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

How much better I am than my guy and Eminem Lyrics

Sorry for the hiatus. The past couple of months I have been enjoying the fall season. Practices have been full of young and chipper rookies working hard to learn the game. Tournaments have been successful for everyone who was able to avoid the curse of the Bümhaus.

However, this is not the reason for me to break my silence. A question was posed to me this weekend by Erik "Heff" Huemiller. The question: What are you thinking when you find yourself here,

on the line staring down your opposition?

At first I didn't really have an answer. Honestly I'm not thinking about anything. Usually K-Train and I talk about "deuces of fire" and related topics of poop being on fire. On a more serious note, it bothered me that I didn't have a real answer to this question. So I listened as Heff began to do some more digging.

Neal mentioned that he thinks about "usually how much better I am than my guy and Eminem Lyrics." This was a great answer and It reminded me that throughout Regionals I was thinking

About a year ago I was talking with Crayon. I was trying to get him stoked to play for Illinois. During the conversation it came up that at the beginning of game I was afraid of my opponent. This fear goes beyond respect, there was a time when I was generally scared that my guy would beat me and I would let down my entire team. I was also scared that I would never touch the disc and I would never garner the attention necessary to move up on the Illinois Ultimate depth chart.

This fear always faded sometime in the first third of the game. Usually I would get pretty open going deep, or get a couple easy incuts and that would settle me down a ton and the fear subsided and then I would get pumped because I knew I could play against the fool that was trying to guard me.

I had this fear during MLC 2010, but afterward it never reared its ugly head again. I never reflected on losing this fear until Heff brought up his question. It had been a long time before I had even thought about the guy I was guarding or how good that person could possibly be.

So what was the moment that broke this fear?

I asked Chris Hidaka to talk with me a bit about cutting, and he graciously gave me some of his time. I tried to ask some questions about how Chris adjusted to where his defender was and what his defender was doing. He thought really hard for awhile and then he dropped the bomb, "I really never notice my defender." He doesn't set up his cuts based on where his defender is, nor does he adjust things because of what his defender is trying to do. Instead he just feels. Just feel the space, the gaps and the windows that are opening and closing. For me this was huge, and I consciously took it into practice and slowly played with idea of never looking at my defender. Before I had been in the habit of looking at my defender as I cut, breaking that habit led me to another place in my development.

When consciously looking at your defender and trying to read his hips and trying to adjust to him, you find yourself throwing some weak fakes and unconvincing jukes. When you stop looking at your defender, faking disappears. Instead, just feel the space and cut really hard to it, if you feel that you have lost the space, stop and go another direction that you feel has a bunch of space.

At the end of the day I am not sure if this mentality helped me become a better player, or if becoming a better player allowed me to not care about where my defender is. I like to think it was an incremental moment in my development, and so I share it with you guys.

Also it really helps to think about this

Bümhaus