Chuck Coast

Shortly after interacting with Luke Johnson I met Chuck.  I think Luke primed me well for Chuck and when I heard Chuck’s philosophy’s I was eager to embrace them.  Chuck told me that everyone coaches the body, lots of people coach the mind, but no one coaches the spirit.  I was eating it up.

1.       IHD:

An alternative title for this section would be “Have a touchstone”.  Teams need something to fall back on.  When the going gets tough or when the challenges seem unsurmountable, a team needs something to check in with and fall back on in order to ground themselves for the next push.  When a season starts to stretch long and patience begins to wear thin, a touchstone can you bring to what matters and what you’re actually trying to accomplish.

For Chuck IHD is the touchstone.  Intensity, Humility, and Discipline are three words that bring him into the moment and remind him what matters and where he is going.  IHD is the answer to every question, it is the guiding light showing you where to go.

2.       Belief is a muscle:

Belief is a muscle that needs to be exercised.  Belief can be your biggest and strongest muscle if nurtured properly. 

Chuck’s idea behind belief is not just “I believe I can win” it was more along the lines of “I believe in what we are doing”.  As I’ve written earlier winning is hard and is often a product of variables that you can’t control.  So when Chuck talked about belief, he was trying to get us to focus on what we could control and to believe that that would be enough to get us to where we wanted to be.

Belief creates buy in, it makes it easy to support a struggling teammate, and it makes it easier to work through personal struggles.  If you’ve got 24 guys who believe in the way you play ultimate, if you and 24 friends are picking up someone in a slump, if you have 24 guys encouraging you to keep working then it’s easier to actually accomplish those things. 

If I believe that my team is getting better every single time they step on the field then stomaching, growing, and learning from a 1-8 record at Warm-Up is easy.  If I believe in Champe and Yiding to work through setbacks and become even better players from it, then watching them blow a 4 break lead against Notre Dame is easy.  If I know that the team believes in me then it is easy for me to give them everything I have, it’s easy for me to make time for them in my schedule.

The thing about belief is it’s always rewarded.  Always.

3.       Touch:

Alright I will admit that I first learned that great teams touch from Kevin Garnett.  The second time I saw Chuck he gave me a big ole bear hug.  Chuck was all about making a connection with a hug or as simple as a hand on a shoulder.  Touching creates a connection, regardless of how manufactured that connection may be it is powerful.

The next time you have a bummed out teammate try putting on hand on them and saying something from the heart.  It’s uncomfortable for about a second, but as they drop their defenses and allow you in the power of your words get magnified.  Touch them, watch them be uncomfortable and shift around for a second, watch them relax, pull them close and tell them you believe in them, then you will see who they truly are.  Some will shyly smile, others will nod, others will say thanks, and Adam Wright will start punching you while trying to hide his face so that you don’t know how much he appreciated you reaching out to him.

The Book of Luke

During college Luke Johnson was that guy on North Park that almost tanked Illinois at sectionals in 2008.  He was a stud, the best thrower in the region, and if he got hot North Park could follow.

My first club experience out of college was with Natives, a Luke Johnson run squad.  As I’ve expressed before, it was a very dark time for me, and the positives came out of playing with Natives was big for me in terms of staying with ultimate.  Luke Johnson was the guy that spun ultimate and put it in a light that made a black and blue image of ultimate appear white and gold.

I only have one thing that I learned from Luke.  I think this is fine, because it has had a profound impact on my life.  I talk about relentless positivity outside of ultimate, I use it during job interviews, and I use it with my family.  I am not going to dilute the impact relentless positivity has had on my life by including two other lesser value points.

1.       Relentless Positivity:

Luke’s formula for having fun is having fun = hard work + relentless positivity.  Prior to Luke I knew what hard work looked like, but I had always employed negativity and being mean as a way of “toughening up” my teammates or encouraging my teammates to “be a man”.  In my mind it was all about being hard and giving people a hard time until they toughened up.  The problem with ultimate is that everyone who plays ultimate was raised by liberal parents who never told them no as children, so the brand of motivation that revolves around “toughness” and “grit” doesn’t work on these people.  What works is relentless positivity.

Finding ways to shine a positive light keeps people together, it keeps their spirits up, and it keeps them bought in.  Casting negative lights depresses ultimate players, it makes them want to quit, it makes them less inclined to try.  Being relentlessly positive builds up the self-esteem, it improves their sense of self-value, and it’s a fantastic way to get the most out of them.

I remember using relentless positivity on the middle school girls’ basketball team that I was coaching.  Obviously they ate it up, they loved it, and it made them have more fun with the game.  Then I decided to bring it with me to ultimate, and it had a shockingly similar effect.  In summary, ultimate players are middle school girls.

On a more serious note, negative energy is a poison.  It is unproductive, evil, and nearly impossible to escape.  Bringing relentless positivity into your life is the lifehack for being able to stop and appreciate the roses.  People want to be built up, people want to see where things are going well, they want to see where they are improving, they want to know what  their impact is, using relentless positivity can help you as a leader show them the value in themselves.  Once they can see the value they bring, it’s then easier for them to focus on that and to maximize the impact of their positives.  It’s easier for them to take pride in their positives if they know what their positives are, and when everyone on your team has pride in what they do then you’ve become a dangerous team.

The Physics of Goose

Matt “Goose” Pasienski was the Coach of Menace during my freshman year.  He got that team to Nationals, sure he had Tania but Menace has had several very good players since then.  When people write off Goose  getting that team to National because he “had Tania” not only do I find that offense towards Goose but I find that offense towards Jody, Foster, Risa, Allie Fish, and all the other good Frisbee players that have been on Menace. 

Goose was in charge of FC Champaign.  I consider myself very fortunate to have gotten a year in with him, here are the three things I’ve learned from Goose.

1.       You’re an ultimate player and throwing is your hobby:

Dear readers may be beginning to notice a trend here; I think throwing is really important.  Goose is the one who told me “you’re an ultimate player and throwing is your hobby.”  When you’re bored, throw.  When you need a study break, throw.  When you’re on a first date, throw.  When you’re hanging out with a friend, throw.  This mentality that your day job is playing ultimate and what you do for fun is throwing still resonates with me.  Sometimes during warm ups or when I’m just throwing I get this rush from deep within and I just have to exclaim about how much I love watching Frisbees fly.

Goose also had an idealized vision for throwing.  Prior to Goose I assumed that everyone would just naturally throw the Frisbee differently.  No.  There is a right way to shoot a basketball and there is a right way to throw a Frisbee.  Get your arm away from your body, use your wrist, and make that disc float.

The perfect huck in Goose’s mind was one that covered 40 yards very quickly, got to about 15 feet in the air, and then floats down with a flat shape letting your receiver jump and catch it around 10 feet.  I still think that being able to execute this huck makes you an excellent hucker.

2.       Running Track:

Goose made me run track junior year.  Workouts were about 45 minutes, we were in and we were out.  We’d warmup with about 1000 meters twice, and then we’d do some kind of workout like 800mx4, or 400mx6, or 200mx8.  Everyone run would have a time goal that you were supposed to hit.

I remember being so torn because prior to this everyone had told me that ultimate is about short explosive moves.  I was told that training long distance running could be more detrimental than good.  All of those opinions are fine and I understand the rationale and studies behind them, but after doing a season of this with Goose I felt faster and in better shape than I had ever felt before in my life.  That year at Nationals I never felt overwhelmed athletically by any matchup.

3.        The Value of the Core:

In Goose’s senior year he got together with his class, they had about 10 guys who decided they were just going to go nuts.  They decided to throw 6 times a week, lift three times a week, track once a week, and go to practice.  These ten guys came together and pounded the rock.  They set the tone for the rest of the team, they made it cool to work hard, and they made it socially unacceptable to not be bought in all the way.  They got second place at Nationals.

I’ve never been able to replicate what Goose described, but the idea has always enchanted me.  If you could have something like 6-10 guys just decide that this is something they want, then they could be the heartbeat of the team and they could drive their team to unbelievable heights.

This will remain to be a fantasy until I experience it for real.

WWWD

Before being exposed to the way Walden thinks about ultimate, I viewed the game as a track meet.  If you can outrun your opponent then that is basically it.  I credit Walden with being the first person to ever teach me about ultimate.  Sure Wiesbrock and Roush deserve the credit for teaching me the rules.  They taught me about travels, picks, and fouls, but it was Waldo that showed me how to be a student of the game.

The challenge I pose to myself here is to pick three things that I learned from Walden.  Three is way too little.  I can rant rave about Waldo for pages, as I am sure most of you already know, but by forcing myself to pick three I can limit the noise, minimize my appearance as a fanboy, and really distill the most impactful things that I’ve learned from the big nasty.

1.       Throwing is really important:

It was the end of my sophomore year; I could throw a forehand huck pretty far and thought that I was basically done with throwing.  In my limited view I had checked all the boxes on throwing, I could throw it forceside and I could throw it far.  Then Walden told me I my throws needed a lot of work.  He told me to throw from my knees all summer, I did this and I still give it most of the credit for my development as a thrower.

My list of requirements to be a good thrower went from about two questions to a page of questions.  Suddenly I was asking myself can I complete an upline with a hard pass, with a soft pass, can I roll it in, can I lead my guy to space, if the defender undercuts can I roll it around him, can I throw it super early and just let my guy run onto it, can I do all of these things left handed, can I pop an upline with a righty backhand against a flick force?  The list goes on, and this is just completing a forehand upline.  Throwing is a book of questions, and it takes time to go through it and answer all of them.

The throwing quest is my favorite part of ultimate, the power of holding the disc is intoxicating.  I never would have even set out on this quest if I was forced down there by Walden.

2.       See the thrower:

The thing about playing with Walden, and later in my career Kennedy, is that the disc my come flying at your face at any second.  Missing the catch because you didn’t see the disc go up is not an excuse.  It’s an unforgiveable offense to allow your thrower to hit you with the disc and you didn’t catch it because you weren’t aware that the disc was coming.  Being shocked that the disc was thrown or being surprised that your teammate is capable of getting off a throw is not okay.

Often in scrimmages I would be the cutter on the breakside sideline.  When cutting from that spot it is very typical that your defender will turn his hips to the field and take a few steps over the top of the offense.  Then your sideline will immediately start yelling at you that you’re poached.  What are your options?  Run straight across the field and get the disc even if it means cutting off your team, sprint deep, or dive into the backfield for an easy dump.  However if a thrower has the disc you might want to stand perfectly still and get ready for that disc to come whipping in at your face.  I can still see Walden lining up a low release backhand break straight across the field, he’d look like a lumberjack chopping down a tree, and it was on me to catch that disc.

Now imagine you’ve made an incut and are going into your clearing cuts, are you ready for the quick invert, are you ready for the late around, are you ready for a fancy high release or scoober?  No? Why not?  You should be.  Let’s say you’re the thrower and you complete a pass, are you ready for the disc to come right back to you?  No?  You should be.

Playing with Walden forces you to be ready for the disc.  It forces you to learn to move and see the field all while constantly being ready for the disc to come, because you never know when he’s about to lumberjack the disc right at your face.

3.        Be critical:

Rabuck once said, "the greatest thing I learned from Walden is how to critic people."

Some people think its mean, rude, and abrasive.  Walden is capable of, maybe notorious for, writing short novel length player feedback.   I see it as an extremely valuable skill.  There is always something for us to work on as players.  The road ahead is always long and it is always treacherous.  You can never “arrive”; you are never done trying to get better.  Having a voracious hunger to constantly improve is necessary just to stay afloat.

This is hard to describe here on this forum, but Walden has amassed an encyclopedia of questions and compiled them in a flow chart.  As a player ultimate is a voyage of answering questions, and once you’ve answered a question you then just move onto the next question on the flowchart.  Walden’s flowchart of questions is so long and so detailed that it could seem impossible to complete it, however I don’t think completing it is the point.  I think going through it, checking as many boxes as you can, and never losing heart even though the questions stretch on endlessly can yield an extremely good Frisbee player.

I often wrestle with putting together this flowchart, it is really hard and I end up getting frustrated and quitting easily.  I don’t have anywhere near a good enough grasp on what it would look like.  That’s why I consider this part of Walden’s genius.  Here is a concept that I can barely even map out without making mistakes and Waldo can do it all off the top of his head in an orderly and clear manner.

Winning is Hard

“You need to lose a game to go before you can win a game to go.”  I think the idea behind this cliché is correct but Frisbee players, in their infinite ability to misunderstand, often lose sight of the underlying meaning.  It is incredibly difficult to win.  Winning is hard.  It is not easy to win.  Wanting to win isn’t enough.  Trying to win isn’t enough.  Playing to win isn’t enough.  Winning is really hard.  Undervaluing or disrespecting the process that goes into winning is a guaranteed way to lose.

When I think about Jimmy Mickle, his Freshmen year he lost in prequarters, Sophomore year he lost in Semis, Junior year he lost in prequarters, Senior year he lost in prequarters, and in his fifth year he broke through and won the title.  Obviously this Colorado team had tons of talent and was incredibly good, but so are all the other teams at college nationals.  I think what set this group a part was the collection of fifth year seniors who had intimate knowledge of just how difficult it is to win at Nationals.

I think Pitt is the cleanest example of the value of knowing how hard it is to win a title.  Alex Thorne and Tyle DeGirolamo spent three years getting knocked out before reaching semis.  In their Senior and fifth years they knew exactly how difficult it was to win a title, and they were able to convert.  The following year they fell short but think about who the super stars of 2014 were: Max Thorne, Trent Dillon, and Pat Earles had never not won a national title.  The last time Marcus Ranni-Dropcho didn’t win a title he was a freshmen.  Do I think that Pitt got complacent or didn’t respect how difficult it is to win?  Obviously I don’t know but I do think that losing, a gentle reminder that winning is hard, has made Pitt in 2015 more powerful than we could have ever imagined.

When CUT lost in semis of 2013, their entire senior class had never lost before reaching the final.

When Florida won in 2010, they were coming off of a 2009 where they didn’t qualify for nationals.

Illinois 2012 had 0 players that had ever lost a game at Regionals.  Then we lost two in one year.

MSU lost the 4 games to go through 2010, 2011, and 2012 before winning one in 2012.

NUT 2014 was a team of kids who couldn’t even spell Nationals.  They were a group that had to struggle to qualify for regionals in 2013.  Is it even reasonable to expect them to know how hard it is to win a game to go?  I am sure they knew they’d have to “work hard” but they had no experience or front row tickets to give them any idea of how hard it is to win.  They had no idea of what “work hard” actually meant.

Success is a goal that a team can and should work toward.  Success can give peace of mind, it can be measured, and it can be improved upon.  Winning is a wrathful and fickle god.  Winning doesn’t need to be worshipped, but it demands respect and penance.  It asks you to pay with more than “effort”.  Fail to give winning what it demands and you will be chewed up and spit out in the most unceremonious of ways.  Fail to give winning the respect it deserves and you will never be able to win.

The Worst Kinds of Frisbee Players

Standlers:

Handlers who can’t cut, “standlers” for short, are my second least favorite types of players.  Standlers are always the ones that get roasted when the offense turns it, and for some inexplicable reason they are always the ones that complain and blame their teammates for any shortcomings. 

I hate how they just stare at you and put a hand up.  I hate how they think they’ve “hacked” or “solved” the game.  I hate how they think of ultimate as a game and not a sport.  I hate how they think if their defender plays them tight they can just get open, but as soon as someone plays them tight they fall apart because they’ve never practiced getting open and they’re athleticism is weak.

I think Frisbee is a sport.  I think that anyone who wants to walk around a Frisbee field and catch dumps for a 10 yard loss just so they can huck it should have some pride and learn how to run.  I think that a team that has handlers who work hard to get uplines and are interchangeable with the cutters is a dynamic team that constantly puts the defense on its heels.  Instead standlers are just not moving, asking their teammates to complete highly technical passes just to get them the ball, and then standing and waiting till around stall seven, letting the defense settle and tighten up, before throwing something. 

What bothers me most about standlers is the question of “why?”  Why don’t you want to run around?  Why don’t you want to throw and go?  Have you ever felt the thrill of running an upline?  Have you ever caught a goal?  Isn’t it great?!?  Don’t you want to get your defender behind you and beat him around the field?  Have you ever tried playing sub stall 4 ultimate?  Have you ever played a sport before?

Mindless-Cutters

As boring and weak willed as standlers are nothing, absolutely nothing, is worse than a cutter who can’t handle.

I hate how they say “throwing has never been my strength” and they think of it as an excuse for why they shouldn’t learn how to throw.  I still don’t get the reasoning behind this.

I hate watching them jitter as they hold the disc.  I hate watching them short circuit as they start looking all over the place and doing weird pivots at nothing because they have no feel for how to manage being a thrower.  I hate how when they dump they just run away and never look back at the thrower.  Don’t you want to throw and go?  What if you swung and went upline?  Don’t you want to move the ball?

What I hate most about these players is that when the standlers make fun of them for not being a thrower, or teases them about being stupid Frisbee players, these cutters who can’t handle laugh and agree!  Are you kidding me?  Have some pride!  As a cutter I found this insufferable.  Why would we just accept our fate as guys who just run around and never throw?

Every time Kennedy made fun of my throws or suggested that I was a mindless Frisbee player, I took a deep and personal offense to that.  I worked to show Kennedy that cutters could be Frisbee players and not just mindless robots.  I wanted to have throws so that no one could ever think to make fun of me for being “not a thrower”.

When you accept a role or identity as one of these two players types, you’re intentionally closing your mind off to half the game.  I can’t think of any dumber or lazier decision to make.

Know the Rules to Break the Rules

This will be my second post along a similar vein of becoming a creative player.  Again, there are no solutions here just questions.

The motif of Kennedy and my arguments in college was to what extent do we put “rules” or “structure” on our team?  From my perspective we needed rules and structure to get anywhere, the reasons we struggled were because we didn’t have a strict enough idea of where we were going and motion died.  Kennedy felt that the rules and structure were hamstringing our ability to play with creativity and we fell apart because no one knew how to react to what they were seeing.

Yngve has often told me that ultimate is like Jazz, when it’s your turn to go solo if you throw in a bad note you ruin the entire song.  Since I agree with Yngve I have often just filed his opinion under my confirmation bias folder.

Enter Leo, a Jazz piano major at Northwestern.  He is one of the artsiest kids I’ve ever met, and he feels strongly that you need to know the rules in order to break the rules.  Look at Picasso’s work as a young student of art, his pictures are perfect and realistic, compared to his work later in life, which we are all far more familiar with.  To hear an extremely artistic person tell me about the importance of the rules was the final confirmation I needed to believe that I am right.  You need to know the rules in order to break the rules, and although this process may take a long time and your players may look like robots for far longer than you’d hope you cannot skip the step of learning the rules and go straight into improv.

Rule	Breaking the Rule
1.        Make Upline cuts from the breakside of your thrower.	Making an upline from the forceside can be a cut that puts the defense is a very compromising position.  It gives you power position towards the breakside, and ideally would lead to continues through the breakside.  In order to execute this move you need to be able to space yourself and take an angle that actually gives your thrower a chance of completing this pass, which can be a technically difficult throw to make.
2.       Start cuts downfield from the breakside and towards the forceside.	If you are on the forceside sideline you can definitely make an incut toward the breakside, but you risk running into your breakside teammates and you risk giving your thrower a cut that he has no chance of throwing to.  You need to be able to look at the mark that is guarding your teammate and see what break throw your teammate has, when you make your move you have to be able to read that and cut so that your thrower has a chance to get it to you.  Before you can learn to do it from forceside to breakside, you have to have the understanding of going breakside to forceside.
3.       Throw with your dominant hand.	Using your offhand has become a very trendy thing, but before you can learn how to hit a dump, upline, or slip with your offhand you need to have a clear understanding of what the throw looks like and how to complete it with your dominant hand.
4.       Handlers handle and cutters cut.	My least favorite rule of all time!  Why can’t a handler dart off towards the big box?  Why can’t a cutter make his clear into the backfield and then set up a handler cut?  Because when you do these things willy-nilly you’re ruining everything, getting into people’s way and shutting down the offense.  When you do it right, you’ve broken the game open.
5.       Clear to the breakside.	If the forceside is easier to get to why not go there?  The answer here is pretty simple, just because something is easier to do doesn’t mean it’s better for your offense.  But there are times where going forceside is good and can be taken advantage of, but before you can start seizing these chances you have to have the rote skill of driving your cut breakside.

Too me rules are critical, but ultimate is not a sport until you start breaking them.  I think I have done a great job of clearly outlining rules in my own head and then transferring them to another.  I believe I can create a robot in about 6 months.  My efforts at helping a player break the rules and competently lay down an improvised riff have been basically zero. 

My roadblock is that rules are applicable to all scenarios; improv is reading the field and making a move.  How do you teach someone intuition without just handing them a long menu of reads, moves, and adjustments?  Should I blow a whistle every 10 seconds of scrimmage, walk over to a random player and start pointing out his options?  We all know how frustrating a big menu is, you basically end up not wanting to order anything.  The current plan is to trust that there are humans somewhere inside my players that want to break out and play beautifully.  If sitting around waiting for the team to reach a critical mass of rule following and doesn’t suddenly start making my guys start playing sports then I am currently out of ideas.