Sorry about the posting delay. Regionals this weekend and midsems this week have made things a little hectic around here, but without further ado...
Last time I wrote about the size of a school being a main factor in the sharp divide in quality of play between college ultimate teams. Comments on that post and some consideration of my own have led me to this post, addressing the experience question. For this post, experience can be divided in two parts: player experience and coach experience.
First, player experience. Clearly, the more experienced players you have on your team, the greater advantage your team will have. I mentioned Carleton College last time and the fact that they attract ultimate players who have played in high school and earlier because of the quality of their program. This gives them a huge advantage in that (I imagine) they don't have to spend nearly as much time on teaching the basics to their players. Size also plays a role here, as I mentioned last week: having enough players to field an A and a B team or, early on in the season, an X and Y team, gives rookies experience they will need to succeed in the competitive spring season. Legacy gives advantages to schools with strong programs because players who are extremely committed to ultimate are, I would guess, more likely to attend schools with good programs. Witness the number of junior world and national competitors on Carleton and Wisconsin's rosters in the past few years (I'm biased towards the Central region and thinking of the women's side, but it's probably true for the men's side and other regions, too).
Having a good club team in the area also helps with player experience. Club teams can, as a commentator on my last post said, take a college team "under their wing" and give promising players exposure to high-level ultimate. These players can come back after the club season with this experience and help out their college teams.
Player experience like this tends to create a feedback loop of sorts. The best high school players tend to play for the best college teams, who build a legacy of greatness and keep attracting the best young players. The best club teams tend to develop talent from the best college teams or invite players from the best college teams if they don't have open tryouts. This creates a bias towards teams that are already strong. Enter my second point: coach experience, or the experience coaches can bring and develop in younger teams.
As a college captain myself, I can attest to the difficulties of serving the dual role as a team captain and coach. Just because you're a good player doesn't mean you'll make a good coach, and though I have more experience than most players on my team, I still have much to learn about the game and sometimes feel overwhelmed with the task of teaching and leading a young team. Having a knowledgeable coach is, in my opinion, one of the main ways for teams to push themselves to a higher competitive level and even out the playing field in college ultimate, in particular, college women's ultimate.
Gwen Ambler has already beat me to this point with an excellent article she wrote for MSSUI. She writes, first, that coaches will usually have more experience than even a veteran college player, and this experience can help the team decide what to focus on to improve most effectively. I've found developing and finding drills for my team to focus on specific improvements difficult, and I imagine a coach would help with this immensely. Second, a coach can see things in games that players simply can't see because they are never entirely off the field in an observer position. Yup...I play probably 75 - 90 percent of the points in any given game just because I am one of the most experienced players on my team, and this means that I miss out on the "big picture" of the game, the view that can only come from watching everything from the sideline. Third, a coach can help with all the logistics of leading a team that make it difficult for college captains who are both trying to play and lead on the field and who also have to deal with calling lines, playing time, and watching what works and doesn't work against opponents. Ambler has this to say in her article:
"Many coached players probably do not realize what an advantage they have over the un-coached squads that are forced to have captains do everything from teaching new players to calling lines to adjusting defenses mid-game to planning practices to leading the team on the field."
And I agree with every word.
I also think a coach adds legitimacy to a college ultimate program. I'm going to devote a later post to this, but I feel like a coach can help focus a team and motivate them to go beyond their usual limits. Especially with new programs, having a coach set a regular training and conditioning schedule can, from the very start, establish the tone of a team. Ambler mentions UCLA as the perfect example of a young program that established itself very quickly as a national contender because of strong coaching.
As usual, there is always an exception, and the notable exception this time is Wisconsin, who has not needed a coach to establish both the men and women's teams as a top or the top college ultimate program in the country. I don't want to pretend to know how they do it, but it speaks volumes of the intensity, dedication, talent, and focus of the captains who organize everything. Like the size issue I addressed last week, having a coach isn't a necessity for success, but because Wisconsin is the one notable exception I can think of, I think it does give a big advantage to teams who have coaches.
So, in conclusion, I strongly encourage players who want to develop more experience for themselves and for their college teams to try out for a local club team. Even non-elite club teams have experienced players from which to learn, and at tournaments you will get to play against some very good players, which is in itself a learning process. My one year of club ultimate has helped me recognize what I need to focus on as a player and has exposed me to new tactics and drills that I use with the college team I captain. Also, if you live by a college that has an ultimate program, contact them to see if they'd like help with coaching. I think anyone with some club ultimate experience and a desire to spread ultimate knowledge and love of the game can be useful as a coach to a college team, serving as a separate set of eyes on the field, giving the team a sense of legitimacy, and helping ease the burden on college captains who have to try to fill the role of captain, coach, and, oftentimes, an essential player on the field.
Some teams, unfortunately, are located in areas that don't have a large pool of available coaching talent or much of an ultimate scene outside of college players. That's a little preview of my next post, focusing on location, coming soon to this blog, assuming I get through midsems week.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Hi,
Nice blog. I like the approach you're taking with it.
You're right about the lack of small/low-level college representation in the blogosphere--glad you're filling the niche. I've more or less been trying to do the same thing with my blog, only for mid-level players/teams that are on the cusp. Whether or not you consider Dartmouth a mid-level team at this point is a fair question, but I feel like there's a definite gap between the basic info you can find anywhere ("this is what a forehand is") and the elite-level commentary that the elite-level players tend to go on about ("throwers don't pivot").
Anyway, I completely agree with the notion of the usefulness of coaching--especially for women's ultimate. Dartmouth's women's team has been pretty damn good the past several years, and a lot of them stems from the coaching of Mikey Lee (Dartmouth '00). Similarly for our men's team--we haven't had a regular coach ever, I think, but over the past several years we've had more frequent visits and sessions with high-level players and tourney-time coaching, both of which have proven invaluable in getting over the hump. These days it sure does seem like every team that challenges for a nationals bid in the NE has a coach (with the exception of, I think, Williams--and who, perhaps not coincidentally, has consistently shown a wide variance in how well they perform).
Wisco might not be coached formally, but I can guarantee you they get lots of coaching-like visits from elite players. I feel like the men's team might have even had formal coaching this year at natties, but don't quote me on that.
At any rate, I like the blog and will be keeping tabs. Looking forward to more posts.
Thanks for your comments-- I read your blog as well. I'm glad to hear some firsthand experience outside of the Central Region about how coaches have helped out ultimate programs. Now if only my school could convince some alums to come back and help out...
One more thing on the usefulness of coaches--they can be an invaluable scouting and strategic resource.
If you want a great example of this, you should look at Harvard. Outside of the occasional stud (see: George Stubbs currently, Jack Marsh and Will Chen formerly), the team is one of the least intimidating/imposing squads to line up against. Yet somehow they always pull out some super-sassy zone that preys on your team's weaknesses (indeed, sometimes you don't realize your weakness until they expose it thusly). This same thing happens on a smaller level in man-to-man matchups as well, and it stems in large part from their coaching--I can't speak much to Josh McCarthy as a player, but as a coach he's pretty unparalleled in my book. That kind of scouting information is hard to come by as a player (given limited experience), and harder still to act on.
Post a Comment