Process of Illumination

It's dusty here.

I hacked at the cobwebs above the keyboard for several minutes before I saw a single key. My computer space is overrun by piles of paper and clothing and my neural blogging infrastructure is emaciated from disuse. Still, my brain is thinking about Ultimate more often than not, and it's gotten to a point where it's spilling over into typed copy. Also Muffin's testosterone prose spreads unchecked like kudzu, and I feel obliged to restore balance. Hence, I am going to write on this blog again.

Throughout the last college season there have been myriad moments where I return home from a practice or tournament with an idea or observation chaffing at my mind like store-brand compression shorts. These would be the things that I have written about in the past but as a captain and coach I wonder if sharing them openly would conflict with our team. I certainly wouldn't give away any of our playbooks, but I wonder if some of these insights and new perspectives don't qualify as proprietary knowledge. I have previously chosen to err on the side of silence and caution.

Certainly in cutthroat patent and copyright law worlds any and all knowledge is a commodity to be owned and traded or sold, but that philosophy has never sat well with me. Ultimate knowledge disseminates itself eventually as players graduate or move to new cities and teams, and I don't think it does the sport much good at this stage in its adolescence to withhold insight and thought from each other. As the talent at the highest levels of Ultimate continues to increase, the strategies and styles teams employ will continue to evolve and differentiate. I am confident that we have not seen just how elegant and exact the game can be played, and am hoping that by sharing my pieces of the conversation I can have some part in spurring that evolution.

Hh