Random Photo of the Day

Truth in advertising. I love this photo. To many of my ultimate pictures are boring profile photos because I'm forced to take them from the sidelines. I got lucky with this one and was able to sneak away and shoot this from behind the endzone, hence the straight on perspective.

Tough calls

I’m dropping Ultimate to one night a week.

Four years ago I was living with one of my roommates and playing Ultimate with my core group of friends. Now obviously, I live with my wife and my friends have stopped playing game. And, for whatever reason, I haven’t been able to duplicate the camaraderie of the group I first started playing with on another team. I think it may be that the original Ulti team started out as a rec squad before moving to the intermediate level.

Now days all I play is intermediate and the personalities involved are more competitive, less social.

And frankly I miss my friends.

Da Flick

I love this picture. It looks like I’ve got tremendous amounts of air.

So apparently I can flick now, just not in a game.

It started a couple weeks ago, I was horsing around in the backyard with my brother-in-law, just tossing a disc and for shits and giggles I decided to try flicking to him. After a few wayward throws I settled down into a nice rhythm. No one was more shocked than I was. This may seem like a rather minor victory to you, but in the four years I’ve been playing Ultimate I have yet to throw a flick with anything approaching distance, accuracy and success.

It’s become a standing joke. I can chuck a hammer, which is a more difficult throw that utilizes the same principles as the flick, but I can’t throw a flick itself.

A couple days later I tried to throw a flick during a game and it was the same old story.

So after the game a bunch of us were tossing the disc and once again I started trying to flick and it worked. Near as I can figure, I’m over thinking the throw during the game, trying to hard to force it work.

So my game plan is to warm up with flick almost exclusively and create some muscle memory. That way when I make the throw during the game it’ll happen automatically.

Well, that’s the plan anyway.

Boo-friggity-hoo

I’ve been re-examining my relationship with Ultimate Frisbee, that fickle bitch, for the last couple weeks or so.

It hasn’t been fun times for me on the Frisbee circuit lately.

Back in April I was complaining about how most of the people I started out playing the game with have had to retire or move on to other things. As I continue to play without them I realize how lucky I was to fall in with the group in first place. I might never have stuck with the game through those gawd-awful first months, where I was fat, out of shape and coughing up the remnants of my lungs after a decade of huffing the smokes, without the camaraderie and spirit the originals brought to the sport.

We were never, EVER, powerhouses but we won enough games to keep us happy and we were always competitive enough to at least challenge the other teams.

I play twice a week in the warmer months. This summer I joined a Tuesday team that’s a little more competitive than most. But in order to inflate some of our numbers a little, and mitigate our playing costs, we picked up some players who can’t at the same level as the bulk of the team. That means the handlers on the team avoid passing to them if they can avoid it. This, rightly so, leads to hurt feelings, bruised egos and team friction. So instead of tipping a pint or two after the game we all sullenly slink back to our cars and repeat the whole process again next week.

I captain Thursday’s team which is a sort of Longshot’s lite. Over the last four years we’ve been adding a new player here and a new player there and now I’m the only one left from the original group. This new group lacks the cohesion of the original bunch. They come or go as they please and quite often the team is very different from season to the next. We’re barely one step up from a bunch of individuals who’ve just gotten together to form a team. And right now we’re losing, a lot…and badly to boot.

After a great winter finish we had our traditional turnover and we lost a couple of out better players. This means that we can’t compete like we used to. So people are less interested in coming out or sticking around and it’s getting hard to keep anyone with any skill around. Add to the fact that the Thursday fields are as hard as hell to get to and people just don’t want to bother with having to struggle to get to a game they’re destined to get their ass kicked at anyway. It wears them down mentally.

I don’t have to win. I just want to be competitive.

We’re a rec team in an intermediate division.

So what can I do? Right now I’m speaking to people well in advance about putting together a fall team. I’m not writing off this season, but if I want to avoid another stinker I need to start lining things up now.

And on Thursday I’m going to call in every ringer I can. If I can get some serious handlers and players to come out then maybe we can start being competitive again and turn people’s spirits around. I’m also going to try to switch divisions so that we can play on fields that are a little more accessible.

It may not work, it may fail horribly and I could find myself in an even worse situation when the fall comes around. If that’s the case I’m going to need to blow up the team and see if I’m lucky enough to strike gold as an individual (avec S of course) a second time out.

We shall see.

Speechify

Bleh.

Speech last night didn't go as well as I'd hoped. Deliverly wise I didn't get any negative feedback. But I came in at 4 minutes on a 5 minute speech. Which wasn't good, considering that I'd be coming in a 4.5 minutes during rehearsal. And that was without my visual aids.

So either I raced through the speech like a small town driver on a back road or I jettisoned a fifth of my speech.

Query. Which is worse, being a minute short, or two minutes over? I'm inclined to say the former.

Anyway here's the speech.

I’ve been playing Ultimate Frisbee for a little over four years now and I’m often asked to run down the basics of the game to interested individuals. The best way I’ve found to describe the sport is that it’s a combination between basketball and football, only played with a Frisbee disc.

Like basketball, Ultimate Frisbee teams place five players on the field. Each individual player is allowed to have contact with, handle and throw the disc in any direction they choose. However, a key departure between Ultimate Frisbee and basketball is that when a player is in possession of a disc they must have one foot planted on the ground at all times. Players are absolutely not allowed to run with the disc.

Ultimate Frisbee’s football influences come primarily from the makeup of the field the game is played on, as well as how points are scored during the game. As in football, there is larger a field of play sandwiched between two smaller end zones. Players attempt to move the disc up and down the field of play towards the other team’s end zone. Teams acquire a single point at a time by catching the disc in the opposing team’s end zone.

Now that I’ve outlined the basics of how they game is played I’m going to demonstrate the three most common throws.

The first throw is called the backhand and I imagine that its one most people in the class might recognize. The backhand is the simplest throw there is in the game. If you’re tossing a disc at a picnic or just goofing around with friends, chances are you’re throwing the backhand.

To throw the backhand a player will curl all their fingers underneath the lip of the disc and hold it in firmly in place with their thumb on the Frisbee’s topside. To release the disc the player moves their arm across the front of their body and releases the Frisbee with a flick of their wrist just shy of their arm’s maximum extension. This is the most powerful way to throw a backhand. To achieve more accuracy from their throw a player will place their index finger along the rim of the disc. This will make the throw less powerful, but it gives the thrower more control when they release it. The backhand throw is best used for beginning players.

After mastering the backhand most players often choose to learn the forehand throw, more commonly know as the flick. To throw a flick simply make a ‘V’ with your index and middle finger, just like a 60‘s style peace sign. Tuck your middle finger firmly under the rim of the disc and once again the disc is sandwiched firmly in place by your thumb. To release the disc tuck your elbow into your side, rotate your arm so that your wrist faces upward and let go of the disc with a firm snapping motion of your wrist. The majority of the power in this throw comes from your wrist. There should be very little, if any, actual movement of your arm. The flick is the best all-purpose throw in the game, easily thrown over a variety of distances with varying degrees of power.

Now the biggest drawback to these first two throws is that they are released roughly parallel to the field you are playing on. What this means is that if I want to make a backhand throw or a forehand throw to one of my teammates in the end zone I need to make sure there are no opposing players between me and him. Otherwise the chances are fairly high that the opposing player will catch the disc instead of my teammate and we’ll lose possession of the Frisbee.

This is where the third throw I’m going to discuss today comes in, the hammer. To throw a hammer a player grips the disc just like the flick. But that is where the similarity ends. To release a hammer throw the player holds the disc overtop their head at a 90 degree angle, like a plastic Mohawk, and makes a quick cutting motion with their wrist, releasing the Frisbee just in front of their forehead. The hammer is not a very accurate throw and is only really used for larger distances. The major upside to the hammer is that players are able to throw the disc down the entire length of the field, overtop of the heads of their opponents, giving skilled throwers a distinct advantage in playing the game.

Now that you’ve seen the basic throws used in Ultimate Frisbee maybe I’ve enticed you to give the game itself a shot.

I certainly hope so.

Thank you.

Back in the saddle again.

I was away last week at a work conference.

So my posting accordingly dropped to nil.

I'm spending today rotating between editing the second draft of the mag, which looks great, and putting the finishing touches on my second in-class speech. The designer always gives me some initial push back on magazine related editing critiques but then turns in the best re-edits.

That says more about his talent than it does about my edits. He makes my job so much easier.

Anyway tonight's speech is supposed to be a demonstration speech. Think cooking show or infomercial if you want to get a taste of what that entails. So I decided to speak about "The three most commonly used throws in Ultimate Frisbee."

Here's some raw material that I'll be using with the meat of the speech to come later.

Enjoy.

Or not.

The Backhand.

The Forehand (or Flick).

The Hammer.

Spring Tune-up Tourney

So,

We had our annual ultimate spring speed point tournament this weekend. I'm hoping the team name change to Shuffle Monkeys was a fortuitous omen as we did phenomenally well, especially in comparison to some of our previous Longshot showings. We played four round robin games, came in first in the pool, then we had two playoff games. Unfortunately we lost our pool's Championship game to a team that we had just eked out a win against in regular play.

The last game could honestly have gone either way, but the other team's captain made a smart call when choosing which end of the field he wanted to start the game from. He put the wind behind him and we had a really tough completing passes as the wind started to pick up. We battled back from an early deficit, but weren't able to close the gap. It happens.

And this is the first time I've played in one of these tournaments and haven't been completely exhausted at the end of it. I know it's not because of my fitness level, which is somewhat of a joke right now.

One of the crappy things that keeps coming up with this tourney is that there are always teams playing out of their division. Nobody wants to be the Intermediate team getting the snot wailed out of them by a Competitive team, but somehow one always sneaks in. Or, conversely a Recreational team signs up, because they just really want to play, and then they get upset because they're used as a punching bag by all the other teams. This is a recurring problem, and our group has been on the receiving end of it once or twice. No one likes paying money to get humiliated on the field.

Here's my suggestion on how to fix that.

When you create an electronic profile with our league, which is mandatory already, you have to put down what you think your skill level is for whatever sport you’re playing. That way if you sign up for a tournament the league can look at your individual skill levels and surmise what kind of team you think you are and attempt to schedule your games against teams with similar skill sets. It’s not a perfect solution. Some teams and players will have skill levels on the cusp between levels and you’re relying on people to be honest about their abilities. But when you’ve got a whole sport based around self refereeing I think you can rely on the majority of people to be truthful. They want to play against teams in their division.

That’s my two cents and I don’t think it’s that hard to implement.

Shuffle Monkey logo

As promised, here's a first draft of the new Shuffle Monkey's logo.

I'm fairly happy with the text and banana, although in Scott's own words, the frisbee needs a little work.

I think right now the frisbee looks a bit like an upside down dinner plate.

But we're on the right track.

I've been a bad boy

One of the weird quirks about Ultimate is that its self refereed.

90% of the time this isn't a problem, but when you have a close game, or your spot in the standings is in trouble this can lead to some really 'interesting' calls.

Aggressive teams will call anything, in order to try and win an advantage by being litigious. We're generally a pretty easy-go-lucky team, if we feel the call is in a gray zone we'll gladly restart the play.

Well last night didn't go quite as smoothly as I would have liked. The previous week we managed to tie the team we were playing, effectively knocking them out of contention to play for first in the playoffs. This week, due to a scheduling quirk, we played the same team. Only this time, they were a little pissed about being knocked out.

So they decided to call EVERYTHING. Every disc that was on the line, every field movement that might have been a pick, every point that was to close to call.

One of the unwritten rules of the game is when a call is made, only the people on the field can argue. People on the bench stay out of it.

However, there was one player on the other team, we'll call her 'Trucker X' who decided this unwritten rule didn't apply to her. She decided to open her yap and throw in her two cents from wherever she was, the bench, the field, buried underneath her defender. Sarcastic comments, just loud enough to be heard by everyone were her forte.

So everytime she opened her mouth so say something nasty, I shot a sarcastic comment right back across her bow.

We won the game, barely. But it sure wasn't my greatest moment on the field.

Longshots? Shuffle Monkeys.

So.

The Longshots are dead.

Long live the Longshots!!!

In their place? The Shuffle Monkeys.

That’s right I’m folding the Longshot team name for Ultimate Frisbee. Too many of the people I first started playing with have left the game.

One couple had a baby, half of another couple now commutes between Canada and Oz (not the country, the mythical land) and half of yet another couple has been racked by injuries and can’t afford to take the risk of injuring themselves again. Even S has hung up her cleats for the summer, not wanting to risk an injury herself with the upcoming wedding. Essentially the core is has broken up and only a handful of original Longshot-ers remain.

I thought the time was right to start from scratch. So for the upcoming Speed Point tourney and regular season we’re getting new shirts with new logos.

I’d post our old logo, but it’s buried somewhere on my hard drive.

I’ve got Scottie W. working on a new logo which I hope to have sometime in the next couple weeks. I’ll post photos when I have them.