Sunday, March 27, 2011

Spirit Animals

Adam Wright- Rhinoceros
The Rhino has very thick skin and packs a lot of power. It runs with its head down and bulldozes everything in its way.

Alex Komisarz- Gazelle
The Gazelle is quick and when it is hitting its bounds is extremely difficult to catch up to.

Andy Kilinskis- Sloth
Nice and lanky gives the Sloth the ability to move through most jungles. Also it is lacking in the speed department.

Austin Lien- Squirrel
Quick and obscenely difficult to catch. Also in "Over the Hedge" the squirrel loves caffeine...match made in heaven???

Brandon Smith- Bobcat
The Bobcat travels and hunts in solitude. When cornered it is extremely fierce.

Brian Pierce- Crane
Bird with long legs. Not very graceful when running, however very proud and cerebral.

Brian Rathunde- Meer Cat
Timon is an intelligent but unfocused character.

Chris Hidaka- Road Runner
When Road Runner is not dominating Wiley Coyote through the desert he is known as a very cunning, quick and agile creature

Chris Kvistad- Gorilla
Gorilla's are built

Colin Reid- Rabbit
Rabbits are very alert and aware of their surroundings. They are very resourceful in those surroundings.

Dan MacDonald- Anteater
They are ridiculous animals.

Dane Jorgensen- Ruppell's Griffon
A jet engine once sucked up a Ruppell Griffon at 37,900 feet, a mile and a half above Mount Everest. They get really high.

Jack Krieger- Weasel
As an omnivore weasels have a lot of cleverness and guile.

Joe Sidrys- Giraffe
They are tall and goofy.

John Rowe- Wolf
The wolf will hunt you down, and is extremely capable of turning on the jets.

Jon Hatcher- Dolphin
Moves very gracefully and with a lot of smoothness. Also has natural looking layouts.

Mark Hirschman- Raven
Raven's are known for being very mischievous tricksters. They would be great poachers on the ultimate field.

Nate Gibbons- Humming Bird
They Humming Bird is the quickest bird, and doesn't stop from sun up until sun down.

Neal Phelps- Shark
As soon as the shark tastes blood in the water, it finds the source and finishes.

Papa Bear- Panda Bear
Playful, loving and always happy.

Ryan Smith- Bulldog
Small, but has more fight per inch than any other animal.

Snack Man- Beaver
Snax flat out looks like a beaver

Steve Haake- Otter
Otters are very quick in their environment, they also exhibit a lot of patience.

Sul Ahmad- Lion
Bold courageous and strong hearted the Lion is a symbol of strength and defiance.

Tom Rudwick- Elk
Pretty strong and agile runner, however the heavy antlers make it difficult to turn its head.

Zach Frantz- Eagle
The eagle looks down and sees everything. This vantage makes it very wise.

Monday, March 21, 2011

My "Observation"

I know that I promised you all an exciting part 2 for my piece on the club tryout and season experience. That is still in the works; however, I have more immediate things to share with you all.

This weekend, I took part in an official USAU (USA Ultimate) observer clinic, and assuming all the paperwork goes through as expected, I became a certified observer. The process wasn’t dauntingly impossible, but it also wasn’t one of the easiest things I’ve ever had to do.

I signed up for the clinic in late January when I received a mass email communication from USAU informing me that an observer clinic would be happening in Naperville in conjunction with the Chicago Invite (High School Edition). Since the clinic was happening in my own backyard, I figured I didn’t have a good excuse not to go. Plus, I knew it wouldn’t hurt to brush up on the rules before the club season started, not to mention have a little more credibility when making calls as a player.

About two weeks before the clinic, the instructor sent us a link to an online rules quiz that we had to pass in order to be eligible for the clinic. The clinic itself is designed more to teach how to make rulings rather than what rulings to make. As such, preparing for and passing a rules quiz proves you at least looked at the rules pertaining to the questions on the quiz.

The clinic began at 8:30am in a small hotel conference room which gave off a classroom setting (complete with a whiteboard on the wall). True to ultimate fashion, the first hour of the program is designed as a “meet and greet” to allow other people up to an hour if they’re late.

The entire clinic is designed to follow the Observer Manual produced by USAU, which can also be found on the USAU website. So if you’re interested in a much more detailed account of what observers are supposed to know and do, then you may want to check that out. The first part of the clinic began with a discussion on the Spirit of the Game. USAU tends to preach this a little harder than they should, in my opinion, but it is one of the founding tenants of the game. Without that mutual respect between opponents, captains, coaches and observers, the entire system breaks down (even in sports with referees).

The rest of the classroom session functioned as a discussion between the 12 participants with the instructor leading the way and making sure we knew the basic responsibilities of being an observer: active in and out of bounds calls, active in and out of the end zone calls, keeping track of time limits between points and for timeouts, as well as the active call on a force-out-foul (though players should be thinking of making these calls if an observer was out of position to make such a ruling). After a lunch break, we also went over many common situations involving correct positioning and proper stall count after a foul or violation is resolved.

One thing all players should be aware of: observers do not make active up or down calls on the disc. So if someone makes a questionable catch in the end zone, the observer will signal that the player is in the end zone, but there is a delay between when we make that call and when we signal a goal. So as a player, it your responsibility to contest the catch and then go to an observer for a ruling if the discussion can’t be resolved. Also, when going to an observer with a call, be as specific as possible, especially on travel calls. State why you think the player traveled, e.g. pivot moved or s/he failed to make a proper ground check or s/he failed to place his pivot in the correct spot.

After all the basics were covered, we went over the misconduct system, TMFs and PMFs. From my experience with observers, most of them would warn teams that a TMF or PMF would be issued for the next offense. The observer program is now discouraging that practice and advocating for giving a TMF or PMF right from the start, especially since TMF penalties don’t kick in until the third one is issued.

Before we headed out to the tournament to get some in-the-field practice, we quickly went over the hand signals and how to work a game with one, two or four observers (two is the most common). At the field, all twelve of us and the instructor worked a single game. Each of us got about two or three points of experience. Having played in multiple games with observers, I was quite comfortable in finding the right positioning and making the proper calls when I needed to. Though I must say, the high school kids handle disputes quite well. I’m not sure if any of us actually made a ruling on a foul call. I chalk that up to good coaching.

After our on-field practice, we went back to the classroom to go over any questions we had as well as receive general feedback from the instructor on how we did in the field. After that, we took another quiz that was a bit more difficult than the pre-clinic quiz. The questions were tricky and there was also a short answer portion for how to conduct yourself given certain heated and complex situations. I think it served as good mental preparation for our on-field evaluations the next day.

On Sunday, the twelve of us would each work a full game in pairs while being evaluated by one of the instructors. Our certification would be determined as a combination of our final quiz score and on-field evaluation. I was fortunate enough to work the first round of the day. At the start, it looked like a challenging game. There were strong winds and rain with lightening expected at any moment. Further, the field we were at had specifically requested observers. We didn’t find out until afterwards that the request was simply to experience a game with observers, not because of any ill will between the teams.

The game went smoothly, very few calls were made, and of those calls, even fewer needed an observer to make a final resolution. I was pretty impressed with how these kids handled themselves. There was even an instance where a travel was called on a throw for a score. After a five second discussion (with no yelling I might add), the kid who made the call realized he was incorrect and acknowledged that a goal had been scored. The kids did have a little trouble with off sides, with one team actually getting a penalty, but the timing between points and time outs was never an issue.

Overall, the program was a very positive experience, and I highly recommend getting involved as an observer if you’re interested in such things. Also, if you’re reading this blog and have more questions or you’re thinking that you’d like to have your team get some practice with an observer, then contact me and although I’m pretty much only available in the Chicago area, I’ll do my best to help you out.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

No San Antonio This Year

A 17 hour car drive and 2 days of Ultimate separated the Illinois team from spring break. The trip to Austin seemed to go smoothly for every car. During the ride Dane picked up on a little quirk of Brian "Crayon" Thunder, who uses his phone to check his hair every 30 minutes or so, it's funny as shit.

Saturday was a day that taught us a lot about who we were. We let teams stick around way longer than we should have, didn't put together too good halves and struggled to execute simple throws and catches in the 10-15 mph wind. I don't care to go into the details about all the games, here is the score reporter page. http://scores.usaultimate.org/scores/#college-open/tournament/8737. What we need to learn from Saturday is how our intensity and focus correlated with the score of the game. Florida State and Texas A&M both started out a lot more intense than us and we suffered by going down early, but once we fired it up, the turntables. On the other hand we had games against ISUC and Arkansas where we came out super strong, and then stopped focusing, and then lo and behold we let them off the hook.

The game against TUFF in my opinion showed promise. Walden disagreed. At the end of the day I thought our marks were good and we played hard D. The execution on O was just poor similar to the rest of the day.

Sunday felt different. We woke up to play LSU. They were an athletic team and they were able to keep up with us. This was not a game of runs, we went down 2 breaks early but we took the rest of the game to come back and slowly build a lead and finish at 14-12.

Here are my feelings on the Kansas game.
and
Illinois 14-Kansas 11

Ninals was between Illinois and UCLA. Usually we lose focus on the last game of the tourney and this was no exception. We took half at about 8-2, and UCLA won the second half 8-7 totaling to a final score of 15-10 bad guys. Another case of us losing focus after going up big.

We won Ninals at centex, and we didn't have to drive to San Antonio to do it. So I guess I can enjoy spring break. The team is dispersed over the entire US right now and will converge on Georgia this Thursday.

As an extreme sidenote, I am currently sitting in a Hotel Room with Sul, CReid and Krieger. We are trying to order a pizza and have put Sul in charge of contacting pizza places. I want to share the transcript of one of these calls.

Sul-Do you deliver to the Hampton by the Airport
Phone Person- I don't believe we do
Sul- Come on dog
PP- Sorry dog
Sul- Alright thanks homeslice
click

Friday, March 11, 2011

Cinderella Man

A Cinderella Man is something to fear.

“I’m not even really supposed to be here right now, so fuck it might as well make the most of it.”

-As a part of this program in 2009 and 2010 there were a lot of times where confidence in the program was hard to have. There are times when the team looked flat out terrible. The outside Frisbee community has taken note, and they want us to prove ourselves before Regionals. In their opinion we don’t belong in the conversation as a perennial Nationals team, however every year we find ourselves in that position. We need to start making the most of the shots we get, because there is no guarantee that we will get more.

“Who can catch lightning in the bottle, Set fire to water,”

-The biggest weakness of this team and program is our inability to bring the fire. We have joked about curb stomping and have forgotten what it means to bring it, way too many of us are too nice to enjoy stomping on people. Almost weekly an email gets sent out to our listserv attempting to provide motivation. However the fires that burn the brightest come from way down low and can only burn at its brightest through internal fueling. Somewhere, somehow, sometime this season we have to find the fire and we have to unload it on everything in our path.

“There’s a storm commin that the weather man couldn’t predict.”

-Any of you who are inept enough to explore the Ultimate forums on the internet wouldn’t struggle to find several places where people are doubting our ability to ball at the highest level. We didn’t have a good Free State Classic, and several people are betting our region only gets one bid. In my opinion that’s awesome because they won’t be prepared for the storm of haterade that is on its way.

“No remorse, I’m showinn they slowin,”

-When the other team puts their hands on their knees to take a breath or calls a timeout of takes their time to get to the line, we have to recognize that as a sign of weakness and use that as motivation to make them hurt more. No matter how tired you are, you should always assume that your opponent is equally as tired and then it becomes a mental battle. First one to show weakness loses.

Raise hell from hell he came,
but didn't come to bore you with the cinderella story,
nor did he come to do the same,
he can’t afford to be a label in this day in age,
and at this stage of the game
mediocrity cannot be allowed to fly,”

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

The Mo Factor

The Mo Factor is something I normally joke around about. The Mo Factor is the intrinsic connection between motivation and momentum. The way to build momentum is to have lots of motivation, and momentum drives motivation. The Mo Factor is the entrance ramp to this highway of awesomeness.

This last weekend Illinois struggled to maintain control of the Mo Factor in Kansas City. Expectations were extremely high as the team cleated up in 2 inches of snow. Thoughts of potentially winning this tournament went through the teams mind as soon as the pools and tournament bracket went up on Score Reporter.

Saturday opened with a game against Colorado State, a game that we were in complete control of from start to finish. Kansas State brought the first challenge of the season. It was a fairly physical game that also brought the first game time injury of the season. After getting up ridiculously high Chris Hidaka came down awkward and suffered an injured ankle injury that knocked him out for the rest of the weekend. The rest of the Kansas State game remained tough and Illinois pulled it out with a two point win.

Rounds 3 and 4 against Truman State and John Brown went by pretty quickly as the team attempted to gear up for Kansas. Throughout the day great plays were made by new comers to the team. Most notably Dane demonstrated his ability to make ridiculous plays in the air and Gibby unleashed layouts that were somewhere between peoples hips and shoulders.

Kansas was Round 5. They were one team that we wanted to play and really wanted to win. The game played out to be an excellent test of Illinois’ abilities. The game would be very typical of a Kansas Illinois showdown and neither team ever provided a knockout punch until the game was completely over. At the end of the game Kansas was the team cheering and Illinois was the one accepting the bitter pill of defeat.

The team dispersed to the Krieger’s and Hirshman’s homes for some sweet home cooked food.

SUNDAY! If you can’t get up for Championship Sunday you should probably quit Ultimate. Missouri S&T and Illinois squared off in the quarterfinals for the chance to face Iowa. Sunday morning belonged to BSmith who punched in 3 scores to help the Illini get to semis.

Iowa, Iowa, Iowa… In the past year and a half Illinois had a 2-1 record against the cornfed IHUC. They exploded out of the gate with two breaks. Finally the Illinois Oline closed a point and gave the Dline a chance to run. Picking up the slack of the Oline the Dline drove a pretty strong run into half time. It was 8-5 at half in favor of the Illini, and 9-5 right out of half time. But, the rest of the game belonged to Iowa. A Callahan and a bunch of break later they were pulling to us up 14-13. A point of several turns later and Iowa was off to the Championship round and Illinois was busy trying to convince Arkansas to play. Arkansas decided to check out early and Illinois’ weekend ended 2 hours too early.