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.”