Transitioning into Offseason

Everyone is familiar with how tough it is to transition into season.  Working out more, trying to diet tighter, wanting sleep more because of your increased activity level all add up and make the first few weeks almost unbearable.

When in season I longed almost daily for the chance to pig out on nasty food, to take naps instead of going to a workout (a couple of times I actually tried but Rabuck dragged me to the track after my nap).  College ultimate boils down to a four year season and I wanted so bad to have an off season.

I've been in off season mode for only three days, and the transition out of season feels terrible.  I've been horking down the sugary foods, and hours later the sugar rush floors me.  As a child sugar rush manifest themselves in the ability to bounce off walls, as an adult my skin gets hot, I feel dizzy, my skin has a thin layer of sweat and my stomache feels miserable.

I miss working out already, I wake up feeling tight and throughout the day certain movement patterns become laborious.  Since I am not working out I don't get myself stretching, and since I am not working muscles like they are used to.  I'm not going to do any research to see if this is a common thing because I don't care, the point is my whole body misses doing a certain amount of work a week and not getting it makes my shit feel weak.

Morale of the story, my offseason is over.  Don't long for it because being in season feels way better and way more human than being out of season.

Regionals is the best Tournament

            Teams use results of games against Elite teams to measure the quality of their season.  They often brag about playing close against some great team or taking half or getting more breaks against them than any other team at the tournament.

            Goose used to laugh when he heard us Illinois guys talk about how we came close to a quarterfinals team or how, if our Oline didn’t collapse for 3 points, we would have beaten a semifinals team.  The thread uniting all those games was when they happened.  The regular season is a time when teams aren’t focused or in kill mode.  Elite teams don’t get stoked to play some second team from a big city, but those second teams are out there to prove themselves against the big dogs and respectable results happen.      

Good teams always have another gear.  They can always raise it when their season is on the line and when they are willing to ball hard enough to make that season last longer.  At 2010 Natties Austin predicted that Oregon would choke.  His reasoning, Oregon had been playing at a super high level all season and come Nationals their competition was going to rise to the occasion and they wouldn’t have any room to go up.

            Let’s pick on an elite team named SuperStrongFastGuys and a second tier team named NormalGuys.  During the regular season they face several times and the score differential is usually about 3-4 points.  NormalGuys are pumped, they think they are right there, they think they can put up respectable numbers every day.  The difference is that SuperStrongFastGuys aren’t focused, they aren’t even trying against the NormalGuys and they are still winning by 3 or 4.

            Then one morning its Regionals and the SuperStrongFastGuys aren’t fucking around and they whoop the poop out of the NormalGuys; the NormalGuys have to spend an hour at Taco Bell just so that they can poop again before the end of the month.

            A few times in recent past Illinois conveniently woke up on Regionals championship Sunday and decided to rage as hard as they could, the result was a ticket to Nationals.  If you fancy yourself a great team you had better be able to prove it in the big ones or every meaningful game throughout the season loses its !.

The taste of forbidden fruit

I now have back-to-back losses in a game-to-go in the 2012 fiscal year. Prairie Fire crushed the competish (except Madison Club in pool play) on the way to the backdoor final and a shot at Nastinals. But we would have to upset Madison for the first time in 4 meetings. We went up 2 breaks early, and hip thrusted our way into halftime up one break. Then the offense shat the bed in a similar manner to Illinois 2012, and we lost 15-10. They say that you have to lose in a game-to-go in order to win a game-to-go. In my case, I've won these games when I was just a role player, but I have yet to do so as an impact player and a leader. If you ever think you're a great ultimate player, you best check your ego and measure yourself against this great saying: "Big time players make big time plays in big time games." I'm not there yet. But I guarantee that I will not let GT fall short at the 2013 SE Regionals. I hope the leaders of the new Illinois squad will work to do the same.

Illinois vs. Georgia Tech

I've been at Tech now for over month and I thought I'd shed some light on the similarities and differences between the two programs. -- Practice attendance is an issue at both schools. Just like Illinois, most of the players here are engineers and the busy schedules definitely hurt practice attendance. That doesn't stop us from scrimmaging though (more on that in a moment.) -- The team leadership is much more informal at Tech. Two weeks after Kennedy sent out the email about details for the fall season, I finally got an email from the Tech captains about practice times. Practice location and times vary from week to week, and now that we've moved off campus, there's even more uncertainty. For example, we were practicing at a park in the city and got booted by a fuckin' kickball league, so we had to find another spot to continue practice. Also, practices are run by a rotation of like 4 guys, so it's not just the 2 captains who make all the decisions (not saying that's good or bad, just observing.) -- They have a GroupMe group too. Troll city. -- GT drinks less than Illinois. As in no one goes out during the week basically ever. The physical benefits here will definitely manifest themselves later in the season, when we're all juiced thoroughbreads looking to seabiscuit on some skinny trucker-hat wearing ulti brahs. -- Throwing outside of practice is much more prevalent. There are multiple guys looking to throw after class almost every single day. As you can imagine, I love it. Repetition breeds mastery. It's also extremely convenient that there's a turf field and a grass field right in the middle of campus. -- Lifting on the Tech team is not mandatory or even organized for that matter, but most players seem to do it. -- Cuts are early. We're down to the A team now. That's basically unheard of at Illinois. Having a B team coach makes this a more successful plan. -- Scrimmaging is our primary source of conditioning. The common belief seems to be that the best way to build endurance for ultimate is to play ultimate, and I'm noticing the benefits when I go to tournaments with my club team. Even if we have 15 guys, we scrimmage non-stop. -- The playbook is simpler at GT. I think this is a disadvantage overall. The mentality of how to run an offense seems a little too cookie-cutter and simplistic (and potentially easier to shut down), possibly because of the Lance-dominated system they ran last year. -- There are way fewer injuries at GT. I'll let you know when I figure out why this is, but in the meantime I'll say it's awesome. -- The weather in Atlanta is hard to beat. We got rained out once, and that's the only trouble we've had with the weather. Otherwise, it's like 80 degrees every day. And it's usually not very windy. And we get to practice through the winter, instead of moving indoors from Nov 1st to April 1st. ATL weather >>>> Champaign cold and wind. -- Last similarity: both teams are funny. Although, there's less youtube/meme posting here, and more just making fun of each other. -- ILLINI for life, Jack

We worked hard Bruns

            A few Eastern Illinois guys and I were on our way to Cooler Classic.  We were reminiscing about past games at the tournament site we were going to be playing at.  The guys on Eastern were particularly fond of a universe point game they had against CUT a few years ago.  Simon Montague and Mike Schwenk we’re going at it and a small crowd had formed.

            A few days later ISU emailed Eastern asking the reaper guys, “how does Eastern start a new program and a few years later end up on universe point with CUT?”  Schwenk thought the question was hilarious.  I fell for the bait, I too was befuddled with how Eastern improved so quickly and I asked the Eastern guys what the answer was.  “How does Eastern start a new program and a few years later end up on universe with CUT?”  The answer came quick, loud and with a slight sense of irritation.

           

“We worked hard Bruns.”

            Mike was almost irritated that I would even ask.  ISU and I were looking for some secret.  Some magic path to develop talent and break through whatever walls we perceive around us.  We want someone to say, “do these drills, do more plyos, do these lifts, try these crossfits, try this try that,” but to Mike it wasn’t about doing the right drills or completing certain workouts. It’s about a mentality.  If everyone works hard, then whatever drills you do are going to have some benefit.  If everyone works hard, then any exercise you do will help.  

Looking for a shortcut or a secret devalues what they did, and how hard they worked to get it.  The next time you are chatting with someone who has improved a lot at something, don’t ask them for a magical drill or secret workout, try to gauge how much time and effort they put into getting better and that should help you frame out what you need to do moving forward.

James Roush was the other guy in the car.

Case Study: 2012

            It’s really hard to lead a team of kids who think they are good, when a team that makes Nationals loses 8 guys, the other 19 look around and say, “hey we got this.”  That is where Illinois Ultimate fell apart in 2012.

            It’s frustrating being the only Captain since 2007 to not get the team to Nationals.  Leadership was definitely weak, and the way the Captains communicate and treated each other was reflected in the overall attitude of the team.  There are a lot of stupid things we can point the finger to and say, “well that made it hard for us to lead this team,” but we were responsible.  We were selected by our peers to get this team where it wanted to be, and we didn’t get them there.  I am going to map out a few issues in team mentality, chemistry and attitude that we inherited, our job was to sort out these issues and we didn’t.

            I think at the end of the day we had a lot of okay players, but just a few great players.  (I also believe that as a team everyone thought we had a lot of great players and a few okay players).  This disconnect manifested itself in a ton of passiveness throughout the season.  (I honestly believe that Jack Krieger is the only person who got any better).  The team found ways to hit the bars more than they hit the gym, school work was being postponed until practice time, and instead of trying to improve the team wide mentality was maintenance on what we had.  I guess it didn’t resonate with people that we were maintaining a “17^th place squad.”

            Throwing is something that didn’t improve at all with the 2012 class.  The guys came in and got better at throwing from freshmen to sophomore year, and then pretty much everyone just chilled there because they were comfortable throwing forehands to the forceside.  We had guys who weren’t comfortable throwing a forehand upline, or would holster dumps where the defender was close because they were scared they couldn’t get it into the cutters gut.  There isn’t a whole lot you can do with an offense when people aren’t good dumpers, swingers, or upline throwers.  What’s particularly frustrating is that this isn’t the level we should have been worrying about, B-teamers should be hammering those throws in, A-teamers should be thinking about breaking the mark and throwing at early stalls.  With such dramatic limitations in throws we ended up holstering a lot of the first open cuts we had because people, “just weren’t ready to throw the pass.”  People had to catch it, tell themselves to be chilly, and around stall three is when we start thinking about what throw is actually going to happen.  An offense that hits the first open guy and moves a ton perpetually puts the defense out of position.  Resetting stalls and getting break side are such valuable assets to an offense running the pain train, and we didn’t have these.

            Despite having the goal of trying to keep people healthy, we still suffered serious injuries to good athletes.  The biggest problem here is that the team thought taking care of an injury was to rest and stay off it.  If you don’t start lifting well before the season starts, then you are at risk for an injury.  Waiting until the indoor season starts is too late; it takes your body time to get used to a lifting regimen and once it adjusts you can heap whatever you want on top of it.  Heaping on extra loads is how you get better.  If you want to be a better thrower you need to get reps outside of practice, if you want to have better cuts you need to get reps outside of practice, if you want to have a better mark you need to get reps outside of practice.  This can only be accomplished if you have a solid foundation of strength, if you don’t you’re going to kill yourself with overuse. 

My favorite are the people who don’t do anything all summer, show up the first weeks of practice and go really hard because they want people to think they’ve gotten better, then they get injured in like October.  They try to make a comeback in the spring, again having done nothing to build a foundation, and they are injured by March.  After all that, they cry about how they were injured for the whole season, and try to convince people that if they were healthy they would have helped the team out a bunch this season.
The 2012 legacy is not a very good one, but now that every returner at Illinois knows what it feels like to miss Natties, I am confident that they won't take the trip for granted.

3 Weeks

Forget Nationals. That’s what you should do for the next 3 weeks.

I’ve heard several guys say something along the lines of “Michigan and Michigan State aren’t that good, just look at their results.” Their results don’t mean shit if we haven’t beaten them head-to-head yet. Both of these teams want to beat us more than anything else. Just like our sole mission for the past 3 years was to upset Michigan and go to Nationals, their mission is to steal the only 2 bids to Nationals and send us home. Michigan has been out for blood for 11 months, and Michigan State is dying to finally make it to Nationals after falling short in 3 straight games-to-go. We have the targets on our backs now; we are on the chopping block.

My point: if you’re not motivated by the desire to be as good as we possibly can, then be motivated by the possibility that our season might end in 3 weeks. Picture how disappointing and embarrassing it would be to finish 3rd in Naperville and watch Michigan and Michigan State play at Nationals.

Let that fear push you through the hard stuff. When you’re tired on the field 3 Sundays from now, or when you don’t want to be at practice, or when you don’t feel like getting off your ass to go lift or throw, imagine how terrible it would feel to lose at Regionals.

Fight or flight.

Carpe Diem

3 weeks ago Adam sent out an article about a high school wrestling coach who contracted a debilitating immune disease that crippled him. A man whose entire being revolved around physical excellence lost it all in a matter of months. The story made me think even more deeply about some of the themes from the senior meeting last month.

If you take to heart Mike Powell’s story, and follow its lessons to their logical conclusions, you are left with two choices:

1) You realize that in devoting yourself entirely to something, you risk losing it all. So, out of fear of loss and wasted time, you don’t even try at all.

2) You go for it and push yourself past your limits, because you have the opportunity to do it now and you don’t know what the future holds.

There’s a risk that I could work my ass off for the next 3 months and get injured right before Nationals, and my extra time and efforts will feel like a waste. There’s a risk that we lose at Regionals, or fail to advance from pool play at Nationals, and my extra time and efforts will feel like a waste. But I’m still going to choose #2, because there’s a 100% chance I will never have this opportunity again.

Seniors, as we talked about, we only have 3 months left. After May, we will never play college ultimate again, never have a chance to win as Illinois, and never play with this same awesome group of guys.

Underclassmen, you don’t know what lies ahead in the years to come. Future Illinois teams may not be as good as this one. You might get injured and miss a season--you just don’t know. But you do know that right now, on March 4th, we’re a team with a ton of potential and a few months to develop it. Seize the day and treat this season like it could be your last.

At the senior meeting, Dane mentioned that he regrets not doing more in high school to be as good in basketball as he possibly could. He said that he doesn’t want to leave Illinois with that same kind of regret. Regardless of how we finish this season, I don’t want to look back and think that there was more I could’ve done to be a better team or a better individual. We play a unique sport that is still underdeveloped; it’s not like the NBA where your genes can prevent you from being the best. The only thing separating you from the elite players is devotion. If you run more wind sprints, throw for more minutes every week, analyze game film more often, etc., you will be better than the guy standing across from you on the line. We have an opportunity to become the best in the country at something--how many of your friends can say that? Even if we fall short, at least we gave ourselves a chance and had fun along the way.


Devotion to be the best in a sport puts you through the gauntlet and you come out the other side a better man, win or lose. It’s not an easy road to be the best, and that’s what makes it so valuable--knowing that 99% of others would have given up before you. You leave with no doubts about what you can accomplish.

Teddy Roosevelt said it perfectly:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Choose whatever mantra you want: No Excuses, Man Up, Grow a Pair. It’s time to ramp it up.

Looking forward to Free State

Free State is February 25-26th. That means we have 5 weeks to go. 5 weeks is quite misleading as it lends to the illusion of time. We only have 14 practices between now and our first game. 8 of these practices we don't even have the opportunity to touch a disc, we also have 4 more Irwin practices and 2 more skill sessions in the Armory.

Totaled up this amounts to about 30 hours of Ultimate. Here in lies the illusion, 5 weeks in reality crunches down to 30 hours. If this still doesn't mean anything to you then consider there are NBA players who spend 30 hours a week on their shots. We have 30 hours to work on everything, over 5 weeks.

It would be easy to fret, it would be easy to go to Free State not perform well and blame the lack of practice. It would be easy to lose to Kansas and Iowa again, and say "well we haven't been able to work on very much as a team," it would be easy to say, "everything will click later."

Or, we could ball as hard as we can possibly ball, we could stop being huge bitches, look our teammates in the eye and do everything we can to not let the guy next to us down. We could go out and throw for 2 hours a week, we could get ourselves to every group lifting time, we can put more weight on the bar, we can come to practice fatigued knowing that practicing hard while already being tired is improving our ability to play hard in the third and fourth games of a day. We could just go nuts and play like our hair is on fire, and when we get to our first tournament of the year we could have tons of fun showing the ultimate community how sick Illinois is going to be this year.

Don't trick yourself into believing that we don't want to "peak to early." Iowa won this tournament last year and made it to Semi-finals of Natties.

Mentally it is much easier to compartmentalize the season, if you focus in on the next tournament versus focusing in on Regionals then the season ends up feeling a lot shorter, and it ends up being a lot more enjoyable since the motivating factor is constantly changing and you aren't carrying one weight for the next 15 weeks.

This is a sweet time for us, our season is now and if we seize every moment we have together for the rest of the season then we are going to be in a position to overtake the 2008 legacy, and that is something I want more than anything else.