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.