Fall Wrap-Up

Fall ended on a strong note with a good showing at SoCal Warm Up for Smaug. We brought two teams, Team Hip and Team Bro. Because we lost Sean Ryan as a try-out tourney, we had me and Bishop captain Team Hip as a tryout team with all the guys trying out for the A team that we wanted to watch more closely. Arby and Knuckles captained team Bro, which had more returning A-teamers, but with both teams having a full 30 people, they ended up being pretty evenly balanced.

Hip went 4-1 in pool play, losing at 8 AM to a UCSD Z team in a pretty sloppy game. We won games against USC, Redlands, Irvine and Arizona Y (who was more of their B team). This put us in the 5-8 bracket on Sunday, which mercifully started at 11 AM, so we got to enjoy ourselves Saturday night. It was windier Sunday morning, and we faced a Long Beach team with only 10 guys that ran zone every point. It was not a very fun game. We played an extremely fun game against the Squids Rick Roll team, which had a lot of hucking and exciting plays. We scored the last point of the game, but hard cap ended us at 11-10.

Team Bro went 3-2 in in their pool, beating UCSD Y, USD and Northern Arizona, but dropping games to SDSU X and Arizona X. On Sunday in the 9-12 bracket, they lost a tight game to Azusa Pacific, who also ran a lot zone, per usual, but had also picked up three ringers from SLO who were looking for a team to pick up with. In the last game, they lost a tough game against Claremont on universe.

SDSU Y ended up winning the tourney over Arizona X. SDSU has had an extremely successful fall, and are looking to be dangerous this season. I am pretty surprised to hear that they haven't been accepted to the SB Invite yet. I think people remain skeptical of fall tourney results, though, which can produce some pretty odd results. It's all about the season.

We've finally (almost) set our A team. We're still waiting to see BSOD and Avatar, who spent the quarter abroad, and Syntax, who had the flu during Warm Up and couldn't play. Otherwise, Smaug will look something like this:

Attica
Avatar
Bishop
BSOD
Da Vinci
Eraser
Falco
Fawkes
Knuckles
Machina
Mongoose
OJ
Pagoda
Rachet
Scarecrow
Spectre
Syntax
The Arbiter
The Curse
The Flood
The Fuzz
Thor
Turok
Vector
Vonage
Whiplash
Zodiac

The squad is really big this year, athough Thor recently had ankle surgery to fix a severe high ankle sprain that he suffered at WarmUp, and he might be gone for the season. We made an effort to bring more youth to the team, because next year Smaug is losing 12 guys to graduation/eligibility. Still, competition for playing time will be stiff, and we expect everyone to earn their way onto the field at every practice.

We have 3 new players who we're really excited about. Our true rookies are Mongoose and The Fuzz. The Fuzz is the shorter of the two, and extremely quick with good field sense and sick lay outs. Mongoose is smart athlete, with surprisingly good disc skills and nice hops. Whiplash is new to the program, too, but he played a year with Santa Cruz' B team and transferred to UCLA, so he'll have 3 years in the program. He got probably 5 or 6 sick lay out D's over the weekend. The most important thing about our three rookies is that they have great work ethic, and I think all of them will contribute this year.

What really excites me about this team is our overall team athleticism. We have a lot of speedy and tall receivers, and a good squad of huckers to get it to them. Our D lines are going to really get after it, and we have a relatively large number of guys that we would be comfortable putting on the other teams best player.

We lost a lot of experience last year - lots of guys with high level club experience. They will be tough to replace, but I think our ceiling this year will be as high as we we want it to be. Last year, we were knocking on the doorstep of getting there. If people decide that Smaug's success is important to them, and put in the necessary work in the gym and throwing outside of practice, we can make a lot of noise this year.

We're running two different offensive systems this year, a vert stack borrowed from Strike-Slip and a split-stack borrowed from Condors. The vert stack will be very systematic and put our handlers in position to play aggressively and control the game. The split stack will open up a lot of space in the middle of the field and will give our cutters more freedom to take over with their athleticism.

The Southwest will be tough this year. There's a good chance we will only have 2 bids after UCSD and UCSB struggled at nationals last year, but the UPA is still working on a new plan to make the regular count for bid allocations, so we've been working hard to be ready to go in January.

Squids, Tide, Arizona and Colorado are the big dogs in the region, but the next level of teams have a lot of talent and will be a threat every time we play them. CSULB, SDSU, Claremont, SLO, UCI, and Colorado State are all dangerous, and I'm sure I've forgotten another good team or two.

I can't wait until January when we finally get to play as one squad at Santa Barbara. Until then, make sure that you're working out over break, and if you want to see us do well this year, call up a Smauggy and make sure they're doing the winter break workouts.

Sean Ryan Fail

I was so pumped to go up to Sean Ryan last week. We had been prepping and planning furiously, organizing rides, practicing zone and getting people pumped up.

Tuesday morning I got a text from Big Jake saying that he was forwarding us the Santa Cruz email. I thought he was referring to the captain's packet or schedule or something, so I thought nothing of it. After all my classes, I went to check my email and find this gem:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: CSULB Ultimate <>
Date: Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 2:42 PM
Subject: Fwd: Sean Ryan field Trouble
To: Smaug Ultimate <>




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Slug Ultimate <>
Date: Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 12:24 PM
Subject: Sean Ryan field Trouble
To: [a bunch of teams not including Smaug]


Hey All,
The UCSC men's Soccer team make the DIII playoff tournament and decided to host the first round at our lower fields. This means, that in spite of the Ultimate team having the field reserved for the last two months, as of last weekend we are suddunly very cramped for space. In order to solve this we are cutting the number of teams we are inviting to twelve for each division. Im sorry for the inconvience, the 12 teams invinted were chosen based on past attendance and proximity.

Thanks for all of your intrest hopefully we can avoid being screwed by our university in the coming years.

Here are the teams invited, in seed order:

Stanford
UCSC
California-Berkley
California-Santa Barbara
California-San Diego
California-Davis
Las Positas
Humbolt State
Cal Poly-SLO
Claremont
Chico State
Santa Clara

--
Cassidy, Russell, Max
Slug Captains 09-10

Keep in mind that this is Tuesday and we're supposed to leave Friday morning. I spent the next few hours seething and trying to find the phone numbers of any of the UCSC captains to call them and get some more info.

I found 2 of their numbers, and called about 10 times with no answer. I left voicemails for them to call me. I wrote a very angry email to them listing our complaints and asking them to call me.

Still, it took until late that night before Arbiter reached one of them and asked if they could adjust the schedule to accomodate for the teams that got booted. No, they couldn't do that.

My complaints:

1. Not telling a team that's planning to move 30 people that they're spot has been canceled 3 days before they leave.

2. They said the reasons for cancellation were proximity and continuity. We've been going since 2005 [edit - Kiosk thinks since 2000]. UCSD and Claremont are farther away.

3. Last year we finished in the top 8, beating squids and losing to Stanford 11-9. Crappy teams got in ahead of us.

4. It impacts teams that are further away more than it impacts teams that are closer. We have to plan more for the trip and commit to hotel reservations.

5. They couldn't man up and return any of my phone calls. I can understand that your school screwed you. At least be men and return my phone calls.

6. It seems like the right thing to do here because of the short notice would be to change around the schedule and share the burden between all the teams. Saying "F you" to 4 of the teams is not the better option.

The whole thing kind of took the wind out of my sails for the week. We were counting on Sean Ryan to be our tryout tourney for our A-team, and now we only have SoCal Warm Up before winter break, which were sending a split squad to.

I was so angry, and it was even more frustrating because we were totally at their mercy. There's nothing we can do about it, and it's not even likely that we'll play them this year because they're out of region.

Basically we had to bend over and take it.

Thanks Santa Cruz.

Rookie Practices

We've been running practices 4 nights a week, 2 for the rookies and 2 for the A team tryouts. It's a lot of practice, and it's a lot of practice to plan. Bish, Trog, Yugo and I have been dividing up the duty, but it's tough coordinate a consistent message for the week.

It's been kind of tough to go from club regionals to teaching people that have never played ultimate before. The two worlds couldn't be more different, and it can be kind of frustrating at times. I get really excited when I see our big players make plays because I'm looking ahead to the Spring.

Today, though, I was totally happy when our rookies took the lessons of the day and executed them really well in our scrimmages. We were working on teaching them to recognize power position, throw dish passes, and make cuts from the front of the stack in our endzone offense.

We ran a dish to huck drill for probably 15 minutes, and did some mini end zone games. During the scrimmage, I noticed people when I got the disc in power position, there was almost always someone streaking deep for me. Our vets handler movement improved from running the handler set on the endzone as well. It was very satisfying to see such immediate results from our designed practice.

I think our drills have been giving too much autonomy to the rookies as players on the field. We should be designing drills for them that teach the simplest processes that veteran players don't even think about as they do. We forget that rookies don't have the basic instincts to cut for the swing or for the break throw.

I think it was someone from Florida that wrote on The Huddle that you have to put your rookies in the position to succeed by giving them the tools that they need right now. It's a balance between teaching rookies what they need to do to win at a tournament this weekend and what will make them the best possible player a year from now. For right now, I think we need to focus on what will make them win this weekend -- the most basic fundamentals.

Once we start playing our tournaments, they'll see what ultimate is all about and they'll improve by leaps and bounds. We met tonight and picked our teams for Sandwich Day this weekend. There was some smack talk and I think people are pretty excited. And our team names are awesome:

Goat-c, Bicurious George, and Up Town Brown.

My Third Club Regionals

So we lost in the the backdoor game to go to nationals to San Diego, finishing 3rd in the region. I feel very split about the weekend, because we pulled out close wins in 5 of our 7 games, and we made it as far as I thought we would make it. We showed great heart along the way, and we had some pretty clutch wins.

On the other hand, we didn't put of that great of a fight in the game to go. Even though it doesn't seem likely that we could have overcome San Diego's talent, I still feel regretful about how we did. I felt the game slipping away from us the entire time, and I felt like there must have been something we could have done.

Playing with Strike Slip on the whole was a great experience. We went full circle from overconfident, to beaten down, and built back up to confidence. Winning sectionals was a huge accomplishment for us. We showed people that LA Open is back on the map.

Congratulations to the TWO LA co-ed teams that got bids to natties this past weekend (I wish San Diego decided they didn't feel like going to nationals after beating us!). That's a huge accomplishment and it shows the talent that our college programs are developing, and the increasing dedication to high level ultimate in LA.

Anyway, it's time to transition back to my last season of college. We're still getting about 100 people out to our rookie practices, and it's a crazy transition to go from club regionals on Sunday to teaching what a mark is on Monday.

I'm still recovering from the weekend, and I might want to give my body and mind just a little time off from ultimate and make sure I'm focused on school enough before I jump into the college season. We have lots of rookie tournaments coming up and it's going to be a grind, but at least a fun, silly kind of grind.

First A team practice of the year tonight. We'll see what we've got.

Club Regionals Preview

It's late so I'm gonna make this quick.

Our pool is:

1. SS
2. Sweet Roll
3. Condors
4. Sprawl

Overall a nice draw for us in pool play. We lucked out by not having San Diego in our pool. I guess they were trying to avoid a sectionals rematch? We just have to be efficient and take care of business on Saturday. I'm guessing that our games will be long, because the other pool has 5 teams. Our 10:45 start time is pretty awesome, although Bob was pulling to go to the field early to watch the Bravo / Street Gang first round match-up. I think the more we stay out of the sun and heat, the better, but I'm tempted.

The other pool looks pretty brutal. Johnny Bravo, San Diego and Monster are three tough games. Hopefully they SD has tough games against JB and Monster on Saturday. Monster gave SD a run for their money at sectionals (13-10), and I really hope they rise up to the occasion again.

Anyway, if things go like they should, it should be Strike Slip/Street Gang in semis, and Johnny Bravo/Condors in the other game. Then things get really interesting. If we win in Semis, we play Bravo in finals. I'm not going to say that we don't have a chance to win, but it might be smart to concede this game and rest for the backdoor game. If we lose in Semis, then we have to win two more games ( 1 decent team, and then probably Condors/Monster) to get to the 2/3 backdoor game to play the loser of finals.

It's really tough to beat a good team twice in one weekend. We worked so hard to beat SD at sectionals, it's tough to imagine it happening two more times. They've probably been planning for us and will give us some different looks next time we play. However, the game that really matters is the last one.

It's going to be hot, and even though we'll have a bigger squad than at sectionals, it's still not very big. The key to our weekend will be to have both our O and D line stay very efficient on offense so we can minimize our time on the field and in the sun. I'm already hydrating now, and I know it will be a challenge to take care of my body in the heat. However, the weather report is saying that it could possibly be in the high 80s, which would be inifitely better than 100.

Good luck to BCBC and Metro! 3 bids! There's room for all of us. Let's represent LA.

Like I said before, I just want to find myself in the game to go and go balls out.

What Smaug can learn from Strike Slip

There are at least three things that I can think of that Strike-Slip does well that Smaug can benefit from. In descending order:

1. Run a System

We sort of ran a system last year, but it was not not nearly enough. The offense should be well thought out and documented in advance. It doesn't have to be rigid, but there should be no guesswork involved for the offensive players on the field. We can beat inferior teams with no system, but when we play teams that are as athletic and talented as us, we need every advantage we can get.

2. Have called plays

This follows closely with point #1. Taking the guess work out of running an offense is an easy benefit.

3. Huck Smart

Hucks are green lighted, but only on the right kind of look. We want to lead our receiver with a flat throw, and the receiver should be to the opposite side of the field that the receiver is cutting from.

4. End Zone Mentality

Our end zone offense needs to change from focusing on a one-man iso to running off give-and-go handler movement, looking for quick horizontal cuts off the front of the stack. This isn't set in stone; the important thing is, we need to move away from a system that doesn't work as well.



The question now is, what should Smaug's offensive system be? I want us to be able to run both a vert stack and some form of ho. There should be as much similarity between the two systems as possible for simplicities sake. The handler motion is the most important part to lock down because it must be the most reliable and it should be the most frequently used part of the system.

I'm not sure if the Strike-Slip vert would work with college players. It's pretty simple in concept, but it might require more throwing skill than we have. Time will tell.

UCLA is a team full of very smart people, but I feel like we've haven't used our intelligence in the right way. Memorizing plays would be a good use of our brain power. Over thinking things would not be.

On the Eve of the First Day of Practice

Smaug's first practice of the new school year is tomorrow night, 7-9. We have no idea how many rookies to expect, because the turnout to the informational meeting was pretty low, but we have a ton of email addresses on our list. Last year it was something like 70 rookies, and I'm hoping that we can at least equal that.

Since most of our players will have never played before, we're going to start off with 15 minutes of vets showing rookies how to throw. Then we're going to break into 4 groups and teach them:

1. How to mark
2. How to cut in
3. How to cut deep
4. Defensive positioning

After rotating through these drills, we'll take as much field space as we can and play some small scrimmages, maybe 4 on 4, for the remaining 45-60 minutes.

The idea is that we'll start to give the players the individual skills they need before they can learn team-wide strategies. The drills should give us a chance to see who are the more athletic rookies that we should take a look at for the A-team, too.

We don't want to throw too much at them too quickly, but we want to show them that we're a serious team and that we're going to work hard this year.