Yiding

My memories of Yiding Hou:

Yiding is quiet and rarely asserts himself.  If you aren’t looking for him you will often miss him.  The first thing I remember was everyone on NUT yelling “Ding Dong” when he made a good play, I thought to myself “that was pretty racist.”

I remember learning that Yiding was only a sophomore and being super pumped, in my mind I was thinking about how perfect it was that Yiding could be a feature OLine handler for 3 years.  When Yiding said he wasn’t ready to play on the OLine and being furious.

At Chicago Invite Walden gave me a hard time for not having Yiding on the OLine.  He commented that Yiding had the best composure and fantastic release points.  When I tried to explain to Waldo that Yiding didn’t want to play OLine he retorted “who’s the coach of this team?”

The summer of 2013 Yiding was a practice player for Chicago Club.  By Heavyweights he had worked himself onto the roster.  He had two D’s in his first game for ChiClub.

In 2014 Yiding was nominated captain, I asked him in front of Jack and Ian if he was ready to play a big role or if he was going to say “I’m not ready” again.  Yiding assured us he was ready to step up for NUT.  2014 brought Max Shepherd.  With Max and Ben on the field and a plethora of athletic cutter Yiding was able to remain a passive Frisbee player.  He continued to defer to the others.  At one practice I tried to get Yiding doing more in the offense, we tried to set up a Yiding dominator and after trying it once just to have it not work out Yiding bagged it.

After Sectionals most of NUT walked away from losing to Illinois thinking “we were close we can get them next time.”  Yiding was the only one I remember who had any thoughts about how to adapt.  Ben and Max couldn’t get open in the endzone sets against the Illinois defenders, so in practice we started working on bringing cutters out to handle in the endzone.  Using Yiding’s plan our endzone conversion was far better at Regionals and that led to a W for NUT.

Yiding hurt his hand in the game to go at regionals.  I don’t even remember how it happened, but I remember not having him.  After we lost Yiding stood alone, head hung, clutching his hand.  Often people joke about how robotic Yiding’s personality is; I have never been able to see what they were talking about.  To me Yiding was a driven, passionate, and caring teammate.  Seeing him in this moment was a difficult sight to take in.  He had placed an enormous weight on self-blame on his shoulders and that weight could be felt just by looking into his eyes.

Yiding got cut from Machine for the second time in the summer of 2014.  The feedback was the same as always, he deferred to others.

In 2015 it was obvious that Yiding could no longer hide.  If Yiding hid in the offense then NUT was going to be really bad.  I was worried that Yiding would fail to assert himself until Steel City.  At that tournament he and Champe were able to hold almost every O point.  They dragged a rag tag group of doggertons that couldn’t force a turn all the way to a respectable 5^th place finish.

When Champe got hurt at Warm-Up I was getting stressed about how we would ever score.  I was with BK, who was also out injured, talking about how Yiding would have to step up in a big way.  BK said, “If anyone can shoulder a big weight it’s Yiding.”  I remember being annoyed at BK, to me it was like he hadn’t been paying attention for the past two years as Yiding stood in the shadows of teammates who weren’t as good as him.  Belief is a muscle and it has to be exercised.  Yiding balled.  He looked like a man on a team of boys.  We didn’t win any game but we didn’t have any bad margins, mostly because Yiding was able to run Feinberg a ton of times and was connecting for goals.

At Easterns Yiding thanked the team for choosing this tournament over spring break.  He barely said a sentence before he choked up.  That was a huge moment to me.  That was the final straw of confirmation that NUT made the right decision.  Going to Easterns had made Yiding happy, and no quantity of upset sophomores can outweigh the reward of making Yiding happy.

At Regionals against Michigan NUT got a D on universe and moved it a bit before Champe called a timeout.  The first thing that got said in that huddle was Yiding, “I love you guys,” – so much for a robotic personality.

Champe

There is a way of looking at ultimate that I often neglect.  Ultimate is a people sport.  We play and fall in love with this sport because of the people we encounter through it.  If I were to create a list of my favorite people in world my family would be the only non-frisbee exceptions.  Channeling this mojo at the end of a season brings a desire to write about my friends, a desire to say something about how meaningful interacting with them was, especially those who I am parting ways with. 

A year ago I wrote a post about Ian and Ben, but ended up throwing it away because I felt I couldn’t do them justice in a single blog post.  Ian turned NUT into a safe house for those on the voyage of self-discovery and Ben relentlessly demanded NUTs best.  These two forces worked together to create some fantastic things.  I tried to write a post about Walden in 2010, instead I ended up making shirts.  I tried to write a post for Kennedy in 2012, which is still sitting in my drafts folder.  Ultimately I feel that trying to express how I feel or explain what someone meant to a program is doomed to undervalue the contribution.  This time I have decided I will share memories as a way of preserving them.

My memories of Alex Champe:

I was at an early NUT practice and noticed everyone calling this kid Champe, I thought man that is a cocky nickname.  Little did I know his name is “Champe” even less did I know he is way cockier than nicknaming himself Champe.

I remember telling Champe that NUT isn’t going to make Nationals overnight.  First NUT has to matter in the section, then the region, and then they can contend for Nationals.  I remember him telling me that he thought NUT already mattered in the section and the region.  I almost reminded him of the Michigan-B loss at regionals the year before, but I didn’t want to incite him.

I remember wanting Champe to play OLine with Ben.  Champe has some DLine is best mentality that I still don’t understand.  There was this mentality in 2013 that DLine gets breaks and breaks win so the glory is on the DLine, but if your OLine can’t hold than breaks are meaningless!  Anyway, Champe would get down about playing offense because all the OLine could do “was screw up” and all the DLine could do “was win”.

I remember him throwing a hammer at Chicago Invite.  I turned to Walden and said, “That was a great throw!”  Walden replied, “no one was guarding the receiver.”  Good point Walden.  The next day Champe had to play OLine because of some injuries; he didn’t like it and sat on a bucket with his head in his hands.  He didn’t come onto the field when I called him.  When I asked him what was hurting he said, “nothing I just don’t want to play.”

I remember Kennedy beating the snot out of Champe at Huck Finn.  Champe was intensely focused on getting Ds on Kennedy while he was cutting, Champe might have gotten a few, but once Kennedy got the disc Champe was just standing and not really marking at all.  Kennedy had a field day breaking the mark.  I left that tournament and road home with Walden.  During that car ride I formulated a plan to trick Champe into asking Walden for Frisbee advice, and then I would let Walden teach Champe the value of a good mark.

Champe studied abroad in the fall of 2013.  He came with us to Steel City Showdown.  He was a nonfactor.  With Ben, Max, and Yiding on the OLine I was seriously considering have a BK, Micky, Henry DLine.  I was actually feeling pretty good about NUTs future, and in my mind it didn’t include Champe.  Champe felt this.  When he asked me for feedback I told him what I saw, a fat kid who couldn’t play defense and liked to standle.

At Warm-Up we had our first team cream adventure.  Champe was really into it. 

There was a lot of movement in the depth chart during Warm-Up 2014.  I knew Max and Zach were going to be great and they showed that.  I remember being shocked by how much I felt I could trust returners.  I remember Ben’s flick falling apart, and I remember thinking of Yiding as the closer the DLine needed to finish out games.  Then we played UCF in the quarterfinals.  The DLine got us a few breaks but certainly not enough to be comfortable.  UCF was on our tail the whole way.  I remember Ben telling me Champe should be in.  So I put Champe in.  I’ve seen good performances by a lot of Frisbee players, but that was the first time I ever thought a NUT player could be relevant at the Nationals level.

I remember Champe getting hurt at sectionals, and the sky appropriately opening up moments later.

After the 2014 there was a lot of back and forth during the captain nominations about whether or not Champe should make it.  I almost emailed NUT saying I wouldn’t coach if Champe wasn’t a captain, but decided against making that information public.  I thought, “I want them to want the best without me leveraging it.”  If NUT had gone a different direction it would have sent a clear message that they weren’t interesting in competing and subsequently are not the kind of team I am interested in coaching.  Champe was elected captain.

2015 had the potential to be a major setback year.  I had finally gotten Champe to buy into the idea of playing OLine.  If our OLine could convert then we could get our DLine a lot of play time and we could leave games with a respectable scoreline.  At Steel City that fall the OLine put together a lot of almost clean games.  We were within a few every game and we were doing it without getting breaks.  Champe looked like a very grown up and mature player, it was early in the season but I felt the OLine was complete.

We struggled through a lot of tournaments this way.  I put a lot of pressure on Champe and the OLine as I tried to push through the DLine’s issues. 

Sunday of Sectionals we went down against UChicago.  I had no intention of going tight lines at sectionals, but Champe said he wanted to do it.  He dug us out of the hole and then buried UChicago, almost single handedly.  I drove home thinking that if that Champe showed up we’d be the best team in the region.

Champe texted me before Regionals saying he had sprained his ankle playing intramural soccer and didn’t think he should play any D points at Regionals.  On Sunday against Michigan when his team needed him most, Champe had a choice.  He could’ve sat on a bucket and told me he didn’t feel like it, or he could have pushed as hard as he could.  He chose the latter, and it was awesome.

While at Nationals I was complaining about the nature of college ultimate.  I hate how every year you start from scratch, you have to reteach a bunch of kids to throw, you have a new crop of injuries because people sat on the couch eating potato chips and then decided to try really hard at the first practice and end up hurting themselves, you have to convince cutters to practice throwing, and you have to convince handlers to move around.  Just when you finally start getting those ideas through to people they graduate and then you are stuck starting from scratch.  I think Champe fits this perfectly.  The year he become the archetypical handler for the type of offense I want to run, he graduates.  More painfully, he is a great friend who always understood me.  I already miss him.

Chef's Table

There is a Netflix original series called Chef’s Table.  My brother is a Chef by trade so I was obliged to watch it.  Beyond the amazing images of food Chef’s Table digs into the stories of six Chefs who are currently ranked in the top 50 in the world.  They are all immensely different characters with different passions, motivations, and histories but there is a single unifying thread in their stories.  At some point they are struggling to find themselves, they have been formally trained and are trying to replicate that training in their restaurants when the realization sets in: “stop trying to replicate someone else’s work and find your own way to express yourself.”

This clicked with a moment I had in college when Austin told me that I needed to find my own style.  He was referring to my recent decision to wear black socks instead of white socks and he said it with in a joking tone, but it later struck me how right he was.  You can try to imitate another player all you want but you will never be that player.  You can definitely learn from them or use them as inspiration but ultimately if you aren’t playing your own game then you are just a cheap imitation of something else.

Idea Models

I think regrets are a little silly.  Per the butterfly effect every decision you have made in life led you to the place you are now. (E.g. If I had chosen to play football in high school rather than soccer I would have never become good friends with Jimmy Wiesbrock and would have never picked up ultimate).  So to say you regret something means that you are unhappy with who you are or where you are in life today.  Do I regret losing at Regionals in 2012?  If I hadn’t I would never have come to NUT, I would have never met Rose.  It would be a lie for me to say that I regret having had those things happen.

If I had played for Stupca I would not have played for Walden, also something I would never want to give up.  But every time I get to be around Stupca, every time I witness him fill and control a room, every time I watch him operate I feel pangs of jealousy that I was never coached by Stupca.  In Stupca’s final year before his first retirement I was a C-teamer.  I never had a single personal interaction with him.  So I turned to the stories.  I got into the google group and went through all his docs that outlined the team strategy, I read through his workout advice, I watched footage of teams that he said Illinois was trying to emulate.

Everything is earned with Stupca (in stark contrast to my own personal style where praise is given out like hot cakes).  As a personality I have an unquenchable desire to please, a trait I attribute my friendship with Waldinho to.  I think the challenge of rising to Stupca’s expectations and trying to satisfy his demands would have been a major motivator to me. 

When you blow a defensive assignment or miss a throw that you have no business missing, Stupca will let you know about it.  This mentality doesn’t jive with many people.  There is this pervasive sense that mistakes are their own punishment and leaders of teams should respect their players enough to trust that they know they’ve made a mistake.  Typically I subscribe 100% to the latter opinion, but let me hang out with Stupca, or even Zubair, for too long and my opinion changes.  If the mistake is its own punishment then how come you keep making the same mistakes over and over?  Maybe I should make it very clear that every time you drop an uncontested swing pass you’re hosing your team.  Ultimately this a trust issue, can you trust your players to recognize that they did something bad?  If the answer is no then you have bigger issues than dropped Frisbees.

Tactically everything I do is stolen from Stupca’s playbook.  The idea and pursuit of “total Frisbee” is the Mecca of strategy for me.  Total Football is an idea the Dutch national soccer team used in the 70s.  Listen to the announcers during the World Cup and it is almost inevitable they will reminisce about “when the Dutch were total footballing.”  The idea is that everyone should be able to fill every position.  If you have 10 strong points that are interchangeable and versatile then that is very difficult to counter. 

The idea starts small.  If you’re a center back why can’t you play wing back?  If you’re a wing back why can’t you play outside midfield?  If you’re a central fielder why can’t you step up into the role of a striker?  As you start smearing the identities of similar positions it becomes easier to smear them with dissimilar positions.  Eventually, given it is possible, you have 10 positionless players that are fulfilling functions of positions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RloHgUdzlU

So Frisbee – Why can’t a handler cut deep?  Why can’t a cutter fill into the handler space and run some handler cuts?  What is preventing your pull catcher from being good at uplines?  Why do your DLine players have to have terrible disc skills?  They don’t.  Ideally there are no handlers and no cutters, rather there are handler and cutter functions that at any given point in time are being filled by seven Frisbee players.  For example what if we started visualizing it like this:

Function:	Center	Breakside	Forceside	Middle	Middle	Edge	Edge
Player filling function at time 1:	A	B	C	D	E	F	G
Player filling function at time 2:	F	C	E	A	B	G	D

Total Frisbee: 7 interchangeable parts to a machine, step up perform a function, step out, reorient yourself, and repeat.  I’m drinking this so hard and the idea is from Stupca.

Illinois owes a ton to Stupca.  He bridged the gap between the great Illinois teams of ‘02-‘04 and ‘09-‘11.  He picked the program up and carried it through a dark age of not qualifying for Nationals.  Even players who spent their entire career in the gap of his coaching tenure felt his influence.

Being a Captain

Illinois opened their Captain voting process last night; and attached to the email that opened the process is a list of what a captain is expected to do.  I originally wrote this list after 2012.  Colin updated and attached the list in 2013, Neal did the same in 2014, and here in 2015 Marty has updated and attached the list again.  It’s funny to me to watch the evolution of this list.  It’s almost like a time capsule that I check in with at regular intervals.

The origin of the list is a classic case study in how little some people are aware of their surroundings.  In 2012 we were having our end of the season meeting and I was talking about how the captain process would work when Michael “Zoidberg” Pohling opened his mouth and said “What does a captain do?”  After a bit of time passed I realized he wasn’t joking, he genuinely had no idea what the captains do.  Even after an entire year of being a part of the team, he had never worked out what the purpose of the captains was.  So an annoyed version of me begrudgingly wrote a list of what a captain does.

Here’s the list with some updated comments:

1.      Decide on team leadership personal

a.       There is a typo here.  I wonder how many iterations this list will survive before someone changes it to personnel.  Pretty silly case study on the power of copy and paste.

2.      Decide what kind of offense the team will run, and the way the team will run it.

a.       Ho Stack? Vert Stack? Split Stack?  Multiple offenses?

3.      Decide what kind of defenses the team will employ

a.       Man to man?  Zone?  Variations of Man to Man?  Variations of Zone?  Zone to man?  Man to zone?

4.      Decide who makes each cut throughout the season, and who will be on the final Ateam roster

a.       In every team I have been a part of the captains have had the final say on who makes the roster.  Walden always let us pick our team.  This season with NUT was the most active I have ever been a part of the process.  I gave the captains a list of 16 players and said, “these are the people who will actually get playtime”, then the captains picked their own roster.

5.      Decide how play time will be allocated

a.       With 24 people on a team how do you decide which 7 get to play and when?

6.      Should be passionate about ultimate

a.       I am going to jack Stupca’s opinions here.  There is value in having a captain who is just nuts about Frisbee.  A Captain that eats, breathes, and sleeps ultimate allows everyone else to “sort of get into” Frisbee without feeling like a weirdo.  A young player might feel more comfortable researching ultimate, watching film, reading Ultiworld, or doing an extra work out if he knows that at least he isn’t as weird as the guys at the top of the roster.

7.      Willing to sacrifice their free time for the good of the team

a.       You can either leave Saturday night practice and head to the bars or you can grab some milk and hang out with some rookies and talk about ultimate.

8.      Must be a leader on and off the field

a.       When you’re captain you’re always captain.  Even if you’re at a party you’re still the captain.  Laying out down some stairs and breaking tv’s maybe hilarious, but it’s kind of hard to respect that person in a formal setting.  It may seem unfair but I think it’s even more unfair for you to ask your team to flip their respect for you on and off like a switch depending on whether or not you’re at practice.

9.      Capable of teaching both basic and advanced skills to a large group of people

a.       Some people need help holding a flick with two fingers, some people need help putting invert on their hucks.

10.  Plan out activities and drills for practices from AugustMay

a.       Most teams have about 6-10 hours of practice time.  What are you going to do with all that time?  Are you going to have random practices or are you going to try and make them all lead into each other?

11.  They decide how to split up the x/y teams

a.       Who goes on which x/y roster?  Are you going to split oline/dline?  Stack a team?  Try to split it even?  Stack handlers and stack cutters?

12.  Make the final decision on what tournaments the team will go to.

a.       Sometimes you have to decide that the team is going to Easterns even if the team would rather follow their womens team around like a pack of wet dogs.  The final decision is on the captains.

13.  Need to be able to sell the team in order to get into elite tournaments

a.       Maybe you lost every game at WarmUp this year but you still think you’re good enough to compete at that tournament.  Are you capable of convincing the tournament director that you should be invited back?

14.  Need to be capable of making rookies feel wanted, and getting them excited about staying in the program

a.       Some captains only keep three rookies, others get double digits.  If you don’t have rookies coming into your program then what is you even doing?

15.  Make any strategic adjustments in game, and in tournament

a.       Is Tufts killing you with handler motion and break throws?  Maybe you should put a flat mark on and force hardest on the off handlers.  Are we getting blown up deep?  Maybe we need some help over the top.  Are we completely dysfunctional at defending pull plays?  Maybe we should get a defense to help with that.  Gone are the days where as a player you can just run around and not know who you’re playing against.  As a captain you have to be aware of who the other team is and what they are doing.

16.  They need to be capable of balancing their own game, with making sure the team is playing theirs.

a.       Again, you can’t just go out there and worry about yourself.

17.  Need to bring intensity at every moment, because intensity is contagious

a.       Sometimes your team is tired.  Sometimes it’s a heavy midterms week.  Sometimes everyone is sick.  Sometimes a lot of people are faking injuries.  These are the forces that cool off the water.  Who’s going to add some heat to that water?  Who is going to turn up the yolo?  We can all wait around for practice to end or someone can decide that he’s physically at practice so he might as well be there mentally.

18.  Need to be able to deal with a lot of emails

a.       Just an absurd amount of emails. 

b.      “I’m sick”

c.       “I have too much homework, and am bad at time management”

d.      “I stayed up all night playing smash brothers, now I feel sick”

e.       “I’m pretending to be injured”

f.       “I’m actually injured”

g.       “I figured that since it was Valentine’s day I didn’t have to tell anyone I’d be skipping practice for a date”

h.      Here’s the greatest email I ever got:  “Captains,  I will be leaving practice early to celebrate a religious holiday, additionally I will be showing up late per usual.  DMac”

19.  Need to be able to evaluate and respond concerns about teammates health

a.       Mostly this is just telling people to go see a trainer.  Also it is pretty beneficial if you can tell people that just because their hip abductor hurts doesn’t mean the problem is with the hip abductor; odds are the muscles in your pivot leg are shorter than the muscles in your non pivot leg and this imbalance manifests itself in pain in the hip abductor.  Go to the gym and lift to make the pain go away.

20.  Be really bad at trolling RSD

a.       This stems from a tangential story.  2011 was the first year that we moved to 10 regions and consequently the minimum bids per region was moved from 2 down to 1.  The Great Lakes region only had 1 bid, and in classic Good Lakes 1 bid fashion Illinois took it home.  The path to winning the region that year included having to go through the #8 USAU ranked Michigan; which we did 15-9.  (Side note Michigan had beaten NUT 15-4 the game before.  In the 3 years I have coached NUT NUT has lost to Michigan three times at regionals by a total of 4 points, the year before I coached NUT they lost to Michigan by 10.  I really hate Michigan and if any team I am a part of plays like a bunch of wimps against Michigan I am just going to walk away and never return.)  After this W I went on RSDnospam and wrote a post called Dear USAU.  Walden was so mad.

21.  Need to be able to offer advice to teammates about dealing with injuries

a.       This one is repetitive because it happens all the time

22.  Need to be able to explain the reasoning behind play time allocation

a.       Sometimes that kid who can’t stay on the forceside of his guy wants to know why he isn’t getting any play time.

23.  Know the rules of ultimate

a.       Sometimes Champe thinks that double turns still exist, and sometimes you have to teach him that they don’t.

24.  Motivate the unmotivated

a.       This comment was targeted very specifically at Andy Kilinskis, Brandon Smith, and Alex Komisarz.  How do you motivate someone who is entirely devoid of internal motivation?  It’s an infuriating process, and one that I failed at.  Good luck.

25.  Organize the recruitment strategies

a.       Chalk the quad?  Put up posters?  Play pick up?  Send out Facebook spam to every incoming Freshmen?

26.  Help run Quad day, email high schoolers, respond to emails from high schoolers

a.       Often Quad day is the first time a freshmen ever sees you or your program.  I remember being grabbed by McClain.  He said, “you’re tall sign up for Frisbee!”  I was going to do it anyway, but that first interaction is huge.

27.  Run the Rookie Invite, and work towards every freshmen having fun

a.       This is an Illinois specific thing.  We have a tournament right off the bat.  Mix up vets with returners, just play Frisbee, and try to give rookies some familiar faces amongst the vets who can often be quite cliquey.

28.  Rig the Rookie Invite so that you can feed your ego by winning

a.       This is a direct shot at Kennedy.  I won the rookie invite as a Junior and made sure to let Kennedy know about it a lot.  So during our senior year Kennedy took the 3 very best freshmen, (Marty, Sarson, and Zoidberg).  No one came close to beating them.

29.  Make sure the week back goes as smoothly as possible, and make sure that the time there is allocated as best as it can be

a.       This might be getting a little dated, doesn’t Illinois only do like a three day week back?  Aren’t you guys down in Chambana getting soft? 

30.  Aid the Treasurer and President in any way possible

a.       Sometimes the Treasurer graduates but doesn’t give anyone access to the bank account.  Sometimes as an ex captain your obliged to hunt that treasurer down and get him to sign over access to the bank account.

31.  Be willing to go lifting with anyone who is looking for a buddy

a.       Sometimes you wake up early to lift with your best friend and then snackman texts you in the afternoon looking for a lifting buddy, sometimes you have to go.

32.  Attempt to get 100% attendance at mandatory practices

a.       If you aren’t going to practice then what is you even doing?

33.  Attempt to get 100% attendance at optional practices

a.       If you aren’t going to practice then what is you even doing?

34.  Answer ridiculous questions from everyone

a.       I’ll steal Chuck’s opinions here.  Sometimes people ask questions just so that you think they’re smart.  They don’t even care about the answer they just want recognition that they asked a good question.  For example “why are we running a four man cup instead of a three man cup?”  “What’s the point of letting people clear to the forceside?  Won’t they get in the way?”  “If something is open should I throw it?”  “If they get passed the front 5 guys in our zone what do we do?”

35.  Deal with complaints about everything

a.       Why do we only run man?

b.      This drill is stupid?

c.       Why are we practicing so early in the morning? (said at an 11am practice)

d.      We didn’t work on hucking this practice!

e.       Why do we run four lines?  It’s only like 1 throw a minute!

f.       We are practicing on Valentine’s day?

36.  Constantly remember that you were elected by your peers, they gave you your power, act accordingly

a.       Another direct shot at Kennedy.  Often he would address the team as “you” rather than “we”.  It was always either Kennedy’s way or the highway.  Some might say that his relationship with Jess was the point in which Kennedy eased up and became easier to work with, others might say that Kennedy chilling out had a lot to do with 2013 getting to Nationals.

37.  Analyze what the other team is doing, and identify a way to work against it

a.       I’ve already addressed this

38.  Run drills

a.       Duh…?

39.  This is not an exhaustive list, anything else that comes up along the way needs to be dealt with efficiently by the captains

a.       Obligatory post so that Michael Pohling didn’t get further confused.

That’s the list as it is today.  One of my favorites got culled.  “Be prepared to lose 10 IQ points.”  I don’t know when this one got culled, but as much as it sounds like a joke it’s a very serious comment.  When you’re captain you get second guessed all day every day.  Suddenly every decision you make is criticized by whisperers in the dark.  When you think going to Easterns is a good idea and everyone is kicking and stomping their feet because you’re being an idiot and not thinking it through, or when you think that running gassers is a good idea and everyone rips on you for scaring away the rookies.  Even after 8 rookies from your captaincy make it to their senior year and get 13^th at nationals, most of them big contributors, you’ll still be teased for being an idiot.  When you’re captain it is inevitable that your team will think you’re an idiot at some point.  What you have to keep in mind is that you probably spent a couple days thinking about something and they spent all of 6 seconds knee-jerking to it.  Take your time, make a choice, believe in it, and most importantly don’t panic.

Being a captain requires a huge effort.  The frustrations of power v. the plebs is magnified by the fact that you’re trying to lead your peers.  However, it is worth it.  Good luck to the captains of 2016.