Collapse

Taking your opponent to the shed out back and whipping them is one of the greatest feelings in ultimate.  Getting the first break of a game and following it with another gets the juices flowing of everyone on the team.  Making the other team call a timeout before they can even score and getting the break right out of half are no small tasks and when a team is able to accomplish it confidence sky rockets and your team is able to ride that through the game… usually.

Blowing a lead is an awful experience.  As a team you’ve checked all the boxes listed above but then, for reasons often difficult to understand, the wheels fall off and all that the team has built is washed away leaving only one stat that really matters, L.

The feeling of blowing a lead is one of gut wrenching helplessness.  As a young player who is scrapping for play time, watching the Frisbee players you admire and look up get beat several points in a row, a D-Liner watching the lead you built get squandered away, as a bottom guy on the O-line that got pulled so a kill line could go, as a member of the kill line that just can’t seem to punch one in, and as a coach who has no other option than putting the seven best players out there and hoping they can do the job, the feel of watching a lead get blown can only be described as helpless.

When a team is faced with defeat it has two options, lie down or play harder.  On the occasions that a team decides to bring the lightning and you’re not ready for the thunder, then you’re in prime danger of blowing the precious lead that was given to you.

The burning question is what to do when you see a run start to come?

Man this is a rough question.  I think the most difficult part is accurately diagnosing that your opponent is making a real run.  Differentiating between, “oh we just gave up two breaks we’ll get the next one”, and “these guys are coming with the fury of a thousand suns” is a much finer line than might be expected. 

There are many times when a team makes a small run and your O-Line is able to figure it out after a few reps.  If they can figure it out and work through this push from the other team, then they should become a stronger unit because of it.  The danger of pulling the panic chord early is that you can stunt this big and critical learning moment for the O-Line.

The danger of not pulling the panic chord is that not only do you lose a game but the group of seven that you need to be confident and consistent could have that very confidence and consistency threatened.  What’s to stop your O-Line from panicking every time a team makes a run in the future?

Telling the difference between a small run and a complete collapse takes a strong understanding of your team.  You need to be in touch with who they are as people, and the energy they are carrying in the moment.  Trusting the relationships you’ve built to be the indicator is your best, maybe your only, course of action.

Let’s say you’ve diagnosed that it’s time to pull the panic chord, do you put in your seven best?  Do you put in the D-Line knowing they’ve already scored a bunch in this game?  Do you go best legs or fresh legs?

I think that you have to put your best seven on the field, if you lose a game you want it to be because your best group couldn’t get the job done.  It’s easier for me to fall asleep knowing that the best guys on the team lost the game.  Let’s say you put in the D-Line in and they don’t get it, then the question sitting in your stomach will be, “man we should’ve just given the ball to our best player”.  Let’s say your best players are in and they are the ones that lose it, then it’s a lot more like “oh well no one else would have done better.”

Beyond line calling, what the team needs is a clear and strong understanding of its moneymaker.  As a team that is in the moment of giving up a lead, ask why are we good at Frisbee?  What is it that we do very well?  What is our best attribute as a team?  Who are we?

Then fall back on that, own that identity, be who you are and trust that that is the way to putting the game in the books.