3-Week Report Card

BAM- Were already three weeks into our spring season. We have three weeks till our first tournament, and less than three months until conferences. The realization of just how long a college ultimate season is should be setting in right now. The wear and tear can be pretty tough to deal with, and taking time off now is better than hurting yourself and taking time off later. Keeping your mental focus can also be a daunting challenge. We put in a lot of time during practice and out of practice and the demand on your schedule may get frustrating. It is important to remember that your teammates are going to be there for you, so you should be there for them.

I've talked to several people about where we are now in relation to past years and how we are developing as a team. I thought that I would put together an Illinois Ultimate 3-week report card, in an attempt to self analyze and reset my own focus.

Throwing: It doesn't seem like people are pushing themselves to improve during the throwing drills. Right now the isolated wrist snap drills are helping us improve the most because of a lack of learning from the break mark drills. We can all experiment a lot more to see how the mark reacts to certain things and try to make the defender make mistakes that you can capitalize on. I think that everyones throws can improve. If you don't think you have something about your throwing that you can improve on, I bet you $20 that Walden can find something your really bad at.

Marking: Throwing and marking go hand in hand. I feel like people are comfortable with their level of marking, and don't make a conscience effort to work on them. We aren't very physical and a lot of us lean and bend over all over the place. Austin and Kennedy are our two best markers and they never move their upper body with moving their legs. We talk about striking on inverts and arounds, but striking does not mean sticking your arm out and trying to hit the disc, it means shuffling around so that your hand will be in a good spot and you won't have to extend awkwardly and lose your balance.

Offense: There is no point in ringing the alarm bells yet. However Friday night a five stall scrimmage pointed out a ridiculous amount of deficiencies. We need to be better at making contested throws and contested catches. There is no team that we will play at regionals that won't be all over us. We aren't going to be wide open all the time, so being able to run our offense despite pressure is what matters. We aren't timing or meshing our cuts together very well and it seems like we get tunnel vision sometimes. I'm not particularly worried about these things though because I believe that the timing just takes work and the tunnel vision will be fixed once people become very comfortable with the offense and know where to expect there teammates are going to be.

Defense: Not physical enough. I'm not going to pretend like I'm good at defense, but we talked about how we have had very few foul calls during practice. That needs to change. When we play good teams they are going to be tight, and they will use contact as a way to stay close to you. Its not that we need to "try harder" we just need to grow a pair and start getting in each others space. Related to defense is our transition from offense to defense. Its pretty terrible right now and I don't have anything nice to say about it.

Overall I believe we are on the right track. Each of my concerns can be fixed by people taking pride in what we do at practice and trying to improve themselves everyday.