Kingdom Come

Message to Haze

1) Lu and I feel that some people need to step up their sense of urgency. There are less than 3 weeks left til Sectionals (18 days) and it's shameful when people aren't coming to practices/conditioning. We need everyone to step it up and make everything they can because when you don't show up, you're not letting yourself down only, you're letting the guy who got his ass out of bed to make it to a rainy day of ultimate practice, your brother.

On Sunday, we couldn't even hold down a full sized field and had to play mini. That's effing BS. You can't let your friends down like that. Maybe you had a rough night the night before, so did a lot of us, but I scheduled practice sunday also b/c you can't expect to be 100% on the Sunday of a tournament. We played in shitty cold and misty/rainy weather without you and I am glad I did b/c it really simulated having to play men down and in crappy conditions (both personally and environmentally). It's tourney sunday, you're not going to be freaking fresh as a daisy, you're going to be hurting and so will everyone else. What counts is how you overcome these feelings of fatigue, sickness, pain, etc.

Lu had a lot more moving stuff to say that I can't remember word for word, since it didn't really apply to me since I make all the practices. In summary, step up your sense of urgency, both mentally and physically. Our season is about to get real.

2) We have 2 more practices this week (about 8 practices total until sectionals). Tonight I set two VERY simple goals for this week. And everyone must comply by them. They are both defensive:

A) Do not get beat in to the open side--this is the primary option of nearly every team in the nation and it is your job to not let that be a viable option this week. I dont care if you get beat deep Wed/Thurs, but you WILL NOT get beat in to the open side. Front your man, or stay even with him, do whatever it takes to stay in between him and the disc on an open side in cut. Ultimate is pretty simple. Teams have a primary option (open side incut) and secondary options (throwing deep/break side) and we WILL shut down this primary option this season and force teams to fall back on their secondary options.

B) Do NOT get broken while marking. You should keep a mental tally if this happens in practice (I will be trying to break the mark lots when I have the disc) and we'll talk about the count at the end of practice.

3) Husayn made a good point: all of you should be thinking about Ultimate constantly now. When you have a chance to get to practice early, talk to your teammates about Ultimate (our zone d, problems you're having, etc). Talk to those more knowledgeable. Read up on anything Ultimate related

-Here're two sites I read or have read in the past and recommend:

- http://www.the-huddle.org/

- http://www.brown.edu/Athletics/Mens_Ultimate/zipstips/ (this is for fun but it has some great advice from, in my opinion, one of the best players to ever have played the sport of Ultimate

Cya all Wednesday/Thursday night 7:30- @Grand Street.

Love,

Q

PS: Workout tonight, for those that missed but have asked to know what we did so they can do it tomorrow:

-3 sets of stairs (with double bunny hops instead of one leggers

-3X raichu abs (15 each), but instead of planks, during the "resting period" between ab sets, we did as many pushups as we could in 30 seconds, so use a watch/stopwatch

-marking drill

-5 suicides (free throw line, back, half court, back, repeat= 1 suicide)

-BREAK: over the fence, back over the fence plyo stretches to the top of the key/3 point line

-another suicide

-BREAK: toe touches to top of key and back

-another suicide

-BREAK:lunges to top of key and backward lunges back

-another suicide

-side shuffles half court and back followed by suicide (without repeat, so just free throw line/back/half court/back)

-repeat side shuffle (facing other way) + suicide

-repeat side shuffle + suicide

-REST

-repeat again facing other way

-REST

-3 suicides

-be tired

-speech about the next 3 weeks, think about ultimate

PPS:

Vassar has been practicing at 6am, four times a week this season. Although I absolutely despise that team, that shows dedication to me.

Step it up, Haze. Every one of us has to come to practice and work their ass off. We will reap the benefits during tournaments.

We have what it takes to be great. So every day and every practice, ask yourself "what can I do to help my teammates?"

~Q

Sorry Charlie- tourney recap

Big shout out to our brothers abroad.

My blogging has been lackluster to say the least. Sorry

Summary: In my opinion, Rutgers went fairly well. There were lots of great plays followed by silly turns, which I somewhat expected being a first outing this spring for City College B. We went 2-1 with wins over Princeton/Rutgers and a loss to Columbia.

• Our O really suffered when it comes to dump resets and when we do get those working, our cutters weren't good at recognizing break opportunities or deep opportunities. Lots of work to do on that.
• Our zone D is quite good. I've worked on our cup with ryan/zach a bit and it works quite well in windy Metro East conditions, but it's not perfect yet.
• Our man D is what won our games. Every team we played brought way more players than us (I think we had 14 to Princeton's 25? Columbia's 17ish? Rutger's 30?) but I think we were better conditioned b/c our man defense would shut teams down when it needed to (except against Columbia)

1. Princeton (13-10): This win should have been by a bigger margin. This team really worked through 3 throwers, one of which seems to be a transfer or grad student from Williams who had some nice hucks. Burgman, aka whiny mcwhiny pants, had some nice downwind hucks as well. However, once we started backing them their offense wasn't so effective b/c we were faster and could cover their incuts. I clearly remember 3 turns that were the dumbest things I've ever done: one scoober behind husayn, one bad swing to chris, and one horrible dishy to a crashing Schulz in which i took two steps from a standstill and then threw it right to the Princeton cup apex....whatever, I knew my first tournament game back in 7 months would be rusty, I'll fix it. When the disc is ours on the sideline, what they like to do is force straight up on the mark and have the dump defender force upline or even, while all the cutter defenders would front our downfield cutters, something we actually thought of doing and maybe will in the future? Nothing much else to note, we are faster than these guys and if we can improve our marks and clean up our O (my O) i think we'll do well against them in the future.
2. Columbia (10-12): This was a tough loss. The final score was close, but it didn't feel like it. Their O, which works through Izzy, Milo and some random asians I dont know (Carey wasn't there, but they didn't seem to hurt by this fact), broke our zone too easily. I was pissed about that. Furthermore Zac seems to have taught them a nice D which works very well in windy conditions when the disc is on the sideline. They seem to have used a 2 man trap cuppy thing while manning the dump. This gave me headaches b/c i felt very trapped and couldn't even huck it b/c the wind and large man in front of me (damn you zac roy- in retrospect, seeing as we didn't adapt to said trap cuppy thing, I should have just boosted it deep on an early count instead of trying unsuccessfully to throw to guarded incuts), but eventually we learned to get the disc off the line faster, but we didn't fix this fast enough in the end and Columbia pulled out the wind. Izzy, who really doesn't amaze me played well for being injured and Milo frustrated us with some nice throws. They have talent and we gotta tweak some things to nullify that. We could have beaten Columbia had I made some conscious changes earlier on (they would have beat us by a larger margin had we not made any changes)...In all, i never felt like we were in this game, even when we broke to take the first score...or am i making that up?...Anyway, yeah the score was close in the end, but I felt like we were down the whole time.
3. Rutgers (15-13): God this game should have been a blowout, but in regular Haze fashion we let them claw back from a 8-4 (i think? we were up like 4 breaks) half time score. Our zone d got shredded a few times by over the top scoobers/hammers. I think it wasn't windy enough for it to be super effective, then again I may be remembering said scoobers b/c we threw zone on them working downwind too :P Anyway, we know these guys well. A bunch of them are friends, so it was a little fun playing them. My friend from Cal is playing his 5th year is joining this years' Rutgers squad which has some reals threats in Joe, Glenn, Frenchy, Greg, Brian Li. It felt great to layout over my friend, Albert, for the score though...he's a much better cutter than me and I dont score goals much. I'm glad he's such a good sport about it too.

• VP-Defensive MVP: I think VP got like 10 layout D's on incuts. If that number isn't right, he definitely got the most on the team. Furthermore, he had some major skies for big scores during the day too, def touched rim.
• Hus- had some phenomenal bids as usual- but we should be throwing better so he doesn't need to make such huge bids. In my opinion, Hus could be All-Region (college or club) with his talent and athleticism. I saw one great sequence of events in which he caught in incut, turned to see a Schulz streaking deep, actually decided to huck it to him for once, but got footblocked (huge thud, which the rutgers sideline followed with a roar-Hus, you released your huck at your hip...), had his man cut deep on him and I could see in Hus' eyes that there was no way he wasn't getting the disc back for us and him, so he caught up to the trailing edge of the huck to his man and prevented a Rutgers score. Honestly I know he has the throws, mark, speed, field awareness to be great, but I think now he's gotta learn to play smart and conserve his energy on offense to make the most damaging plays necessary for our team to win. Furthermore, I'm not sure how to explain it better than saying he needs the confidence to take over games not just as a receiver but as a thrower/leader too.
• Schulz-played most points as usual. The Schulz/Hus power cutting combo should work better than it did this day. Gotta think why, since these two cutters are definitely the fastest players in our section and top cutters in our region.
• Me- too many turns when teams threw crappy zones on me-1 lay out D in the redzone against princeton and 1 layout score
• Chris Nelson- played some great D on the day, definitely is the scrappiest rookie right now, and one of the most in shape players on Haze
• Kyle- had the prettiest dishies which resulted in a goal
• Lu- got open at will and had some nice hucks to open the field up
• Zach-he's good, couldn't connect with Schulz on our pull plays though
• Kahyee- I know we have him handling but I'd like to see him cut deep sometimes like he does on me when I guard him in practice.
• WesW-needs to play more aggressively for his size on O and D

I/The teams needs to learn to use time-outs more effectively and to our advantage....not sure how, since I'm not great at it, but that should happen. We need someone to keep score, b/c I suck at that. Also, people need to start cutting deep off dump swings....and whenever I have the disc...everyone seems to cut in when I have the disc...I HAVE NICE BACKHAND HUCKS TOO GUYS....GAWD...also, our dumps suck. I'm looking at VP, Larry in particular.

Gotta get some sleep. Goin to work early tomorrow. Spring break starts at 1am Friday night for me.

Georgia on my mind,

Rampage