Sandblast

           After years of trying to get onto a Sandblast team, Chuck the mayor of Chucktown invited me to play with his boys and girls.  I was just stoked to be on a team where I could listen to Chuck talk for an entire weekend.  As a coach of NUT Chuck was the inspirer and emotional leader of the team, so I couldn’t wait to listen to him as a player.

After our first game against a team much less talented than us, Chuck spoke about respecting the opposition.  Usually after poor performances to bad teams, leaders talk about not playing down to the other team.  Talking about not playing down to a team specifically shows that you do not have respect for the other team and it puts you out on the field with a sense of superiority.  When things go wrong under this mentality there is a sense of “come on” or “we should be better than this”.  When Chuck spoke about respecting your opponent, it set a mentality of playing hard and continuing to work through mistakes.  It encourages people to stop looking for easy d’s and just work on playing their matchup.  Offensively it keeps people from playing a lazy game and gets them working again and trying to score by stringing passes together, versus throwing something up to an athlete.

I had another moment with Chuck on Sunday morning.  We were throwing before the game and getting ready to play.  I was doing my patented Kevin Bruns walk to pick up misthrown discs.  Chuck lost patience with how slow I was moving and lifted his hands in the air and told me to pick it up.  Then he immediately ran through my pass to him and when he threw it back he turned and pushed deep for another in cut.  I followed his lead and started moving harder.  I liked the way Chuck encouraged me to work harder without sounding like a nagger or a whiner, he just looked me in the eye and said “Pick it up,” it was clean, quick, and easy for me to follow.

A week before Sandblast Chuck announced that Seth Wiggins would be joining our squad.  I could hardly contain my excitement for the entire week.  When Seth showed up he did not disappoint.  His throwing hand was injured so every throw he made was amazing.  He put up some crazy push passes, and was able to throw capably with his left hand.  He seemed to be having fun with every one of his matchups and every time he threw the ball it seemed like he was having so much fun.

Saturday night Seth went to the party but did not drink.  Sunday morning I could see the fire in his eye and he was out there playing in order to win the game.  I feel that a reason we lost is that people on our team kept getting in Seth’s way, when he demands the disc you need to find a way to get him the ball.  On universe point Seth was wide open and the team pushed an invert to someone else.  It frustrates me that people wouldn’t just ride the horse to a victory.

The main highlight of Seth was a give and go push pass, where he caught a swing, pushed it right back and thundered up the line.  Seth also taught me the magic of the upside down backhand pull.  The pull rises and drops straight down where it sticks, if you can aim it you can get it to land anywhere without worrying about where it will roll or bounce.  Another benefit is that it is very difficult to catch, it comes down as a blade with the opposite spin that people are used to.  I screwed around with it recently and found that I can pull it about 45 yards, so in small games of 3v3 or beach ultimate it can be used very effectively.