How to Pass Blame

See open AJ

Miss open AJ

Blame open AJ

Emphasize blame

Blame AJ one more time for good measure.

2, 4, 8

There is a game circulating the internet.  You are given the numbers 2, 4, and 8 and you are asked to think of the rule that these numbers conform to.  You can type in three numbers to test whether or not your rule works.  You can do this as many times as you want and you aren’t penalized for typing in three numbers that don’t conform to the rule.

78% of people who take the exam never type in three numbers that yield a no.  They see 2, 4, 8 assume the rule is 2x the previous number, type in something like 16, 32, 64 get a yes from the computer, and with that confirmation they submit their answer.  Only 22% of the people try to get a no.

The rule is that the numbers are in ascending order.  Although 2x the previous number falls under this umbrella and will yield a “yes” every time, it doesn’t cover the entire scope of the rule.  Uncovering the whole truth cannot be done without first trying something you think will fail and discovering that it works.

The question I am left with is when is a good time to test things we don’t think will work?  A team has a finite season, a player has a finite career, and if we know that something will work we are inclined to follow that path.  Risking time testing out something that we think will fail is not particularly enticing when looking for efficient results, but innovation comes from taking a risk on something that may not pan out.

When do we test out the diagonal stack?

When do we try the diamond stack?

When do we try a circle stack?

When do we consider a non-stack offense?

When do we try having cutters guard handlers and handlers guard cutters?

When do we try a “force nearest sideline” defense?

When do we try a defense that doesn’t include a mark?

I will probably never try something wild but someday someone will, if it works then the game changes.

Alpha Dog

We’ve been playing 3v3 in Evanston once a week all summer.  There is a peculiar phenomenon going on at 3v3.  Walden’s team has never lost.  There is the obvious factor that Walden is by far the best player.  The mismatch he creates is debilitating for the other team.  There is another, harder to explain, factor going on.

Everyone plays better when Walden is on their team.  Across the board when on Walden’s team we play simple, run more, throw under stall three, don’t do anything crazy, put better touch on our throws, and in general act with some swagger.  Take us away from Walden and all of the sudden we are staring downfield, ignoring the easy throw at stall 1, moving less, throwing hammers, turning the disc over because we suddenly can’t execute a throw, and most shockingly the idea of a space pass goes completely out the window.  We look like a bunch of college B teamers trying to prove ourselves to the A team captains.

It’s pretty obvious why this happens.  When you have Waldinho on your team you know you’re going to win, as long as you stay out of his way.  There is no need for you to do anything special or crazy.  When you don’t have him on your team you know you’re going to lose so you lose your mind trying to pull and upset.  You convince yourself that if you don’t do something amazing right here and right now then it’s over.

The alpha is the guy who you know you aren’t better than, so when you’re on the line with him all you have to do is not screw it up.  Catch the disc, find your alpha, give it back to him, play defense as hard as you can on a turn, don’t be the dead weight that drags him toward defeat.  In return he will bring out the best in you and give you Ws. 

Add an inch

Adam told me this story.  There was a man who walked past a beach every day.  The beach was littered with trash and no one seemed to be taking responsibility for cleaning it up.  One day the man decided to take a trash bag with him on the way to work and fill it with some trash.  He did this every day.  After a month of filling one trash bag a day the beach was noticeably cleaner.  After three months of one trash bag a day the beach looked beautiful and the locals started to enjoy the beach again.

This is a classic “add an inch” story.  It doesn’t take much time to fill up a trash bag.  After a couple days it can even become a habit, making it even easier to find time for in the future.  While it may feel like you haven’t done very much that day, when you multiply it by months you can make some serious damage.  Think about throwing (as I always do).  If you find time to throw 100 passes a day* and you do it Monday through Friday (take weekends to do nothing!) and you do it for 25 weeks (the number of actual school weeks at Northwestern before Regionals) you will have thrown 12,500 throws.  If it takes 7,000-40,000 reps to master something then this puts you firmly in that range by the end of one year.

I had a pile of books to read.  After I finished my spring quarter of school I wasn’t able to rationalize not digging into them anymore.  However I was still holding back.  “Reading takes a long time!” or “Reading takes a lot of energy!” were my base complaints.  I was intimidated by the size and denseness of the book on top of my pile.  Finally I got fed up with myself and decided to just read 10 pages a day.  At first it was hard to find time to read.  I had to force myself to make time for reading (much like Will.I.Am makes time for the Wall Street Journal).  Soon I discovered that  making time was easier and easier.  Eventually my brain just started dragging me toward reading.  I read 10 pages a day and after a week I had chipped away 50 pages.  In week two I decided I could get 15 pages a day, at the end of that week I had 75 pages done for a total of 125.  (125 pages is 20 percent of the book.  After about 5 weeks I had finished a book that I had been putting off 5 months.  The only question that remained was why did I wait so long?!?)  My reading obviously got faster.  More importantly, by simply not procrastinating, I got through my reading pile faster than I thought I would. 

Think about lifting.  “It’s hard to go over there!” “It takes too much time!” “I can’t lift a lot!”  All classic excuses, but if you just go to the gym and spend 20 minutes squatting and you do this regularly you can turn it into a habit.  Once it’s a habit you can find that spending an extra 10 minutes to do some pull ups isn’t that hard.  Once that’s habit you will find that you have another 15-20 minutes to do some other lifts. 

By making time (less than an hour) and forcing yourself to do something a couple times you can create a habit.  Then just let your habits guide you toward the person that you want to be.

(*Sidenote: 100 passes takes Yngve about 5 hours, it takes me about 20 minutes.  Double-disc toss can make 100 go by in a snap!)

Laying out

Haymaker pulled, I caught the disc, found Kennedy and centered.  Haymaker had come down hard on the pull, they had gotten close, but there was enough room to center.  We went down and scored without a turnover.  As I walked to the sideline the Haymaker who had come down on Kennedy was losing his mind, “I can’t lay out!”  “I just can’t lay out!”

As people, we love the exciting.  Everyone wants to practice flick hucks, skies, and layouts.  But how often do these things come up?  Does it make sense to spend 95% of your throwing time putting up flick hucks when you probably only throw them 10% of the time?  How many times does someone layout at a tournament?  If someone laid out 10 times in a weekend he would be a “layout machine”.  Getting 4-5 layout chances is a more realistic number for an entire weekend.  Does it make sense to judge someone’s Frisbee skills, or allocate someone’s playtime, based on how well they can layout?  Why do we put so much weight and pressure on people to layout?  Why is this kid on Haymaker losing his mind about the layout when Kennedy broke his mark twice during the point?  Doesn’t he mark more often?  Isn’t that the more important skill to learn?

I personally think that laying out and skying are the last things to ever be practiced, if they are to be practiced at all.  There are a lot of trainable skills that get used way more often than laying out or skying.  I have never gone out in a field by myself and practiced laying out.  If I ever do, it will be with a screwing around mentality and just something I am doing for fun. 

I recognize that I am toeing a dangerous line here.  Pulling the trigger and going for a d is big, not only for your team’s chance of winning but also for the mental state of your team.  If I can throw myself at a ball I am definitely going to try and I want teammates who are not going to leave me hanging.  (To me not laying out is an incredibly selfish deed).  But there are people who lack the basic desire to go for a layout, freaking out at them and making them practice layouts is not going to get them to change who they are.

I believe step one is developing a desire to throw your body around.  This is the biggest hurdle to get over.  Some people (e.g. Bif or Zubair) are too terrified to throw themselves around.  This fear cripples them and prevents them from pulling the trigger.  They can practice laying out from their knees or diving into bed all day long but until they get away from the “I can’t layout”, “I’m scared to layout” mentality and enter a “I am going for this” mentality they just aren’t going to layout.

In High School I played soccer and was the goalie.  I learned early that if a shot looked hard to stop, not going for it at all would yield a bad reaction from my teammates.  My solution was to just throw myself at hard shots and pretend to go for them.  I amazed myself with how often I would get to it.  Just pretending to try to block the ball was often good enough for me to get a hand on it and save it.  This is where I learned to throw myself around.  The transition to ultimate went smoothly for offensive layouts.  Running down a pass you’re pretty sure you can’t get to, or maybe a ball that gets thrown off of your vector, just diving for the pass for the sake of tricking your teammates into thinking you’re trying is often good enough for you to get a hand on and catch the ball.  I don’t think it matters how good the layout form is. 

Defensive layouts came later.  There is often a guy in the way and I had no desire to try and layout into their backs.  Situations would occur on the field and I’d replay it over and over in my head.  Never thinking “why didn’t I layout” but instead thinking “how could I have gotten there”.  I think this is step two.  You have to visualize getting a layout d.  If you’re going to replay a missed opportunity over and over in your head, don’t replay the version where you got scared and stopped replay the version where you went for it and got it.  Couple my willingness to throw myself around with a lot of mental reps and during my junior year laying out just started happening.  My first in game layout d was at MLC 2010 against Wisconsin, it was dope and I did it without ever practicing a layout.  By the end of 2011 Austin would make fun of me for having great layout form on defense but never on offense.  I think the reason is obvious.  Offensively I could get to the ball just by throwing myself at it, so I’ve never done a single mental rep.  Defensively my mental reps of getting around the offense and hitting the ball always included me using good form and consequentially my form came out well on the field.

Today I continue to be all over the place with my layouts.  Sometimes I baseball slide and scoop, other times I can get high and flat.  Sometimes I get teased for having terrible layout form, other times people ask me how I learned to layout so well.  When I layout poorly I never get up and say, “man I wish I had laid out correctly,” usually I am just thinking “I am glad I went for it.”

Untrustworthy Throwers

A reoccurring frustration was nailed by McCoy at Nationals this year.  After Illinois was knocked out we were sitting together and he told me that there was a box.  This box represented the space that he could cut to and his handler would be able to get him the ball. McCoy’s conclusion was that Illinois’ box was smaller than every team they had lost to.

This is resonating very loudly for me right now.  If I don’t trust the thrower then it becomes very difficult to cut anywhere.  If I doubt my throwers ability to complete an upline (occurs way more often than it should) then I have no motivation to go upline.  If I doubt my throwers ability to throw a 40 yard away then my deep cuts are half-hearted clears for everyone else. 

If every time you catch the disc you feel a vacuum of your teammates crowding you screaming for the disc; that is because they think you’re a terrible thrower and they are desperately trying to get the disc out of your hands.  If you ever wonder why your handlers stand behind you and dance back and forth, that’s because they think you are a worthless thrower and all they want is for you to stop holding the disc.  If you ever wonder why everyone is standing when you have the disc, it is because no one thinks you can throw anything and they’re all in panic mode.  If you experience this often, you should probably throw more often.