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.