Completing an Upline

After writing the “in-cut” post I felt exhausted.  That may explain why I have taken so long to get to this next one.  Recently I was talking with Carol Li.  Carol, a fantastic thrower, was expressing a frustration around how little her vision of throwing can gets translated.  To some throwers it is a binary function, the act of completing the pass earns a 1 and an incompletion earns a 0.  Carol goes several steps beyond this; she judges her 1’s and 0’s by their shape, speed, float, and accuracy.  Did it curve the way she wanted it to?  Travel at the speed she wanted?  Get to the side of her receiver she wanted it to be on?  It is incredibly hard to transfer this from thoughts to words.  The desire to be able to do it perfectly is what has held me back over the past month.  However as my doctor told me when I was a wee lad, “nature is never a perfect line, well fractures are perfect lines but those are no good.”

I’ll start as simply as possible.  The red star has the disc and is attacking up the page.  The defense (in orange) is forcing forehand.  The blue dot will drive towards the thrower and push upline for a forehand pass from the red star.

My first and most common frustration is the timing of when the disc gets thrown.  The thing about frisbee’s is that they float.  Case 1 is an example of when I want the Frisbee thrown.  The blue dot has gotten a small step here and given the red star throws a soft pass into the pale green oval then the blue dot can just box out his guy the whole way and do the necessary work.  Case 2 is an example of how I lose my sanity.  The red star is scared of holding the Frisbee so he holds the disc forever.  He waits all the way until this moment to release the disc and whips it at the pale green oval, this makes the catch tighter and it gives orange an angle to undercut this pass.

In the fall of 2009, I saw Austin get open upline on Kennedy.  I saw that Austin was open at a stage earlier than case 1 above.  I knew the whole time that I was going to throw it to Austin.  I waited, for no real reason, until a stage after case 2 to throw the disc, Kennedy laid it out easily.  After the point Austin told me that once he gets steps to just throw it out in front of him and let him run onto it.  I think this is a critical piece to completing an upline, you have to be able to sit a pass 7-12 yards in front of you so that your teammate can run onto it.

The next piece I want to talk about is where people try to complete the uplines.  I have drawn a black line.  The black line is not perfectly oriented N/S, it is angled a little bit NW/SE.  I think there is this fixation with trying to complete the upline on the line.  There is nothing forcing you as a thrower to do this.  When your teammate is open you should just get it to them at a convenient spot, there is no need to try to complete every upline to the same spot.  If I can complete the upline left of this line, then I have created power position and inched my team away from the trapside.  The Toph really likes to try to complete his uplines to the right of this line, he thinks it’s funny to further exacerbate the issue by putting an invert shape on the disc so that it tails away from the receiver.  I personally find this exhausting and would much rather put a roll curve to the left of the line.

The last piece I want to try and convey is that receivers can change direction.  In this drawing the defender is close the whole way and goes for the undercut.  When he goes for this undercut the receiver effectively has boxed the defender out of everything up the page.  If our thrower just puts the disc downfield and lets the receiver turn and run it down he can make the receiver pay massively for gambling on trying to undercut.

In general I think the ideas from completing an incut can apply to the ideas of completing an upline.  Throw it early, throw it soft, give it roll curve.

Here’s Christina Sur throwing to Sara Miller.  I think if Christina was a weaker/scared/rock of a thrower she would be tempted to gun it into Miller at the red dot, fortunately Christina puts a soft one to the green and the defender has no chance.

This one bothers me because Carol is open here; her left hip bone is in front of the defender’s right hip bone.  In this moment if Dobby (I think it’s Dobby) had some short range touch pass she could have hit Carol.  I put the green dot in as a rough estimate; this green dot is very far to the left of the black line I drew above.  Dobby’s mark has shifter no around which definitely gives her the angle to lay this off.

I fully understand that what I describe above is a very difficult throw.  This is what ended up happening.  Carol increased her advantage, and Dobby set up and released an around throw off the sideline.  I am ecstatic that she got this around off.

Here’s how they eventually score.  At this moment Carol is open, Christina just has to get it there.  As a receiver it's important to note that in this example Carol gets her girl's back rather than the getting her front like she did in the previous example.  Getting the defender's back gives Sur a lot more space to work with and entices her to take a chance on the throw.

This is the moment of release.  She throws this disc incredibly early and she is using a high release pass which will give her the float this disc needs for Carol to make the play.  Carol’s defender is close, but since Christina throws it early and soft Carol just boxes the defender out and scores ezpz.

This is not an upline but it’s a good throw by Carol and I want to talk about it.  Carol could fixate on Abby and try to hit her in the hands on the red dot, or she could float one for the green dot and get some buckets.  Buckets.

Here’s the last one I will do.  Emilie is open already and I’m pretty sure Risa sees her in this frame.

Ignoring the fact that Emilie is open by a mile and only a rock could miss this throw, there is still something to learn here.  If Risa tries to put it on Emilie’s hands in the red dot area this becomes a tough pass, but by floating it in the green dot she makes this an easy conversion and a goal.