Rankings

...matter.

Also, rankings don't matter.

20 teams go to nationals. Only one of them can win. Only eight make quarterfinals. Does it matter who the other 19 or 12 teams at nationals were?

It matters to those teams, but it's probably program dependent. In my eyes there are four categories of programs (who appear at nationals more than once). Teams that don't go to nationals, periodic qualifiers, perennial qualifiers, and title contenders.  If you're a periodic nationals qualifier, that probably means you're like Illinois. Some years you qualify for nationals, some years you don't.  The next steps above that are the programs who are always at nationals. Maybe they miss one year out of ten or so. Some years they'll contend for a title, others they won't. Carleton, Wisconsin, Colorado, Pittsburgh, Texas, Oregon, Florida...this list changes every couple of years, but these are the programs where if they didn't qualify for nationals, you'd say "Oh wow, _____ missed nationals this year!" However, just because they're there doesn't mean they're favored to win or even make semis. Obviously after that it follows that there are the title contenders. This has, potentially, the quickest turnover of the categories. You can go from being a title contender to finishing T-13 in a short time. For a few years, Wisconsin and Carleton were in semis and sometimes the finals, and the past few years one or the other hasn't made it past pre-quarters. (Note: this is somewhat shoddily fact-checked but I think it's legit; ideally I'd graph nationals finished over the past ten years; that would be awesome, actually...coming soon!)

In my mind, it's hard to move from not qualifying for nationals to winning a title. If the sport keeps growing and we hit a certain point of parity it will be possible, but until then, I think you have to migrate through tiers and give your guys experience. You have to taste nationals before you can beat Pitt at nationals. Once you're a perennial qualifier, you could jump from finishing T-17 to winning a title (Colorado got knocked out in pre-quarters before winning the title). I do think though that a program that can't consistently get to nationals will have a tough time winning a title until they can at least consistently get to nationals.

[That being said, I don't think the goal of quarters is unreasonable for us, provided we win the Great Lakes region. Obviously a team's nationals results mean the world to that team, it just means less and less to outsiders the higher the number by your name is.]

Anyway, today or yesterday or whenever it happened Cincinnati pulled out of Huck Finn after the USAU rankings had them at #14 in essentially the second-to-last set of rankings that can realistically be impacted by regular season results. They've gotten a lot of flak from the ultimate community, or certain groups in the ultimate community. All day I've been trying to answer the question "What would I have done in Cincinnati's shoes?" I still don't think I have an answer. Michigan isn't quite comparable to Pitt, but at this point the chalk would probably pick Michigan to win the region based on their regular season results compared to ours (and ignoring !history! or whatever...). So, if our region has one bid locked and we think we can keep another by dropping a mid-level tournament...I don't know what I'd do. I guess my point of rambling for the first few paragraphs was to say that if Cincinnati takes a bid from the Southeast and gives it to the Ohio Valley, that still leaves the SE with four bids. If all SE teams make semis, then we can make the case for Cincinnati truly "robbing" a "deserving" team of the chance to compete at nationals...but at that point, that's all it is, right? Just theoretics. The title contenders will go to nationals and contend for a title. All the rest of the teams are just there to experience nationals. You can make the argument about "Any given Sunday..." but Cincinnati figured out a way to [potentially] get to nationals and they're going to take that route. I'll still cheer for Lehigh in the Ohio Valley (nothing against Cincinnati, I just want to see a DIII team slay it) and I'll cheer for Auburn in the Southeast. Heck, I want to go to nationals. I'm sure those guys do, too. I don't fault them for wanting to do what everyone who's not on a perennial qualifying team wants to do.

Easterns is this weekend and it would be awesome to crush teams and turn heads, but realistically all that matters is figuring out how to play so that we can go undefeated at regionals. I think the Great Lakes getting two bids is outside the set of possible outcomes right now. Let's go.

Injuries

As I sat out from practice this past week I was left wondering if I would be in this position now if I had just taken the time to recover fully in the fall. I had strained my hamstring after Illinois Invite in October and instead of doing the smart thing and resting it and bringing it to full strength before returning to playing, I returned too soon, not only playing on it in practice but playing a full tournament on it as well at MLC. What would have been a 3-4 week injury went to a nagging season long one, preventing me from playing 100% when I was able to play and in my current situation, putting me on the sidelines for the next 3 weeks.

So why was it that I felt I needed to return sooner than I should have? Why was it that I played on it when I should have just sat out and continued strengthening it? Was it the pressure of tryouts and showing Stupca that I wasn’t a total scrub? Was it the pressure of my teammates?  Looking back to last year we might be able to see that team culture can have a lot to do with how one responds to injuries. There was a negative stigma about being hurt last year and this can help drive people to come back sooner than they should. Another driving factor is not wanting to let the team down. When injured you get to sit back and witness all of your teammates putting in work while you focus on recovery, its hard not to feel the desire to join them. This feeling is especially amplified around tournaments. You train all year for these few tournaments and having to sit on the sideline watching your teammates go to war without you is just rubbing salt in your wounds.

For an example, lets look at Greg’s injury progression from last year. Greg injured his knee at practice in the early spring and sat out for an extended amount of time letting it heal (good!). Greg then sat out for the majority of our first tournament before deciding to jump in during a close game. During the one point was in, he chased down a huck and re-aggravated the injury, putting him slightly for longer (bad). Come Easterns he was able to play a majority of the tournament before once again re-injuring his knee during the last game. This put him out until regionals where he eventually went for broke during our semifinal match up against Northwestern was able to play one point before getting scored on and falling back to square one once again.

The moral of this story and something I wish I would have considered more in the fall, is taking your full time to recover. You know your body, you know if you are healthy enough or not. If its even borderline something that could potentially sit you out for the rest of the season, take care of it the first time. Don’t risk injuring it again especially in a situation that doesn’t matter as much as regionals does. I believe all that Greg did was due to his love of the team and wanting to be able to help them win, but sometimes we need to step back and consider what really matters in the long run. Even though it may be hard to sit out as you watch your teammates grinding through practice and putting in the work, you have to think about the end result. Although it may suck to miss a regular season tournament, its better to do whatever it takes to ensure you can play when it matters come regionals. In my case I’ll be out for the next 3-4 weeks working on bringing my hamstring back to full strength. Its going to hurt not being able to play at Centex but if I can ensure my health for the rest of the season it will definitely be worth it. And in the meantime I’ll be doing everything within my power to expedite the healing process.

Geeking Out and Knowing Your World

We're going to try to make this blog-thing work again.

Personally, I'm very excited, as I've been reading the content of this site for years. Long before I came to Illinois I had creeped around Al Gore's Internet and found this place, back in the day when school was easy and my ultimate experience minimal. I'll never forget my first exposure to ultimate on the internet: Nick Lindeke, one of my first captains at Valparaiso, sent an email to the new members of the team in the fall of 2010 saying: "one of the best things you can do to get better at ultimate is to Geek Out on ultimate." He sent some links to the USAU, RSD, Match Diesel's history about Henry Callahan, and a few others. He left off the links to The Huddle and some other key sites, but hinted that they were out there, hoping some people on the team would put in the effort to find them on their own.

I really wanted to get better at ultimate, so I tried really hard to Geek Out. think I found most of the sites Nick had hinted at, and many more. It became a hobby - a borderline obsession - to fill my mind with the wisdom of Jim Parinella and Lou Burruss, to have a little fun with Brodie's trick shots (the first one came out the spring of my freshman year), and to eventually become a regular reader and financial supporter of Skyd Magazine. To bring things full circle, I had read quite a few posts on the Illinois Ultimate blog by Bruns and Adam Wright before I had even considered graduate school, let alone Illinois. I forget how I first found this site, but I did, and would periodically read it until...well, now.

Anyway, in the airport before Warm Up I had a conversation with Bruns during which we talked about "knowing your world." Even here at Illinois there seems to be a surprising lack of knowledge of big names in the sport. Example: when we played Texas A&M at Warm Up I'm not sure how many people were aware that Matt Bennett is this very-much-talked-about, crazy-but-talented thrower (at least before the game; it becomes pretty apparent in-game as soon as he touches the disc). Now hear me out: there's a fine line between having some knowledge on an opponent because you've done your research and being afraid of an opponent because you've taken your research too seriously. You have to be careful to avoid paralyzation due to idolization. It's just a game and you have to want to win. As far as knowing the big names, though, I think it's safe to say most people know who Brodie Smith is, and as the sport reaches a younger and younger audience people will know the (recent) past Callahan Winners and past college national champions before choosing a school to attend. But what about Jim Parinella? A few years back Hector Valdivia wrote a piece for Skyd Magazine about the younger generation and how they don't know Alex Nord. I may be one of the last people of my "generation" who know of Nord. Do people know what city DoG was based out of? JAM? Who is Kenny Dobyns? Do you know? I hope some people know about Andrew Fleming's catch in Prague, 2010.

Names are just a small part of the picture of this world I think we should know. Also, I can't be too harsh on Illinois since I come from the end of the spectrum where I'd probably rather sit alone and read old ultimate blogs than attend a social gathering. Well, sophomore year MattWest was all about that life, anyway. But I wonder how many people on Pitt read extensively or consult external resources outside of practice. Do they know the culture, or do they just throw and run a lot? Have they read Lou Burruss, or do they just know their reset looks and that's enough? This is kind of a serious question that I wonder about. Obviously, if I had an hour to spend either throwing or reading, it's more beneficial to throw (in most scenarios). Do you need to read opinionated stuff on strategy and culture to be a better player? I'd like to think it helped me on my journey. Actually, I know it helped me.

I guess I equate it to the relationship between academia and industry. We need thinkers and dreamers to push the boundaries of what we currently know. The doers test what we think we know, and see if we knew it correctly. The doers apply the knowledge, make it practical. If there are no textbooks, then there are no guidelines for the people who go out in the world and make things happen. We need people to write, update, and re-write these textbooks. If there are no doers, and everything is theoretical, then what's the point? One without the other is pretty useless. Some people are more inclined towards doing, others towards philosophizing. I'd like to think everyone should do a little bit of both. You should know the history and culture of something for the same reason you should know the history of your country, of the world; experience is the best teacher, and it's nice to get free, easy, second-hand lessons in experience by learning about those who came before you.

In ultimate, knowing your world means knowing who the best throwers are so you can learn from their technique. It means knowing who won last year's national championship so you can attempt to understand what makes a strong program. Or so you can understand how a program falls apart. A lot of the base knowledge for knowing your world can be found online, by Geeking Out.

To close things out I wanted to resurface some old posts on this site that helped shape me. I know some of the authors and don't know others. Sorry I'm not sorry I'm a bit of a creep. I don't necessarily agree or disagree with everything in these posts, but they were ones I enjoyed reading and learned from. Sure, this stuff is opinion in some senses, but that only adds more to my knowledge of the sub-world of Illinois ultimate.

• This is me Rambling
• Rags to Riches: Adam Wright (I'm guessing that "some dude on JAM" is Idris Nolan? I think Walden likes to use him as an example...)
• Case Study: 2012 (thoughts on the last sentence: at this stage in my life I can't imagine taking a trip to DI Nationals for granted)
• For the Improving Player
• FIN.

I have about three months left of college ultimate (that is arguably the saddest thing I've ever typed). I plan on Geeking Out for the next three months and many more to come. Join me, if you want, as I write about things that come to mind about the sport, thoughts on tournaments, thoughts on strategies, differences between DI, DIII, and a range of Club teams, and so on.

Side note: I thought it was funny and a bit meta to come across this post years ago. Reading a blog post about wanting to be an ultimate blogger and thinking about how I would like to do the same thing some day. Side side note: I'm pretty sure this dude has been an observer in some games and I see him around and think it's odd that I know who he is because of some blog. Either that or some observer looks like him.

Lastly, Moses Rifkin is probably, like, my hero - the person I aspire to be most on, around, and off the ultimate field (he was recently in the news for teaching social justice/leading discussions on privilege in his classroom, even though he's a physics teacher - awesome). He's been called an ideal teammate by many. I owe that to Nick for challenging the Valpo team in that email to, among many other things, know "all about Moses Rifkin and why he is awesome." Thanks, Nick. You're awesome in your own right.

Know your world.