Nationals: 2015 Picks

Pool A Revolver (3-0) Machine (2-1) Patrol (1-2) Madison Club (0-3)

Pool B Ring of Fire (2-1) Doublewide (2-1) Rhino (2-1) Sub Zero (0-3)

Pool C Truck Stop (3-0) Sockeye (2-1) Goat (1-2) Florida United (0-3)

Pool D Johnny Bravo (3-0) High Five (2-1) Ironside (1-2) Prairie Fire (0-3)

Revolver v. Praire Fire	Revolver v. Goat	Revolver v. Sockeye	Revolver v. Ring
Doublewide v. Goat
Bravo v. Madison	Bravo v. Sockeye
Sockeye v. Rhino
Ring v. Florida United	Ring v. Machine	Ring v. High Five
Machine v. Ironside
Truck v. SubZero	Truck v. High Five
High Five v. Patrol

Champion: Revolver

On Saturday NUT had their first returner practice.  We did a throwing challenge.  Complete 40 incuts in a row in 4 different variations.  It took the team an hour to complete the challenge.  I expected it to take less than 20 minutes.  (I had two other throwing challenges that I wanted to throw at them.  With water breaks included I wanted all three challenges to be an hour of practice).

Is this a waste of time?  No, if your team can’t throw and catch then there is no point of working on anything “higher level”.

Didn’t the team just start to fray in frustration?  No, three things happened that made this exercise bigger than fundamentals:

1.      Jeremy (typically a salty negative brooder) was positive and encouraging.

2.      Elliott (typically an introspective nervous little nelly) starting getting on his teammates to run through the disc.

3.      Topher was hitting the floor trying to catch discs he had no chance of catching.

When Juniors realize they are role models and start acting like it, your team is in a good spot.  I would have expected it to take more time for them to mature into these roles but they brought it on day one.  Maybe playing club helps you grow.

CR#1

I owe Colin Reid answers to two questions:

How do you use the process and the success this year to improve the B team? 

I’ll try to make my answer as straight forward as possible, we don’t change anything about the open source programming.  In 2015 we allowed our practices to be open all season.  Before a tournament we had to set a roster and whenever those were set we split scrimmages so that you were working with your roster.  Kennedy had a pretty good stroke of brilliance when he created four teams: A team OLine, A team DLine1, A team DLine 2, B team.  This allowed us to:

·         Have capacity for about 40-45 people at practice

·         Let individual A team lines to get reps together

·         Allowed the B team guys to exposure to playing against A team guys

So in my opinion, we never completely cut the B team off of our A team.  I think doing this again next year is the best way forward.

(There will be a snag in our season next year.  With the Elite Select Challenge early in the season I am sure people will want to “show up” at the tournament.  I think this mentality is not mutually exclusive with BMU’s culture of being inclusive.)

The other piece to improving the B team is a commitment to teaching fundamentals.  I have said this before but I reckon it bears repeating, advanced teams don’t use “advanced topics” they’re just better at the fundamentals.  If the entire program is focused on reworking their fundamentals, and the B team sees A teamers putting emphasis into their fundamentals, then you narrow the gap between top and bottom of your roster.

What are some things you like to show people the power of the break arounds and moving the disc quickly?

I’ve been pushing this one off because I don’t know the answer to it.  I am developing the opinion that an around hurts a defense more than an upline. 

Upline	Around
1.      Gains yards (between 3-15 yards) 2.      Moves toward trapside 3.      Power Position down the forceside a.       Downfield defense can help b.      Next thrower doesn’t have power position	1.      Loses yards (between 1-10) 2.      Moves away from trapside 3.      Power position down the forceside a.       Downfield defense can’t help b.      Next thrower does have power position

Based on this as a defensive coordinator I am bothered by easy arounds more than I am by uplines.

That wasn’t a directly on point answer.  This is: 

1.      During Four lines: add a throw where the thrower has to throw a space around for a loss of yards.  Tell the receiver not to move until the pass goes up.  If you want them to throw early arounds they need the technical skill to do so.

2.      Set up a breakmark drill that mimics filling from the front of the stack and continuing the pass to the breakside.  If you want them to throw early arounds you need to drill looking for it at stall 0.

Process

All the same point, just thought about differently.

Thought #1:

Winning is fun.  It is fun to win sectionals.  It feels great to beat a team that beat you earlier, and playing in a game-to-go is awesome.  Results feel great.  The dangerous part of results is that results often entice a results orientation.  This weekend Black Market played in a game-to-go to Nationals.  What is the next step for our program?  From a results orientation, the next step is clearly to qualify for nationals.  It’s just one more win right? 

Taking a step back and reviewing the landscape of the region changes the picture significantly.  Black Market happened to win this weekend, but Brickyard beat us on Saturday.  What if we had flipped those games and won Saturday instead of Sunday?  Smokestack controlled us from wall to wall at Heavyweights.  Beachfront and Haymaker are always tough matchups that demand to be taken seriously.  It is extremely possible that Black Market could have ended the season underneath all four of these teams and been seventh instead of third.  This region is not a three team dog fight over 2 bids; rather it’s a 5 team dog fight for “top select” status. 

So if we were to choose a results goal for Black Market 2016 that is in the sweet spot of difficult to achieve yet attainable, that goal would be to repeat what we did this year.  From the results vantage this isn’t an improvement, but it would still be an amazing accomplishment.  This is a big part of my beef with focusing on results.  Results, by nature, are not linear.  Just because you got third this year doesn’t mean you will get second next year; more dangerously it doesn’t even mean you will get third next year.  If we value ourselves by our ability to improve linearly in our results then we are dooming ourselves to disappointment. If we go to something like the Elite-Select Challenge with a goal of winning x games and lose every single one, we risk walking away as a frayed and collapsing team.

A process orientation embraces the lack of linearity.  It acknowledges that the road is going to be bumpy, that there will be frustrating practices, that not every day will be your best day, that your players need time to make mistakes and learn from them, that just because someone kept getting screwing up today doesn’t mean we should quit on him tomorrow.  The process accepts these as facts of life. 

If we have cultural goals like

1.      Stay positive

2.      Make every game about us

3.      0-0

And couple that with mechanical goals like:

1.      Get the disc off the trapside

2.      Defend deep

3.      Give your depth chances

Then we can go to something like the Elite-Select Challenge, lose every single game, and be much better because of it.

Thought #2:

How much of this weekend did Black Market actually have control over?  What if:

1.      Kennedy had a good experience with Wildfire and was tempted to play Machine.

2.      Kyle Weigand had liked some other teams Facebook page?

3.      The Neuqua Valley kids (Johnny, Pro, Prayag) weren’t coming of club age?

4.      Nate had decided to stay home with his kids?

5.      Roush wasn’t able to get healthy in time?

Do we perform as well as we did if some of these factors were tweaked against us rather than for us? Certainly not.  How much control did we have over these factors?  None.  Results are often the sum of many things that we have no control over at all.

You have more control over your process. 

If you want your team to be positive, you can choose to be positive.  Yes winning and making plays makes it easy to be positive, but losing doesn’t make it impossible to be positive. 

If you are focused on your own team, what you’re doing well as a team and what you’re doing poorly as a team it is easy to see where your identity as a team is as well as where the opportunities for growth are.

If you choose to approach each game as one point at a time, then you can’t get bogged down by an overwhelming deficit.  You can choose to get something out of every point and you can choose to make it matter.  If you’re down 6-1 against a team much better than you in a game that decides who goes to Nationals you have a choice.  You can choose to hang your head and pout, or you can choose to approach each point 0-0 and maybe, just maybe, you’ll find a way to go on a run.

Thought #3:

The results difference between Black Market and Nationals is one game.  There is only one step between us and Nationals.  The way forward with a results orientation is hazy.

The process difference between Black Market and Nationals is huge.

1.      Can we defend top end talent?

a.       Can we run with teams at the elite/select challenge?

b.      Can we reliably guard deep cuts 1v1?

c.       Can we put more pressure on incuts?

d.      Can we have better footwork and positioning when defending near the disc?

2.      Can we develop better top end throwers?

a.       Can we raise the level of our bottom end throwers?

b.      Can we get better at throwing arounds?

c.       Can we get better at space passes?

3.      Can we deal with zones better?

4.      Can we develop more players that can get open?

a.       Can the players who can get open do so more efficiently?

5.      Can we continue to give people play time so that they can develop?

6.      Can our depth be even better?

7.      Can we continue to believe in ourselves?

The way forward with a process orientation is clear.

2012

This is a brother post to Yngve's: http://yngfu.blogspot.com/2015/09/2012.html

Monday

Sid and I head over to Kennedy’s to do a google hangout with Walden so that we can game plan for regionals.  Sid hasn’t played all season; I ask him if he is going to go for regionals.  He tells us that in his four years at Illinois he has never felt so confident that the team would make Nationals; he tells us the team can do it without him.  I feel good.

Saturday

The tournament is double elimination bracket.  My mind is already on the semi with Michigan.

We come out against Southern Illinois.  We spend most of the second half cramming it down the cram side.  That year we thought it was hysterical to cram it down the cram side, most of us could explain why it was a bad strategy but we thought it was just so funny that we liked to do it.  From the sidelines we would yell to get it off the sideline, then as soon as we’d get playtime we’d be tunnel vision down the line.  Game point was long and annoying.  I get the disc on the sideline, everyone floods to the sideline for the continue pass, out of frustration I look them all off and stare at the centering pass.  Gibby is there and he runs upline, I can’t believe it.  I wait staring at the breakside until probably stall 8 when finally Heff decides to run over there.  Couple of continues down the breakside later and we score no problem.

Eastern Illinois: the game before Michigan.  We’re losing 4-0 before we know what’s happening.  I’m thinking that our comeback is inevitable.  At some point during the game Sidrys asks me to tell Dane to stop dumping the disc like an idiot.  I don’t think its Dane’s fault; I think Kennedy is hosing him with the dump cuts.  I try to talk to Kennedy, he isn’t interested and he’s really peeved.  I still think we will make the comeback.  When the horn blows for soft cap I still think we’re going to win.  When Schwenk completes the game winning pass, I’m stunned.  No Michigan today.

Dane asks to be taken off the OLine.  I’m mad at him.  I think he’s giving up on the team and I wonder where his sense of pride is.  Walden talks me down, tells me to think about how Dane feels.  Consider feeling like you can’t complete any passes and that you’re killing the team.  I tell Walden I don’t think its Dane’s fault and that Kennedy needs to fix his cuts.  Maybe, but we can’t bench Kennedy it’s his team and he is our alpha.

I touch knuckles with Neal.  It felt good. 

I briefly chat with Roush; I congratulate him on his team’s victory.  He tells it isn’t over yet, we can still make Nationals.  I tell him that if any team can fight through the backdoor bracket, it’s us.

As I write this today I think we’ve lost 10-9 or something.  Score reporter says it was 13-10.  We got whupped.

We play Illinois State.  I am on the OLine for Dane now.  The game feels routine.  They tried a zone on us, it didn’t work.  Kennedy balls.  We win 15-7.

We play Purdue, they have no answer to Kennedy.  We win 15-10.  I am happy today is over.  I am ready to go home.

Sunday

We wake up to play Indiana.  Kennedy plays like a mad man.  The game is easy, make an incut and give it back to Kennedy, repeat.  We win 15-7.  It feels good; we’re starting to feel like the team we think we are.

We play Eastern Illinois.  We win 15-2.  A lot of ‘12ers will point to this as proof that we were the much better team.  Eastern Illinois had less than 10 players.  They were tired.  In the game that was full strength v. full strength we straight up lost.

Michigan State had just lost to Michigan in the final.  For the first time in my career I didn’t play Michigan at all during the season, feels bad.  If you want to be King of the Lakes, I think you have to go through Michigan otherwise you’re just pretending.

Things are working well against Michigan State.  Krieger and Wego are playing well.  Kennedy looks unstoppable.  I score a couple of times.  Half its 8-5, we’re only up two breaks and we know it isn’t enough.  We get two more right out of halftime, its 10-5, feels great.

MSU starts making a push.  They are a good team, obviously they make a push.  They use a four man cup; it puts the pressure on Kennedy.  At times it feels like it is Kennedy v. all of Michigan State.  I times I wonder if we are too much dead weight for him.

My mom pulls me to the side.  She tells me that the team is losing confidence and that we need to get our heads right.  I tell her I need to focus and brush her aside.

I don’t know the score but it’s a big point.  We had just been broken.  We’re going upwind.  I have the disc a few yards outside the endzone.  It’s a stopped disc.  I get to make eye contact with Crayon.  I’m thinking I can get the backhand invert for a goal to Crayon.  Disc gets tapped in, I step hard for the invert, Crayon goes forceside, I still think I can get it to him, Aaron Zeigler gets a layout D, Kennedy is right there open on an upline.  This is the moment that sticks for me.  This is the one I wish I could have back.  Why didn’t Crayon go breakside?  Why do I feel the need to blame Crayon?  Why didn’t I just find Kennedy?  Why didn’t I use my alpha?  We get broken.

It’s universe point.  Dane gets a massive layout D on the first in cut.  Kennedy picks up and hits Dane all alone in the endzone.  Dane drops it.  There are a lot of people watching this game, the ensuing “ohhhh” is loud and long.  It rattles my cage.  We get another D, this time we have to go the whole field.  Kennedy throws a million passes and gets us all the way to the goalline.  He finds Krieger in the endzone.  Krieger has caught this pass a hundred times.  He drops it.  Hoch picks up and fires.  The way I remember it he threw it from inside the endzone.  It goes all the way.  We lose 14-13.  Feels bad.

I remember Neal with his hands on his head.  I remember Hidaka holding Wego.  I remember Krieger walking back from chasing down the huck.

We go sit as a team off to the side.  The reason these huddles are so difficult is because no one prepares to lose.  We spent all season trying to prepare to make a push for quarters at Nationals, and we had just gotten third at regionals.  No one knows what to say.  Sid says that the things in life that bring you the most joy can also bring you the most pain.

I think about how I could have lifted more, ran more, and thrown more.  I think about how I could have given more on each rep that I did do.  I think about how I could’ve been a better friend to everyone on that 2012 squad.

On the car ride home Krieger starts to rationalize.  Neal wasn’t able to go to Nationals, how well would we have actually done?  It’s a legit question.

Kennedy texts the group me, “Does anyone want to hang out? I don’t care what we do I just don’t want to be alone.”

Walden asks me when the blogpost is going to go up about the weekend.  He tells me I have to write about the good and the bad.  I sit down to write it.  I come up with one word.  “Shit.”  I delete it and never blog about that day on the Illinois blog.  Instead I email the freshmen:

“Your legacy of helping this team rebound is what you will be remembered by.”

I hit send and go meet up with Kennedy at Firehaus.