Progression

"Now this shit's about to kick off, this party looks wack

Let's take it back to straight hip-hop and start it from scratch"

I wrote once about the order in which I would teach someone to play ultimate.  The thought experiment was from my perspective as a coach.  I wanted a kid to have utility right away, and to streamline him toward increasing utility.  Here was my list:

Marking

Downfield Defense

Cutting

Catching

Throwing

If a kid can mark then I am willing to let him play a couple points.  If he can mark and defend downfield I want him on most D points.  If he can mark, defend, and cut then he is playing ever d point.  Add catching to the mix and we are pulling him for some o points, and when he learns to throw I want him playing every point.

This progression has guys moving from defense to offense.  Defense is a culture.  Forcing your whole team through the DLine yields a team where everyone values defense.  Defensive teams walk around wearing big boy pants.  They tend to be tough, like handslaps, and not care about the success of their women’s team.

I look at teams like this through the rose colored glasses of Illinois Ultimate history.  2008 was the last Illinois team where everyone could play defense, they were the last Illinois team to make quarterfinals.  The main OLine handler on this Illinois team didn’t have a special forehand, but he could haul it on D and pulverize people up the line.

For a long time I was convinced that you could take your team, shove them all through the DLine, and get the desired culture.  I was mistaking the chicken for the egg.  People are going to be who they are.  An offensive oriented player (one who plays with pace, space, and grace) is not going to learn how to be a fiery, tough, red-blooded American man just because you toss him into the inferno of the DLine.  A defensive player (one who plays to pound, ground, and hound) is not going to learn to dissect the game because you toss him into the deep, dark, cold water of the OLine.  A player is who he is.  Jimmy Wiesbrock is calm and mellow, he wants to find the path of least resistance and take that home.  Adam Wright is a bull dog that is going to do the same thing everytime and expect it to work everytime.  When it doesn’t work for Adam then his solution is to do the same thing again, except harder this time.  Is Wiesbrock’s temperament going to change just because he is playing DLine? Is Adam going to have an epiphany on how to joga bonito?  No, they are not.

As a coach you don’t have the luxury of creating your players into what you want them to be; you are simply charged with molding them into the best they can be.  The statue is already in the stone, it is up to the sculptor to free him.

The USAU coaching clinic endorsed teaching throwing first, because throwing is the nature of the game.  Is throwing the nature of the game for everyone?  Does Matt West want to throw the Frisbee or chase it down?  Does Neal Phelps want to throw the Frisbee or play one on one sports with someone athletic enough to challenge him?  Does Dane Jorgenson want to throw the Frisbee or does he want to jump as high as he can?  I postulate here that the nature of the game is different for everyone.  Developing a money-maker that will get you play time on any team you want, derives itself from your personal view on what Ultimate is.

Which brings me back to Matt “Goose” Pasienski, “people like to work on what they are good at.”  My response today is, “great!”  Let them work on it until they are elite at it.  Send them down the path they want, help them find their way when they get lost and watch them love working on what they are working on.

And hope, always hope that one day they will come looking for more.  When they come, then you can build it.