at the end of every workout, I can't imagine that iron abs could possibly be a detriment to our playing conditions. Anyway, as Henry put it, at least we're going to develop fantastic beach bodies for Spring Break. So why not?

I forgot to take my pills for a few days in a row, and my knees are feeling much worse than they felt last week. I'm really kicking myself for letting my supplement routine slide, since these chemicals build up in your body to work the way that they do. When the reserves start to run thin, they don't really do so much to protect my joints. I just hope that it doesn't take long for me to get back on schedule and renew the balance of knee-healing chemicals in my body.

Speaking of supplements, I had a funny conversation with my creative writing professor this afternoon. We were walking in the same direction when we left Bartlett, and we started talking about running and suchnot. Apparently, this professor runs all year in the woods behind his house. In the winter, he straps spikes to his shoes and prays that he doesnt break a leg on a log concealed buried beneath the snow and ice. It sounds terrifying, but he says that he can't run on the pavement because of his knee problems. I advised him to start taking the type of supplements that I have been taking since the beginning of the semester, but he seemed cynical of such things. Well, I suppose it wasn't actually that funny of a conversation, but it was a noteworthy occurance for me so I figured I might as well log it down. It seems ridiculous to me that somebody will run in the snow in the woods and won't even try joint healing supplements.

Some other stuff.

I actually ran out of time before I had to leave for class, so I came back to the library to toss up some stuff that I hadn't been able to chronicle during my last type-sesh.

As a team, we have quit drinking, smoking, and otherwise abusing substances for the duration of the 2009 season. This is official as of last night, the final weekend where drinking was allowed. Our team celebrated this final weekend with a fair amount of the aforementioned soon-to-be-banned activities.

Several of us drank Thursday night while we watched indoor pickup - when Clayton showed up and asked for money, we quit playing and I went with Mitch to the local liquor store. Indoor pickup is kind of stupid and boring, and I'd already been able to play for an hour before Clayton even showed up. I couldn't bear to go from free shitty ultimate to ten dollar shitty ultimate and, anyway, that dude is a douche bag and I love to just stick it to him, so several of us moved to the sideline and watched from the bleachers. I really only went because we wanted to give Gaylon a try-out, since he had transferred to Umass just this semester and has yet to miss a practice or workout. He seems like a really nice guy and he's a very hard worker, even if he is quite inexperienced as an ultimate player. It was almost as if he was not yet good enough to take but not bad enough to justify cutting - another one of those bubble newbies of which we have so many. Hopefully a few more weeks of practice will sharpen his skills and his field awareness and make him a viable addition to the team, since we decided in the end to take him.

Friday afternoon, I started drinking at about 1 o'clock. Ryan swung by my house to wait for his bus to leave for Needham - he was going back for the weekend to hang with his girlfriend - and we decided that a drunk bus ride was far more exciting than a sober bus ride. I also wanted to get a little liquored up before class, since I wouldn't have the opportunity again this semester, but I ended up drinking 6 shots and deciding to play Babbitt's zombie video game instead. That night we had an early birthday party for Babbitt, who turns 21 on March 5 (in the no-drink zone). It was a really fun party, actually. A lot of the team showed up, so there was a pretty decent crowd, but it wasn't enough people to make moving around uncomfortable or to make us worry about a noise complaint or something. And we got capital h Hammered. I was short on cash, so I only bought myself a growler of Opa-Opa Porter to drink, but the profusion of available hard liquor actually caused me to forget about my beer about 3/4 of the way through the growler. Mitch had bought a handle of 100 proof vodka for Bonta and her friends, and those silly girls got too drunk and left it unoccupied on my kitchen table. A bunch of us ended up standing around that table, slamming shots of vodka and yelling at each other. Kasarah had made a rum and coke in a giant punch bowl, using half a handle of rum. I started chanting, "Drink from the well! Drink from the well!" and insisting that people drink directly from the ladle that I was pulling from the punch bowl. I soon dumped the rest of the handle of rum into the mix, and when the level started to drop I added the rest of the handle of vodka. By the end, it was a caustic mixture of almost pure alcohol with just a little coke coloration. Awesome. That's pretty much the last thing that I remember; apparentely, we all got high and both Jesse and I blacked out and threw up on my bedroom floor.

I was hung over all Saturday, a wreck collapsed across the living room sofa. We watched a couple movies on television, and then Jesse, Patuluk and I went to watch Taken in the theater. I thought it was excellent. We went to bed early to prepare for plyos the next morning.

Plyos yesterday went alright, though there were some hitches in our plans. Babbitt, Patuluk and I were about to leave when Robin called, having left early by himself. Apparently, Boyden was filled with some convention of future women athletes (a.k.a. little girls being taught rudamentary field hockey techniques), so that space would be unavailable for a while. I wanted to move practice to our parking lot, but it was cold and there was a steady downpour of freezing rain (it later became snow, and we accumulated about an inch and a half). On the way to Boyden, we decided that we would tell everybody that we were going to lead them to a secret field where we could practice outside, get everybody's hopes nice and low, and then take them bowling instead. Of course, once we got there with this plan, the women in Boyden told us that they would only be there for another half an hour, so we had to just wait it out and then hold our workout. It was really disappointing. I had gotten excited to bowl!

Our workout was alright. In the interest of time, I really dropped down the number and the duration of our rests, which made the workout difficult even though we actually did fewer sets. We did two plyometric circuits with only a two minute break in between each one and limited our in-set recoveries to 18-21 seconds. We also did sprint and backpedal shuttle runs instead of suicides. Individually, I didn't find these shuttles too difficult, but they definitely were tiring by the end. Afterwards, a bunch of us stayed behind and played basketball. While I was too tired to play hard, I think that this was the first plyo workout that didn't leave me too dead to even attempt to play basketball. It certainly wasn't as hard of a workout as some that we have done, but I think that it was okay.

Last night, our final night of drinking, all the people in my house except Robin got together to drink white russians and watch The Big Lebowski. Babbitt initially tried to keep up with the number of white russians that The Dude drinks over the course of this movie, but that quickly proved impossible. I think I drank six or so, and I was feeling pretty drunk (and sick) by the final couple. Maybe we'll get through the Big Lebowski Challenge, but last night was not the night. We then watched Annie and some other stuff on television before a late bedtime.

I'm pretty content with that as my last drinking night of the spring semester. It was a relaxed, pleasant evening where I got pretty drunk but kept things pretty. I mean, I'm glad that Friday night worked out the way that it did, but I'm equally glad that things didn't get as ridiculous last night. We're going to be able to drink a bit on Spring Break, so we can better bond as a team and all that, but I think that I'm going to try to keep it fairly reasonable. I'm too old to drink hard and play effective ultimate, and I'm old enough to understand that.

Ho, Shit! Oh Holy Day! I just got an email that my cleats were delivered to Needham! This is an exciting day for me, even though I don't know when I'm going to actually have them in my grubby little hands. I designed the most audacious, outrageous, stupendous cleats this past winter, and Nike has taken their time putting them together special for me. My dad said that he would buy me a pair of customized cleats for Christmas, so I went online and found Nike's top-rated cleat and ordered it in some funky colors. They cost $180 and look, in my mother's words, "very interesting", "like a five year old got at them with a set of poster paints," but it's my last year playing ultimate so I decided to just fucking go for it.

I'm fucking pumped. I can't wait to put them on for the first time!

Okay, got some time.

For the first time in ages, it feels as though I have a little time to myself to get some of my thoughts down here. I've been a little disappointed in my ability to regularly post on this blog, but this semester has been far busier than I ever expected it to be. Being a captain is truly a full time job, what with the planning and management of dozens of senseless ultimate players, and it becomes even more difficult when I try to remain a good boyfriend and a decent student while still trying to preserve some semblance of sanity. Kids, don't become captain. Unless there really isn't anybody else who can get the job done. In that case, well... I warned you.

While I put something up towards the end of last week, that wasn't exactly an exhaustive picture of our team situation. This post is going to be a little more detailed, and I guess it's going to have to cover about three weeks of Zoodiscery.

Plyos three Sundays ago had its ups and its downs. That morning was really the beginning of my battle with the disease that crippled our team for the better part of two weeks. I had been feeling a little ill (congested, headache) since the end of the week before that, but it wasn't really a big deal. Of course, like the genius that I am, I drank really hard that Friday night and totally unbalanced my imune system, which probably tipped me into the realm of completely fucked.

On a side note, however, that Friday night was a Lot of fun. A bunch of my teammates came over to drink, and I made everybody have a bunch of peppermint patties. For anybody who doesn't know, a peppermint pattie is when you pour Hershey's chocolate syrup into your mouth to coat your tongue, hold a shot of peppermint schnapps in your mouth, and shake your head back and forth so that the two sugary liquids mix. Swallow. Delicious. I drank about seventy of them that night (note: exaggeration). After almost dying of diabetic shock and alcohol poisioning, the following Saturday was a hung over waste. I was probably sick for most of that day, but I was way too hung over to even realize it. Which brings me back to my story.

I woke up that Sunday morning for plyos and felt absolutely horrible. I decided that I would push myself until I threw up, but only made it to the Boyden parking lot before I lost my breakfast. Several other veterans from the team were sick and had to sit out of practice as well. Henry and Mitch had been sick for the entire last week, and though they tried to participate both had to pull out of the workout. Josh's ankle was still bothering him from when he rolled it playing basketball the week before. Babbitt and Robin were sick, but they looked remarkably better than I felt. I think that the lack of veteran leadership in that plyometric workout resulted in a mostly lackluster performance by our team. It's hard to push yourself through one of these workouts. While everybody does the same excercises, plyos are almost entirely an individual activity because you can pussy out at any point. If you're doing calf jumps, for example, and you start to feel tired, you can jump more slowly or jump for less height. While it appears to the casual observer that you are still killing the workout, you really aren't getting the benefits that you would be if you were pushing yourself through the entire set. This is what I saw for most of the workout that Sunday.

While it can't be helped that some of the more experienced players were sick, I don't think that everybody did what they needed to do to help motivate the teammates who were taking part in the workout. Babbitt and Robin and Patuluk, for example, were on the next basketball court during portions of the workout, shooting baskets and giggling. This behavior is extremely distracting and a detriment to the team morale during the workout. It should suck to sit on the sideline during a workout. You should have to be dragged from the gym floor during Sunday Plyos, wanting so badly to support your team but too hurt or too sick to get it done. You should be in agony. When people look over and see you, instead, giggling like a twelve year old girl, it makes them doubt your sincerity. I was very disappointed in those guys; they should have known better, and I let them know exactly how I felt. Hopefully that isn't a problem that we encounter again.

There were some high points to that workout, however. One of the most notable occurances of that plyo workout was during the last set of suicides. Our entire team had crossed the finish line for our second to last set of suicides in under six minutes and thirty five seconds. Then we did pushups, holding leg lifts between each set. For the following set of suicides, I told the team that they would be done with running if they could all finish in under six minutes and forty-five seconds. It seemed like an accomplishable goal. People, however, felt more fatigued than I had expected. They fell well behind the pace that they would need to hold to meet our goal, and it seemed as if I was going to have to make them run another set of suicides (which I absolutely did not want to do - everybody was already lagging pretty hard, and it was obvious that doing more work wasn't going to do us much good). It all came down to Brandon, Little Pancake, and I had already written the team off as having failed. However, he exploded off of the line, running the first two legs of his suicide at an absolute sprint. I kept waiting for him to slow, surely nobody could run an entire suicide at top speed, but he refused to let the team down. Brandon knew that he needed to run an outrageously quick suicide to keep us under 6:45, and that's exactly what he did. Each individual on our team, on average, runs about a 35 second suicide. Brandon ran his final suicide in under 28 seconds, allowing the team to finish in 6:43.8 - about a second below our goal. It was fantastic. Watching him run that last suicide gave me shivers. If each one of us, when our number is called, can put the team on our shoulders and just get shit done, there isn't anybody who can beat us. Brandon made me believe that we can do it.

Practice the last couple weeks has been pretty good. We've gotten decent numbers from the A team for most of our practices, which has helped to keep people in good spirits. We also had pretty good weather, though it was at times cold and at times rainy. In keeping with my goals at the beginning of this semester, we have been working whenever possible to improve our fundamentals as a team. Right now, we are a team that struggles to make a simple throw, a simple catch, or to put on a hard mark. Practice has been good these last couple weeks because the weather has been good enough to do some work on these skills. We spent several days doing almost nothing but the Go To drill, working on our ability to run at a disc at a full sprint and make a catch. As a team, we practiced making pancake catches, claw catches, right handed catches, and left handed catches. While our results were often woefully inadequate (and frustrating as all hell), I think that a couple of hours of concentrated catches are exactly what our team needs right now. Zoodisc needs to get our drops out of the way now so that they won't be such a pestilence when we actually get onto some fields. We also did a number of marking and pivoting drills, which is an area where our team has never excelled, in my five years of experience.

As time progressed, the parking lot even became dry enough to run an End Zone Drill. The first time that we did this was last Tuesday. I figured that we would run it for a while, get a number, and then move on to some sprints and some other drills. After five minutes or so, I yelled out that we should get twenty scores in a row before we switch sides. Forty-five minutes later, we finally achieved our goal. It seems like, as I noted earlier in this post, our team struggles to complete simple throws and catches, even when there is no defense and negligible wind. While it is frustrating now, we are working through our problems now so that our fundamentals will be automatic when the season is on the line (or so we hope). At least it's nice to be running after a frisbee, even if it does come down to doing simple drills in a parking lot.

Our focus on throwing and catching has meant that practices haven't been as physically exhausting in the last couple of weeks. Running End Zone Drill for a couple hours is not nearly as tiring as running straight sprints with little rest. But it does turn out to be a fair amount of running, even if the recovery time is much too long. Hopefully what we lose in physical fitness during practices like this gained in our ultimate skills. Hopefully.

I've been feeling a bit worse for wear since last week. My calves had been bothering me since I first started getting sick, and I believed it to be muscle tightness on the insides of my calves. A doctor told me Thursday that it was a "classic case" of shin splints (in a different area from the shin splints that I am familiar with), so he gave me some stretches to help fight the shin splints. I also hurt my shoulder lifting weights last Wednesday night. I was doing the military press. The weights felt easier to heft than usual, so I wasn't giving the excercise my usual care. All of a sudden, my left shoulder wrench backwards and I felt the joint give way. I immediately stopped and went to the doctor the very next day. He said that he thinks that it's probably nothing more than a strained rotator cuff, but it was very disconcerting. It doesn't much hurt now, but it is still a little stiff and the doctor advised me not to use it much until it feels significantly improved. Again, he gave me some stretches and excercises that should presumably help my shoulder to heal.
Until then, it seems, I shall be limited in the gym and shall not be doing my pushups. Ah, the setbacks may be minor, but they sure are annoying.

Long time no post

It's been a while since I've made a post, so I figured I'd throw a short one out there while I have a few minutes between classes. I'll put up something more extensive within the next couple of days.

I was sick for all of last week, which is a lot of the reason why I didn't make any posts. I was pretty much in bed during that entire period, coming out only to lead practices. Let me tell you: it sucks to get through an entire workout, but it sucks Much More to have to tell other people to get through a tough workout while I stand off to the side. It was a miserable week. I'm still not feeling completely better, but at least I can participate in all of our drills and sprints now, so that's good.

Plyos last Sunday wasn't the best, but I think that had a lot to do with some of our team's more experienced members having to sit it out due to illness. The young guys work hard, but it's difficult for them to push themselves without an older teammate working beside them to show them how hard they can go. People were definitely lagging during that plyometric workout. However, there were some good parts, including Branden's heroic sprint at the end of practice to ensure that the team wouldn't have to run another set of suicides (more on that in my more extensive post). It was, by far, the most inspirational thing to happen to our team this year. I'm just sad that I wasn't a part of it.

We've been working on getting our uniform orders together, but there seems to be some sort of complication in our correspondence with Patagonia. I don't know what's taking them so long to send the proper forms in to the school so that we can get that shit rolling, but this whole process has been very frustrating. We are considering going with another manufacturer if Patagonia can't get it together soon.

We also had a meeting with Greg, our adviser. We talked about possible dates for our home tournament, sent in our final tournament fee (for Roll Call), discussed the process for paying for gas and reserving hotels, talked about buying parachutes and resistance bands to help with speed training, and a variety of other things. I think Babbitt and I are going to go in there on Friday to pay for everybody's UPA membership, and we're going to work on the hotel reservations sometime in the next couple of days as well.

I'd never met Greg before today. He seems like a fairly cool dude, and he was most helpful. I'm glad that we have somebody like Greg working on our side. It makes me believe that things will go the way that we've been hoping.

Anyway, that's all the time that I have right now. I have to go get changed for practice and then go to American Philosophy, so that I can run down to practice as soon as class gets out. I'll try to write a more detailed overview of the last two weeks whenever I have the time.

We just keep working.

Wednesday's practice was alright. We met at the Curry Hicks Cage to run a track workout (I believe I referenced my plans to do this in my last post), and ran a brief warmup. My intention was to run a 200 repeat workout. That track, however, is only about 165 meters long. I thought that the slightly reduced track length wouldn't make too much of a difference in the workout, so I told Tim and Ryan to pace us at about 30 seconds per 165. We ran 3 sets of 4 of these laps, with 30 seconds of rest between each lap and 2 minutes of rest between each set. While this workout was a little tiring, it wasn't really the brutal pace that I had anticipated. Everybody was able to get through each of the sprints with very little problem.

Ah, disappointment. Next time will be harder.

We ran a pretty tough stair workout at Lederle yesterday. This workout consisted of:
2 floors of 2 up 1 down
2 floors of 3 up 2 down
2 floors of 2 up 1 down
2 floors of 3 up 2 down
3 floors of singles
4 floors of doubles
2 floors of 2 up 1 down
2 floors of 3 up 2 down
4 floors of singles
5 floors of doubles
2 floors of 2 up 1 down
3 floors of doubles
3 sets of 10 squat jumps.

We did this entire stair workout twice, and then we did 4 sets of 15 pushups, holding leg lifts for 20 seconds between each set, and then we did our usual ab workout. All in all, a good practice.

I said this last night and I'll say it again. And again. And again. We are Not working this year to make Nationals. We will make Nationals this year, based on our hard work and our attitude. We will make it because we have players on this team who desire the win more than anybody else. We will make it because we refuse Not to make it.

No, we are working this year to contend for the crown once we get there. Zoodisc is going to outwork every other team in the country this year. Hands down. We may not have the best skill players or the best athletes, but we will beat quality teams by outworking them all winter. We are going to get to Nationals. That much is certain. Once we get there, we are going to take down one of those teams whose hype and potential outpaces their work ethic. They are out there, and we are gunning for them.

We had been planning on going to indoor pickup in Greenfield to give Galen an impromptu tryout last night. Galen is a new transfer this spring who seems to be totally pumped to join us this semester. He has worked his ass off every practice so far and is a regular at the weight room. He's fairly tall and seems moderately fast, but is not very good at jumping. Oh, and his throws look alright, but we haven't seen them in a game situation. I don't know how much experience he has playing real ultimate, but I want to give him a shot to earn his way on to the A team.

Yesterday's practice took away a lot of our inclination to go to indoor. To Galen's credit, he enthusiastically assured us that he was ready for his tryout when we offered him the chance to bail due to fatigue. I respect that. However, when we got home, Babbitt saw that his car was blocked in by Robin's and called off the entire excursion. It was too bad, as I really want to get this tryout over with (Galen is stuck in the "new kid suckup" phase, where he seems to be working really hard to get in everybody's good graces - it's just awkward), but there wasn't any easy way to get to Greenfield and we were exhausted. Hopefully we will be able to get this whole thing over with next Thursday.

I don't mind giving kids tryouts. Everybody deserves due opportunity to be part of this team, especially if they are willing to put in the work that it requires. The time leading up to a tryout, however, is vaguely uncomfortable. Nobody knows where their place is, the hierarchy hasn't been established. This is how I feel about Galen right now. When we finally get him his tryout, he is either on the A team or he is not on the A team, and everybody can get used to their respective roles. We can start thinking of him as a member of our team. Or we can start thinking of him as another hard working B teamer who can hopefully work himself into a viable contributor on the A team next year. Either way, I'm okay with that. I just want to know what the situation is so that I can act accordingly.

I am afraid, however, that Galen might not be as talented as I hope he is. Babbitt put it pretty well last night when he said that he was afraid that Galen would turn out to be a moderately athletic kid with no field sense and halfway decent throws, and that we were going to have to break his heart. Moderate skills and a lack of sense is probably the worst combination to have in terms of feeling hopefully and being let down. A kid who can throw and catch is often a kid who believes that he can make the A team. He thinks that he knows how to play, he thinks that he deserves a spot on the team. What that kid doesn't understand, however, is that field awareness and defensive tenacity are much more important characteristics when it comes to making our team. We have throwers; if you are going to make the team, it is unlikely that you are going to make it as a handler. It is much much Much more likely that we take a kid who is willing and able to work his ass off on defense or who knows how to be a downfield cutter. We can teach an athlete how to throw. We can't necessarilly teach a thrower how to be an athlete.

Anyway, I hope that Galen turns out to be a baller. More than that, I hope that he can keep things in perspective if he turns out to be more of a thrower than a baller, and we can't take him.

Update continued.

Right. So I said that I would post the workout that we did on Sunday for plyos. Well, here it is:

Six Stations:
1) Box Shuffles
2) Box Jumps for speed/Slalom Jumps for height/Slalom Jumps for speed (we did a different one of these three every time we rotated through the stations)
3) Squat Thrusts
4) Wall Touches (off of rapid hops)
5) Frog Leaps
6) Scissor Jumps

First, we each did 2 full court suicides in relay groups of 2. We then divided into six groups and split amongst the stations, doing 45 seconds per station and then rotating to the next station. Before starting the next station, we would do 20 seconds of a stationary workout. These stationary workouts were: foot fires, high knees, butt kicks, shadow drill, shadow drill, and then foot fires. We took a short break and then jumped off each foot and off of both feet multiples times at the basketball rims. Then we did each of the six stations (and the 20 second stationary workouts that went with them) twice again. Then we divided into relay groups of 4 and did 3 full court suicides. Then we did 4 sets of 20 pushups with six inch leglifts held for 20 seconds between each set of pushups. Then we did 3 full court suicides in our groups of 4. Then we did an ab workout with 40 repetitions of each of the abdominal excercises we do (somebody told me that it amounted to 420 crunches or so). Then we did 2 full court suicides in our groups of 4.

So, yeah. It was a pretty tough workout. My legs were pretty sore for a couple days after, and I'm sure most other people felt the same way. It's that kind of workout, though, that's going to get us into the shape we need to be in when the season really gets going. A couple sad notes, however. Josh sprained his ankle playing basketball between sets of plyos and will be out for at least a couple weeks, it looks like. He's keeping a good outlook about it, though, continuing to work out however he can and eat relatively healthily. I believe that he will rebound well from this injury and be a dominant force for our team. John, my brother, also hurt himself during that workout. He pulled a hamstring, which he has done at least once a season for the last several years (ever since falling over backwards out of a chair, which misaligned his hips). He says it doesn't feel too horrible and that he will be back as soon as possible.

Today's track workout wasn't nearly as miserable as I had anticipated. The indoor track at Curry Hicks is only 165 meters long instead of 200, but I set us up to run 200 times (30 seconds per rep, 30 seconds rest between reps, 4 rep sets). We did 3 sets of 4 sprints. It was tiring, but certainly nothing terribly difficult. Next time, we'll have to increase the pace and drop the rest, or something. It's an inexact science and I'm still trying to get the hang of it. When we finished running, we did 4 sets of 15 pushups (with six inch leglifts held between each set) and my ab workout to 40 of each exercise. Next week, I think we're going to up it to 50 crunches per exercise. It's going to be glorious.

My conversation with the track coach this morning was pretty entertaining. He was pumped to hear that the Ultimate Frisbee team wanted to use Curry Hicks to get in shape ("You guys gotta come get your asses in shape!"), and told me that we could come there any day after 5pm to work out. He then cautioned me about the dusty floor of the track (it is pretty filthy), telling me to be careful that nobody hurts an ankle. He explained that the facilities guys usually only sweep one lane because they know that they can get away with leaving dirt on the track. "They only clean the things that people care about," he said, "like the basketball court." He then seemed to get a glimmer of hope and asked me whether the Ultimate team could pull some strings and get the school to start cleaning the track, therebye helping everybody. Sadly, I had to reply that the Ultimate team doesn't have any clout with Anybody in the administration. But that's okay. I'm just glad that I got to see the athletic hierarchy of Umass in action. I guess Basketball is pretty set in the pecking order above Track, but both are miles ahead of Ultimate.

Update

I haven't been able to get to a computer the last couple days, so I really wanted to post an update. I don't have much time, so this is going to have to be pretty brief, but I'll post something longer tonight.

Sunday morning was our first plyo workout. I would have been perfectly happy letting this first one slide, since it was the first weekend of the year, but luckily Babbitt didn't let my laziness get in the way of a great team workout. And it was a Great workout. We absolutely pounded our bodies for about 3 hours. I'll post a description of the workout later, but rest assured that it was intense. I think that my legs still haven't fully recovered.

We also had our first makeup workout on Monday. While a bunch of people should have participated, a bunch had valid excuses and only five ended up taking part in the workout. I had intended to run it myself, to set a good example, but I ended up being far too sore from the plyos and just stood by the side and ordered others through the workout. Which was just fine. Afterwards, I played our first intramural basketball game (we got blown out), and I lifted.

It snowed yesterday. In spite of some complaint, I decided to hold practice outside on our parking lot. However, it was Quite slippery, so we only ran a couple sprints. We also had several 20 second sessions of high knees, butt kicks, and footfires. Finally, we partnered up and threw for about half an hour. When we were finished, a fair dusting of snow had accumulated and it was definitely too slippery to run, so we all went to Boyden for an ab workout in one of the dusty hallways. That was alright, but it wasn't a very difficult practice.

Today we are meeting at 5 at the Curry Hicks Cage for an indoor track workout. This should be much more strenuous than yesterday's practice, so half of me is looking forward to it and the rest of me is a little more reluctant. Since practice is later than usual, I am going to lift before practice rather than after. We shall see how that works out.

First Week

The first week of Zoodisc's Spring 2009 season is officially at an end. I think that this has been a most encouraging week of practice, and I can honestly say that I have never been as excited about playing for this team as I do right now. Hopefully we can make this excitement last through the entire season.

Two days ago school was canceled because of a fairly mild snowstorm. The amount of snow that accumulated wasn't terribly impressive, but there was some freezing rain so I guess that was the school's motivation for closing. The snow did prevent us from doing the plyometric and agility workout that we had planned, so we played snow football instead. We got a pretty big game going (10 on 10 or so, with the addition of Joe, Brent, and a couple B teamers) and had a ball. The players who decided not to show totally missed out on a great time. We ended up exhausted, soaked, and happy.

On that subject, I am dissappointed that some members of our team didn't show up. Some had pretty good excuses - Henry's knee was sore and he didn't want to risk it playing football, Allan doesn't own a pair of boots, etc. - but others didn't really have any reason not to be there. Now, I know that this wasn't the most important practice that we're going to have this season. Frankly, if somebody is going to blow off one practice, I hope that they choose to blow off the practice where we just play snow football. But participating in practice means more than just getting in shape and bettering yourself as an individual player. It means that you are demonstrating to your teammates that you are going to be there every day, no matter what, busting your ass off. Making a committment to be at practice every day helps your teammates to learn to trust you. It makes them understand that you are going to back them up when the shit's in the fan. It tells them that you are somebody they can depend on. Our team needs more of this trust. We need to get to know one another like best friends. We need to Be best friends, so that we can come together and work towards a consistant goal when we are all fucking exhausted and unity is the only thing that we can possibly have left. I understand skipping a practice that doesn't seem as important, but every practice is important in some way or another. We need to have everybody together so that we can grow together.

While I would have preferred to do something else, yesterday we met in Lederle to run stairs. The ground outside was too slushy and icy to really run a sprint workout, and I haven't yet figured out the schedule for the Curry Hicks Cage track (I should try to do this today or Monday). I put together a pretty good stair workout, I think, and I'm pretty happy with how the practice went. I put an emphasis on doing short sets of stairs quickly, hoping that we can build explosive power and footspeed through this workout. The workout went as follows:

Throwing outside.
Warmup of a slow ascent to the top of the building (floor 16)
2 floors of 2 stairs up 1 stair down.
2 floors of 3 stairs up 2 stairs down.
2 floors of 2 up 1 down.
2 floors of 3 up 2 down.
3 floors of singles.
4 floors of doubles.
5 floors of singles.
6 floors of doubles.
3 sets of 10 squat jumps.
5 floors of singles.
4 floors of doubles.
3 floors of singles.
2 floors of 3 up 2 down.
2 floors of 2 up 1 down.
Stretch.
4 sets of 15 pushups, holding leglifts or planks during the recovery.
My ab workout.
3 sets of 20 seconds sitting on the floor pumping our arms like we were running.

This was a pretty tough workout, but it was by no means impossible. Everybody got through it in pretty good spirits, and I think that we're looking pretty good for this point in the season. Afterwards, some people went to Greenfeild to play indoor pickup, and a few of us went to the gym to lift upper body. I'm pretty tired right now; my legs felt like jelly when I woke up this morning. However, I am excited to be going to the gym with a Keenan, Josh, Ryan, and maybe a couple other people at 5. This will be the first day in a week that I'll be able to lift legs (the gym was closed on Monday and Wednesday) and I'm curious whether I'll be able to put up more or less weight than I was able to last week, when I'd been pushing my legs pretty hard.

Yesterday's Practice Was Pretty Good.

We had a pretty great turnout from the A team guys, and a few B team guys were there as well. Overall, I would say that I was pleasantly surprised at the conditioning of most of the people on the team. Clearly, people have been working hard this break. I think I was most impressed with Allan. He isn't the fastest runner on the team (by any stretch) but he was always one of the top few to finish the sprints, especially as the practice progressed.

I was a little dissappointed, however, that the practice wasn't more difficult. When I planned the workout, I had believed that it would be practically insumountable for most of the players on our team. I really intended to use this practice as a wake up call, to shock my team into being prepared to work exceptionally hard. And that isn't to say that people Didn't work hard yesterday - people really struggled and then pushed through their fatigue to finish the workout. But that's the thing: people finished the workout and didn't look terribly sick at the end. Our next sprint workout is going to have to be considerably harder. I think that I'm going to do this by lightening the number of sprints per set (to help people to push their hardest through every single sprint rather than slowing down on the last couple due to exhaustion) and decrease the amount of rest time between sets. I was giving two minutes for water between each set of sprints. Next time, I'll toy with the idea of only giving one and of having more shuttle runs, suicides, and foot fires.

After practice, I ate dinner with the team and then went to the gym. There were some other people there, but I mostly worked with Patuluk and Keenen. Both of them worked pretty hard, but I was surprised at how little weight they were able to lift. Or how much weight they believe they can lift. I really think that a lot of it is in their heads; they think that they can only military press 20 pounds, which intimidates them from trying to lift more. I'm going to have to break them of this in the next couple of weeks to get them up to some respectable weights and build more explosive muscle. All in all, however, I am proud of the amount of work that they did for this first day. I hope that we can all keep it up.

Today is a snow day, which means no classes and the gym is closed (no lifting, bah). Since we clearly can't do the plyo workout and the agilities that we were planning on doing today, we are heading onto the field to play snow football. That should be a good, fun way for the team to get together and bond rather than just working out. Sprints can be tiring and demoralizing. It's definitely good to mix up the workouts to keep everybody fresh and into the program. I'm excited to go play football and hang out with the team.

This year is off to a great start.

First Practice is Tomorrow

And boy am I excited! I put together what I think will be a pretty fucking tough workout for everybody to complete. Do you want to see it? No? Well, fuck it, I'm going to show it to you anyway!

6 100 yard sprints with a 30 second recovery between each.
4 backpedal/sprint shuttle runs.
6 70 yard sprints with a 30 second recovery between each.
2 20 second partner shadow drills.
6 40 yard sprints with a 30 second recovery between each.
2 20 second foot fires.
3 suicides at lengths of 10 and 20 yards.
2 100 yard sprints.
2 70 yard sprints.
2 40 yard sprints.
2 20 yard sprints.
Stretch.
4 sets of 15 pushups.
Ab workout.
30 backhands.
30 forehands.

Looks intense, huh? It didn't seem so crazy when it was in my head, but I just kept coming up with more and more things that I want to do and now I have this gargantuan list. But I'm still excited; this is the first step towards creating the most explosive team that I have ever played for.

I've been swapping emails with a lot of different people. I sent several to the team clarifying what our tournament schedule is going to be. I've also been corresponding with one of our RSO advisers, who is going to try to schedule us gym space as a team. Two years ago, we were able to get Boyden once a week from 10pm to midnight, and that was fantastic. Last year, the only availability was Friday morning from 8am to 10 am, and that was all but worthless. Hopefully we can get some sort of schedule that is more reminiscent of two years ago. Oh, and I also received an email from the captain of Amherst College, who is looking to scrimmage us a couple of times before Spring Break. That would be phenomenal, since we otherwise aren't going to be able to get onto a feild at all before tournament season starts. Amherst College has a nice turf feild under the lights, which would be great to play on. I should email Ben and see if we can get something together to head out to Bentley and play on their feild sometime in the next month or so....

Anyway, as you can see, exciting things are in the works. It was one thing to think about the season a couple weeks ago, when I was building up a solid foundation. The season just felt so fucking long away. Now, though, with the first team practice breathing down my throat, it feels as if we have no time at all. We are going to absolutely slay ourselves at practice this season. There is nothing that I would rather do.

Running Alone Sucks.

That has been a major obstacle to my training this Winter. Lifting alone isn't difficult for me. I don't have too much trouble motivating myself to get down to the nice, warm gym once a day for a lift, even if my workout buddies aren't available. Likewise, I don't have too much trouble sticking to a regimen of pushups and situps. Both of these workouts are comfortable and indoors, which helps me to get them done. Both of these workouts are also fairly regulated. I know how much I can squat and I know how many crunches I can do. These numbers remain roughly the same day in and day out, so I can't easily let up on the workout when there isn't somebody else to push me.

Running is, in every way, quite the opposite. Running outside in the Winter is cold and unpleasant. It is a workout that I detest, and this makes it difficult for me to complete the workout without somebody else to drive me forward. Unlike pushups, situps, and lifting, the severity of a running workout is almost entirely precipitated on the speed that the individual runs. Because of this, a running workout that would be almost impossibly difficult to complete in a group can be relatively tame for an individual, if that individual does not know how to motivate himself.

If the previous two paragraphs haven't already tipped you off, I am not very good at motivating myself to run.

I would say that I've done a pretty good job attempting to run this break. At least a couple times a week I got outside and did a sprint workout. Recently, I have also been using the treadmill at Gold's Gym to run interval workouts. However, I'll have to admit that I haven't gotten out to run as frequently as I would have liked, and the speed with which I have run has been dissappointingly poor. Without other people to hold me accountable, I find my speed inexorably sinking as I reach the end of a sprint. Or I find myself getting distracted and spending too much time between sets. Or I give up on the final sprint and walk home instead of taking a cooldown jog.

I think that I'm in pretty good shape. I look better than I looked at the beginning of break (which isn't necessarily saying much), and I feel okay when I elevate my heart rate. This first week of the spring semester is going to be an important test, however. I need to demonstrate that I can push myself through a tough running workout when I have a couple teammates to urge me on. More importantly, I need to show my teammates that I can be a leader and that I can push them to achieve more than they ever could before.

I'm excited for Tuesday, but it's going to be pretty fucking hard.

2009 College Nationals Bid Allocation

The UPA released their decisions regarding the 2009 College Championship Series. I was able to view these decisions this morning. As they have previously indicated, Nationals will be expanded this year from 16 to 20 teams. Under the new system, each of the 8 Regions will receive 2 automatic bids (up from 1 automatic bid in past years) and 4 strength bids will be allocated based on last year's results. For 2009, the Central Region will have 4 bids to Nationals, the Southwest and Atlantic Coast Regions will each have 3 bids, and everybody else will have 2. While I personally do not think that it is fair for one Region to have 4 bids (the Central Region will likely send Wisconsin, Carleton, Minnisotta, and Iowa - while Wisonsin and Carleton are deserving teams, Minnisotta is usually fairly average and Iowa... well, I would be suicidal if I were to lose to Iowa, based on what I know of their team) I do think that the UPA is moving in the right direction with these decisions. There is too much year-to-year change on a college team to assume that the number two team in a Region is not better than the number one team from another Region. In past years, it was possible for a strong number two team from one Region to be sitting at home while a weak number one team from another Region blew it at Nationals. That hardly seems fair. While deserving teams will always be left out of the Championship Tournament, giving two automatic bids to every Region will help reduce the number of deserving teams that are not given the opportunity to compete.

This brings me to the reason why the UPA has made these rapid changes: the C1 controversy of this past fall. I don't believe that I have written anything about C1 in any previous posts; I'll have to make sure to write something up about that soon. For better or for worse, C1 seems to be serving as a catalyst of change within the Ultimate community, and it deserves due recognition.

Furthermore, while the presence of size bids has helped our Region in the past, I am glad that the UPA is finally doing away with that particular system of bid allocation. Though we never made use of this opportunity, I always felt funny about the prospect of taking a number two bid to Nationals that is based solely on the fact that our Region has more piece of shit liberal arts college non-competitive Ultimate teams than any other Region in the country. The UPA should be trying to let the best possible teams into the Championship Tournament. It doesn't make any sense to say that a Region deserves an extra bid just because it contains more teams than any other Region. Being the second best of fifty uncompetitive teams is less impressive than being the fourth best of ten contenders. I admit that the strength of the Region in the previous year isn't a perfect way to determine whether a Region deserves an extra bid in the current year. However, this method is certainly superior to the method of allocating bids according to the size of a Region. At least now the UPA can say that they are trying to reward teams for beating quality competition instead of rolling over a rabble of unqualified hippies.

The long and the short of all this is that nothing changes for my team. Our Region has two bids to Nationals, and that's nothing new. The Northeast Region has had two bids to Nationals for my entire college career. However, learning about our bid situation at this point in the season makes it feel very different. In the past, we've had to wait until all of the teams from all of the Regions submitted their rosters before we knew for sure whether we would receive a size bid. Though we were always pretty sure that we would get this coveted second bid, we could never be certain until the UPA officially notified us. One year (two years ago, I believe), the Northeast came within three or four shitty teams of losing our size bid to the South Region. Our potential second bid was always a matter of stress, a distraction as we geared up for the College Series. Personally, I am relieved that the UPA has simplified matters by letting us know early on how many bids each Region would be recieving. We know for sure where we need to place in order to make it to Nationals. We know for sure what we need to fight for.

Nothing has changed since I looked at the UPA website this morning. Nothing is different between this year and last year and the year before and the year before, at least in terms of the number of bids allocated to the Northeast Region. But these new developments do change the way that I think of the upcoming season. They make it easier for me to set goals (personal and for my team) without the chance of having my goals disrupted by a silent uncertainty. Somehow, I feel as though it will be easier for me to visualize the season and think about what I have to do.

Man, oh man, I am fucking excited about this Spring.

The Week Before Spring.

Since the Spring Semester begins in under a week, I figured I'd get my first post of 2009 out there. I had intended to write a lot during Winter Break, but that sort of thing always turns out to be a lot harder than I anticipate. With working out, working at Walker, hanging out with friends, hanging out with family, and spending some quality time with Jesse... well, let's just say that I didn't spent much time in front of a computer. Hopefully I'll be able to turn out more material at school.

This winter, I worked out harder than any other winter of my college career. Maybe it was the desperation of being in my final year and knowing that this is my last opportunity to contribute to the team that I love. Maybe it was the added pressure of being a captain and knowing that my work ethic needs to set the standard for all of the younger players on the team. Either way, I had very little trouble staying motivated to get in shape this winter. I got a one month membership to Gold's Gym and made a commitment to go every day. For the most part, I went with Jake and Jimmy (of Wisconsin) and Brian (of Colorado). We lifted seven days a week, alternating between leg days and upper body days. With such a rigorous schedule, it wasn't long before we started seeing some serious results. Probably our most pronounced results were in the amount of weight that we squatted. We started at a relatively low weight (I think 75 pounds on either side of the bar, so about 195 total) but eventually got to the point where every member of our little group could squat 300 for a set of 8. The most that I ended up doing was 315 on a set of 8, but I'm pretty sure that I could have done a little more. We also worked hard at power cleans, and exercise that I had never done previously but which I quickly learned to love. You can just feel your whole body working its explosive muscles when you do a power clean. It's fantastic.

Additionally, I also ran during break. After talking to a whole bunch of people regarding the right type of workouts for Ultimate, we have decided not to do any distance running this season. Instead, we are going to do a massive amount of short sprints with low recovery time. For instance, one of the running workouts that I have been consistently completing is 5 100 yard sprints with 30 seconds recovery between each sprint, 5 backwards and forwards shuttle runs with 30 seconds recovery between each set, and then 5 more 100 yard sprints with 30 seconds recovery. By the end of this workout, my heart is racing and I can really feel my cardio fitness improve.

Finally, I've been working hard on my core. I do a pushups and a fairly intense ab workout every day. My core is pretty strong right now (though it will certainly improve in the next few weeks) to the point that I can see a light etching of abdominal muscles through the layer of fat on my belly. This is an extremely compelling sign for me. It isn't that I am fat, but I am thickset enough that it is rather difficult for me to develop a sixpack. Perhaps this will be the first time that I get into good enough shape for my abs to push through and show the world how bulletproof they really are. We can only work and hope.

I am in Amherst right now because Jesse had to have some testing done for her ADHD. While I am here, I am trying to get some of my Ultimate responsibilities taken care of. I've been talking and emailing people regarding tournament bids, gym space, uniform orders, etc. Last night, we had a meeting in my kitchen to discuss our training plans for the first part of this spring. I was there, with Babbitt, Mitch, Josh, and Henry. We talked about what sort of training we would be doing and what our general attitude should be. I believe, and I think that the others agree, that the emphisis should be on getting in the best shape that we can possibly get into while working on fundamental skills. This fall, we were plagued by bad throwaways and drops. If we can learn how to throw and catch and mark effectively, and we are all in good shape, we will win the games that we need to win. It's that simple. We also decided to emulate the Wisconsin team and establish a buddy system for the coming season. We randomly paired each player on the team and emailed out the list. Every player is responsible for making sure that his buddy gets into the gym, and each player is responsible for pushing his buddy in practice and during workouts. By making every player accountable, we hope to prevent anybody from slipping through the cracks and not getting into the best possible shape. We need everybody to be working at full capacity this spring, and I really think that we can only do this if everybody is held accountable for their actions by the other players on the team.

My buddy is Keenan. I hope he's ready to work.

I know I am.

Winter Workouts have begun.

We started offseason lifting last week. This is an important part of our workout regimen, as we need to strengthen and build muscle before we start more aggressive workouts as a team. Not only does this make us better prepared for practice, giving us a higher maximum ceiling, but it helps ensure that we don't get injured right at the beginning of the Spring season. Traditionally, not everybody on the team manages to consistantly make it down to the gym. You can always figure out which players on our team are dedicated workers and which are just posers: the workers breeze through the first couple weeks of practice while the posers pull themselves out of workouts with panting breathes and phantom pains.

I just finished calling everybody on our team to check up on their workout statuses. Really, I've only seen a handful of my teammates at the gym, which is a little disappointing. We've been meeting at 3:30 in the Boyden weight room most days, doing a quick lifting workout and then heading to the basketball courts for some pickup basketball. Anyway, as I suspected, most of the people I talked to hadn't gotten around to doing much of anything in the way of offseason workouts. A lot of them didn't sound too excited, but I coerced a good portion of my team into agreeing to meet me at Boyden tomorrow afternoon. I hope that most of them show up tomorrow, though that's only the first (easiest) step towards a Winter of hard work. It's hard to get started, but it's even harder to stay motivated. I'm really going to put in the extra effort to stay on my teammates and do everything that I can to get them all into the best possible shape.

We had a team meeting on Friday, which was very productive (by our standards). We started by discussing the tournaments that we will be attending this Spring. We are planning on heading down to Terminus in Atlanta at the beginning of Spring Break, hitting High Tide in Savannah during Spring Break, and then stopping at Easterns in North Carolina on the final weekend of Spring Break. The following weekend, we're going to head back down to Washington D.C. for Roll Call. Then we (hopefully) will have our tournament and Yale Cup before Sectionals. A pretty good lineup of tournaments, I think. Mitch ran through the numbers and figured out that we would be able to do all of this for only $250 per player, which we will be collecting as dues in the first week of the Spring Semester. This is much cheaper than any other Spring Season has been, so we are discussing the possibility of either trying to add Vegas or the Stanford Invite to our tournament schedule. Both of these tournaments would be very expensive, so we are only going to seriously consider the possibility if we can get a fair amount of money from the school, but that is certainly a possibility. Babbitt and I need to meet with our advisor as soon as possible to discuss our team's budget for the Spring Semester and see if that is even remotely feasible.

We also voted on our uniform design. I think we came up with a pretty dope look for this season. On our white jersey, we are going to have the seal of Massachusetts with a nautical star in the background instead of the regular old star that usually appears on the state seal. The back of our light jersey will have our last names and our numbers. Our dark jersey is going to have the Zoodisc Z on the front with "Massachusetts Ultimate" and our numbers on the back. Our shorts are going to be maroon with our numbers on the front of the left leg and a Zoodisc Z on the back of the right leg. I think we're also going to get warmups, though I don't really know what the design for that is going to be.

Friday night we had a surprise birthday party for Josh (he turned 22 this weekend) and then we had a semi-formal at our house. There was a fair amount of stupid drama surrounding the semi-formal (which I was not to helpful in preventing), but that's neither here nor there: the party went prety well, overall. I had a bit much to drink, however, and yesterday was a complete wash. I was up all night drinking, finishing a large number of beers and taking whiskey shots in rapid succession until the sun came up. I'm too old for that shit. It totally wrecked my ass, and I'm only really feeling better now. I also jammed my left thumb on a basketball this afternoon, which is just peachy.

Alright, enough of the whining. I need to figure out an ab workout that I can email out to the team tonight to get a more structured workout going in addition to the individual lifting that everybody should be doing. I want to give out a workout that everybody can do twice a day, at wakeup and at bedtime, at least five days a week, but I need to make sure that I don't give them something too time intensive or else not a lot of people are going to commit to doing it. Ergh. Maybe I'll do some abs myself and try to figure out how large of a workout I can tell people to do and have them actually do it.

I'll have to give it some thought.

New Sheriff in Town

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.

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.

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.

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.

Rough practice day

We didn't exactly have numbers for practice today. Only twelve players showed, including a B teamer and several guys with injuries who played anyway. It was cold and windy, and the field was wet. On the whole, we had a lot of trouble concentrating and playing through the adversity, and I would say that effort was lacking in our scrimmage. Everybody just seemed resigned to fail. It was just a day of bad attitudes.

Seth layed out and got a bloody nose. I gave him my shirt to stem the bloodflow, since it's the shirt that I'm wearing for Halloween tomorrow (I'm going as the victim of a bear mauling, so blood will not be out of place). Other highlights include a huge layout that Christ had on a hammer that I threw him for the final score of our scrimmage. I think that it was a pretty excellent hammer, but he took a bad line on it. He layed out huge, snatching the disc's trailing edge coming down on it from above with his thumb under the disc rather than simply putting his thumbs below the disc and catching it more easily. The kid made it tough, but he made the catch. That was pretty sweet.

Tomorrow we're going trick or treating and then having a Halloween party. Josh is buying a keg. I don't really support this sort of thing, since we have a tournament Saturday morning, but I guess I'm just going to go along with it and have some fun. I guess I am sort of excited about the party but, well, I dunno....

Canes on the Brain, etc.

Sorry that I neglected to write all this up earlier. Frankly, I just didn't feel like it.

Friday afternoon we played a scrimmage against Amherst High. Our vaunted O line started the game by giving up a few breaks, and our D line didn't have the firepower to break back in the first portion of the game. Rather than trying to break up the lines more equally, we put all of the experience on the O line and none of it on the D line. When we got turnovers, we just weren't prepared to set up a good offense and march it down the field against Amherst's zones. It was ugly. We finally put in a good number of the O line players on Defense with the rest of the D line spots being rotated, and we came back to win the game. As often happened, we gave ARHS a due opportunity to win and they simply refused to accept.

I didn't play too well in this game. My legs felt tight and weak for the second half of last week, after Purple Valley and a succession of hard, shorthanded practices in which I shouldered a lot of the D line's burden. I really, truly wish that we could get better numbers at practice so that I wouldn't have to run so damn much. I think that I was probably at about 75% of my meager speed, and I was pretty ginger on the field. I played alright on defense, not really getting burned anywhere in spite of my physical weaknesses. On offense, I had two turnovers. One was a poorly placed hammer that I threw at the beginning of the game when we couldn't get our D line offense out of our own endzone against the Amherst zone. The second was a poach D by Henry's man later in the game. I should have seen Henry and his man standing in the force-side lane and holstered it but, frankly, what the fuck was Henry doing there, anyway? It was an outrageously bad place for Henry to have placed himself. Even if I Had seen him, it would only have obstructed a completely open Ryan coming in on a twenty-yard in cut. For being one of the supposedly "best"players on our team, Henry sometimes sure does play poorly. I think he probably had ten or eleven turnovers during our ARHS game on Friday, and that isn't even an exaggeration. Henry makes some of the worst decisions that I have seen on an ultimate field; he makes them unapologetically and gets on his teammates for attempting to make significantly higher-percentage throws. I'm getting tired of Henry's bullshit.

Yesterday it rained pretty hard, so we didn't have practice. There was still standing water on our field today (and it is Fucking Cold) so we didn't play today either. We were told to all go to Boyden to lift or to play basketball, but only a handful of us seem to have done that. I question the devotion of almost everybody on our team right now. Day by day, frustrations grow and there doesn't seem to be anything to do about it. Like Josh, who claimed that he "had plans already" during practice time. He claimed to be sore from lifting legs yesterday, but couldn't give me an explanation as to why he couldn't go to the gym to lift arms. All I can say is that his committment level is not what I expect it to be. What I expect it to be for all of my teammates.

I don't expect perfection from my teammates. I merely expect that they try. And that is not what I'm seeing from a lot of people who supposedly "care" about Zoodisc.

Seperating O and D lines with limited numbers is Stupid.

Today we had limited numbers. Again. We split into O and D lines for practice, but we had to move a couple D liners to the O line just to make numbers even. The isue is that Henry chose to put a couple of the most athletic and experienced D liners to the O line, leaving the D line with a definite skill disadvantage. The Defense was left with me as the only handler and six inexperienced cutters. We were overpowered on every single matchup, so it was no wonder that we got destroyed in our scrimmage. To add obnoxious to insult, the O line decided to throw a zone on us whenever we received the disc going upwind. Without any real zone-line handlers( and no, I really am not one; I'm a pretty decent second handler in a line, and I can work with another handler who equally shares the burden, but I can't really take over a point), it was impossible for us to work the disc against the zone. Seriously, impossible.

Practices like that don't make any sense to a rational human being. The young, inexperienced players on the D line don't get any better just being tooled on by the O line. Young players only get better by playing with guys who know what they're doing, opening up space on the field to cut and telling them what to do. The O line doesn't get any better cutting on guys who can't possibly defend them. All that it does is add to the arrogance of our Offensive players, who are never actually tested until they're thrown into a game and are suddenly surprised to give up five breaks against a team who is actually playing DEFENSE on their pompous fucking asses.

Anybody who put an iota of thought into the lines would have seen that splitting up the way that we did was worthless, but Henry was too wrapped up in his assinine self to think about it at all. That kid love playing against the least experienced player on the field and abusing him as much as possible. This reached a culmination late in the game when the O line was probably up 12-3 or so on us. Henry was marking Chris, one of our least experienced freshmen. At stall 7 or so, Chris tried putting up a dump to me when Henry hacked him unforgivably across the mid forearm. Chris looked like he didn't know what to do, so I said, "Hey, call that foul!" Henry responded by snapping, "Oh, great Dave, fucking great." I just wanted to kick him in the fucking head.

Henry is acting a douchebag, and he isn't helping the team get any better through his bullshit. That fuck.

Cold Weather continues unabated.

Today's practice was even colder than yesterday. It was a little miserable, but still fun for the most part. Sadly, we did not have very many players - again. When we split between A and B teams, we only had enough for six on six or whatever, and then John Sheyer hurt his foot and had to go to Health Services. Part of the reason that we're having increasing trouble getting numbers, it's becoming increasingly obvious, is our high injury rate. This is partly because of people being absolutely bitches and nursing injuries far longer than shoulde be necessary, but it certainly also has to do with some serious bad luck. I mean, John hurt himself planting too flat on the sole of his foot. That shouldn't hurt him! Ridiculous.

We ended up playing three-on-three across the width of an endzone, which is an incredibly tiring way to play. It also was rather uncomfortable for my knees, since this style of play is just little squirrely cuts. In a normal game or scrimmage, there are points where I can make longer cuts (or run down on the pull) and really lengthen my stride, which helps stretch my legs out and keep my knees feeling alright. Without any longer runs, especially with the biting cold, my knees really took a beating.

We finished practice off by scrimmaging against the B team, which I consider to be a worthless waste of time. You don't get better by playing sloppy ultimate against lesser players. But, I guess, our choices are limited when we don't have numbers. Those fools who started the game from our side gave up two breaks to open the game (fucking O line), but we managed to straighten out and won 15-4. That doesn't mean that we played well, however. We had a lot of turnovers. It was an ugly game. But I guess that's to be expected, to an extent, when we our competition doesn't make us work to beat them.

Yesterday's Practice.

Sorry I didn't write about yesterday's practice last night. I took Jesse out to the House of Teriaki for Sushi instead. Delicious

Yesterday was cold and wet. It rained earlier in the day, but stopped a little before three. I sent out an email letting everybody know that practice was not cancelled and implored people to fucking show up. Not too many listened. I think that we ended up with 13 A teamers who could play, which is utterly indefensible. We can't get anywhere as a team if the team doesn't show up. But I don't want to keep on that rant right now; I don't have much to say about it that I haven't said already.

In spite of low numbers, we had a pretty good practice. We had some drills that we ran pretty hard, and I'm feeling rather sore right now as a result. With lower numbers, our lines were shorter and we had much shorter breaks. We ran the endzone drill, but practiced holstering throws when a man at the cone put a hand up to symbolize a poaching defender. I laid out for a big catch at one point and really knocked the wind out of myself, to the point where I felt nauseaus and had a headache for ten or fifteen minutes after. We ran two five pulls, with limited success, and then did a full field huck drill that was a lot of fun. I didn't throw all that well in the huck drill, but I think that was because I was overthinking my throws instead of just cutting myself loose and going for it. At the very end of this drill, Jeff laid out and hurt himself in some way (his shoulder?). He couldn't move his hand, so he went to Health Services. I have no idea how that turned out, but I hope he's alright.

We are going to start having the injured people not show up to practice. Presumably, they will be working out or going to a doctor or something rather than sitting on our cold sidelines, but I really don't trust that too many people will do this. If I can't trust them to show up for practice, how can I trust them to be working hard when their team isn't even present to hold them accountable? Either way, the idea behind all of this is to prevent them from distracting the players who actually Are working hard. It does really suck to be running your ass off only to look towards the sideline and see eight of your teammates joking around about something stupid. I don't know how this new system will work out, but hopefully it'll be alright.

Purple Valley Day 2

Today... didn't go nearly as well as yesterday.

We got to the fields and actually had a pretty good warmup this morning, but we never seemed to really get going in the actual game. We started against UConn, and things just didn't turn out well. As a team, we played poor defense, letting them just march down the field on the force side and letting up a lot of IO breakside throws. UConn also really liked having the handler throw upfield and then sprint upfield for the give and go, and we really got burned by that play. As a mark, it's difficult to turn and run right after the throw. We couldn't seem to find any players to simply man up and get it done, tiring though it may be. We also had an unforgivable number of drops and poorly thrown passes. And it seemed like the same players were guilty of these offenses over and over again. It was clear that they were getting into their own heads, thinking too much about their mistakes, and not being able to focus on the next play. It was depressing watching so many players crumble mentally, but I guess that it's really a good sign of our team's youth. As we gain more experience, hopefully these mental failings will dissappear.

Anyway, we ended up losing the game 15-12 or so. UConn beat us handly, but really didn't give us the beating that our poor performance deserved. This was in spite of the fact that they were playing with several quality pickup players who significantly boosted the talent level of their team. Unlike Harvard, Wesleyan, and ourselves, the team that UConn fielded for this weekend was significantly stronger than the team that they will have for the rest of the year. And we definately should have stuck it to them. Personally, I walked away feeling very frustrated about my performance this game. I had two turnovers: a drop that went right between my hands (Unforgivable!), and a throwaway that was a good decision but an utterly horrendous pass. I tapped the disc in on the front corner of our own endzone and the first cut didn't get open. Jeff cut up-line covered, and Ryan filled into the backfield for the dump pass. He was open, and I went for the around forehand break, but for some reason threw the pass ten feet into the air. A defender tore it down on the goalline and made a simple pass for the score. I've thought about this pass a lot, but I still can't figure out what I did wrong on the throw. I guess I must have fucked up royally, but I have no idea how. Which is annoying. I also got burned twice on defense, which is no good. Other than these mistakes, I actually think I played pretty well, but my four mistakes were so glaring that they left a horrible taste in my mouth following the game.

The Williams game was next. We ran a little better in this game, but still couldn't get our shit together. We had a lot of the same mistakes in this game as in the UConn game - poorly thrown passes, easy drops, bad defense. Oh, and a lack of going to the disc. I don't know if I mentioned it in the UConn write-up, but we had a lot of trouble going to the disc in that game, and this problem continued through our Williams game. I don't know how many go to D's we had against us, but it was a lot. And it is unexcusable to get D'ed like that. We also didn't play very good defense as a team, and a lot of this has to do with positioning. I think that Ashton would have had at least two or three D's today if he had just positioned himself in such asway as to allow him to see both his disc and his man at the same time. Because he didn't do this, his defense was really inneffective and he gave up a good number of scores on the day.

Again, I think that I played well, but I had a couple totally egregious errors. I got point blocked on our own goal line, and threw the disc away to a well-covered Mitch. I think I could have completed the throw to Mitch, but I just didn't lead him by enough. I think that I played pretty good defense in this game, though I did get scored on twice (once on a blade that I almost got to, the other on a well-thrown breakside huck), which is really no good. Williams didn't cough the disc up as much as UConn, though, so they didn't keep us in the game in spite of our misplays.

Today was dissappointing, but it really is only the beginning of our season. It shows us a lot of the things that we did wrong and what we need to work on in the coming weeks and months. We have a long road ahead of us as a team, and I really do believe that we will end up being pretty fucking good when all is said and done.