Credit Ultimate

I have a standing list of assignments students can do for extra credit in my classes.  One of the assignments is to organize an ultimate frisbee game that includes me.  They have to get together at least 13 people and secure a field such that we can play for at least an hour.  I give them an extra 25% for each additional faculty member they can turn out - so far no group has managed the additional points.

We just had a game a couple of weeks ago.  Usually students don't think about extra credit until the very end of a semester.  In the fall that means that when extra credit is on their mind the temperature outside would be hovering around freezing and therefore less conducive to an ultimate game (although there's no admonition against an indoor game - might be more difficult to schedule though).

There's another standing instruction for this activity that isn't overtly stated in the description but that I make abundantly clear face to face: students must know where the nearest AED is located.  Just in case.  I don't play all that often anymore.

In each of the instances of this activity the team I have played on has done quite well.  I'm not sure why that is.  One player ought not make that big a difference, especially a single player that really isn't playing any defense, or you know... running much at all.  But that's been the case and this time was no different.  I offered reshuffling the teams once we went up something like 8-0, but they weren't having it.

I had a lot of assists, but not as many as throwaways.  My backhand is still solid.  My flick really needs work, and the hammers were really quite awful.  I also got a lot of mileage out of a tight little upside down throw I never used to use but saw thrown a lot while watching AUDL on TV.  So I guess I'm still learning.

Honestly I wish I could make this happen weekly.  But then nobody would have to do any homework and I don't think that would be pedagogically responsible.  Might be fun though.

Ultimate TV

Can I tell you how cool it is to be able to watch Ultimate on television?  So, so cool.  It would be overstating to say that having a sport of TV brings it into "the bigtime" or "the mainstream."  I'm old enough to remember the early days of ESPN and hour after hour of Australian Rules Football.  I don't think that sport ever caught on in the US even though it was on TV quite a bit.  Still, seeing the sport I prefer to play on a TV in my TV room is pretty cool.

This really isn't totally new.  I've been watching Ultimate on TV for a while.  Usually it has been either the open or collegiate national championships.  And mostly it had been on ESPN 3 or ESPN U and the only way to get it on the TV screen was to use the Roku or stream it on a laptop.  In most of those cases it was just the finals and the semi-finals that even got to those channels, with the earlier rounds streaming on the tournament website.

Lately though it has been different.  Now there's an AUDL - a professional Ultimate league - and they appear to have an actual TV contract.  The AUDL is showing up in my cable guide on Eleven Sports (which I don't get) and the Stadium channel (which I do).  Stadium is on a part of the dial mostly populated by the alternate digital broadcasts of our local TV stations - the world of MeTV and GetTV and Bounce and a half dozen PBS channels.  Not that anyone probably notices, but I checked and Stadium is actually available over the air in Pittsburgh.

So this is a different experience than the prior appointment viewing on ESPN.  This is channel surfing and coming across the Indy Alleycats vs. the Chicago Wildfire midway through the third quarter.  I've yet to stumble upon the Pittsburgh Thunderbirds - maybe that's because they're 3-10 on the season.

The production end of things is small.  Ultimate is difficult to show on TV.  Either you are too close to see what is happening or too far to be able to make out the details.  These telecasts are getting better though.  The people doing the play-by-play actually know something about the game and the players.  The camera angles are improving, and the instant replay is invaluable just like it is in football.

AUDL has some interesting rule variations.  The play to a clock rather than to a point total.  THat's probably better for TV.  They know how long the game will be and there's no soft-cap, hard-cap stuff (although I guess they lose the drama of universe point too).  There are referees - active referees - zebras, with whistles.  Some things that would just be a restart in the game I played are yardage penalties in the AUDL game.  But overall it is Ultimate, and it is on TV.

It does make me wonder if had it come along at the right time would I have been good enough to play professionally.  I guess the answer is probably no.  There was a time when I was probably one of the top 100 college players in the country.  I'm not sure I ever would have cracked the top 20 players in Pittsburgh.  The year after I graduated from CMU the Pittsburgh club team went to worlds and there's a chance I might have snuck on as the last or second to last man on their roster.

There appear to be on the order of 850 players in the AUDL.  I guess it is possible that at the very apex of my playing career I might have been one of the top 850 players in the country.  Although just as possible I wasn't.  I had great disc skills, but I never really had the all around athleticism or the hops or the physical size a professional league would require.  Good throws, field sense, and reading the disc will take you far but they don't get you there faster or let you soar over a defender.  Probably even if it had happened then I would have been watching on TV rather than from the sideline.

If you haven't seen it, you should check it out.

Peaked Too Soon

This evening I got to do the coolest thing.  I hooked the laptop up to the TV and watched The College Ultimate Open Semi-Final live.  I think this should count as national TV as I assume someone actually gets ESPN3 as part of their cable package even though it turns out we don't.  I had to use the Watch ESPN streaming feature on their website (which of course requires that you actually have cable - a rant for another day).

If you missed it there is going to be a rebroadcast on ESPNU later this week.  That running is scheduled to record on the DVR, but why wait when you can see it live online?

Pitt was one of the two teams playing in the semi I watched: Pitt Vs. Oregon.  The other Semi is Carlton vs. Central Florida (which is probably over now...it is, Central Florida won).  I can't say I am a rabid Pitt Ultimate fan, but it was nice to be able to root for a Pittsburgh team and I will happily root for them in the final tomorrow.

For me though, the reason watching this game on television was so cool is that in the spring of 1989 I actually played in it.

1989 College Nationals was in Wilmington North Carolina and I was a junior in college.  I played for Carnegie Mellon's "Mr. Yuk" and it was my third and the team's fourth (and last) trip to Nationals.  We'd played really well in pool play.  I had actually thrown two goals: one a total rainbow hammer to Greg Wolff against Indiana and the other a much longer than I thought it was flat flick to Ron Papineck against North Carolina.  That year I was arguably the 7th starter or the first or second guy off the bench, a dedicated middle who could handle a little and would work real hard and smart on D.

We drew returning champions Santa Barbara in the semi-final.  I remember they had this fake up the line, dump over the mark break pass at the staple of their offense.  Midway through the first half I discovered that off a turn you could totally stymie their play by just standing in the break behind the mark and giving them the easy pass up the line which it turned out they didn't want.  They were so disciplined that they'd let the stall go up to 8 or 9 before they'd abandon the called play.

Yuk actually lead something like 8 to 3 at halftime.  After that we collapsed, or they really rallied, or both.  I think we lost like 15-12 in the end.  After the game we talked about easy things we forgot to do that could have got us another couple of points.  We never sent our handlers deep, we never threw our zone, really aggravating stuff in hindsight.  These days the teams actually have coaches, with clipboards, they probably would catch things like that (although I guess what would make one team better would probably make both teams better).

I think there was an ESPN in 1989.  I doubt there was an ESPN3 or an ESPNU.  Would have been nice if there had been though.  It would have been nice for my friends to have seen me play in the National Semi-Final (and would be great to be able to go back and watch a tape now).

I guess it will be enough to be able to do it vicariously.

An Evening of Ultimate

Tonight I think for the very first time I went to watch a game of ultimate. I mean, I've watched ultimate before but usually games at a tournament where I was playing. I've never in my recollection set out to go watch a game for its own sake... until tonight.

The NexGen Ultimate Tour made a stop in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon tonight. It's a traveling team of college all-stars. They travel around the country playing local all star teams to build awareness for Ultimate. When I first saw the notice I gave a little thought to if I would ever have been good enough to have been involved in something like this had they done it 100 years ago. At the very peak of my game, which would have been my junior year at Carnegie, I would have been somewhere between 5 an 9 on our depth chart. We went to the national semi finals that year, so that puts me on one of the top four teams. At the very most optimistic, and I believe this to be too optimistic, that would have made me someplace around 20-36 in the nation (this of course neglects every player that was better than me on every team that didn't place that highly - could be another hundred players or more. I said it was optimistic, yes?).

NexGen has a roster of 15, so I am guessing no. There was a time when for sure I was one of the 15 best local college players though. So I guess I could have been involved in the Pittsburgh game, but not the tour.

Pittsburgh has a fairly large ultimate community. I have to say, I was expecting more people than this.


I guess there were maybe another two-dozen around the field, but overall not that many people. That was too bad, because the rain held off and the play was pretty good.

It's different experiencing Ultimate as a fan. I have to say that from the stands it can be kinda hard to follow until someone sent one long, then it's fairly obvious what is happening. But when it's really rolling in the center of the field even though I had a good idea where play was going to go it was kind of difficult to appreciate. I think I needed to be higher up. It's hard to watch the thrower and see the field at the same time. I guess it probably has a difficulty level someplace between Basketball and Hockey. I think watching Hockey on TV is real hard. People just appear out of nowhere. A little bit Ultimate can be like that too. You're watching the guy with the disk and a cutter coming in close, but then he looks him off and pivots to throw the other way to a person you hadn't been watching.

It's different when you are the guy holding the disc, or the one cutting.

The level of play was pretty high, although I think I've seen better in tourney play. NexGen was really good at a ticky-tack inside kind of play that I was never good at. I'm more of a big swing punch it up the side player. They had a lot of give & go and punch it up the middle. The Pittsburgh team (called "Oakland" to cover folks from Pitt and CMU I think) seemed pretty well rounded. Their long game was decent but occasionally they struggled to move the disc forward in smaller bites. Most of the highlight reel would have been on O. I don't remember seeing any stellar D. Pittsburgh threw a zone some at the beginning. It's nice to know some things never change. When I played club in Pittsburgh we always managed to throw in our Z, wind or no wind.

There didn't appear to be much wind tonight, but the game had an upwind/downwind feel to it anyway with almost all the scores going from my left to my right. Oakland went down quickly 2-1 but then managed to lead for much of the first half, only to fade a little and go into halftime trailing 8-7. They opened the second half scoring and evening the game 8-8 but then sputtered some and finally succumbed 15-11. It seemed like they were in it for most of the game. They didn't play their Z in the second half and it might have helped. It seemed to me that there were more calls than I am used to, but maybe I've gotten used to pick-up where people often let those things slide.

All in all a good use of a couple of hours on a nice summer night. If the tour is coming through your town you might want to check it out.

Endzone O

One of the coolest things about my office is that pretty much every day there's an ultimate game happening just outside. This is especially neat for me since I played collegiate disc on that very spot oh so many years ago. Many days on my way out I stop and watch what's going on. I guess if I could drop the spare 50 pounds I'm carrying I might even step in, but its been a long time since I've been in an actual game.

Today I emerged from Purnell to see this endzone drill underway. I can only assume it was Yuk, because casual pickup usually doesn't involve drills.

There are so many things wrong with this that I don't really even know where to begin. I might have even said something to them except I remember what I would have told an old buttinski when I was a college player. So I will just rant about it here and maybe it will work its way back to them - or maybe you will learn something about ultimate you didn't know before and that will be the end of that.

Just for starters, cutting off the front of the stack is lousy. It's clogged and doesn't give you much set up. Also from a fairly basic place, lateral cuts aren't great. When you're cutting from side to side you're clogging everyone behind you. This play they were practicing does both of those things, it cuts laterally off the front. It's possible it's set up as an isolation for that one guy, so maybe the rest doesn't matter - I'll get to that in a minute. Additionally here the guys set up for the dump are set up clogging. The feature guy has to cut right into one or the other of his teammates on the wings. It'd be way too easy if you were one of their defenders to just sag into the end zone and poach the pass; doing so is nearly free because if they pick up the poach all they get is a dump anyway. Speaking of the planned dumps, these aren't great. They're too shallow and wide, so if you have to go there all of a sudden you've brought in their eight defender - the sideline.

The way the play is set up, the feature either cuts behind the force or laterally with the force. If he goes with the force, that's what their defense is set up to stop; so the defender is likely in position to make the play. If he goes behind the force, he's making you throw a tough break-mark pass, probably a low righty backhand riser. If you can make the throw it's a decent play, but it isn't an easy throw to get off - if the mark plays wide enough for you to get it off at all. My experience is that the closer to the goal line, the more straight up the mark plays, making that thow that much harder.

The only time any of this is going to work is during the drill, and that's because the defenders willingly play their part. The practicing isn't going to help much for game situations.

But maybe it is supposed to run as an isolation. If that's the case, it ought to look more like this:

This way you clear all the traffic and give your receiver the entire end zone to work with. Also the dumps don't set up clogging and their defenders are in no position to poach (and the dump passes are deeper and more acute so as to keep play more in the middle of the field. This would work, although it's still real congested. Probably the standard end zone offense would work better.

"What's the standard offense?" you ask. I'm glad you did. It looks like this:

The offense sets up stacked vertically in the end zone, shading behind the marker. The true design of this play is to go to option two, cutting off the back of the stack hard for the front corner. You will notice though that it does still feature that off the front of the stack break mark pass in option one. This is there if the mark is sleeping, but the design doesn't require you to depend on breaking the mark it's just there in case it presents itself. If not that cutter continues in the dead space behind the mark and goes for a fairly steep dump. Option three is for if the marker slides over to take away option two. If he reaches across to take away the long open side then you have a fairly easy break mark to the short side. This set up also gives you two dumps without clogging. Option four and option five give you good dumps without bringing you to the sideline.

Plus, if you take the dump pass, you immediately have someplace to go...

This gets a little hard to read because it's showing two possible throwers, depending on which dump the first thrower got. Moving ahead the first primary receiver clears up the line to the dump and the short side receiver clears into the middle with the original thrower. It's possible at this point to get a quick give and go with the first thrower, but that's just sort of normal ultimate and not part of the design of the offense, but if you get it you can take it. As soon as the dump throw is off, the two remaining players who started by clearing to the back repeat each of the two front corner cuts from the first iteration. Once again you should have an open with the force option, an open break the force option, and two dump passes. If you haven't scored by then you've probably either backed up far enough that you can stop thinking about it as end zone offense or you turned it over.

So there it is, standard end zone offense in a nutshell. Now go, and don't clog.

Surprise Ultimate

So this really cool thing happened on the DC trip. Late at night while doing the flipping thing I discovered that the Donovan House gets "CBS College Sports Channel." This is a channel that's not part of the cable package we have at home. Anyway, while doing the flippy-flippy I happened upon this channel and what should be on - the college ultimate nationals.

I haven't played or seen decent ultimate in maybe three years; the last game I played (and saw) was the summer league finals I played in a few years back. So this was really cool to happen upon. Needless to say I stayed up to watch. All in all it was a decent game, but I kept having those "when I was a kid we had to..." thoughts.

The game was Wisconsin against Florida, all by itself that was sort of shocking to me. In three years of nationals I don't think I ever even saw either of those teams. I can remember an Indiana team, but nothing else really from the midwest. The team furthest into the southeast must have been ECU, pretty east but not too far south. My life was full of Cornells and Santa Barbaras and Princetons. Florida and Wisconsin, what's up with that?

Mostly the game was a bit of a blowout. All through the first half Wisconsin built and grew a lead. At one point later in the game they flashed a stat saying it was the largest blowout since Chabot played in the finals in 1987 - as if that was sometime before the dawn of history. As it turns out I was at that game, at Penn State, in the crowd. I'm old. Also of note is that Yuk played Chabot closer in pool play that year than any other team at the tournament, I have it on video tape. Not that a pool play loss in 1987 has anything to do with the finals in 2008, but its a nice little, tiny, connection for me.

So I'm watching and the crotchety old man is saying, this sort of sucks. I mean, the play is ok, when they're playing. But the whole thing got all ticky-tack early with call after call and didn't loosen up for the whole game. It was interesting to watch a game with pretty active observers. When I played observers could only speak up on line calls, in or out of the goal or the field of play. Now the observers are in on everything. At least it cut down on the argument time, although I guess on TV they could just edit the arguments out.

Seemed to me like I kept seeing a zone like the 4-2-1 Pittsburgh Zone, except it also looked like they were pinching one of the hammer stops and playing the back like a 2-3-2. The odd thing is that from the throwers perspective it looked like just a cup and then deeps. Add to that they were switching marks so the count never really seemed to get that high. I was just looking at it dumbfounded thinking bender to the flat or that cup will open up if you'd just throw a believable fake already. I know it's probably better than it looked on TV, and it was probably windier than it looked on TV, but it did seem like a fair number of summer league teams would have made pretty quick work of it (and then walk uphill both ways through the snow - why when I was a kid we didn't even have a box...)

Geek, geek, geek.

So, maybe next spring I'll look to add that channel to our cable package so I can ridicule another zone.