My Road

I am writing this post because I lost a bet.  Big Red overcame a 3 game deficit in a best of 7 series at Twin Creeks Disc Golf to knock me off.  So, instead of the maestro sharing his magnum opus on upline theory with the world, you get this.  Enjoy.

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I've always liked competition.

Back when I was in high school I had a buddy whose older sister went to Pitt.  She played or had played with the team there and taught him how to throw a pretty respectable flick.  He'd get freshly printed discrafts in the mail every once in a while from her and we'd generally be in awe of them and of her throwing skills.  I remember trying to replicate their flicks and instead slicing wobbly blades into the dirt during our pickup games.

07

When I showed up on campus as a freshman, I didn't have the slightest clue what NUT was about.  I just knew I was sick of the soccer grind and I wanted to brush up my flick so I could crush my friends back home at pickup.  I remember seeing Teddy just ripping bombs on Deering during welcome week and thinking "I want to do that".  I don't remember a whole lot else from welcome week, with the exception of showing up to welcome week pickup (RIP) and getting just roofed on by another freshman, a guy named AJ.  Turns out he was a nice guy and we became great friends after that.

I didn't go to a lot of practices as a freshman.  My time management skills were atrocious.  I was still trying to figure out how to juggle homework, several work-study jobs, and feeding myself properly, not to mention trying to get to know all the people in my dorm and classes.  I would estimate that I went to 25% of the practices that year.  But, I went to all the tournaments, bought jerseys, and I went on spring break.  I went to such a hilariously small number of practices that two of the captains still didn't know my name by spring break.  I am sure many of the returners thought very poorly of me or pretty much ignored my presence altogether.  We didn't have a B-Team that year, so tournaments involved sitting in a car for 6-16 hours and playing 0-2 points per game.  I spent a lot of time hanging out with Thor, who played a similarly small number of points and was a genuinely great guy to go on road trips with.

My flick got a lot better over spring break.  Throwing for a few hours every day for a week was enough for me to start to get a sense of what it should look and feel like on release.  But I was still useless on the field.  Slow, couldn't catch, couldn't throw, couldn't jump, couldn't mark, the list goes on.

I spent a lot of time in the gym as a freshman, but I didn't have a plan or a goal in mind.  I would just walk across the street, do some upper body stuff and some core and go home.  I felt like I should just go do what I wanted, and that I didn't really need to have a solid plan for what to do that day.  Bringing a notepad and a pen to write down what I did seemed like a huge hassle.

I distinctly remember getting my first NUT jersey at a practice in Trienens the week before spring break.  This was a big moment for me.  That year we had black and white jerseys with an outline of a "3D" NUT, grey shorts, and we also ordered hoodies with our last names on them.  I remember this being the first moment that I really felt like I could be part of something bigger than myself.  At that point I still had no idea what NUT was really about, but I think that's a big piece of why I chose to stick around.  Due to my poor practice attendance, people on the team at that time were still struggling to remember my name, so I decided to help them out by wearing my hoodie around as often as possible.  It worked.

08

I didn't work on my athleticism at all over the summer.  I went for a few long runs and did occasional sets of pushups and told myself I had done all I could on that front.

I did work on my throws over the summer.  I threw by myself in a park 2-3 times a week, trying out new throws and making sure to log over 100 total reps per session.  I got good enough at them that some of the elder statesman of NUT at that time thought I should start figuring out how to be a handler.  When I was a sophomore we had enough guys to put together a B-team for a few tournaments, but we only had 7-8 guys, so I had as many reps as I could physically manage at my disposal.

Over the winter quarter, NUT decided to run a combine.  The way it would work is at the first winter practice we would measure 40 yard dash times, vertical jump, and a few other metrics.  Then at the end of winter we would remeasure and see who improved the most, so about 12 weeks later.  I thought this was awesome and it motivated me to do more research on how to lift for speed and explosiveness.  That winter I started hitting the gym with a specific goal: decrease my 40 time.  I taught myself how to squat, deadlift, lunge, SLDL, etc.  I worked hard at it for 12 weeks and dropped about a half second off my 40 time.  This was my first real exposure to how training for a specific goal can work.

09

Summer before junior year I hung around Evanston, went to pickup a few times and hit the gym on occasion.  I was in India for about a month and didn't lift or throw at all while there.  I was the last guy cut from the A team that year and I took it pretty hard.  I found it easy to blame the captains at the time for making a mistake and generally not respecting me.  In retrospect, my attendance was poor and I hadn't improved much/showed up in the fall out of shape, so I probably didn't even deserve the look I got.  I played with the B team again, this time we had a good 20 guys.  We went on to win what I think was the first Dev sectionals, which I think was called DII at the time, when our finals opponent forfeited the championship to drive home a few hours earlier.

I started my engineering co-op in Jan '10, putting me on the 5 year track.  My co-op job had me catching the 4:30am bus to work and getting home around 8pm.  I remember showing up to spring break and being woefully out of shape, having not been able to attend late night winter practices and not really working out.

College nationals in 2010 was held in Madison, WI, which was close enough to encourage a group of older NUTs to make the drive and spectate.  I remember replying to the email sent out to the group on a whim.  I was only there for Saturday, but I remember that as my first time seeing the game that ultimate could be.  The game was so different than what I had been playing, the teams were so competitive, and the energy in the air was so thick you could almost touch it.  

10

Summer before senior year I had a car, giving me massively more free time to work with when I wasn't at my 40hr/wk job.  I spent this time lifting and throwing with AJ.  I had done more research and wanted to get a lot more explosive, so I had come across the vertical jump bible and was following a program exactly.  I was eating properly, lifting hard, sleeping enough.  But I hadn't decided if I was going to play ultimate that year or not.  3 years of mediocrity were wearing on me.  I wasn't really thrilled with the prospect of enduring another year of that.  At this point I was considering joining either the Rugby team, which I had a few friends on, or the Powerlifting club, which sounded pretty neat.

At one point over the summer, I shared my thoughts about ultimate with AJ, who was then heading into his second year of captaincy of NUT.  He felt that I should definitely give NUT another shot.  I thought long and hard about it and eventually decided to give it one more year.

I made the A team that year as a cutter on the back of my athleticism, splitting time between O and D.   I hadn't worked on my throws as much, so they were certainly nothing to write home about.  I don't remember a whole lot from that year, but I do remember that the team struggled mightily.  We were placed in a power pool at Huck Finn on the back of our performance the year before, and faced off against Illinois, Wash U, and eventual college champ silver medalist Wisconsin.   Needless to say we got trounced, putting up 7 points on the Hodags only because they let off the gas in the second half.  I didn't really start to understand what NUT was about until the end of this year.  And I didn't start to love ultimate until I understood that.

11

In the summer before my 5th year I was a practice player for Haymaker.  I went to about 5 practices total before I left the country for study abroad.

I studied abroad in Edinburgh for the fall quarter.  I picked it because Scotland sounded cool, I didn't have to learn another language, they had interesting course offerings, and Paul had studied abroad there, had played ultimate, and had loved it.

In the UK, they have a fall ultimate season that is played entirely indoors.  Games are played to time, with 5 players per side, usually on a basketball court.  Quick movement, blades, and height rule the day.  We ran a "cycle" offense which was basically centered around running upline -> 7 cut -> fill as hard as possible and hitting space passes.  Ultimate made study abroad very easy.  Every few weekends I would take a train with my 20 new friends to a different city in the UK and we'd play a tournament.  Edinburgh also had a world-class weight training facility available to all students.  To this day the best gym I have ever been in.  Training for ultimate and getting reps was easy and fun while abroad due to this.

When I got back to NUT in the winter, I fit in pretty well on the dline.  We didn't have enough handlers, so I was happy to fill that role in what way I could.  At that point I was roommates with Q.  We would talk lifting and ultimate 24/7.  From winter to spring I was all in for NUT.  This was the point at which I was living and breathing NUT culture the most.  By this time I had done whatever I could to plan my schedule around training for NUT and doing well at school.  I was trying to make the most of my recovery and get as much as possible out of the gym so I could bring the heat for NUT in the series.

We brought it at sectionals, going down big to Illinois in the final but climbing back within reach.  Champe launched an upwind break assist that was dropped but would have brought the score to even and given us the wind.  We ended up in 2nd.

We got bounced from regionals, losing to Michigan 15-5.

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Looking back, I wish I could have understood what NUT was about sooner, so that I could have given more during my college career.  I wish I had made more of an effort to talk to the upperclassmen when I was a freshman and sophomore, so I could better understand their passion for and knowledge of the sport.  I think it is evident that the times over which I improved the most were the times when I worked hard, consistently, with a specific goal.  Like lifting with a program to improve my 40 time, or throwing my flick regularly.

One of the reasons I like coaching Bolt is that it gives me a chance to try and show new players what the program is all about, and how rewarding it can be to invest yourself.

This post isn't really meant to be a guide on how to get better.  For that, I would suggest checking out this post.  For a version of this written by KB, you can find that here.  For those of you that know Adam, he also has written a similar post.