Wednesday, March 26, 2008

First Outdoor Practice

My friends, the time has finally arrived. The sun has rescued us from our dark days spent in dismal dreary. We no longer have to taste the stale air of the armory. We no longer have to suffer the rug burn of Irwin. Let sweet freedom ring out from the green fields of Champaign, Illinois!

The weather did not disappoint us: 50 degrees and windy, really windy. We warmed up and recalibrated our throws with cut to’s, regular and break side. After being inside for three months, the central plain wind exacerbated every bad throwing habit we had developed. Any flutter resulted in a blading turnover.

We decided to take advantage of the wind and practice upwind hucks. Austin, Walden, and Zubair seemed to do best with forehands (I guess it’s a backhand for Walden). If you get the chance, I recommend watching how Zubair drives his invert into the wind. Walden, running down your backhand is a pain.

We worked on backhands next. The wind blew slightly crossways, so throwing towards the middle of the field leads to the greatest chance of success. Yours truly found it really ironic that Joel stressed this before we started, and his first huck went straight down the line and landed 3 yards out of bounds.

After hucking and realizing that we all need more throwing practice, we moved to zone defense. The D-line pulled upwind every point, and the O-line tried to score. We didn’t keep track of score, but we seemed pretty evenly matched. Both lines have a lot of work to do since turns outnumbered scores.

We have three weeks before we travel to Naperville. Do work.

1 comment:

Joel said...

For the record, that huck certainly landed in bounds. It did however flirt with the sidelines.