The Abyss

The Abyss

Walden: So in-season we would lift 2x per week, and everyone had to do the conditioning, footwork, and frisbee drills (also 2x per week).  Plus hard practices or a tournament on Sat/Sun.
Sent at 1:33 PM

Me: So the 3v3 was just on top of that.

Walden: yep
Sent at 1:41 PM

Me:  Nice.  I feel like a lot of people don't really understand how much work you guys put in on a weekly basis.  As in, people don't really realize how much work it would be if they made it.

Walden:  Haha I mean, how would they know?  That was part of why we wanted to align with Chicago Club.

Me:  That's not exactly what I mean.  I mean that the workload expectation isn't consistent with the goals.

Walden:  Right, but that's a hard thing to gauge accurately.
Sent at 2:07 PM

Me:  Yeah.  It has always been a pet peeve of mine with how Chicago Club went.  It felt like people were uninterested in really making the jump and working hard.  Maybe it was an issue of understanding what working hard means, or maybe it was a misalignment of the workload expectation and goals setting.

Walden:  Haha yeah.  It's possible people thought that that's what they wanted, and then the abyss was too scary.

Me: "The Abyss".  I think it's more like a skydive.  Like you have a parachute but you still have to gather your nerve and make the jump.
Sent at 2:26 PM

Walden:  Nah, a skydive is too easy.

Me:  What about a skydive, but you think you don't have a parachute, although you do.

Walden:  Still too easy.  Because after you jump, you know you have the parachute.

The Abyss though, you have no sense of direction, you have no idea what's there, no idea how long you have to keep going, and going back would be easier but you have to somehow find the strength and conviction to keep going forward.
Sent at 2:31 PM

Me:  So it's like a cave and you don't have any equipment or lights of any kind.

It seems you have to have a reason for entering The Abyss though.  Like you want to be great, or you're doing it for yourself/your team.
Sent at 2:33 PM

Walden:  I mean of course, you're not going to enter The Abyss for no reason.

Me:  When you said "somehow have the strength and conviction to keep going" it kind of makes it seem like having those things would be unusual.  I suppose having those things in the absence of a team would be pretty unusual.

Walden:  I mean, it IS unusual.  A lot of people give up or get discouraged, decide they can't do it, and back out of The Abyss.

Roles and Teams

Note: Joe isn't real.  All similarities to players past or present is purely coincidental.

Meet Joe.

Joe has a lot of experience as a handler.  Joe is a good thrower.  Joe can break the mark, huck, and move the disc with consistency and composure.  Maybe Joe also has a good give and go move and is pretty decent at getting open in 1v1 situations.

When Joe plays pickup, he likes to get the disc every other and run the offense.  He likes it when people catch his throws and dish it back to him while he picks apart a defense.  Joe can consistently break weaker marks and get open most of the time against less experienced players.

Joe is a pretty well-rounded ultimate player.  He doesn't have many glaring weaknesses, or at least his strengths balance out his weaknesses well enough to give him a good ultimate madden rating.

For the sake of discussion, let's rank a few of Joe's skills.

Let's say Joe's skills look something like this, with each skill ranked from 0 to 10:

Joe:

Composure with the disc: 7

Break Throws: 6

Deep Throws: 5

Give Go move: 5

1v1 Handler Cutting: 4

------

Joe joins a new club team: "Average Joe's".  On this new team, Joe is not obviously better or worse than the other players on this team.

In fact, let's say that all the other players on Joe's team have the exact same skill ratings and preferences as Joe.  So any given line of 7 players has 7 copies of Joe.

 

How should Joe develop during the season, if the end goal is to create the best team possible?

------

A few thoughts:

1.  A line of 7 Joes as they are at the beginning of the season would not accomplish a lot.  They would be pretty good across the roster at throwing, but would struggle mightily at getting open.  They would also struggle because every one of them is used to playing with the disc in their hands.  So maybe they would score on occasion due to their throwing ability, but there would be discord in their on-field play style, their skills would not mesh together well, and they would get frustrated easily.

2.  I think Joe needs to pick a niche.  Joe needs to grow his game in a particular area that the team needs.  This might not be a big change, but it will take specific work, mentally and physically, both in and out of practice.  Consider two scenarios for how Average Joe's season plays out:

Scenario 1:  Joe and all his carbon copies do the same things they have in the past and generally try to improve at everything, with no change in on-field approach.

Scenario 2:  Joe and each of his copies picks a different role (list of skills) to work on individually, in order to mesh into a more cohesive unit.

I feel strongly that scenario 2 would result in the better team.  For the sake of discussion, let's say Average Joe's decides to play a vertical stack offense.  So 4 copies of Joe put in extra work on: initiating cuts out of the stack, timing continuation cuts, throwing strong continue passes, and moving the disc laterally.  Then maybe 1 copy of Joe spends extra effort points on maximizing consistency, composure, and breaking the mark.  Then the remaining 2 copies of Joe max out their focus on 1v1 handler cutting, give go moves, and power position hucks.  (Notice how all of the Joes are getting better in one way or another.  None of them has to "bite the bullet" and "not get better".)

Then, after a season of hard work in practice, you have a team that can play coherent offense, but can still leverage how good they are at throwing.

------

I think the key for Joe is to find a niche and get really, really good at it.

When I was starting my ultimate career people would tell me this a lot.  I didn't really get it then.  I think one of the reasons I didn't get it is that I was looking at "niche" too narrowly.  

By "niche" I don't think it means one specific thing, like "a great forehand".  I think it's more about what you can do one the field and how that's valuable to an offense.

For example:  Maybe a "niche" could be being really great at getting open in a 10x10 yard box in the reset space, as well as having good composure with the disc and moving the disc to the break side.  So the niche is about the value you have, and is made up of several skills that work well together.

------

Note:  I think that "Moneymakers" and "niches" are not quite the same thing.  The way I'm talking about a "niche" in this post is that it is team-specific.  Also it is actionable within a single season or a single month.  My thought is that Moneymaker would be more like a niche developed over an entire career.