Orienteering

Self-assessment is a massive challenge.

It's difficult to accurately determine how good you are at ultimate without receiving external feedback.  At best your understanding will be murky, and can easily be misled.  I think this is because you will tend to measure yourself based on your performance against a variety of opponents, all of whom have their own strengths, weaknesses, energy/focus levels, etc.  So for example: you may find yourself dominating a low level pickup game with relative ease, and overestimate your abilities based on that.  Or you may end a hard practice with a feeling of frustration, thinking to yourself that maybe you aren't as good as you thought, perhaps underestimating your abilities.

I like to look at ultimate skills development as a bunch of paths.  Some people might refer to these as skill trees, but I think paths make more sense.  I'm walking down a path, not climbing a tree.  Maybe there's a path for forehand, backhand, getting open, playing defense.  Each of these paths branches out into other paths as growth continues and more in-depth development begins.  The paths aren't clean and concise.  Sometimes they will diverge, other times they will overlap.  Often times they won't be linearly incremental, i.e. perhaps spending some time throwing hucks will help your control with flat forehands.  One possible map for a throw might look like this:

Paths will look wildly different for different skills and between different people.  Not everyone will travel the same path, and not everyone will find success traveling the same route down a specific path.  I think this is one if the biggest challenges both players and coaches face in the development process.  There must be an element of individuality considered in attempting to find your most ideal path.

A critical part of the improvement process is assessment.  Players have a couple weapons they can use when trying to assess.  The first is asking for feedback from others.  Ideally someone with relevant experience on that path.  Since opportunities for this tend to be infrequent, a second weapon must be developed.  This second weapon is self-assessment.  In self-assessment, you must assess where you are on a path in order to determine how you should progress forward along that path.  Without an accurate assessment of your location, you are essentially blind.  Maybe the work you are doing is helping, maybe it isn't.  You have no way of knowing where you stand.

Self-assessment requires an honest (sometimes brutally honest) critique of your strengths and weaknesses.  It can be awkward or uncomfortable at first to think critically about these things, but doing so will bring you closer to understanding where you are on your path, and therefore where you might need to go next.

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Me and Matt were discussing self-assessment a few days ago, and he brought up the idea that the questions asked in the WUGC application are a pretty good starting point for players to use for assessing the basics of their game.  Food for thought:

Your Current Team

1. Describe your off the field role on your current team. What do you bring to the team as an organizer, leader, captain, teacher, follower, sideline presence, etc.?
2. Describe your offensive role on your current team. (What position do you play? What skills make you good in that role? etc.)
3. Describe your defensive role on your current team. (What position(s) do you play in zone defense? What type of player do you guard when playing person defense? What skills make you good in this role?)

Self-Evaluation

1. How do you train for ultimate? (Physically)
2. How do you prepare for ultimate? (Mentally)
3. What are your main offensive weaknesses? (What are other players better at than you? What are the specific areas of your offensive game you are focusing on improving)
4. What are your main defensive weaknesses? (What are other players better at than you? What are the specific areas of your defensive game you are focusing on improving?)
5. Describe one of the best offensive plays you have ever made, and explain what made it great.
6. Describe one of the best defensive plays you have ever made, and explain what made it great.

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After some discussion with Walden, he brought up some other useful cues that can be used for self-assessment.  These can be used to bring another level of depth, as they can be applied to various specific situations (offense, defense, specific types of plays):

• What are your physical strengths/deficiencies?
• What are your skill strengths/deficiencies?
• How do you play with other people?
• What external factors cause you to struggle or play well?
• What internal factors cause you to struggle or play well?