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