Week-recap.

mon, in gym.
tues, outside, nice.
thurs, mt view cancelled, but a stellar scrimmage.
friday, schtick and mini, the links are to the rules.
super fun today, great good time. this old guy is beat up.

notes on rules: we're making some changes to speed up play and stop stalling...
2 discs, no bounds (we can make generic boundaries)
-start with a kickoff.
-on a score we have another kickoff (this is new)
-you are only 'taggable' when you have the frisbee in your hand.
-if tagged, you just have to drop the frisbee
-the disk just has to end up in the box. it can slide in.
-interference is a goal (interference is touching a disc in the box, or touching a disk NOT on your side)
-i'll keep working on this...

notes on mini;
we're not going to go with stall from anywhere (official)
but, we are discouraging foul calls (but not encouraging fouling)

plan on games every day.
if you are a player, start playing.
we're outside every day unless otherwise posted.
dress accordingly. next week promises glorious weather.

Clip of Day.

These guys beat themselves up. One of the best teams in the world Bunka Shutter Buzz Bullets. They all get jobs at this one giant company in Japan.

video HERE.

yo

some good highlights.

41 Days.

And only 24 til' westerns... Still need money.

Thursday: Looks Like we're in the Gym. I'll try to bring the ipod. Please bring your outside clothes everyday though.

Practice:
Throw, with individual coaching as I can. Til 3:15
Review practice order 3:20
Warmup 3:30
Skipper drill. You all want to throw skippers, now I'll teach you the right way (Teaches how to angle a disc)3:35
Marking Drill (Should know, will be new to a few)3:45
4 Corners drill if there is room (This will be new for a few of you)3:55
Endzone Offense (refine)3:10
Half court endzone scrimmages. 4:30
Mini Games, focusing on marking one way, pause on turn over to stack and set defense.
Done at 5.

Friday: Looks glorious. 55 sunny, light wind. Bring Light, Dark, Water, food. AND PLEASE BRING A LONGSLEEVE. Helps with throwing to keep your arms warm.

Saturday: Anyone want to play a full game to 15, two even teams? If I have 20 players sign on, we'll do it. Should be 57, and partly sunny.

Upcoming:
Portland is rained out
Before westerns maybe next weekend-- Could we get drivers for an early release next friday? Leave at 1, and in Eugene?
Tentatively games vs Bend and MVHS next Thurs!

LINK OF THE DAY. Catch by my old team mate Andrew Fleming. First person to mention this to me tomorrow gets a prize.

storm

Storm.




Fundraiser Reminder.
Ski waxing by donation:
3015 NW Meldrum Ct
On Awbrey Butte. Coordinate with a friend or two about some stuff to throw on the barbie. If you got some skis need waxing bring them! Go talk to your friends and family! I'll bring a projector and a frisbee video to play. 2000 national finals, Santa Barbara Condors v. Vancouver (BC) Furious George.

What's the expected donation: well up to you. Tuning alpine skis takes more time. You're going to get a product as nice as any shop. Waxing will include base cleaning and a multi temperature wax. Basic mini tunes of alpine skis are no problem as well. If you have specific requests, include them!

Nice Practice. Lots of new concepts, introduced, assimilated, and implemented. I have high hopes for thurs, fri practice! No new concepts, just throwing practice, and a hard fought force forehand scrimmage.

PULLING

approach and footwork
shots of him pulling

this guy has lots of great tips.

FUNDRAISER

Ski Waxing Fundraiser and Team Get together
Wednesday April 20th 5- 7 or 8.
Plan something to grill, bring some stuff, organize it with some friends.

ANDDDD.
Get some nordic or classic skis from family or neighbors that need them waxed.
Bring them. Get instructions on what they want done. Professional Quality wax and mini tunes available. Donations will fund the team. If you just want them waxed and scraped, let us know. If you'd rather have us get your skis ready for PPP, let us know.

Make it happen team!
Check back here. I'll have the address up Monday night.

a guarded success.

the girls work is easy to celebrate: playing 5 girls against 5 guys, in any sense is a plus. we still have tons to work on, but thanks to coach Justin (thank you Justin) we have shared vocabulary, game experience, and an understanding.

the boys played our best game ever against south, but it was too intense, and we were unable to sustain. finishing games will be our theme. down 15-0 we will finish. up 15-0 we will finish.

focus on that.

we will focus next week on THE MARK, HOLDING THE MARK, BREAKING THE MARK, and finding our roles. It is a statement of fact: our top 8-9 can play with anyone. But as we saw this weekend, our team is defined by 15. We will develop our game such that it uses all 15-22 players. Find your role, find your niche. Hit the open throw. Break the Mark:

Success: We pushed deep, kept the line clear, played out of our mind 'd'.
Things to work on: Move the disk sooner, hit the short throws, and finish the game.

Also: Please, I hope you get that anything I tell you comes from experience, and a desire for you to win: from this weekend: bring a polypro top and bottom. face the mark. break the mark.

We will get better. You will be awesome.
Cheers.

49 days.

7 weeks. That's it. And much less until our 2 biggest tournaments.

Tonight was the parent meeting. A few parents there, highlighting our need for communication.

This weekend is the 541 invite. In Eugene. Leaving tennis courts at 7:15 am SHARP. Here are directions.

As of tuesday, we should have enough drivers. But, no guarantees. Coach Justin and I are the only guaranteed passengers who don't bring their own coaches.

So, sign up your parents, and I'll see you friday at practice at the tennis courts for a final count.

55 days?

-practice thursday, in the gym, but i'll still go to tennis courts until 3:05
-practice friday, meet in parking lot. probably stay at summit, as baseball is away.
-upcoming fundraiser: waxing of skis. you will be responsible for finding one person who wants their skis waxed. bring them to me and rich gross (matt's dad) at his house. we'll play a dvd of frisbee, maybe have a grill going, and need a little help from the experienced. you will watch movies, hang out, eat, and help clean up. if you know how to wax and tune, chip in.

we'll wax and tune alpine skis, wax skate skis, and you will need to return them then next day or two, which will require a little bit of driving around by you. you will need to collect the donation.

price: by donation, should be 10-20 bucks per, depending on what is going on. that is as good or cheaper than any shop. i'll have flyers that you then rubber band to the skis with what they want done. I hope to make several hundred dollars from this.


-your $50 dollar dues are due. we get no money from the school, or anything. your coaches are volunteers. this is the best deal in town. PAY UP!

57 days.

wednesday you're on your own, althought mario is trying to organize some pickup.
thursday and friday, meet at courts, and we'll decide based on the weather.
spring will be here eventually.

reminders...

current schedule
april 16-- single gender games in eugene, or here.
april 23-- single gender, or we'll play co-ed against pdx teams
may 14/15 westerns-- the big deal: teams from seattle, oregon, cali, colorado, minnesota, kansas, missouri, louisiana.
mayb 21/22 coed states. attendance, and abillity will determine 'a' 'b' and 'c' teams
june 4/5 single gender coed states: determines our qualifier for next years 'westerns'

Westerns Teams

Welcome to the big leagues:
I'm also going to try to schedule a game for our girls against a college team or two before states. and local club players.

High School Westerns Boys
alameda community, CA
berkely high, CA
monarch high colorado
wichita HS east kansas
catholic high school louisiana
hopkins high, minnesota
la due horton watkins, missouri
churchill
sheldon
south
summit
franklin (seattle)
lakeside, seattle,
nathan hale, seattle
bush school, seattle
nw school, seattle

High School Westerns girls
Summit
Franklin, WA
Lakeside, WA
Nathan hale, WA
Roosevelt, Wa
Seattle Academy
Bush School, WA
NW School, WA

performance cues.

with a huge team, we're all going to have to fight distractions at practice. and even at tournaments. i'd like to introduce the concept of a performance cue. this is not clap once, clap twice stuff. this is, how do i immediately find focus.

the idea is to tie a physical motion to the mental cue to focus. this could be:

when i go into the field, i'll grab some dirt and grass, and hopefully some chalk, rub it on my hands, and clap. hands are now sticky, and mind is focused.

in the nba, count how many guys wait to tie their short drawstrings RIGHT when they step on the court.

pound the ground when you start your point.

take your hat off. fix it, put it on and go to work.

clap your hands together and say, LETS GO

tuck your shirt in.

pound your shoulders.

come up with your own

66 days and counting.

Here is a link put together form the good old days? the teams in the last few points are NYNY, who won 5 straight from the late 80's to early 90s vs Boston, who would then go on to win 6 straigh. In all seriousness, please don't spike against your opponents. It's generally discouraged in HS play.

Notes:
The first tournament is April 16. It's a one day tourney at this point: There may be opportunity to stay over, play one game on Sunday, and participate in a well run clinic from ECU ultimate. Talk to your parents NOW about driving.

Again, the current schedule is 4/16, 4/23, 5/14&15, 5/21&22 (Coed states, Prom will apparently hurt us, but we'll take a team), and June 4/5 (Possibly a one day). Working to fill the schedule. I can probably Get us 2 games on any saturday, or even a 2 game play on an early release wednesday. We will also have games against Bend (for sure) and hopefully MV.

Team expectations at this point:
Basic understanding of Forehand, and Backhand, if not expertise.
Ability to run trident and gladiator drills with some consistency.
Some minor idea of our 'Center Stack Formation.'

Goals for the following week:
Understanding of our basic 2 endzone plays.
Understanding of our basic sequence offense, and our 'standard' play.
Abillity to participate in the huck/comeback option drill.

Please come to 2 practices per week, so that you know have some grasp of these drills as we move forward.

Team Management notes:
Your dues are due. 50 dollars. I'm ordering shirts now, 2 cotton tshirts, one white, one kelley green. We'll iron on numbers for state.
Get some plain black shorts.
Bring a light, a dark, water, and a bite to eat to every practice.
Bring tights to wear under your uni, or sweats for over for all chilly days.
Best to bring running shoes for warmups, or to have for indoor if particulary bad weather, and spikes for cutting drills and scrimmage.
I'd rather you only come 2x per week, and give 100 percent then, than come every day, and not be inspired.

I''m excited for the year, the team, and the sport.
I hope you are too.

68 days and counting.

...and even less till our big tourneys. I'm still waiting to here from USAU on westerns.

Here is what I know.
April 16th, games, in probably Corvallis, Maybe Eugene (Working on Fields and schedule)
April 17th: Tentative Frisbee clinic in Corvallis. We can combine the two, but it makes for more complicated driving for Parents.

April 23rd: PDX mini tourney. Details to follow.

May 14/15 Westerns. Applications in. Waiting invite.
May 21/22 High School Coed Championships. We will carry 2 or 3 teams to this.

June 4/5 High School Single Gender Championships.

Weekly matches vs. MVHS and Bend TBD.

Link of the day. Backhand video.

COUNTER

MARCH 24 -- 73 DAYS AND COUNTING
WHAT DID YOU DO TO GET BETTER

Spring Travel Schedule

Tournament Schedule.

April 3rd (sunday) or 9th (saturday): vs. South Eugene at South Eugene. Possibly Sheldon Also.

April 16th: Coed Scrimmage vs Crescent Valley. 4 pm. Depart summit 12:30 pm. Arrive 3:15. Warm Up and play. Lodge with houses. Need drivers.

April 17th: Clinic with EmeraldCityUltimate.org
HS and MS Clinic taught by great guys. Great chance to meet other players. Perhaps see a scrimmage between UO and Portland Club team Rhino Slam. Need Parent Drivers, Volunteers.

April 23 (Tentative) Open scrimmage vs Portland teams. If we don't arrange to play against girls there, we WILL play Co-ed against them.

may 14th and 15th. Westerns. Awaiting invite. Big deal. Boys Team. Girls Team. Premier West coast tournament. No guarantees we're in. Need Parent Drivers, Volunteers.

May 21 and 22. Coed-States. Probably 2 teams. Maybe 3. Need Parent Drivers, Volunteers.

June 4. Single Gender States. Qualifier for next years Westerns.

State OH 10! Mixed, mostly varsity results.

Best year ever? I've had some amazing kids come through the school, but this was my most successful mixed team yet. We lacked the one cannon armed kid we've always had, but had great depth accross the board. IN fact, I don't think we connected on andy +50yard out passes, all weekend. But I don't think we took more than 3, and we were very successful on the 40ish range, with long throws coming from as many as 5 of my 11 players.

Most impressively, we ran, at least 70% of the offense: executing the cuts, scoring pretty frequently on 4-6 passes, lots of scoreing on 3 or less possessions (trust me, that's a big improvement). Many of them on 'one offense' or 'one defense.'

I really had no idea of what to expect. Last year, we didn't have a UPA event, and, we played no tournaments. When we played our first tournament 7 years ago(technically 6 years ago, as this is the 7th state), we scored the first 2 points of the day against perennial powerhouse churchill, and never looked back enroute to scoring no more points the rest of saturday play. Over the years, we've still never played a single tournament outside of Or. State States. Which we once hosted.

We've gone 0-6, 3-4, lot's of .500 years, and then this year 5-2. Here is the link.

(1) Churchill 6-0 in pool play; won the final
(2) Summit Varsity 5-1 in pool play
(3) Sheldon HS 4-2 in pool play; won the 3rd place game
(4) Crescent Valley Tribe 3-3 in pool play
(5) Grant HS 2-4 in pool play; won the 5th place game
(6) Summit B 1-5 in pool play
(7) Corvallis HS 0-6 in pool play

We had very suprising margins of victory, until we met the Churchill Juggernaut. 13-5 goes away really quickly, when you are used to scoring those against a team that will give you 3 chances. Churchill has one absolute stud player, who looks ready to make the jump to the next level, and several very talented players who may do the same.

They played a great TEAM game, so it's it's difficult for me to assess individual talent. Lots of seniors. Great flow out of the Horizontal stack. Success long and short. They didn't blow me away with their defense, but frankly, in a 13-5 win, not getting any take aways from us doesn't speak to any 'lack' of defensive talent.

OH, and ironically, we scored the first 2 points against them in our first game against them.

IN the build up to our games, here is the round by round summary.

Round 1
Summit 13- Corvallis Mixed 0
A good draw. Corvallis mixed is a brand new team, (or rather, a return of a legendary pro gram). The new team is young, and until 2 weeks ago, uncoached. But, now with some coaching, they may be on the upswing. This weekend was hopefully a jumping off point. But, it served as a huge confidence booster to my kids. And the seeding was luck, as this was the 5-6 game coming in. Turned out we were underseeded, by I told the tournament director that if Grant, Churchill, CV, and Sheldon had a tourney under our belt, we should be no higher than 5th. I think there was not a single call the whole game, by either side, no arguements. I'd played a couple games of the Gandy Goose with the new coach, and it was a really pleasant experience. Having been there (new coach of a new team), I really appreciate what the kids and coach are going through (fun for the kids, teeth gnashing frustration for coach, at least it was for me).

Round 2
Summit 13-Sheldon 3.
A stunning upset, at least on past results, but a wake up call for me to the vagaries of HS ultimate from year to year. They had some good talent, but just didn't get it going. And, it was my first inkling in our future of winning points that involved a turnover or two. Super classy, I'd played a tournament with the coach last year. Definitely, one of those games, where coaches are on the same page, and if they asked us, we'd probably have had the same opinions on calls and stuff. The turning point of the game was a best of 1 ROCHAMBO for a line call on the other side. That we won after, no kidding, 10 straight tied throws. Couldn't have been cleaner.

Round 3.
Summit 12 - Grant 3
The tournament format was 4-3 or 5-2, offense decides. Grant had a small team with only 5-7 guys on saturday, and 4 experienced girls. They (understandably, based on their experience) assumed it was 4-3,3-4. We played offense calls for a while, then they had a guy go down with cramps. Hmm. We played 6-6, 3boys 3 girls. It was a bit contentious, and I told my buddy (who's kid i'm coaching) that was the hardest 12-3 game i've ever played. Bottom line, they maid calls, which is not inherently wrong, we usually don't, but that's team policy: until you know and play by every rule, don't bore me with cheap travel calls when some of the team travels.

We had a bye round. I went for a 5 mile run.

Sat/Night Sunday Morning.
Camping was eventful. But not for the reasons that every coach fears. The campground was a grassy oak tree shaded place. I stayed there friday with 8 of the boys, and we were in bed by 10. I slept on the ground, and went to sleep staring up at the swaying tops of trees. Awesome. Too much light polution to be perfect, but I had an eye pillow. Saturday night, the whole team (v and JV are there). I again slept on the ground, curfewed them at 10, had to tell one kid he couldn't take his shower at 10 (sorry dude, i told you the curfew). Slept on the ground to make sure that there were no shenanigans of co-ed camping. Slept like a champ.

IN the morning, dads cooked pancakes, and a random cow ran through camp. Told the kids to stay away. Didn't get a look to see if it was a cow or a bull. The cow ran off to the west into the RV park. WE drove into town, saw police lights, long story short, one of our cars reported a cow sighting. The cow had escaped. And run at least 4 miles to campus. free at last.

despite my best efforts, rather than warming up at 8 for our churchill game, we warmed up at 8:40. We went up 2-0, before losing 13-5.

Round 5 (our 4th game)
Churchill 13- Summit 5
Once they got going, we could't hang. We let them run by us to the endzone too much. Too much inexperience, vs too much experience. Too many seniors, vs too many sophmores. Too many big arms vs an offense than needs 4 passes to score. Again, they had 1 obvious great individual talent, and some other good players. They had no coach, which, I think HS teams should have a coach on hand so that I can talk to someone about 'game issues' without engaging the athletes: to do so is to be pedantic.

Round 6
Summit Varsity vs Summit JV
13-3. Back to form. Vs teams willing and able to have a couple turnovers, varsity wins. My JV team had 2 players who were of 'a' quality, and specifically would have been great goal scorers defenders, but, I thought it best to let the JV team have some anchors. Appropriately chippy, but only lightly so. I got in a run during the pregame and early game, as I didn't want to 'over coach' one team or another. From 5-1 I just worked with each team a bit to get them to focus on improvement.

Round 7
Summit 13-Crescent Valley 5.
We may have been automatically into 2nd before this game based on other outcomes and point diff. But I didn't discuss this with the team. Until about 5-4, I don't think CV's offense had a single turnover. I was very concerned. Their H stack was a slower, but equally effective version of Churchill's. But it faded, and we won. The coolest of the cool. And they deservedly won the spirit award. They constantly showed courtesy and respect, slapped hands after good plays, etc. I can only hope that they saw our team as showing similar quality.

'Finals'
In the 7 team round robin, the last round was 1-2, 3-4, etc.
We hung around a bit vs. churchill, but, they'd had a bye, they were better, our 11 person roster was just cooked. But all in all, a great weekend.

A note about the JV team:
Seeded 7th of 7, they showed steady progress throughout the weekend. Scoring better and better all weekend, it culminated in a big win over corvallis' new team. Against Grant, grant had a different guy get hurt. So we, at their request, played 3 girls every point. But they had to play 4 guys all game. A bit chippy, but basically fair. And, at 11-8, I told my team, I could shorten the lineup, or we could play it out with our open rotation. They chose the open rotation, and lost 12-9 after a couple long points ate up the cap.

A wonderful weekend for the team. Ironically, I was talking to a parent 10minutes before the end of the JV game, and I said, "it's been perfect and... well one more thing, but I'll tell you later." I was thinking, 'and no one has gotten hurt.' 3 minutes later, a player went down with an ankle injury (lots of swelling, but hopefully a sprain).

'horrible noises' by me.

But a great game by the team, yeah storm.

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