The Real Beginning

Our first week of outdoor practices has ended, and Sectionals is giving us the evil eye from two weeks away. Will you be ready?

Thursday gave us a taste of sour weather. The spring season rarely brings all sunshine and rainbows, so it’s good to get some work in cold, wind, and rain. The team seized this fortunate opportunity to work on upwind hucking again. In such conditions, focus becomes the key to success. The cold weather numbs your hands. Just the simple act of switching your grip could cause you to fumble the disc and turn it over. We had the handlers throw first and the longs go second. Completions depended more on luck than anything else. Welcome to the great outdoors.

Being a defensive long, I love bad weather. Why? Zone defense. Indoors, the O line can throw any pass they want. In the still air, these passes are fast and accurate, shredding even the tightest cup. Outdoors, the situation changes drastically. Passes float. Hucks get stalled in the air. And any flutter or tipped disc goes into the ground. This allows the defense that extra second to make sick plays on the disc.

So, despite terrible weather, the team got some solid work done. Both the offense and defense needed work on zone defense. The offense even transitioned into a cup after a turn. Such strategy works effectively to stop upwind breaks, and allow the offense to conserve energy at the same time.

The weather only got worse as practice went on. The b-team left the field around 5:30, and we called it a day about 45 minutes later.

As if to mock us, Friday and Saturday provided perfect conditions. Too bad we weren’t practicing. Stupca scheduled a throwing session on Saturday, but the late notice caused yours truly to miss that one. Then Sunday comes along, and clouds fill the sky with promises of thunderstorms once again. Luckily, the rain never came.

We worked on swings and up line cuts with an aggressive mark on the trap sideline. It’s very easy to panic in this situation and get locked into looking down field. Extra practice is needed by everyone.

Before we started scrimmaging, we got up to full speed with Randy Moss drill. Pat and Joel had some good battles on the backhand side. Phenom took the prize from me more often than I did from him. Cole, on his first day back, did what he could, but Bettsy had the better marms today. I remember seeing B rad sky Zubair.

Some of the matchups got switched up when we went to forehands. I owned Joel.

With a depleted D-line, we scrimmaged with altered scoring rules. The D got a point for every turn over given up by the offense. Games were played to five, and the D-line pulled every point. The D-line started out with zone, and the O-line tore that apart in the first game. We moved to man defense with straight up marks and gave the offense a little trouble, but they still won the second game. Using some of our more strategic defenses, we won the second game. Taste it O-line.