Why you should Watch Club Nationals

It's the last weekend of October, and that means it's the weekend of Club Nationals. Even if you don't feel a special affinity for any team there, or feel like you don't care about what happens throughout the course of the weekend, you should still try to watch a couple games... Why?

A. They are a lot better than we are. This is by far the most important factor, the individual pieces are better than us, and the sum of their parts are better than ours. What are they better than us at? Well they are better throwers, cutters and defenders. More importantly they are on a whole other level in terms of running their offenses. When you watch a club team run a good offense it seems like cutters have tons of space to work with and the pressure on throwers is non existent because they are not trying to hit people's guts, but rather floating it out into the wide open spaces. They are extremely disciplined and very rarely do they do stupid things, it is a pretty amazing thing to watch.

2. It's a lot different swimming with great whites than it is watching them on Discovery channel. When you watch club nationals your first instinct is going to be "Why am I not impressed? I bet I could keep up with them." Let me be the first to inform you that you are lying to yourself. Club marks are tight, and club throwers could not care less. The best part of watching good ultimate is picking up new tricks to use when throwing and watching what makes a good marker a good marker. Club markers don't just sit there and foul away at people, however they are very close, balanced, quick and use their feet extremely effectively. Despite all this pressure the throwers still get their shots off. Faking is something that I don't find intuitive, but watching people who have spent about 10,000 hours refining the craft really helps you develop an idea of what can be done to break the mark.

D. It is still a game of runs. I remember when I believed that high level ultimate was usually decided by about 1 break. This is a ruse. Even at club natties it is a game of runs. Teams never mentally check out (Machine was down 5-1 to Furious and won 15-12). Illinois really takes pride in its ability to check out at random times throughout a weekend. Seeing how the best players in the world compose themselves under the highest pressure in the game is a great model for how you should carry yourself every single weekend.

Finally, If Revolver plays Doublewide you might get to watch Beau Kittredge and Brodie Smith go at it, and that alone should be good enough.

KB