Coaching Chemistry

Centex

2006-03-31T14:56:00.000-08:00

Centex 06

Tournaments like Centex should prompt us to step back and evaluate whether we want our sport to be an all day endurance competition or a contest of strength, speed and skill. Obviously there is a benefit to playing games against a large number of opponents, both in terms of experience gained as a team and familiarizing yourself with many future opponents. However at some point the factors of fatigue injury (both potential and normal attrition) reduce these benefits to a negligible level.

At Nationals the level of emotion and competition is very high and each game takes a large toll on a team. The UPA organizes Nationals so that teams play at most 3 games in a single day. Even so I have found Nationals to be the most exhausting tournament I've ever played in, and I used to go to (low level) college tourneys with a team of 9. I would suggest that tournament that wish to be as competitive as national need to take the quality of the ultimate being played and the health of the players into account. If you want a player to be playing hard and giving it his all during all the games on the schedule then I would suggest that it’s not reasonable to have a team play 8 games to 15 within 31 hours. I think fatigue played a serious factor in determining the outcome of the tournament. Not for us though.

We flew out to Austin on Thursday so that we could get a practice in on Friday afternoon before the tourney on Saturday. That is some of us flew out on Thursday, some got in mid-afternoon and some got in on Friday night. As it was I had about 12 guys practicing on Friday afternoon. This should be absolutely mandatory or we shouldn’t do it at all. As it was the guys who did practice got some good work in and looked sharper during the tourney than did some of the other guys.

We had a first round bye on Saturday because we were going to be playing in the showcase game that night against UCSD. So we arrived at the fields with an 1:15 to warm up before our game against Wisconsin. Apparently this was not enough as we came out extremely tentative on offense and just kept giving them the disc until it was 4-0. We called a timeout, and did a bit of yelling. After that we started trading and the Hodags took half at 8-4. We got a couple of breaks right out of half time (Levy had a huge Callahan) and managed to get within 1 on several occasions, but were unable to get the break we need to tie it up. Wisconsin won by 2, 15-13. I firmly believe that if we had not started that game playing like crap we would have won the game. We will have no fear of Wisconsin next time we play them.

We played well at times during the next three games but we were overconfident and pissed away a few leads to teams that were still playing hard despite being behind. Michigan and WWU made runs after we had taken the lead but we were able to survive our own loss of focus and win. Brown never made a run, they have obviously lost a ton of firepower from last year. I don’t remember those scores off the top of my head.

That led us to the showcase game against UCSD and the winner would move into the championship bracket on Sunday and the loser would be in the middle consolation bracket. It was a bit of a hassle to get the game started on time, but once it got rolling it was pretty uneventful. We managed to take charge from the beginning and we were up a couple of breaks at halftime. Big plays were made by both teams in the second half and we scored the last couple to win 15-11 or something. Doug was hurt pretty bad in the first half when one of the Squids laid out into him as he was catching a pass.

So on to quarter finals with a rematch against… Florida! Woo hoo. Well it was a prime chance for revenge and we were ready to go. Florida went up 3-1 and it was looking bad and then we started playing. The offense and defense both picked up and we went on a run taking half up 8-5. We came out of half gunning but couldn’t convert on the turns we got. Florida got back a couple breaks here and there and then it was 11-10 us. And all of a sudden we fell apart Florida ran off 4 in a row and all we could do was punch in one last score to close to 14-12 before the scored on offense for the win. Why did we fall apart? I don’t know. Maybe we tightened up again. I’m sure that giving up two Callahan’s and a dropped pull (by our best player) didn’t help. Oh yeah, and the wind picked up during the game. That may have led to some difficulties too. Fortunately, this tourney has convinced the guys that that they can play with anyone in the country. And it’s good that they know that, because it’s true. And who knows, maybe by the time we get to Regionals and Nationals we’ll be able to beat teams in the wind too. We’re workin’ on it, that’s for sure.

Oh yeah there was a consolation game too, but aside from getting lots of playing time for the rookies I couldn’t give a flying fig. I think we lost 13-12, who cares. I hate consolation games, as a coach and a player.

Stanford (Stockton) Invite

2006-03-31T14:14:00.000-08:00

Okay. It’s time for a recap of Invite.

Disaster.

And now to move on…

Well, alright. It wasn’t a disaster, but it was close. Here’s how it went down.

The big deal leading up to the tourney was whether or not it would actually happen at all. The Stanford fields were going to be closed from some substantial rain in the week leading up the games, and no replacement fields had been found. The tournament organizers were working around the clock to find fields whose owners/supervisors would allow a tournament to be run there. By Wednesday night 8 fields had been located in Stockton but only for Saturday. With this much and hope for more that organizers decided to go ahead and tell the teams that the tourney was not canceled and that they should plan to travel to the tourney as scheduled, despite the fact that there would still be a chance of having only on day of games.

On Thursday afternoon I got a call from Skip saying that they had reserved the Central Valley Polo Club for the weekend and would be able to host the whole tourney in the planned format. This turned out to be the major factor that determined the outcome Stanford’s weekend. The Central Valley (which includes Stockton for those of you not in a California frame of mind) means wind, and wind means zone. Palo Alto and Stanford are not generally very windy to start with and Roble field is dead calm even when the trees outside Mudd Chemistry Building are whipping around. So we don’t often get a chance to practice zone effectively. And our guys don’t get many chances to get good at throwing in the wind.

We started off against Oregon. They played a disciplined vertical stack offense and ran a tight man D. They were only able to effectively move the disc on the break side, however that was extremely effective. They were breaking us like bitches. They would look for the IO constantly until we tried to take that away and then the would go for an around high release. We started out slowly and had to come from behind in order to eek out a victory at 10-7. They didn’t play much zone and it wasn’t very effective when they did.

Up next was Davis. We failed to take this game seriously until it was too late. Frankly our zone offense was weak. Most of the poppers looked lost out there and the handlers didn’t know what to do when their options were limited. Davis zoned up all game. Up wind, down wind, off pulls and off turns. It was the correct strategy to beat us. They would take shots up wind when ever our O team turned it, and once and a while they would pull down some of the garbage, they managed to punch it in up wind a few times as did we, but they ended up with the down wind on double game point and they were able to score for the win at 13-12. Unfortunately for them they went on to lose to Oregon and still ended up taking fourth in the pool. Davis is pretty bad this year and this loss doesn’t say anything good about us.

After that debacle we play Georgia. They played man D and we were a bit more competitive, but we had tightened up collectively after the shocking loss to Davis. Actually the wind had made us tentative and timid all day and the loss to Davis made things worse. Josh sprained his ankle badly during the Georgia game and if the wind wasn’t already gone from our sails that sealed it (it looked really bad). We were never really in the game and I don’t even remember what the score was.

Amazingly point differential placed us 2^nd in the pool and that led to a prequarters match up with Cal. Two straight defeats was not good for morale and we ended up falling behind Cal too. The score got to about 7-5 Cal before I told the boys to throw a zone and we reeled of 4 in a row to take a two point lead at that point it was 9-7 game to ten. I think Cal then scored downwind and then we scored downwind for the win. But it may have gone to double game point. I can’t really remember. In any case it was much closer than it should have been. And so despite our overall suckage on the day, we were still moving on in to quarters, and our quarterfinal round opponent was Florida.

Florida has been dominating the college ranks so far this season going undefeated until the finals of Centex. Oops, I guess I spoiled the outcome of the game against us. Well. It wasn’t pretty. We managed to trade with them until fours, and then they got a couple of upwind breaks in a row. Kurt Gibson has a huge flick that he can throw a long was up wind and he put up several of those shots that were pulled down by his teammates and they managed to convert the goal. My guys did what a told them to. They played zone upwind and downwind and the jacked the disc as far as they could when they got into trouble. It was ugly. Florida was taking their shots too and there were a lot of turnovers. However, we didn’t have the correct mental attitude on defense and we allowed a lot of breaks and throws though the cup that shouldn’t have gone up. In addition the intensity and focus was lacking in coverage and we were unable to defend well enough to keep the game close. In the end we were capped and Florida won 11-7. Not a pathetic showing, but certainly not what we had been hoping for going into the tourney.

Since Invite we’ve been working on nailing down our zone offense and getting the guys comfortable running it. The zone d has gotten better too, but still could use a little work. The improvement was apparent at Centex. Cag set discipline has been a little lax and that needs to be addressed too (and soon.)

2006-03-08T14:42:00.000-08:00

I have to say that one of the worst experiences you can have is biting into a Boston Creme donut only to discover that inexplicably someone decided that lemon filling would work just as well as creme. Mere physical pain pales in comparison. Fontuately I have learned to spot the warning signs and I never rush into donut consumption without a thorough inspection.

KK19

2006-02-22T17:15:00.000-08:00

KK19

Ahhh. Kiamana. This was my fourth time out to Waimanalo on President’s Day weekend for a little beach, ultimate and partying. And I have to say that this time was not quite as good as the others. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed myself. You can’t fail to enjoy this tourney, but, for me, the novelty has worn off a bit and I am able to actually be disappointed by some of the drawbacks. The weather was not the best this year, mostly cloudy for most of the weekend, making the normally gorgeous Waimanalo beach slightly less attractive. Also on Sunday night there was some serious rain. I mean the fields were covered with up to 4 inches of water in some places. Lots of folks had their tents and gear drenched as the rain came pouring down for nearly an hour. So the two methods of getting your stuff wet were to a) have your tent collapse or b) have your tent site fill up with water in some localized flooding. Fortunately, Amanda and I have a nice tent and chose a decent spot and managed to avoid having to sleep a van or in wet bedding. We moved our gear into a van to keep it dry in case of further rain, but when we went to get it in the morning our stuff was soaked. Could be that it was wetter than we thought when we put it in the van, but I’m pretty sure somebody (Robbie) put soaking wet gear on top of ours and left the back window vents on the van open, thus rendering our attempt at protecting our stuff useless. Unbelievably, games were played on Monday. The ability of those fields to absorb water is off the charts, and I grew up in RI where we have sand instead of dirt so I know from absorbent.
There was some ultimate to be played too, so I guess I could sum that up quickly. I played on Skeletor, a Stanford alumni team. We had some sweet jerseys, and here the mostly cloudiness came in handy, b/c those sweet jerseys were black and if it had been sunny we might have died. We won all our games until we played Nada Mooger in the semis. They beat us by four, but it wasn’t that close. We spent the whole weekend building leads and then giving up on playing hard and letting teams come back. It was stupid. We almost managed to lose in the quarters to Deathstar, an Australian team from around (but not in) Sydney. They had some decent players and were taking the tourney way more seriously than any of us.
Oh, and we (the alumni) beat/lost to the current players. We traded for a while and let them take a lead and then the cap went on and they were up by one. We scored to tie it up and then during the next point the hard cap went on. The college boys punched it in for the win. But an extremely common misinterpretation of the rules lead to us playing one more point. Which the alumni scored to tie it up, and then we pulled and scored again to take the win. Fortunately this game will create lots of entertaining debate/chapping over next few months. The bottom line is, of course, that old and wily wins over young and stupid/drunk.
This year’s haircuts were special, and hopefully I can post some pictures here soon. The kids did pretty well, losing to us and the Doughboys (in quarters). I hear that there was lots of playing time to go around and the rookies were performing very well. Also the zone O still needs some work. We’ll need to find the middle layer over the next month.
Amanda’s (Dea to all you ultimate players) team, California Pride, took home their second straight tiki, beating Coyote Ugly in the finals by a few or maybe several, I’m not sure. The game never really seemed to be in doubt. CU didn’t have an answers for Amanda with their average height around 5’2”. Also, the other girls on CP are pretty good too. I just wasn’t paying much attention to them.

Amanda and I got to drive up to the North Shore and hang out for a few hours at the house that the Stanford men and women will be staying at for the rest of this week. It was awesome, like MTV Cribs worthy (that is before that show became a parody of itself). Then we had to head to the airport for the red eye home. We got to SFO and took the train back to our apartment; I took a shower and promptly fell asleep until 3! So much for going in to lab. It wasn’t all my fault, there was a baby in the row in front of me that didn’t stop screaming until about a half hour before the plan landed. If you add that to the fact that I can’t sleep on planes anyways and I was pretty much screwed.

So, here are some personal plans for the next Kaimana. I’m not a fan of the current attitude with the Stanford alums. I think I’ll try to play with some other team. We have been acting like we deserve to win without earning it (a la Nada Mooger except that we’re just not that good). I will not go back to this tourney without spending at least four extra days in Hawaii. The tourney is not enough for me anymore. I have got to go see some more of these beautiful islands. I will try to bring even less stuff next year. I was able to fit all my stuff in one carry-on this year, but I could see that there were some things that I didn’t need.

Kaimana is the best tournament I have ever been to. I have been told that there are others that are better (Paganello maybe, Potlatch doesn’t come close, and Clambake wins the food war, ties on Party and loses big time on Beach). I will certainly be back, although exactly when is up in the air. Coming up next: What is it like to line up across from Nada Mooger when they are trying to win?

Nada Mooger

2006-02-22T16:45:00.000-08:00

What is it like to line up across from Nada Mooger when they are actually trying to win?

Well here is a snapshot.

“Okay so who’s got MG?”

“mumble.”

“Good. Okay, Somebody wanna take Idris?”

“mumble.”

“Alright. Who’s on Zip?”

“mumble.”

“Nice, that’s a good match up for you, just try to force him under.”

“Now, anybody want Beau?”

“mumble.”

“Yeah, just, uh, force him under too.”

“Excellent, who wants JD?”

“mumble.”

“Good, then I’ll take Kubalanza, and that leaves you with… looks like…yup, Damien.”

“mumbleF*CK THATmumble”

SB 2006

2006-02-08T17:36:00.000-08:00

Well today has been somewhat unproductive in the lab and I figure I should throw down a blog entry. Also, I haven’t given any recap on the Santa Barbara tourney and I’m sure you’re all dying from the suspense. (No, I haven’t forgotten about the Kaos 2005 experience, but I’m struggling to work up the energy for that one.)

Santa Barbara. Somehow we managed to get booked into the same crappy hotel that we were in last year, even after I specifically instructed the travel guy to book any hotel but that one. Oh well, it’s fine for most of the weekend but team meetings become 20 minute body heat sauna of sweat and farting. Amanda and I left Palo Alto at about 5:50 and she dropped me off at the hotel at about 10:50. We made pretty good time and kept our one stop pretty short.

Amanda taking the car and leaving me to find a ride to the fields with the boys worked out in my favor right away as James volunteered to go to the captain’s meeting which was at 7:30. This wouldn’t have been an issue if it weren’t for our lovely first round bye. So the morning had a some what leisurely wake up call of 8:00am and we didn’t have to rush to get some food in the cooler.

Okay no one cares much about that crap so on to the games. We rolled up to the fields to find the B team getting stomped on by Arizona, this probably should have been my first hint that Arizona wasn’t f*cking around this year. We warmed up and did the usual “passing out of this year’s jerseys for the first time,” and got set to face our first opponent UC Santa Cruz. Now, UCSC isn’t terrible. They’ve got some real good players, but they weren’t able to do much on defense against our O team. It was just a matter of time until our D team figured some things out put on a run. We came out and score the first two points for a 2-0 lead and then traded up to 6-5 Sanford, when the D finally got a run together. The O team scored to take half 7-5 and then the D team went on a 5-1 run and then we traded out the game to finish up 13-7. It wasn’t that close. IF you are looking for someone to watch from UCSC for Callahan or All-Region it should be Danny Karlinsky he’s got all the tools and knows how to use them. Unfortunately Santa Cruz won’t do well enough for him to get much consideration for those honors.

Up next was UNLV, they’ve got a couple of good players too, but they weren’t good enough to make up for the rest of the team. We started 3-0 and the traded to 5-3 as they managed to score mostly on downwind hucks to leaping catches. We then ran off 6 straight to 11-3, whereupon we had a melt down and the O team got broken twice. We got our act together and scored the last two to finish it off 13-6.

At that point we had one for game of pool play and then a long break until the showcase game against UCSB under the lights. The one more game was against Colorado State. Now, none of us had heard anything about CSU and so we had no idea what to expect. Being homebodies I heard a few guys suggesting that UCSC would have been a better choice for the 2 seed in the pool. I tried to keep a more open mind. Well, we ended up struggling more against these guys that I had thought possible. We started the game on O and everything stayed on serve until 4-3 us when the D team ran off three straight breaks to take half 7-3. Everything looked good and similar to two games we had played previously. However, we came out after half and the D couldn’t get anything going. I guess we were going upwind on D and downwind on O but even so we should have gotten at least one break! The O team was solid, though, and we traded out the game until it was hard capped with the final score 12-9. CSU seemed to have the highly unoriginal strategy of hucking it to their best athletes, which, depending on how good your athletes are, works up to a point. Sometimes I wonder if we don’t do this enough, but I think this is a strategy that keeps games close at the start of the weekend and may even allow you to win a few games, but in the end you’ll wear out your athletes and you won’t beat the top teams because you’re never really as close as it may seem (Keep this in mind for UNT later)

So on to the showcase game. We took off after beating CSU and headed back to the hotel. Most of us got some food at some point before 5:30 and then we headed back to campus at around 6:15. The showcase game was not in the stadium as it had been in the past. It was held on a new astro-grass field that had light around it. Apparently some of the women’s teams had been playing there during the day. I had never been to this field before and I don’t think any of my guys had either, so it wasn’t simple to locate the field. When we got there the lights weren’t on yet, but the soon came on and we got good and warmed up.

I have to say that it was pretty much ideal conditions for us that night. The surface is very fast and the air was dead calm, not to mention cool but not cold. We are a fast team and man D and O play to our strengths. We started off on O and scored easily. SB held serve and then broke our O team to put us behind for the first time that day. Our O convert on the second try and then the D broke back to get back on serve. We traded to 4-4 whereupon we went on a 9-0 run to take the game 13-4. Now that may seem impressive but it’s not. We played a good game and our team matches up extremely well against UCSB.

This year’s incarnation of UCSB has two great players, one amazing athlete who is still a little raw (the great players are very good athletes but not quite on this guy’s level), and four solid role players. If you’re keeping score at home that’s 7 players who can make things happen. Even when all 7 of those guys are out there we can match up well with either the O or D team; when any of them are sitting out we have a significant advantage. So basically the game plan is to make sure we get good match ups on the two great players (Rory and Asa) and the athlete (Abomb possibly aka Alex) and the let the rest of our guys take over. Their strategy is easy to figure out too since they have little flexibility with such a shallow roster, for example if only Rory and Alex are in on D and you turn the disc, Rory will try to get the disc and huck it to Alex. This is easy to prevent if you have the players to do it and know that it’s coming.

Sunday. UCSD managed to lose a close game to Arizona on Saturday and thus played themselves into a quarterfinal match up with us. San Diego was the second best team at the tourney and the only showed against us. They have a deep roster of athlete and a good group of handlers to get them the disc in fact those groups also overlap well making them even more dangerous. Possibly their best asset is that they have no fear of any team in the country after reaching the semifinals of nationals and nearly winning.

Of course, this is not why they were able to keep this game close. Nope, they played zone in a fairly decent breeze. We hadn’t really covered zone O for more than about 15 minutes in practice and we failed to handle it well. For the first time our O team coughed up breaks like it was their job, getting broken 6 times over the course of the game. UCSD played a wide open hucking offense and our D team was up to the challenge getting enough breaks to put us in the lead. However, we gave it all back and then some and found ourselves down 13-11 with the cap going on. I put a good line on O going downwind and they were able to score getting us to within one. I then put out the best line I could on D going up wind and they got a couple of turns before finally punching it in as the hard cap went on. So we were pulling down wind on double game point we got the turn and had a few injury subs to get some O players in there (UCSD got hurt and we got to change players), and we finally scored to win the game.

UCSD is very good and anyone, that points to the losses to Arizona and CSU (in consolation after losing that heartbreaker to us) to say that they are having a down year, is a fool. I wish I knew some of their names so I could give credit where credit is due. I guess the most I can say is that the dude with the long blond hair and the head band is real good and Kevin Smith is very effective as a handler and a cutter. Their handlers are unusually patient for college teams and we were generally unable to force them into bad decisions with some of our more gimmicky defenses. They just kept working it from handler to handler until the found the big gainer.

Semis were against UNT. They have some great athletes and the generally work it around until the can put the disc up to one of them. They must not have been watching our quarterfinal game since they only played zone D when we were going up wind. They got within 2 late in the game at 11-9 and again at 12-10, but from there we ran off three straight for the 15-10 win. The O team only gave up 2 breaks this time and the D team had already put us ahead by a few breaks before that so we were never behind. I’m afraid that it was not a very eventful game in the realm of ultimate. Opie of all people managed to make one of the UNT guy want to get into a fight with him. I guess that guy is a little fiery as his teammates didn’t seem too surprised. All in all I am glad that we were able to avoid a let down after the emotional win over UCSD.

Finals were basically a repeat of the previous night; we played UCSB, again, and beat them easily, again. I guess it didn’t feel that way at first as we found ourselves down 4-2 after the first 6 points, but then 7 points later the score was 9-4 Stanford. A bit of trading and a final 3 point run at the end and we were taking home the title with a 15-9 victory. We knew what to do against them and it showed, even if they failed to roll over quite as easily as they did the previous night.

I think that what I learned from this tournament will have to wait for another post as this one is already getting a little (very) long. I can say that I think I should have let the games against UCSC and UNLV get a little closer if that’s what it took to get the rookies more PT. At the time it never felt like we had those game totally in hand, but looking back it is obvious that we did and that it was the time to play the rookies a bit more.

2006-01-27T13:31:00.000-08:00

Oh, Blog world! It's been a one way steet b/w you and I recently. Well, it happens. I am now pretty good at sudoku. Things were going well in the lab for about a week, followed by two weeks of frenzied activity trying to recapture the magic. As of yet the magic is eluding us. The boys finally got back to school and practice began anew. I've put a fair amount of work into the play book to get things ready for this weekend (Not that I made up any new plays, I don't think set plays are important so why waste time on developing new ones? I just used my favorites from other year and teams).

This weekend. Santa Barbara. The first cars leave in two hours. There'll be some good tests down there. I am looking forward to letting our rookies loose on some other teams. I think they must be anxious to play against someone who's not a three year veteran of a nationals level team. We'll be playing the showcase game on saturday night against SB. It should be a good match up as several of their players played with the Condors last club season. At the very least we'll get to experience some solid sideline noise from our opponents.

The best developement for the team thus far this winter has been the return of Jit in a coaching role. Jit, along with James, is another forceful voice on the sidelines at practice and that is something that I most need help with. I am good at managing practices and players (we'll see soon how it goes a tournaments), but I am often too low key, and Jit and James help to pick up the slack.

Amanda and I went on our annual snowshoeing trip two weeks ago and we went to Yosemite once again (it's hard to pull ourselves away). We had several novice snowshoers with us but everything went quite well. We made it into the valley through a storm and then woke up the next day to sunshine and lots of fresh snow (up to 20 inches in some places). It made for a gorgeous hike and many photo ops.

2006-01-10T08:45:00.000-08:00

Back on the Horse.

I got thrown off the blogging horse by the trip home for the holidays and a brief attempt to get good at sudoku. Well the holidays were a success and sudoku was a failure so I'm back in cyberspace shouting into the wind. Or more accurately whispering into a breeze.

Actually what most motivates my to start typing again is that ultimate is starting back up. Today will be our first practice of the year/quarter. It also looks like it will be the first rain practice of the year. I have to say I'm not looking forward to the crapfest that goes down whenever our regular fields are closed for rain. Do we hold practice? Do we run hills? Do we go off campus? Does one of the other teams have the one field on campus that never gets closed? Do we want that sh*thole of a field? Where off campus can we go? It just sucks, and lucky me, as coach, I need to make a definitive decision without spending too much time hemming and hawing over it.

So I think at least 15 or so of the 26 guys on the team will return from break healthy enough to play today. Most of the guys who had surgery seem to be progressing well in their rehab. Bronx is a machine and I wouldn't be surprised if he comes back from his ACL/MCL surgery faster than he was before. (Speaking of ACL/MCL tears, I took Carson Palmer with a 13th round pick in fantasy football this year so I get to keep him for next year and it will only cost me a 11th round pick. I have to think I should still take him and hope for a full recovery. I mean he's a pocket passer anyways, he doesn't need full mobility to be effective, right?)

I'm working on putting together the play book for this year, and no I won't be discussing any details. But, I will say that my philosophy on plays is that set offensive plays are not important in their details. What is important is that you are able to get everyone on your team on the same page quickly. I also think that you should have a three to four plays that everyone on your team can run as the thrower. If your less talented throwers are calling the same one or two plays all the time they are going to get shut down quickly, so give them a couple more options. I took a look back the play book that we used in 2002 when we won the championship, and there are only six set plays (not including iso and individual calls), so obviously an extensive set of plays is not necessary for success. By contrast Kaos had 13 set plays this year, which I thought was too many. I think I always spent a little too much time think about what the plays were rather than setting myself up to execute them properly. Don't get me wrong, many of those plays were very nice clever plays designed to deal with certain situations, but the sheer number of them reduced their individual effectiveness.

We're down to three weeks before the first real tournament of the season, and we've only got one Saturday practice before then. So we've got to try to make these weekday practices as productive as we can with these short winter days. I guess I should cover zone d/o at least a little bit before we head down to SB.

Lastly and most importantly this month is the Matt Babin Memorial Facial Hair Contest. With the entire team starting from clean shaven on New Year's Eve, facial hair will be judged on volume and presentation on the Thursday before Santa Barbara which will be almost four full weeks of growth. I will try to post some pictures of the hilarity that is sure to ensue. I am participating, however from more than about five feet away I just look like I need to wash my face even after a couple weeks of growth. I'm not sure what four weeks will look like but I guessing that it won't be much better.

Up next, Kaos heads into the Fall series with high hopes.

2005-12-16T15:11:00.000-08:00

ECUE: 05: Part II: The Team
So, I ended up joining Kaos only a few weeks late in mid June. The Solstice tournament in Eugene was not well attended and for that matter neither was the Colorado Cup in August. At each of those two tournaments we had maybe 15-16 guys. So it wasn't until Labor Day in Santa Cruz that I got to compete with close to the full squad. However, through practices and those small squad tournaments I mentioned I was able to get to know the new guy pretty well and what follows is my impression of them and their influence on the team. I will try to be honest, and if any of these guys end up reading this they should know that a) it's, like, only my opinion, man and b) I am more critical of my own play.
In 2005 Kaos remained a similar team to last year (04), it retained most of the players from the previous year. The four guys who left the team during last year's season stayed gone: Robbie Cahill, Josh Wiseman, Kevin Beck, and Travis Finucane. (You'll note that the two best players I coach, abandoned Kaos at some point during the year we went to Nationals, it would have been nice to have them at nationals, but I'll take having them healthy and running the O team here at Stanford.) Beach was going to be abroad this fall or something and wouldn't have been around enough to commit, and Kenbrah was committed to playing in '05 until he destroyed his ankle and ended his career (He's healed now but no longer risking his body for ultimate). Cameron was hurt and planning to leave for an academic position wherever he could find a job so he was out. And Monberg also planned to play until the season started up and his knee needed surgery effectively ending his career too. So we ended up losing four players from the squad that went to Nationals, dropping us to 19. We added 6 more for 2005. In alphabetical order they are:

1)Louis Eisenberg: Louis has a wicked flick bomb and an unusual release. He, like me, is not fast enough to just out run people at the club level. He has astonishingly large pectoral muscles. At this point he mostly just out-works his opponents, cutting until they are to tired to cover him anymore. He needs more experience at the club level, but he is effective at times nonetheless. He was injured for a large part of the season and it seemed to be ambiguous as to whether he was a full player or just a practice player. It's hard to tell how good Louis can be, I do know that Louis will work hard enough to get there, wherever that is.

2)Francesco "Simba" Giorgetti: Simba is an Italian import. He can just run past people on the club level. He is tall, jumps high, and runs fast. He is also very raw. He needs a lot more experience playing the American game. His potential is just busting out all over the place, and sometimes there were too many helpful teammates trying to tell Simba how to use that potential. I look forward to seeing Simba play again because you need to take a break before you can judge how much a player has improved over a season. I think he has become much better but I haven't been able to tell yet. His ceiling is unknown.

3)Chris McManus: Chris is the first of the three ex-Condors who joined Kaos in 2005 (not chronologically just alphabetically). Chris is an excellent player. He is a hard cutter, a formidable defender and a solid handler. He occasionally makes huge (I mean HUGE) plays, after which he has a tendency to jack the disc away, but when he can restrain himself they are game changers. He quickly became the East Bay workout group leader and whipped those boys into great shape.

4)Jason Seidler: Jason (Another Condor) is a speed demon with big throws too. He can be a tenacious defender when provoked, but he has too much of a dependence on his speed and has failed to really hone his defensive skills and anticipation. His a great cutter, both around the disc and in the open field. He has good breaks and hucks. He also tend to be a bit chippy when being marked, often looking to draw fouls and free throws. That's not how I play but it is certainly within the rules.

5)Marc Weinberger: Marc is an old Stanford guy. He came out of a semi-retirement forced by his bad ankle(s) to bring some attitude back to Kaos. Marc has a super aggressive mark, if there is a line between an aggressive mark and a fouling mark, then Marc slipped up behind it in a dark alley and hacked it with a lead pipe. All I'm sayin' is, you don't forget that he's marking you. Marc is fast and has great game knowledge, he has the biggest pull on the team and is extremely useful as a handler, and defender of handlers.

6)Ryan Yarborough: Ryan (yet another Condor) took some time off and eventually decided to join the team in August. He was a bit rusty a first but he is a great player and it showed frequently throughout the rest of the season. It took him a bit to get used to the team but he fit in well in the end. He is quick, with great hand and throws, and adds good ups for his height. His most best attribute is the extensive game knowledge and experience that he puts to excellent use on the field and off.

The last four guys on the list brought a swagger and an expectation of winning to Kaos and it showed in our ability to stand up to teams that were historically better than us and some times that led to wins. Certainly we never played a game that I thought we were out of it the whole time. Those four guys expected to compete with anyone and that attitude rubbed off on everyone else. It didn't hurt that they all could and did make game changing plays throughout the season.

All 6 of these guys were positive additions to the team and despite not qualifying for nationals in 2005, I believe that Kaos was a stronger team than in 04.

Leadership: Kaos had three captains in 2005, Nick Handler, Dan Dewey, and Dan Schneider. I will discuss them here as captains not as players although I will touch on how being captain affected their play.

Dan Dewey: Dan was very quiet as captain, his contributions were rarely seen except at a few practices not attended by Schneider. Maybe Dewey did a lot more work behind the scenes than I realize, but I doubt it. Dewey is a calm force on the field, but his low key nature was so overshadowed by Schneider that it was easy to forget that Dewey was a captain. By the end of the season Dewey seemed to have lost some of his fire for the game. I hope he can regain it for next season, because he can still shred when he is motivated.

Nick Handler: Nick was probably the best player on Kaos this year. He took his game to a new level. I am not sure if being captain had any affect on that, but I'd make him captain every year if it meant he'd keep playing like he did this year. Nick was a strong captain, he kept the team focused in practice, and managed the O team substitutions as best as can be expected by someone playing in the game. Nick did a lot of work (as all captains do) and seemed to avoid burning out on it.

Dan Schneider: Dan is a great guy, very good player, a good teammate, and a mediocre to bad captain. He did a good job running a few of the practices near the beginning of the season, and he came up with some helpful drills. However, he has a personality that can border on abrasive when combined with power. He seemed to mean well in his attempts to motivate us and keep us focused (things we certainly need to improve on at times), however his methodologies were a mistake. He might have been able to succeed with those tactics while coaching middle schoolers , but with a bunch of veteran ultimate players who almost to a man equal or exceed him in knowledge and experience, it was generally a failure. His substitutions for the D team were a mess, and his strategic choices were often confusing or inappropriate. If there were only a few occasional problems in these area it would not be worth mentioning, but it was persistent over the course of the season. I like Dan and I know he did his best, and I appreciate the effort he put in and the work he did, but I think the team might have been better of with him as a regular player. I would go so far as to say that I feel like his being a captain had a negative affect on his play on the field. He was much more of a force for us in 2004, but in 2005 those big skys on defense and offense were lacking. I think the captaincy wore him down a bit and stole some of his on the field edge. Maybe he tried too hard to give his edge to the rest of us. I would not hesitate to have Dan as a teammate again, but I would not play for a team with him as captain.

So I think that with one good captain, one fair to poor , and one barely noticeable, our leadership was kind of a wash. Since they sort of cancelled each other out, Kaos' destiny in 2005 was primarily determined by the players.

Up next, I'll explore that 2005 season in Part III.

2005-12-13T16:12:00.000-08:00

So here at Stanford we've enter the dreaded exam week. Of course it doesn't affect me, but a quick glance at the team workout log shows that the boys are taking a pretty big hit. Our last practice was over a week ago and the next one isn't for almost a month, so I'm experiencing a mini off-season from ultimate. Maybe, I'll finish this post with a review of my club experiences form this year.

First off, though, I have to say that I am excited that my section will be moving across the street to a new lab. (Oh yeah this is a Chemistry section. I still do that.) And I mean new, the building was built during the time that I've been here. This means my section might have it's own room and I might be able to spend several months without someone stealing my lab supplies, putting things in my workspace or moving my stuff around when I'm not actually in the lab. Of course, it will be more difficult for me to similarly use other people's sections so that might be a slight drawback. We'll have to see how soon I'll actually move over there, but we've got approval from the Dean to kick out the squatters from the next lab over so things should start happening soon. In terms of actual experimenting things are inching forward slowly; more slowly over the last week and half due to some product ordering delays, but moving forward nonetheless.

Amanda and I got our first real Christmas tree this year. We got a permit from the National forest service and went out and cut down our own tree. It was fun, since we had six friends with us wandering through the woods looking for a good tree. The tree itself is beautiful, not as full as some others we've had in my childhood, but it has a nice shape and some beautiful silver gray bark. It is currently filling up the living space in our apartment nicely decorated (for now) with only white lights. Photo to come soon.

Evan's Club Ultimate Experience: 2005: Part I: Tryouts: (AKA: The Colon)
In 2004, I abandoned coed for the open ranks. This decision was fueled by several factors. First I was dissatisfied with the level of intensity on the coed teams I had played on the last two years. I wasn't sure that it was a coed thing (although I am now sure that it is), but I was unhappy with my personal intensity level and I felt it was an environmental problem.
The second factor was a successful trip to Hawaii for the Kiamana Klassic in Feburary, at which I played for Highway 17, a team made up of Stanford alumni and fleshed out with a few ringers from Santa Cruz. (Highway 17 is the main route from the Bay Area to Santa Cruz) The team had players from DoG, Bravo, Jam, Condors and Kaos. I had quite a successful tourney and played well in the finals despite our team losing by a substantial margin to the perennial kings of Kiamana, Nada Mooger.
The third issue affecting my decision was the potential to join a relatively new squad and have a good chance to go to nationals. Kaos was holding open tryouts with almost no one assured of a spot, even previous players. (Maybe 5 guys were certain of spots.) The other second tier Bay Area ultimate team, Valhalla, had dissolved and most of their top players were trying out for Kaos. I wasn't sure that I could play at the level required to make the team, but I was given great encouragement from several sources and I stuck with the process and made the cut.
Kaos' season in 2004 might be worth a separate post, but for suffice to say that we came together well enough and went to nationals where I played as well as I ever have. I played a large number of points and was a significant contributor in all games.
So after all that I was excited for the club season in 2005. However, I had a few doubts about the future of Kaos and my future with Kaos, some of those were substantiated and some were not. So the tryout season was not so simple as just deciding to play with Kaos again. I mentioned to one of the captains of Jam that was interested in trying out for that team and checking out the whole scene over at that team. Unfortunately I made a poor choice of captain to talk to and I didn't talk to any of the other three (I didn't want to seem pushy), and since the guy I talked to was pretty much MIA during their team forming process they didn't even know I was interested. So I missed out on the opportunity for another year.
So I was left with the decision to play open with Kaos or go back to coed with Brass Monkey. Now, my desire for intensity was satiated with Kaos, and lure to play with some of my best friends was strong. Playing for Brass Monkey are three of the 18 people who were at our wedding, including the two who married us. So the pull to play and hangout with them was strong. In addition, Brass Monkey was sure to be contending for the title come fall. So I went to tryouts for Brass Monkey and Kaos, and I played at the Davis Ultimate Invitational with Kaos. Kaos won DUI beating both Jam and Condors. Again I played well. However the leadership issues on Kaos were a little off putting (more to come later on that), and I was not sold. In the end, Brass Monkey offered me a spot that "might not be there" when Kaos tryouts were over. So I said yes against the advice of my much wiser spouse.
I went to several practices with Brass Monkey, and had no issues with the team or the intensity level. Things were different, but that is to be expected. But then came the first tourney of the year in the beginning of June. Oh my lord, I sucked! The competition level was low and my intensity level was even lower. I played down to the level of the competition in the worst way, I tried to do things that are outside my game, and in general was just bad. I discovered that weekend that I am just not a good player if my intensity level is not high enough. Nor am I any fun to be around. It was horrible, I cut my losses and ran. As crappy as it is to back out on a team of your friends when you have committed to them, I was unwilling to risk the damage I might do to my enjoyment of ultimate and the performance of the team. Maybe I would have figured things out, but it would have been bad had I not been able to get things together. Fortunately, I think that those guys have forgiven me, or at least forgotten about the whole thing, Championships tend to be a big help in that area. Not that they would give me a spot on the team if I tried out again, but I don't think I'll repeat that mistake. I'm an open player now for better or worse.
So I went crawling back to Kaos to see if they were interested in having me. Fortunately, they were welcoming and I got to play with them at Solstice in Eugene two weeks later. Some of the guys didn't even notice I was gone. Thus began the 2005 season in earnest.

UP NEXT: Part II, a discussion of the new additions to Kaos in terms of impact on the field and off, also the affect of the new leadership core on team performance.

2005-12-06T17:34:00.000-08:00

So the last practice of fall quarter is over and we've entered the time of individual training over the holidays. What motivates players to go out and push themselves in the cold training, while old friends and Mom's homecooking beckon inside? It is obvious that all the best players put in the work over breaks, and some mid level players can build the base of greatness during these times. But surely this knowledge alone cannot be enough to drive these guys out to lonely hill workout and fartlek runs?

What drives my players? I'm not sure. Thanks to Louis we've got a great workout log for the team, it's online so everyone can see what everyone else is doing. This helps to motivate through both the inspiration of seeing your teammates workouts, and through the shame of not doing as much. However, I don't think that is enough to drive someone to put their all into each sprint and every last squat jump.

I hope that most of my guys are visualizing one of two things. 1) Our main goal for the season, a National Championship (UPA, Champies, whatever) 2) Our 15-7 loss to Brown in the semis six months ago. I know that those two thoughts would drive me. To achieve number one we need to be stronger and faster so that number two won't happen again.

Personally, I know that during my '01-'02 Christmas break I was visualizing myself schooling Alex Nord. Now, at the time I had never played against him, so I didn't know how unrealistic that was. But it never hurts to dream big. ( I have since played against Alex several times and even covered him for a few cuts. Hey, I even almost got a layout d on him(stress on almost), but lets just say that he is generally not playing on the same level of reality as me.)

As a fun aside, Spell Check for blogger questioned "UPA" but accepted "Champies" so Champies it is.

2005-12-06T16:51:00.000-08:00

The perils of a cheap haircut.

Since moving to California and away from haircuts that are both suggested and paid for by my Mom, I have been going to the usual cheap chop shops around Stanford. You know Supercuts and The Haircut, not names usually associated with the cutting edge of style. They fit conveniently into the section of my budget set aside for personal grooming (as little as possible), but there are risks involved. The most common pitfall is the language barrier. I find it almost as impossible to tell what countries these women come from, as to determine what they are asking me. And in fact it seems that they have just as difficult a time understanding me. This becomes increasingly important when they are about make changes to the shape your head that will take at least a month or more to recover from. It's a mixed bag. Sometimes I get exactly what I want, and then there's days like today.

I've been getting kind of shaggy lately so today I went to The Haircut for the service so subtlely alluded to by the name of the shop. Now lately I've been having good experiences at the haircut. I've memorized the number of the clipper attachment that I want for the sides and back, and I've learned to just accept whatever length my hair ends up with on top as long as I stress "short." Since all they ladies seem to want to give me the same hair cut, and all they have to do is give me the same haircut I've got when I walk in only shorter, it seems to work out pretty well each time. This time I got a woman I don't remember seeing before. As I was sitting down, she mumbled something about a number 3 buzzer. I told her that I wanted the number 5 for the sides and back, and then she interjected "and finger length on top?" I said yes. She said that we would try the 5 and if I wanted it shorter we could go over it with the 3. "Okay, I guess."

So, she whips out the buzzer, straps on the number 5, and shaves off a strip from behind my ear to the top of my head. While I'm trying to keep my eyes from popping out of my head, she says "Half inch left. Good?" "Yeah. Sure." She proceeds to buzz my whole head except for a four by four inch patch on the front. This patch she then cuts to finger length. "Good?" "Uh... maybe you'd better just buzz the front too." And so she did. And now I've paid 14 dollars for a head of hair that's the same length all the way around. I could have borrowed Patrick's clippers and done the same by myself for free.

Sometimes I can go to The Haircut and get exactly what I'm looking for (provided I'm looking for the standard haircut that they want to give me), this was not one of those times.

2005-11-29T14:33:00.000-08:00

Playing time. This post is in response to a comment wondering how I manage playing time with a big roster. Well my response started to get a little long so here are my thoughts as a new entry.

I'm not sure what is the best way to deal with this issue. In my mind right now, yes the less experienced players will get more playing time in our games against weaker opponents or when our "starters" have shown that they are not bringing it. In general the less experienced players will have to except that playing time will be lopsided. However, with most of those players we are looking towards the future, and grooming them to be progressively bigger contributors with each year they spend with the team. Some rookies can come in and contribute right away, but their contributions are seldom at a level comparable to that of the three, four and five year veterans. Last year we had Tom James and Henry Adams getting substantial amounts of playing time in big games and contributing at a high level, but their lack of experience still showed at times. Playing time needs to be earned in my book, through on field talents and off the field participation such as practices and workouts. (These off the fields activities obviously contribute to on the field performance, but I'm not a big fan of guys who don't work hard for their teammates, but still expect to play based on pure talent. I'm pretty sure we don't have any of those at Stanford though.)

In the end of course our goal is to win nationals and playing time must reflect that throughout the season. All of our players must become comfortable playing with each other, and some of those groups must attain a high degree of familiarity. So they need to get a fair amount of play time together in the early season (everything before regionals). Everyone needs a fair chance to demonstrate their on field talents in a non-practice environment. And the coaching staff needs to be able to make a fair evaluation of how players will perform in game situations against unfamiliar players and strategies. Our less experienced players need to become experienced, and despite the learning done at practice there is a need for solid amounts of playing time in tourneys.

None of what I just mentioned even covers the issue of playing time from a player's perspective. Playing time or the lack thereof can affect a players mentality which can affect his on field performance, which can affect his playing time, etc. Happy players create good team chemistry which helps on the field. However, there is only so much PT to go around and it is inevitable that some players will be disappointed with their PT. (I have been one of these players on various occasions, especially during our run to nationals in '02. In fact I went from one extreme to the other, from one tournament to the next, during the last club season). How those players deal with that disappointment can have a big affect on the team. It is possible to reverse that disappointment and just be excited about every opportunity you get to play. I hope that open discussions and clear communication will help to keep everyone involved and excited about their participation in the team.

So how do all these considerations add up? I'm not sure yet. However, to start the season we will be subbing relatively generously, giving the rookies substantial PT in all games. We will sub to win. I expect the rookies to get things done and score, but if teams score a few more goals on us, or it takes us longer to score, it's not important. What I mean is, I could always put a line out there that should score easily against most teams, but I will put lines out that might have a harder time scoring or getting the D. We still expect them to get the job done, but we understand that they might have a more difficult time. Whether or not they can step up will tell us a lot, including things that we may have missed in teaching them the game or communicating the team strategies.

Needless to say there are a lot of things that go into determining who plays and how much. However, I'm pretty sure that most of the time that goes out the window when you were just scored on and you've got to look at a spreadsheet on a clip board and pick a line in the next 30 seconds. Thank goodness no one is keeping time at early season tourneys. At this point I'd like to wish myself good luck.

2005-11-23T15:44:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

I love ultimate. I love constantly evolving strategies, the spirit and the awesome people that I have met through playing the game. But, I no longer enjoy playing at levels below the elite. At one time I was a playground style player. I could excel in games where offense was disorganized, and flow was hard to come by. But this is no longer the case. I am now at my best when playing within a structured system, limiting turnovers and playing team defense.

When I play pickup or rec league games, I am either too casual for my teammates, or too exacting in my desires for the team. If I play loose and fun, my turnovers go up and my defense is poor (to my standards). If I take the game seriously, I am frustrated by all turnovers and by the fact that my shutdown D is useless when my teammates don't or are unable to play D at a similar level. I know that I should enjoy the game for what it is, but I am no longer able to.

It is perhaps an inappropriate but accurate analogy to say that disorganized ultimate was like a gateway drug, and once I moved on to the hard stuff (elite college/club), the original gateway games just don't seem to "do it" for me any more. Should I mourn this loss? Sometimes I do. Elite ultimate doesn't happen every day, and to play elite it is necessary to but a large amount of time into practice, workouts and tourney travel and so on. But I need that hardcore stuff to stimulate my ultimate nerves. I think that this is the main reason for my current obsession (or so Amanda labels it) with mountaineering and outdoor pursuits. I have always been interested in them, but my anticipation of the end of frisbee season and it's actual abrupt end almost a month earlier than last year coupled with my advance knowledge that I would miss nearly the whole of my team's most important tournament of the year, have led to a focus on the outdoor pursuits that has somewhat distracted my from the loss of elite ultimate.

Coaching is fulfilling in too different a way for it to be a substitute. It doesn't quite have the adrenaline rushes and the thrills of accomplishment. The highs aren't as high and the lows aren't as low. It doesn't have the physical nature that my still young body craves. I guess I've just realized that low grade ultimate doesn't give me the fix I need and I've been looking for other drugs to help me with my withdrawal symptoms during the offseason.

As a side note, I have to say that Scott Wiant is the best ultimate player I know that doesn't care to commit the time to be an elite player. I wish I could talk him into playing for real. He could have a Cruikshank-like impact on any club team (given a year or two figuring out the club game). Anyone else know someone who could be great at ulti, but doesn't care to but in the time?

2005-11-21T15:05:00.000-08:00

Who plays O and Who plays D?

How do we look at our roster and divide up into an O team and a D team? Off the top of my head, I've got a few guys that are awesome on both, a few guys that are good at both, a few that are good O players but weak on D, a few guys that are passable on O and great on D, and a bunch of rooks that are nearly clueless on D but learning fast, ditto for O.

So, I guess that rooks should go on D until I know what they are going to bring to the table this year. And now I put the weak O players on D, the weak D players on O, and split up the rest evenly. Now, my O team can't play D if they turn it and my D team can't score if they get a turn. So I guess I've got to hope that we never turn it on O and when we're on D, I start chanting "Callahan" like a grade A chump.

Seems obvious that I need more balance on O and D. To be honest, it doesn't look like I've got any real defensive liabilities; it's all relative. Right now I feel like the best move is to put a couple of my biggest weapons on O and surround them with a solid support group, and then let the rest of my gunners loose on D with support from some hard running rookies.

Maybe I should just divide the team up into a couple of even strength squads and make a few trades for guys with obvious strengths and weaknesses. The real strength of having O and D teams is to have those smaller parts of the team become familiar with each other and used to playing together so that when crunch time come they each know what the other will do.

Fortunately I've got a bunch of players who will fit anywhere I put them, it's just a matter a figuring out where they need to be for us to get the most out of each of them.

2005-11-21T09:33:00.000-08:00

The Rookies. (In alphabetical order.)

They look gooood.

Neale "Bologna" Mahoney - 5th year, grad student transfer from Brown - Dude is about 6'3", fast and good. He lays out extremely well for a big guy. I like his throws, but so far this year he's been forcing it a bit. I think he is simultaneously trying to impress us (not necessary), and frustrated with the level of play (understandably). Things are pretty grim for a while when we are still in the tryout phase. Things will be much better from now on and Neale should fit in well. He and Lebron seem to be able to communicate on a level that no one else does, and we can only hope that it will translate onto the field.

Chris "Lovechild" McCarty - freshman, no previous experience - Chris is athletic without being overwhelmingly so. He has good height (about 6'), good speed, good hops, and amazing hands. His throws are good for a rookie, and he has developed a great field sense in a short period of time. He gets up well and reads well also. To be honest, not only does he look like Tom James, he is pretty much the same player that TJ was last year (except he doesn't have the monster throws that TJ had/has).

Mac "Cheeeese" Parish - freshman - no previous experience - Mac is also blazingly fast. His lacrosse experience is translating well to ultimate, although it has led to some interesting idiosyncrasies. His defense looks good, and it will only get better as we teach him to layout and remind him that he doesn't have a six foot stick in his hands anymore. He manages to break the mark surprisingly well, and little work on timing will have him looking deadly in the open field.

Steven "Mary-Kate" Scardato - freshman - no previous experience - Steve is an excellent soccer player and has made the easy transition to ultimate like many soccerites before him. His speed and field sense have more than made up for his lack of height. His fiery attitude on the field also won him a lot of supporters. He may well follow in the foot steps of Josh Wiseman as a deadly 5'8" deep threat. Strong layouts and good field sense have led to a number of D's for Steve, and experience should improve that.

Alan "Ashley" Shaw - freshman - no previous experience - Alan may prove to be the third fastest player on the team, not too shabby for a team full of speed. Alan is picking up the game quickly for a guy moving to a field sport from swimming. He is spirited and very supportive from the sidelines (I mention this because Stanford has lacked strong sideline support as long as I've been here and Alan stands out). A willingness to layout combined with big time speed has led to quite a few Ds and with some tutelage the number should rise quickly.

Nate "Peach Fuzz" Young - sophomore - played in high school - Nate made the team for his throws, which are buttery. He plays the handler position well and keeps the disc alive and moving. He breaks the mark very well. His defense is good enough. He might have made the team last year except for an injury that held him out of tryouts. This year he was injured again but managed to pull it together long enough to impress us at a few tournaments. It remains to be seen where he will be most effective for the team.

There were a couple more guys trying out that we all thought were worthy of making the team, but unfortunately we didn't think it would be fair to the players already on the team to take any more players. As it is, we are a large squad. With the injuries that we are facing we may never reach the full 27, but we can always hope.

Let me just throw in a note to say how grateful I am to have James coming out to practice. He manages to see things that I don't, and his never ending confidence allows him to speak forcefully about any topic. I think that we should be able to work well together this year, with each filling in the blanks that the other needs help with. In addition, there are too many guys for them all to get the attention that might be necessary from just one coach.

Things are looking good. Now, if we can just get healthy...

2005-11-17T10:46:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, after a long and difficult selection meeting, we have picked the new members of Bloodthirsty for 2005-2006.

However, my thoughts right now are taken up by news that I heard just minutes ago. Lt. Ryan McLaughlin, a former member of my lab here at Stanford, was killed in action in Iraq. Ryan was in the year as me and we went through all of the first year stuff together, TA training, orientation and so on. I don't claim that I was close to Ryan, but I knew him well and he was one of the few guys that I would regularly associate with during chemistry events. Ryan became a member of the Zare lab in the L2MS section, but quickly realized that, despite his interest in research, his real desire was to serve is country as a member of the US Marine Corps. After two years in the lab he completed a terminal masters degree, and joined a Marine Corps officer training program.

Ryan was killed doing what he most wanted to do in life, doing his duty to his country. His death guides my thoughts towards the men and women who decided what that duty is. It makes me think that those men and women must understand what it means to lose bright futures like Ryan's. Be those futures, great research that pushes the boundary of human knowledge, or merely raising a family, the cost of losing those futures is enormous. Empathy may not be enough to qualify someone to decide whether we can afford to lose those futures. It is important that we can trust the leaders, into whose hand we put the futures of thousands of men and women like Ryan, to make sound decisions that truly weigh the consequences against the gains.

We all lost when Ryan was killed. I know that his light shone brightly wherever he was and whatever he was doing. How many deaths will it take before we all see war as a last resort? Do we all have to lose someone like Ryan before we can understand the true cost of wars even when they take place far away?

Even if you never knew Ryan, please take a few moments to think about his memory and the family that he leaves behind.

2005-11-15T11:58:00.000-08:00

Sean Ryan: Part deux

As we return to the tale of our heroes, we find them congregating on Roble field in preparation for another early departure to Santa Cruz. As our perspective pans across the tired and careworn faces of these brave souls we notice that many faces are missing from among the crowd. Work and ping pong tournaments have taken their toll. Well, a few casualties are to be expected and those who remain will battle on without fear. A closer look reveals that we have gained a few key reinforcements overnight. Robbie Cahill joined team X and takes on the college game again after a brief but successful sojourn on the club scene, and a couple of athletic rooks joined up with team Y. We talked thing over and decided to shuffle the teams a bit to even things out. Basically team Y had suffered the most casualties and had 11 players and team X had 17, so we moved Solon and a couple of tryouts over to Y so that the team would be competitive. After the first round some of the SB guys had a beef with this, but I really don't understand. They lost to the Stanford team that lost players, and crushed the team that gained players. Plus it's a tryout tournament, would the have learned more about their tryouts by crushing team Y by more points than they did. I doubt it.

In any case, back to the action. The schedule worked out so that Quarters was Stanford X vs. SB X and Stanford Y vs. SB Y. As I mentioned above team Y had lost most of their returning A teamers and so the rookies had to step up into roles to which they were unaccustomed. For the most part they did a great job. It was difficult for them to move the disc with any kind of flow, but the rookies and tryouts had to step up and be primary cutters with our experienced players having to play behind the disc. This gave us a great opportunity to see how they would handle the pressure of good defenders and having to think on their feet. They all managed to make good things happen out there. Unfortunately, they were not consistent enough to keep the game close and despite moving into the lead at the start they were not able to maintain that pace and fell behind to lose by a bunch. To their credit, SB has some sick athletes and we weren't able to deal with them all. I expect that a full squad and some strategy that goes beyond the bare minimum will make a substantial difference. We'll have to see. The second game for team Y was against SB X who lost to Stanford X in the other quarters game. Team Y struggled throughout this one as Solon took the game off to nurse a groin injury and thus we were down to 2 A teamers. We lost it something like 15-4. It was a tough one to swallow, but the rookies got some great exposure.

Team X, on the other hand, was out to show that the combo of Josh Wiseman and Robbie Cahill will be tough to beat this year. With a little help from the other guys those two were just making folks look silly. The score board didn't look silly though, b/c SB had some ballers on that squad too. In the end, Stanford X scored a come from behind victory and a date with SB Y in the semis. The semis was another game that centered on the big play. Stanford and SB both put up big throws to their athletes expecting them to come down with it, and often they were right. The throws were not always high quality and that led to some exciting jumping matches. The score was mostly trading after halftime until SB managed to pull ahead by a break. Then the cap went on, a few more trades later and we were pulling to SB at double game point. They put up a big throw to their sickest athlete and he came down with it. 13-12 SB X.

Now, as much as I hate losing to Santa Barbara, I was happy that we weren't going to be playing another game. My boys were tired and another game would have meant the potential for more injuries.

So, I think that most of our remaining questions about the tryouts were answered, and it's a good thing too, with team selection going down soon. A couple of guys were big question marks going into the weekend and I think that we've sorted that out. By this point I am confident about who I want on the team, and I am once again stoked for the coming season. I know that the rookies will take this team to a new level, by challenging the vets, and running us all into the ground. They will all make plays and have big moments. The real season is about to start and I couldn't be more excited.

My next post will probably cover personal updates, and after that you can expect a review of the rookies that we selected.

2005-11-14T16:16:00.000-08:00

Sean Ryan

The biggest tryout event of the fall went down this past weekend. We had a few hiccups along the way, but in the end we got everything we wanted out of the weekend. Well, almost. There was one dude who we wanted to see b/c we were still considering him for the A-team. However, he didn't show and so he's out. In a miraculous turn of events it rained in the week before SR and managed to clear up for the actual event, leaving us with sunny skies and nice soft turf.

Amanda and I rolled up to Roble field Saturday morning, at about 6:28, to see a few disconsolate souls sitting on the curb. We were the first drivers to show up. A nice turn out when we're supposed to be meeting at 6:45. In any case, over the next half hour more bodies show up and pile into cars to be sent on their way. We eventually come to the realization that we've got way more car spaces than we do players, when we were expecting to be short on rides. It seems that 14 out of 48 guys, who signed up, decided not to show. Instead of feeling betrayed we just felt happy, because this made things easier.

An hour later, after yet another repeat of the route to SC that I've driven at least 35 time in the last two years, we were assembling on the lower fields and trying to determine where we would be playing. The players would be facing a chilly morning with a fairly still wind. If you don't know already let me tell you that Roble field, where we practice 99% of the time, is a terrible place to get used to throwing in the wind. As a result I was a little concerned that the wind would a) cause us to lose (not that important) and b) not allow us to play well enough for the tryouts to really show their stuff. I should not have been concerned. Our guys handled the wind pretty well, at least no worse than the other teams.

We were split into teams X and Y each team had about 14-17 players and out of those 4-5 were A-team returners. So with 10-12 rookies or B-teamers on each squad, there would be ample chances for them to step up and show us something. In fact if we were to win some games it would be a necessity.

Team Y started out against Santa Cruz Y and ended up winning by a few in a game dominated by the wind. Next they played Davis X and crushed impressively. I had peeked over a few times during the SC game and Davis had looked pretty good beating up on Cal. The last game for Y was the old grudge match against Cal. Boo was not there and with some a few other big contributors not playing that was a bad sign. Y ended up winning by three as they let Cal score a couple once it got to game point. A pretty good day for the Y team as they avoid the crossover round and head home at 2pm with a double bye to end the day. There were solid contributions from the rookies, pretty much as we expected. The ones that we thought would stand out did so. I guess what I mean is that there were no surprises on team Y. One player did step up a bit more than I expected and I am still giving him some consideration, although I believe that I am in the minority, and it won't make much of a difference when the teams are picked.

Team X began their day in a similar way, with a game against SC X instead of Y. It was a sound spanking administered by X however, because their first round bye gave the wind a chance to die down a bit. Unfortunately, a third round bye had team X cooling down immediately after a their heartening win. So, after lunch it was down to the lower fields to play against Santa Barbara X. This game was a barn burner and I missed the ending in which SB came out on top on double game point. Next up was LPC, and the let down from the SBX loss was obvious as LPC came out and took half 7-2. After a great fireup half time speech from Jack, the boys came out gunning on D and forced a number of turns and even punched a few of them in for scores. We managed to claw back to 7-9 and 8-10, but couldn't close that final gap down and ended up losing by a few. So we would have to play in the dreaded crossover game which was essentially a pre-quarters game. Our opponent was Chico, a team that usually lives and dies by the big play. I told the boys to watch for hucks and attack any disc that floats even a little bit. I can't even remember if the game was close, but I know we got capped and won without any anxiety on my part.

This post is taking a long time so consider this Part I and expect Part II soon.

2005-11-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

Who's got the right stuff?

And what stuff exactly do we need? This year? Next year? Three years from now?

We are nearing the crux time of our team selection process, and the field has been narrowed down quite a bit. At this point some of the tryouts have stood out above the rest, some have faded after showing intial promise, some have exploded in way none of us expected, and some remain enigmas tantalizing us with glimpses of potential. With 20 players returning from last year it would seem that we should only select new players based on potential. But with nearly half of those 20 returners recovering from or nursing injuries, come spring we may need to rely on the rookies more than we think now. So, do we plan for the future and potentially lose an advantage for this year? Or do we try to make the team as good as possible for the current season at the risk of weaker/less experienced teams in a few years?

I believe that the benefit of taking a player with great physical abilities but minimal knowledge of the game, is huge. We have a player now who is 6'4" and blazingly fast, and he's a sophemore. Last year, he spent most of the season learning and wasn't able to contribute in the big games. However, he had and still has an awesome attitude towards learning the game, and he is lightyears ahead of where he would have been if he was on the B-team last year. We would likely have lost him entirely if we hadn't taken him on the A-team. Now this year he will be able to step into a very effective role, and in the next 2-3 years he will most likely blow up all over the NW region.

This is a testament to the effectiveness of taking a player for the future. Obviously there are some guys who are slam dunks. Rookies who start out impressive and only get better. That's the easy part. The hard part is figuring out what guy are going to develop into stars (or at least effective contributors) and which are never going to get the game.

Because of the relatively free flowing nature of ultimate, the best players have to have a feel for the game that allows them to improvise and make decisions with out having the possible plays scripted out for them. How can you tell if a player has that quality while he is still learning the game? Defense helps. If a guy is just following his man around and seems constantly surprised by his man's changes of direction, then you can bet that player hasn't figured out the game yet. If the same thing is happening three weeks later, then some time on the B-team would seem to be called for.

Speaking of the B-team, they are going to be awesome this year, if they can hold on to the rookie that we don't end up taking on the A-team. There are quite a few excellent prospects this year and we are not going to be able to take all of them. The B-team already has a solid base of talented players, and they are going to be stocked up to give some A-teams a run for their money.

Fortunately, for those of us who need to select the new members of Bloodthirsty, we have a big event this weekend that will help to solidify our opinions of the various players still in the running. We are sending two relatively equal strength teams down to Santa Cruz to duke it out with a bunch of other college teams. This will give us tons of time to watch the guys play against some one that they haven't seen before. This is possibly the best source of data we'll get on how our guys will match up when we play real games against other schools. I am psyched to see my boys kick some ass.

For a little note of personal history I was involved in an event at this same Santa Cruz tournament that may never happen again in my ultimate career. In fall 2001 I was trying out for Bloodthirsty, and playing with Stanford X. On Saturday during pool play, we scored 23 points in a row. 2 in row to beat a team I can't recall, followed by a 13 point bageling of UCLA, and then going up 8-0 on UCSB X. Now that was just ridiculous. I'm still not sure how it happened, and I'm pretty sure it'll never happen again, not to me at least.

2005-11-07T13:33:00.000-08:00

Poop as effective signage.

For those of you that don't know, Amanda, Patrick and I went for an overnight hike in Yosemite this weekend. For those of you that don't know Patrick, the following might seem unusual, but for those that do know him it is just classic Pat. The plan was to hike to Tiltill Valley from the parking lot at Hetch Hetchy (hereafter referred to as HH) on Saturday, camp and hike out on Sunday. 8.5 miles in and 8.5 miles out. A couple of cool waterfalls to check out on the way and lots of late fall views of an area of Yosemite that none of us had been to before. Good plan, didn't turn out quite as we expected, but it was fun nonetheless.

On Friday, Amanda and I finished packing up and made a quick stop at Krod's bon voyage party (he is biking to the Bottom of South America), and headed over to pick up Pat. At this point, Pat informed us that he wasn't bringing a tent(... okay...), or a sleeping bag (...are you sure?), but he is bringing a hammock and a blanket (dude... you're going to die.) Pat assured us that he wouldn't die, and so we loaded up the car and drove to Oakdale, where we crashed in Pat's aunt and uncle's guest house. Pat slept on the floor in his blanket and jacket, basically the same gear he was going to sleep out in the next night. He was cold, at sea level, inside. All signs were pointing to an interesting night on Sat. We got up at 6am piled back into the car, and headed over to the Oakdale Cafe, and loaded up on calories for the coming day. After I finished consuming massive amounts of country gravy we were ready to head out to HH. We managed to find the right roads to get to HH despite having never been there before, and we were at the entrance gate by 8:45. The rangers took forever filling out our wilderness permit (no computerized permits at HH in the winter) and renting us a bear canister, but soon enough we were parked in the overnight parking lot. This lot is as far away from the dam as they can get it. Apparently Homeland Security is worried that terrorists are going to blow the HH dam which is San Francisco's water supply. So any cars that are parked near the damn overnight are towed and/or searched.
We took our last chance at running water and flushing toilets, loaded the food in the bear can and strapped on our boots. Since I was the only one of us with an actual backpacking pack I had most of the communal gear (i.e. tent, stove, fuel, food, filter, first aid kit). I was the only one with enough room for that stuff. I was in fact amazed that Amanda was able to fit her sleeping bag, clothes, and thermarest into the bag that she had. I would guess that my bag weighed twice as much as Pat and Amanda's (40lbs to 20lbs) but we'll never know for sure. And so we set off around the reservoir at about 9:40am. It was a nice sunny day, once we got out of the shadow of a mountain to the south of us. Because, the overnight parking lot was so far from the dam (where our trail begins) we had to either, find our way through unknown terrain that might contain a trail and might not, or hoof it along the road (which is a circular loop with us on the opposite side from where we need to go). We chose to pick our way our way directly across the loop, through trees and brush and some smallish cliffs. This was not the easiest choice, but we were still energized (having been hiking all of three minutes) and it was over quickly and we were at the dam. The dam and HH itself were very cool and beautiful too, but I'll have to let pictures do the talking for me. (just as soon as they get downloaded from Amanda's camera)

We started hiking along the north side of HH and quickly notice that the vegetation was similar to high mountains in the Bay Area rather than what were used to in Yosemite. The day was warm and we quickly shed layers. After hiking for a couple of miles we had our first incident that suggested that this trip would be a bit different from our normal experiences in Yosemite. I was leading the way (A&P tended to hike a bit too fast for me if I let the ahead) and I heard a load whooshing sound followed by exclamations of surprise from A&P. Apparently a hawk of some sort had swooped over us by just a few feet. I can't say that I've ever heard a bird make that kind of noise before, it must have been really close.
In a few more miles we reached the point where our trail departed from the shore of the reservoir and headed up into the hills along Rancheria Creek. Soon after we stopped for lunch, and chowed down on trail mix, power bars, beef jerky, and dried mango. Amanda applied some vaseline to her heels to prevent some blisters that were threatening, and we hit the trail again at about 1:05. We had about 3 miles to go to get to Tiltill Valley, pretty much all up hill. I took the lead, because I had a good idea of where we were going. We made it up to the intersection where we were turning left (north) to Tiltill quickly and started up. The switchbacks began almost immediately and I was breathing heavy and sweating just as quickly. A&P continued to let me lead the way, presumably so that I wouldn't be embarassed by not being able to keep up with them. Thirty switchbacks later we arrived at the top of the trail, and all that was left for the day was a half mile downhill into Tiltill Valley. So after a brief stop to let me catch my breath, we headed down into the valley. After a few hundred yard or so we came across a pile of animal scat that was definitely not from a horse, but must have be from an animal of similar size. Uh-oh, that's bear poop.

We decided that it's just a pile of crap, ignore it and keep walking. Well, we passed a few more piles on the way down into the valley. As we switchbacked down to the valley floor we passed through a stand of aspens that were mostly bare. A few were still clinging to some golden yellow leaves, we were about two or three weeks too late to see what must have been a beautiful display of color. One of the few drawbacks to living in California is the lack of fall colors on the trees. I didn't realize how much I missed them until we got a little taste this weekend. In any case when we hit the valley floor we noticed that there was still some frost on the ground, at 2:30pm. This meant that the sun never hit the ground on the south side of the valley. Not a good sign for Patrick and his blanket. The map showed a trail intersection in the middle of the valley so we decided to head to that point and try to figure out where to camp. At that point we made some clever jokes about stopping at the gas station and asking the locals for some advice. We would come to find out that the advice was "camp somewhere else unless you want us to eat you and/or your food."

Once at the intersection we couldn't see any obvious places to camp or to get clean water. The map showed a stream farther along one of the trails leaving the intersection. So, we headed down that path. It crossed to the north side of the valley and started to head west along a jumble of boulders. The path was very overgrown at that point. In addition, there was so much bear crap on the trail that we just couldn't ignore it. Seriously, it was like every twenty feet there was another pile. And then, Patrick saw a bear in the boulders. It was a little guy and it ducked into cover immediately, but that was enough for us. We turned around and retreated to the intersection. Upon reaching the intersection we discussed what to do. Fortunately it was only 3:00pm and we had a couple hours left until dark. So we decided to hightail it back down the 3 miles to Rancheria falls where there was a few campsites and we had not seen any bears. So this time Amanda took the lead and adrenaline fueled her legs, as she tore up the switchbacks out of the valley at a pace that quickly left me in the dust. After, a few stops to let me catch up we reached the end of the up hill and began descending back to Rancheria Creek. After we walked downhill for about 150 yards, Patrick saw another bear. This one was about 200ft off the trail to the left and 60ft up on some rocks. And it was watching us.

After a brief pause to look at the bear (another little guy), and this time we all got a good look at it, we gunned it down all 30 switchbacks to the campsites near Rancheria Creek. Fortunately we saw the bear heading in a different direction as we took off. So our 8.5 mile hike for Sat. turned into more like 12 miles, some of them at a pretty good pace. We picked out a campsite and set up, filtering water and collecting firewood before it got too dark. We ate dinner around the fire and Amanda made smores for dessert. Patrick set up his hammock, and then installed a trip wire around it.
After a while by the fire, Pat and I went out to find enough firewood to last through the night. A few bumps and bruises later we had a pretty good pile. Pat decided to sleep in the dirt by the fire. So, he heated up some rocks next to the and the used them to warm up the ground that he would be sleeping on. He used one of them as a pillow. Amanda and I repaired to our tent, wishing Pat good luck. We managed to sleep pretty well in the tent, waking up from time to time and seeing that the fire was still going. At about 5:30am Amanda and I were both woken up by a rough barking noise that sounded like a very large animal. We heard something moving around, and saw the light Pat's flashlight shining in different directions. About 30 seconds later we heard, "Good Morning... That was me. A coyote hit me in the head."

Turns out Pat hadn't been able to sleep much due to concern over the possibility of waking up to find a bear licking the smores out of his beard. I got up and went down to the river to filter some water for breakfast, and Pat managed to doze off while I was gone. When I got back, he and Amanda were both up and about. We had some breakfast and packed up our gear. Then we headed down to the river to scramble up the rocks towards the falls. We spent about an hour playing around on the racks and contemplating jumping off cliffs into some pretty deep pool. Fortunately we didn't have to test the depth of the water, because it was a little too cool out for the ice cold water to be inviting. Once we reached the top of the falls we walked back down the trail to our campsite, grabbed our gear, and headed back to the car.

The day was, unfortunately, not as beautiful as Saturday, but it was fine weather for hiking anyways, and we made good time despite frequently scanning nearby cliff tops for signs of wolves or mountain lions (we figured that they were the only native animals we had missed so far). We covered the 6 or so miles back to the car in 3 hours and without incident. We got into the car and peeled of boots and sweaty clothes. Patrick promptly crawled into the back seat and fell asleep. We informed the rangers at the gate about our bear encounters, and the response was "Hunh." (Hetch Hetchy Park Rangers: We don't care, as long as you don't blow up the dam.)

So five hours and a stop at In n' Out later and we were home. Our reward? Our downstairs neighbor Greg had spent the weekend going crabbing and he had caught the limit on Sunday. So after showing them off to us (we were suitably impressed) he promised to send up a couple for us to eat. Sure enough, an hour and a half later we were dining on fresh dungeness crab. Not too shabby a weekend.

(Possible meanings of a bear poop sign:
Keep Out
Private Property
No Trespassing
Trespassers will be eaten to the fullest extent of the Law
Here lies Joe Hiker: Rest In Pieces)

PS I know black bears don't eat people, I'm just trying to be funny.

2005-11-01T16:19:00.000-08:00

Nobody comments on my posts. That's cool, at least my mom reads it. (HI MOM!!)

Halloween Tourney

Stanford Ultimate held the annual tourney yesterday. Coed Ultimate with costumes and a keg. I fabulous experience for everyone. Each team has a costume theme, and mine had the theme of childhood cartoon characters. This had the unfortunate side effect of bringing home to me how much younger these players are compared to me. Sometimes, I forget about the age difference and just think about it in ultimate experience level. However, the mention of Doug as a possible childhood cartoon was my first hint that there is nearly a full generation gap between me and this years freshmen. Well, I showed up with no costume so I had to improvise with whatever extras other people had brought. I found a gigantic afro-style wig and a furry coat, and boom I'm Hair Bear! Unfortunately, no one else had heard of Hair Bear. In fact most people thought that I made him up. I found one older grad student who said he had head of Hair Bear but he may have thought I said Care Bear. When I got home asked Amanda if she had heard of Hair Bear and she said no too. That really doesn't mean much though, because Amanda spent most of her childhood doing healthy things like running through the woods behind her house and making up dances to her favorite 80's songs. And even when she was sitting in front of the TV she and her sister were certainly watching "The Man from Snowy River" or some other similarly horse themed movie. Well Hair Bear is a real cartoon, and here's a website with some info for all you doubters.

So, lots of drinking and hanging out with a bit of ultimate thrown in for when you get bored with the other activities. It was nice however to see a few of the old timers from my era show up to throw a few turnovers for old times sake. K-rod, Zack Wyatt and Handler were all there to really show those youngun's how to throw no look lefty scoobers into the ground 10 yards from you intended receiver. Actually, that may have been only me. Zack was definitely showing a need to get out for some more exercise; because a) he is pasty white, and b) he was winded, at the HALLOWEEN TOURNEY.

Of course the Halloween tourney is special because it's one of only two or three opportunities a month to get to see Doug looking like this:

2005-10-31T09:45:00.000-08:00

1 out of 3 ain't bad

So Champies finished up over the weekend. I had thought that Fury was looking good , but they managed to lose of Backhoe pretty badly in the semis. I don't know what the problem was and I can't speculate acurately from the other side of the country. I thought that their offense let them down, but Amanda said that it was the D. I guess you can't tell very much from the score. Backhoe went on to be stomped by Riot in the Finals.

Jam also managed to lose in the semis. They coughed up a 5-0 lead to Furious at the beginning of the game and failed to fully recover before the game was over. They did tie it up at 11-11 but it takes a lot of effort to get those breaks back, and frankly it just gives the other team too many chances to score. I guess you just can't do that against Furious. Furious edged Sockeye in the finals. If you told me that Furious would have won the title back in April there's no way I would have believed you. Frankly, I am still amazed that they managed to rebuild so much and play so well. Congratulations to them on a truly impressive feat.

Brass Monkey on the other hand did indeed win the Championship. I am not surprised in the least. I told them back in June that they were the best Coed team anywhere and I meant it. I hope they can properly savor the moment and avoid the post tournament let down. In the finals they were down, 9-11 maybe, but then they turned on the turbo and won 15-11. It's nice to have a roster full of studs like they do.

Coaching #4
Friday's practice with sort of a disaster on the organizational side. Turns out we were about 60 Stanford Fund letters short of our quota and they were due at 5:00. So we had to try to have practice while 15 guys were sitting on a couple of cars and writing letters. (I asked if we knew whose cars they were, answer: no. ) However, in the end practice couldn't have worked out any better for me. This is because from 5:30 on we played shtick. Shtick is kind of like reverse capture the flag. To score you have to get the disc to stop in a 3x3 yard square. You can run with the disc but once you cross on to the other teams end of the field if they tag you must drop the disc and the other team gets it. You can throw to your teammates at any time. (If you want a better description of the rules just email me.) So why is this good for me. Well it is fun and different and therefore exciting. But on top of that, most of the players were newbies and B-teamers since the A-teamers were mostly out of commission or absent. This resulted in me being a pretty dominant force, and that's always fun. I believe my team won 5-2, and I had 2 goals and 2 assists. Personal entertainment aside, it seemed to me that Shtick was actually a great evaluator of rookies too. Disc skills were not as important as raw athletic ability relative to ultimate, and some of the guys who we had been sort of looking at from a few tryouts seemed to really stand out when playing shtick. It really helped me to solidify my opinion of their athletic abilities. In the end it was fun and enlightening.

2005-10-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

Nationals from Afar

I find myself glued to the Scoreomatic website today watching for new updates on the outcome of the power pool games. Fury did as I expected, unfortunately. They stomped another team in the first game of the day and then faced yet another game against Riot. And yet again they lost. I'm not really sure why Fury has crumbled when facing Riot lately, but they've been doing it on a regular basis this year. Most of the games haven't even been close. It makes no sense to me, the athletic difference is certainly not that great (it might even lean in Fury's favor), and Fury has the throwers... I am forced to conclude that it is mental. However, this gives us (the Fury fans) reason for hope. Mental problems can be overcome much more quickly than any physical disparities. Unfortunately, mental issues are also more difficult to surmount. When I look at the score of the game from half time and the final, I see another sign of hope. At half time the game was 8-3 and in the end the score was 15-10 that means a second half score of 7-7. Not exactly what they needed to win but much better than the previous half and previous games. It could be that after 4 games in a row of crushing their opponents, Fury needed time to get themselves into their highest competitive gear. I hope that was the case, because they'll need it tomorrow. It's hard to tell at this point who they'll be playing, but Riot's on the other side of the bracket so they won't have to play them again until the finals. That should be plenty of time to get geared up on the field and in their heads.

Jam has held seed so far, winning their pool yesterday and today. However the victory against Bravo was a close run thing as it appears they pulled out a one point overtime win on a greatest goal after surrendering and early lead. Whoever they had covering Beau was not quite good enough as it appears that Beau scored 6 goals in the game. Furious and Sockeye duked it out for the lead in their power pool and Sockeye came out on top by a couple. The NW open teams
seem to be well on their way to a repeat 1,2,3 performance with only Bravo looking like they might want to crash the party. I'm going to stick with my pick of Jam for the title this year, mostly causes there's no reason not to.

Brass Monkey just lost the number 1 seed for the championship bracket, to of all teams, Slow White and the 7 Dwarves. I'm not sure how that happened (14-13 final score). SWat7D is tearing up the tournament coming from a four seed in their Thursday pool to unseat the number one seed overall. I guess I've been away from the East Coast scene for a while, but I am still a bit suspicious of any team in which BU is prominently involved. I mean URI (in it's current reincarnation) got it's first win ever against BU. Oh well, if Brian Suaro has jumped on the bandwagon they must be good. Mischief seems to have lost all their games so far (even if they were all pretty close), it's sad but I think they are mostly just happy to be there. Whore$hack must be benefiting from the presence of one Lefty Tim b/c they are kicking up quite a fuss, and have put themselves into a good position for quarters.

Beginner's Rock Climbing

Holy crap. I thought that I was in pretty good shape. I just came off a season of ultimate and I'm not far from my (regrettably small) peak condition. I've been doing a smattering of pushups here and there. All these means is that that the experience of taking beginning rock climbing is even more humbling than it would be under normal circumstances. I mean, I can do a few pullups without much training. I should be able to just climb the wall like a ladder. HA! What an incredibly naive view that was!! I now go to class hoping that I might make it to the top of the wall on one of my three or four attempts. I also hope that I can high enough on all my attempts so that when I fall off my belayer actually has to catch me (with the rope) rather than just having my feet hit the ground immediately. There are a number of parts of me that need to be a lot stronger before I do even a #2 rated route (the rating system goes from 0-7). Most notably my fingers they get tired and sore after a class and they are so clumsy I can barely hold a pen or water cup. It's kind of ridiculous.

Coaching section #3
Last night we held official office hours at the Treehouse. It wasn't as bad as it seems looking back. In fact it was kind of funny. I mean when you have your twentieth 8 minutes long meeting in a row and you're saying essentially that same thing to one guy that you said to the last guy, it better make you laugh or else your going to cry. Unfortunately, although there are a number of ways to make the A team, most of those ways are not open to the vast majority of our tryouts. What is open to every one of them is Defense. We will never feel like we have surplus of defenders. We are always looking for more guys with the potential to be great defenders. Defense wins championships, right? The plain fact of the matter is that if you can't defend well, we don't want you. Now some people will point to Dan Maidenberg as the classic example of an all offense player. However, in his best years Maids was the smartest and most active defender on the team. Now this doesn't mean that he was the best, because he wasn't. But he wasn't the worst, even though he was the slowest, he moved his feet constantly getting into the best position and was always ready to react to any cut. He had to do this to make up for his lack of speed.

Now, Maids had some pretty special skills in the throwing department, and a certain defensive deficiency could be overlooked. No one who is trying out for us this year has those kinds of skills, so we are looking for fast competent guys who can show some aptitude for D. Fast guys who already know how to play D are good, as are super fast guys who show good potential. Ideally we would have some superfast guys who already know how to play D, but those guys are already on the team. The tryout process is wide open, and there are at least 10-15 guys that are getting serious consideration. Needless to say there are a lot fewer available spots. I certainly hope that the next few weeks can narrow things down a bit.

2005-10-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

What do you do with 15 guys at practice?

Coaching section #2
Yesterday we had 15 guys at the start of practice. We made it up to 18 by the end, which is still not a large number, but is enough to have a decent scrimmage or two. Of course if you count all the long and short term injured guys that we had standing on the sidelines we had a nice total of about 28. So the question is, if you've got low numbers at practice what do you do?
Later on in the season I would have no problem doing lots of drills and some three on three work. However, we are currently in the tryout process , and it is hard get a decent evaluation of a players abilities/potential from drills. And sometimes it is just plain difficult to remember appropriate drills for short numbers when you are trying to revamp a practice plan on the fly because you've realized that the plan you made on Monday isn't going to work.
Too much ultimate with short numbers becomes tiring, and then sloppy, and then once again useless in terms of evaluation. Yesterday's weather was not helpful either, cold and damp is not great weather for less active drills because muscles that were once warm quickly become cold and in danger of cramping or worse pulls and strains. On the other hand, the more active drills are themselves tiring, and thus they reduce the quality of the ultimate even further. All in all it is a difficult situation to deal with. Mostly I just hope it doesn't happen too often because if it does I'll run out of worthwhile drills.

Nationals has begun this morning and the one score for Amanda's team is even more lopsided than I expected, a 15-3 stomping of Bonogo. Seeing as Homebrood beat up on Safari (the other two teams in their pool), and Fury has been stomping Homebrood habitually for the past three or four years, it would seem that Fury will probably cruise through to today's pool into tomorrow's match up with Riot in the power pool.
In other divisions there are a number of interesting upsets brewing. Chain is currently holding onto a lead over DoG, and it seems that Twisted Metal beat the Condors in overtime and now the Condors are losing to Doublewide. If they do lose it will make the Doublewide vs Metal game very interesting. Jam and Brass Monkey (The other two teams I am following closely b/c of the friends I have on the team) appear to be cruising (but not crushing) as expected.

2005-10-26T10:46:00.000-07:00

Well, Amy started a blog and I wanted to comment so I had to have a blog too. I may never post again, but maybe I will. This blog will (if there is ever another post) center on the things that I spend most of my time on: Coaching (and sometimes playing) Ultimate and Researching Chemistry. I guess I can give an intro in to both those things a bit later, but some of the things that you will come to be familiar with after reading a few posts are: my propensity for using parentheses even when not strictly necessary (two sets so far.. three), my impotent ambitions towards mountaineering (mountains climbed = 2), my strong desire to always find the word with exact connotation that I am looking for and thus using "big words" ( I promise that I never look anything up in the thesaurus it's all straight out of my head), and among other things my lack of motivation to workout on my own. Oh, and bad spelling, you'll become well acquainted with the number of spelling errors that can sneak by a spell checker.

(Personal News at the bottom)

Coaching section #1
This year I am the head coach of the men's ultimate team here at Stanford. This is the fourth year since I played for Stanford, and my second year coaching the team. Last year I was an assistant coach, which seemed to workout pretty well. I sort of offered my services to Dan Maidenberg who had been the head coach for two years until life caught up with him and he no longer had the time to put in this year. Well, he and the captains accepted my offer and I was welcomed by the team. I mostly just ran practices when Maids couldn't be there. I attended all practices, helped out running drills, and attended all the tournaments too. It was invaluable experience, I would be completely lost this year if I had not had last years experience. I'd like to think that I helped out too, because we had our heads up our asses up until right before sectionals last year and at a team meeting Maids and I were able to talk some fire into the boys and they didn't lose another game until the semis at nationals.
We're in a very interesting situation this year. We've got 20 of 24 players returning from last years team. We will have a very good team. So much so that if I can't prepare the team well enough to win nationals I will consider my job to be a failure. And that is my job this year, I have to prepare the team and give them the tools to win. I give them the opportunity to get strong enough to win, they have to do that part themselves.
Fortunately for me I am not alone in my attempt to prepare the team and load their guns with the right ammunition. In addition to a very strong internal leadership corps within the team, I will have help from Maids whenever he has the time, and two guys who were huge part of last years team: Nick Handler and James Herbert. I consider Nick to be a good friend, circumstances have perhaps prevented us from becoming better friends, but nonetheless he is a good friend, a great guy, and more importantly for this discussion a f***ing incredible ultimate player. I have played for Nick's club team for the last two years and he has been amazing against some of the best players in the world. Cries of "Don't let the f***ing midget score on us again!" have been heard all over the Northwest. He is a very smart player and he will be a great motivator for us when he gets back from Africa. James has graduated from Angry Ex-Captain to Angry Coach, and will be providing some much needed yelling this year. I am unable to muster as much anger and volume as James and I am excited to have him around to fill in my silences. James of course is an awesome ultimate player too and has been playing with Jam for two years now. He should return from Florida is about 5 days with a Champies title (at least that's my prediction.)
Right now we are in the process of selecting the team for the year. Like I said we've got 20 returners, and so we've had some debate about how many rookies were going to take. I am leaning towards a large team. The only issue with a large team is playing time, and I think that that is my problem. I'm pretty sure I can handle that without too much fuss. There are two guys who are pretty much locks to make the team and after that it is very up in the air with at least 12 other guys with some chance to make it. I will not discuss anymore this since it is remotely possible that someone associated with the team will eventually read this.
Okay I think that's more than enough ultimate for now. It seems I've got lots to say so I might return to this blog after all.

Chemistry section #1
I'm going to guess that this section won't be as frequently posted to or even read, but I think I should give it a stab anyways. I am a PhD student in the dept. of Chemistry I've nearly reached the stage where I refer to myself as an nth year student, but I can still get 5th year out when I'm asked. I might be a bit embarrassed if I hit my 7th year, but I don't think that'll happen. I think Dick is planning to get me out of here well before that. My research centers on the development of a new test for the detection of EPO. If you don't know what EPO is you're not alone. However, I bet that just about anyone who's reading this knows who Lance Armstrong is. You might also know that he has recently been accused of taking performance enhancing drugs (doping), and the drug he is accused of taking is EPO. EPO promotes the production of red blood cells and thus booths your oxygen transport abilities and that helps your endurance.
Because EPO is produced naturally in the body any test to detect the drug from on EPO must be able to differentiate between the natural human form and the non-human drug form. We are trying to use three different methods of separation to perform our identification. We will first separate the EPO from all other proteins in the sample by immunoaffinity. An immobilized antibody specific to EPO binds the EPO as the sample flows over it. Second we will release the antibody after the rest of the sample is gone and perform capillary electrophoresis (CE), a method that separates molecules by their mobility in an electric field. Thirdly we will perform mass spectrometry (MS) on the molecules to determine their mass. This mass separation is the last step. So we'll separate EPO from the sample, then separate the different forms EPO in time with CE and by mass with MS.
So far we are working on the first level of separation, because for our lab that part is the most challenging and unexplored. EPO is bloody expensive (1.3 billion dollars per kg) so were are practicing on less expensive molecules that have similar properties to EPO. Things have been going quite well recently in that area and we are nearly ready to try to couple the first and second levels of separation (still using the practice molecule). I'm not going to go into too much detail unless I get some questions.

Personal News section #1
Depending on my eventual audience this will end up being the most read or least read section of the blog.
Amanda (or maybe to you it's Dea) and I got married just over six months ago. Things are still awesome. She has been the single greatest force in improving my personality. I owe most of my interpersonal relationship skills to her, not to mention a ton of other things. But I am a fairly different person compared to what I was before. For one, I am rarely ever an assh*le anymore. That's nice. I'd like to think that I have been able to improve her life too, but I let her be the judge of that (I'm assuming that marrying me is a good endorsement, but maybe in today's society that's no longer a good general assumption.) Amanda should be bringing back Champies trophy too, provided her team can figure out how to beat the Seattle girls. I hopefully optimistic about it though, I'm sure the eighth time's the charm... or something.
We have two cats, a guy, Lancelot and a girl, Cleopatra. Those names are fitting to their personalities (contrary to what I used to believe cats DO have personalities), but we just call them Lance and Cleo. They are indoor cats and we are constantly trying to figure out how to keep them from getting fat while also keeping them from constantly crying to be fed.
I'm taking a rock climbing class at the new climbing gym on campus. It is a fairly humbling experience. I've been getting better and better at ultimate and it's interesting to go out and suck at something. Perhaps this will motivate me to workout a bit more.
I am trying to get out to into the great outdoors a bit more often. I am fully equipped to go backpacking finally and I have already gone on one four day 36 mile trip in and around Yosemite with one of my labmates. I'm hoping to turn a Amanda into a backpacking partner, along with any other friends I can trick into going out into the woods. I have an unfortunate desire to hike far and fast, which doesn't mesh well with Amanda's desires to stroll and take pictures. I'm sure we'll work it out. But some of my more ambitious plans may require crazier partners. Ambitious plan #1 is to climb all of the California 14ers (14,000 mountains). There are 15 of them in CA, some gung-ho dude has done all of them in three and a half days. Not being an experienced mountaineer I expect it'll take me a bit longer, more like 3.5 years. Ambitious plan #2 is to solo hike the John Muir trail. It's 216 miles from Yosemite Valley to Mt. Whitney. Should take me 14-20 days, but don't be fooled. It is one of the most highly trafficked sections of trail in the Sierras so despite my being solo, there will probably be hikers around quite frequently in case something dire happens.

I'll call it quits for now, let me know if you have any questions for next time...