Squat's Thoughts #4

so you're sprinting downfield for the deep look with your defender desperately trying to catch up from a few yards behind you. you're not to worried though; you've made this cut a million times, and as long as the thrower leads you into the endzone with the disc it should be a score. sure enough, the OI forehand huck goes up. "Shit, it's coming fast," you think to yourself. the disc has good distance, but it's quickly blading in high from your right. you continue sprinting after it, and jump with your right hand raised for the one-handed snag...and it tragically macs off your hand and quickly turfs. disgusted with yourself, you turn to play defense on the poor sap you just torched. and you think to yourself, "i should've listened to scheid all those times he rambled on and on about how to catch with one hand!"


well now is your chance :)

first off, i should say that two-handed catches are often preferable. pancakes should be used for anything from your thighs up to your head, and two-handed claws for most low throws, throws on either side of your body, and most jumping catches. sometimes though, a one-handed catch is the safest route (skying attempts, many layout attempts, very high or low throws to your side), and this primer is for those times.

different throws have different spins, and it's much easier to catch with one hand if you learn to instinctively read it. so for the next couple of weeks, every time you throw around with somebody, train your mind to read the disc's spin. backhands spin clockwise when viewed from above, and forehands spin counterclockwise (vice versa for southpaws). therefore, every disc approaching you has an edge that is split in two: half approaching edge and half trailing edge. try to visualize this; have your roommate throw a short pass to you if it helps. always catch a disc on the approaching edge, it is much harder to catch a trailing edge pass.

this means you should catch forehands on their left side, and backhands on their right side. this holds true whether you are chasing down a disc on a deep cut, or running to it on an incut. a corollary to this is that it's easier to catch forehands with your left hand, and backhands with your right hand, because of the way our hands are naturally shaped. give it a try next time you're throwing around. if you focus on it for 30 minutes straight, you'll never have to think about it again because it will be instinct. and a good ultimate player thrives on instinct. but that's a thought for another day...


-scheid

Eyes on the Prize

It's not about practice. I want to be very careful about what I say here, because I don't want it to be misconstrued, but the Ultimate season is not about practices. Or tournaments. It is important at the beginning of the season and at checkpoints along the way to set certain objectives as a team and make sure that everyone is on the same page. Yes, Ultimate is fun. Practices, tournaments, parties, road trips and eating contests. All good times. But the season comes down to the Championship Series in the spring. WPI has taken great strides in acknowledging the importance of the end of the season, and I only want to highlight how necessary it is to keep that Sectionals tourney in mind throughout the year, not just in D term.

Practice helps. Going to tournaments helps. Winning at tournaments helps. But what happens at individual events earlier in the season has less and less bearing as the Championship series approaches, which brings me to my actual point. There is a distinction between performing well and improving, both on an individual and a team level, that must be recognized. It is not of primary importance that you perform well at practice, but it is important that you improve. Same at a tournament. Sure, it would be nice to win Yale Cup or Terminus, but you can't display your won/lost record in April to the TD and explain to him or her why that should greenlight you to Regionals.

This is getting too complicated for such a simple issue, but my point is that you need to fight complacency all the time if you want to improve. You should never leave a tournament with the feeling that it went as well as it could've. If you have that feeling, you have peaked, and you might as well just wait for the end of the season. Similarly, you should never leave a practice thinking "That was easy." I understand that, especially early on in the season with a huge disparity in skill levels, practice is not ideally tailored to everyone. Make it hard on yourself. Show up early. Run a few miles or some sprints and see if it's as easy to walk through the drills as it was before. Focus on the little things, and set a nightly goal for yourself. Maybe no turnovers (always popular) or picking up a new throw for your arsenal.

The overwhelming theme here is to push yourself. Stay late. Run harder. Throw when you're tired. Try to play a D point after you just sprinted 100m for kicks. Put yourself at a physical disadvantage to your teammates. Ask more from yourself all the time. Because come spring, nobody is going to remember that sick layout block that happened on a Thursday night under the yellow lights on the turf. And here's the hard part, they might not even notice that you didn't get broken all game, or that you played shut-down defense the whole day and your guy got looked off time and again. But what will be noticed is the scoreboard. And no matter how unglorious your season was, that ticket to the next round is pretty damn exciting.