Process of Illumination

This was the question that Billy Stone, CBS Sports representative, posed to us, the captains and coaches meeting before the beginning of the championship. By far the most dynamic and exciting of the speakers at the captain's meeting, he had everyone present fired up to finally get some real exposure for the sport.  Frequently stressing the need to tone down the language in huddles and on the field, he was adamant that having seen the footage from last year's natties, the top brass at CBS Sports was ready to double down this year with their coverage and exposure of college Ultimate's hallmark event.

"And next year, we want to go...live!" His energy was infectious. Hell yes, of course we want to go live. We all do. It'd be great to have a well-produced live showing of the championship games for the open and women's division. After our incredible semifinal game against Colorado, in my opinion the game to watch of the tournament, Peggy, a Wisconsin alum and producer of the Alt Games footage, said that in production meetings they had talked about adding more footage of Ultimate to their CBS broadcast, from the planned 6 minutes to as many as 9. This would be the footage that gets televised to 120 million homes.

But all of this was before finals against CUT. Carleton vs. Wisconsin, the rivalry and history promised to make this game one to remember. Then the winds came racing down the foothills, shearing the support cables from the Alt Games inflatable arch and sending it tumbling end over end above the fence behind the north end of the fields. I could see our team game plan fly away with it, and I'm sure that Tom Crawford and the rest of USAU saw the promise of a watchable game of Ultimate soar away as well.

Jack Marsh, Harvard Red Line and Wisconsin Hodag alum summed it up best, watching online from NYC and tweeting his opinion, "I can hear @cbssports shredding its @usaultimate contract from here."

Nationals was an incredible experience, so much fun and so rewarding for many reasons, but that wind made the open finals game unwatchable. It certainly wasn't Ultimate in the way every game beforehand had defined it. Are we ready to go live, Billy Stone? I am, I certainly want to be, but then again I won't be the one watching, I'll be the one living it.

Oof,

No way to sugar coat it, we got worked over at the Stanford Invite a couple of weeks back. Whether one chooses to blame the Pacific time zone, or a depleted squad, or an ingrown toenail, the fact remains that for the whole of the tournament we were listless on the field, lacking energy and playing complacent.

Perhaps a solid outing at Florida Warm-Up made us feel that we were well on our way - a way that like a greased slide would effortlessly lead us to Regionals. What we proved is that no matter how much talent we have, we are only as good a team as the effort and work that we put into each point of each game. We eked out a few victories, but it was the resignation during our losses that was most troubling. We came back from Stanford with only a week before Spring Break, and a lot of work to do.

The Hodags left icy Wisconsin to their beach house along the shores of the Atlantic in Myrtle Beach. In contrast to last year's destructo-fest, that left little of the house intact, this year's week of bonding was filled with throws and touches. Beach time was an opportunity to throw with a brisk breeze, and the team organized a few team-wide practices to stay fresh and to work on fundamentals - an important focus for any team.

That work paid dividends at Easterns where, team-wide, unforced errors diminished. We found ourselves in a dogfight against Colorado to take the pool but could not convert the score on double-game point, so despite a win against pool winners and eventual semifinalists Michigan we played a prequarters game and faced Florida in quarters.

Our eventual 7th place finish was disappointing to much of the team, because we played well for 4/ 5ths of every game, but we were unable to close games against our stiffest competition and it cost us dearly. However, the silver lining is that our defense generated turns and breaks against all teams present, and we led late in the second half of every game we played. Being able to stay tenacious and shut the door on teams once we've established a lead will be crucial for our success, and we're currently placing our O-line in do-or-die situations at practice where they must convert in straight possessions or lose the game.

Arriving back from Easterns, we were greeted by a sunny spring in Madison. The weather has been brisk, in the 30s and 40s, but when the sun is out we get sweaty and it feels like summer is around the corner. The weather's cooperation has been a blessing to us as a team, and we're outside taking full advantage. Considering that we've only had 5 outdoor practices since the beginning of 2011, we're nowhere near our ceiling and we leave each practice a little better than how we arrived.

Up next this weekend is Huck Finn, a late addition to our schedule to get the younger players on the team reps, and to help us gel on the field. While I won't be in attendance, I think that will probably work in their favor, as each player will have to step up and be accountable for themselves, to each other.

The thermometer outside threatens to dip below 20F, and the clear skies belie cold gusts that slap at the UW students' faces as they walk to class. Although spring is technically three weeks away, its warm temperatures and tree blossoms don't seem any closer now than they did a month ago.

Still, the impending arrival of several cairns signal that spring is in fact rapidly approaching. Daylight savings time is 10 days away. Our sectional tourney, and the college series for everyone, begins in little over a month. And in  two days, we board a plane for SFO and the Stanford Invite.

As I mentioned before, with Lent starting so late this year our annual pilgrimage to Mardi Gras fatefully conflicted with the Stanford Invite. We made the difficult choice of foregoing a geographically closer tournament to play against west coast teams we won't see otherwise until, if all goes well, Memorial Day weekend in Boulder. But this has shortened our pre-series schedule by one tournament, not insubstantial,  making each game more important to our development.

Compounding this, last night was our final indoor practice of the season in the McClain Center. Last year, the women's rugby club dropped a serious ball and missed the deadline for reserving space and time indoors. Their loss was all other club sport teams' gain, and even late in the season where we and several other teams gave them some of our indoor sessions, we had plenty of opportunities to meet. Needless to say, the rugby team didn't make the same mistake again and that, along with a reduction the the number of total dates available to all teams, meant that we had only 4 total sessions indoors. The end of our indoor practices came so suddenly that Feldman and Cullen didn't realize the significance of it being their last indoor practice ever until midway through last night. Cullen worked accordingly, scoring and spiking goal after goal and, at practice's end, spending a few wistful moments reflecting on 5 years of Hodag service before checking back into reality and realizing that he had to get home, at 12:45am, to do some homework.

We can't well spend the time between Stanford and the arrival of warm weather waiting for opportunities to throw outside, so in Wisconsin winter spirit we have to make them. So take some gloves, some Patagonia gear, and 20 minutes outdoors before the cold makes the Ultrastar's plastic so stiff and brittle it could shatter from an dropped pass, and you've got yourself a 'Sconny throwing sesh. We're not a pretty team, but the college series ain't a beauty pageant.

Follow the Stanford Invite here, and check the Hodag twitter feed for frequent updates (or my feed for infrequent but typically wittier quips). See you in California.

I've been following Lou Burrus' writings at Win The Fields as he discusses several reasons why referees aren't the panacea to Ultimate's ills, and I certainly agree. He mentions in two different posts the strongest points I have for continuing our current observer system, but having the observers perform the duties as they're prescribed.

The first point he addresses is the time between when a call is made and its resolution. I am in favor of the observers giving some time for players to work out an understanding of the play in question, but in my opinion observers have shied away from stepping in when it's clear the disagreement between the players won't be resolved. This can start with all players keeping in mind that in many contested fouls, a call/contest response is acceptable. But observers, perhaps afraid of being too large an influence, have developed a neutered style where they'll sit back and, only after minutes have been whittled away, step in and make a call. The observers need to be ready with a ruling, then interject and either rule one way or send the disc back.

Secondly, I am all for observers wielding team and personal misconduct fouls with greater frequency as a way to dissuade players and teams from forcing stoppages of play with bullshit calls and fouls to dictate the pace of the game. Right now the threshold for TMFs and PMFs is so high that only egregious violations seem to merit them. While observers have in the last year been more generous with TMFs, I don't think it's been enough of a change yet.

Lastly, as I perused some write-ups from Warm-Up, I read this breakdown of teams on No-Look Scoober, where the writer Stonewall Jackson conflates some heated intra-teammate talk with "issues being a unified squad". He goes on to write, "In one instance, negativity seemed to go over the top, past teammate to teammate heckling when members on the sidelines expressed their discontent with some turnovers colorfully."

I couldn't disagree with this more. It goes without saying that the writer was nowhere near the fields, or even Florida, during the tournament, but there wasn't a single instant all weekend where I thought any Hodag went over the top in criticism of his teammates and, had I felt that was the case, there would have been immediate and significant consequences for doing so. This Hodag squad is fantastic; I couldn't be more happy with or proud to coach them, and each of them would go to the limit of their abilities to help any of the others. If teams are looking at our unity as a possible place to get an edge or incite divisiveness look elsewhere, because you'll be wasting your time. If there's one things the Hodags have never lacked, it's strength through unity, and indeed our most common cheer, and the bedrock of our team philosophy, states it. Hodag Love.

After two days of rest to allow the knots and tightness to dissipate, the Hodags reconvene tonight at their winter lair, the Shell. With a long list of things to improve on but not much opportunity to touch on those that require discs, we can only turn our focus toward the one thing we have control over: team-wide fitness. Tonight Jerrybomb sets about as taskmaster to the team's athleticism. In his tenure as team fitness coordinator he has established himself as an efficient trainer with a splash of sadism that his civilian acquaintances, unfamiliar to the rigors of competitive Ultimate, don't get to see.

I drift now to moments on the sidelines this weekend whenever a call was made, in our games or otherwise, that nullified a score or big play made by one of the teams. Mostly I think of all the incredulity and snark that comes out of the mouths of players too far away to see any part of the play with clarity, or senseless noise coming from players who didn't see what happened at all.

It seems now we're at a moment where everyone provided with vocal chords claims as their right some permutation of best perspective; where every call's legitimacy is argued if it goes against your team; where even the worst calls a teammate can make are upheld as manifest truth.

It reminds me of a moment in Steven King's The Stand where the survivors of a biological apocalypse, after enjoying a period of camaraderie and tight communion, begin to lock the doors in their Boulder, CO homes as the size of the settlement swells, and distrust once again takes root within the cracks of unfamiliarity.

On the heels of the UPA (oops - USAU -old habits die hard) announcing that membership has reached an all-time high and junior memberships have now surpassed those of adults, I'm wondering if we're losing some of that closeness that allowed self-officiation to thrive, that community which allowed each of us as players to leave the doors of our trust unlocked during games.

At the captain's meeting this year at Club Nationals, there was nary a peep about the future of referees in Ultimate - quite the opposite, the corporate line from CEO Tom Crawford and everyone else who spoke from headquarters stressed the future of the sport as predicated on self-officiation as the keystone in the arch of selling points the USAU is using to push Ultimate to a wider market.

And I don't want you to get me wrong - I love self-officiation in this sport. But it's been my experience lately that the familiarity between players nationwide has diminished as our numbers have grown, and now the hardest thing to find on the field the moment after a contentious call is civility, and players with unsubstantiated opinions and no desire to base them on any hard reality sprout like uncontested weeds from the green of the pitch and sidelines. If our civility holds its current decaying trajectory, we're going to need to modify our rules eventually to allow for more observer empowerment, and not because self-officiation is dead or impossible, but because new generations of players simply aren't putting in the effort necessary to make it work. Trust and democratic spirit within a game are as difficult as any upfield break or off-handed sky, but while the latter two bring instant glory and praise, the former two affect the game with a subtlety not immediately tangible. It's only during the handshakes between teams, at the end of a long and hard-fought game that both felt was called fairly, that their true value comes to light.

It's my responsibility, and a primary focus since taking the helm of the Hodags, to make sure this team enjoys and promotes a style of play that is aggressive, intense, and competitive, but also fair, honest, and full of the sportsmanship that Spirit of the Game upholds but has hardly cornered within our sport. For the Hodags and teams nationwide, the challenge remains.