Process of Illumination

Who is our pyromaniac? Who is our firestarter?

Getting yourself fired up with no provocation is one of the hardest things to do. In lulls of energy, everyone knows that if a small-ish number of teammates get louder and more animated and start playing balls out and physical, eventually the whole team will follow suit, and murder will ensue.

The problem is that getting loud and animated takes energy. Getting physical and playing balls out take energy. And the vast majority of humans, in situations like these, silently hope somebody else will do it. So they cross their fingers and wait, they wait to join the surge, straddling their emotional surfboards ready to paddle onto and ride the wave of energy their teammates will create. You will discover quickly that when this happens, you end up with 26 players, each with their fingers crossed, waiting for a wake that never comes.

I'll tell you one thing; we missed Coolidge this weekend. He can be counted on to buckle in and produce in our moments of need, and you can actually see when he declares by sheer will that he won't cede another inch of ground, and any pass foolishly sent in his direction gives us possession, and chills at how Kill Mode he got.

But one player is not enough to spread the fire. And yes, we have Brian Hart, and many other quality defenders; I'm not talking about defensive skill, I'm talking about fire. And not just being able to hold fire, I'm talking about the ability to create it.

Consider this: Once upon a time, there lived a human being. This human being was the first human in the history of our species to create a fire at their will, just because; they wanted a fire and - poof - they made it. Every single human before them had feared fire and desired it and saw how powerful it was but this human was the first to create it consciously, deliberately. Hundreds of thousands of years later we have bics and electric stove tops and furnaces in basements and we take it for granted that we can have heat on demand. (true story!)

The moral of the story is that it's easy as hell to bring the heat when you're handed the flame, but don't nobody wanna be the guy who has to light the torch. It's a tough job, much harder than putting your hand out waiting for the torch to be passed to you.

And so I acknowledge that I'm being demanding when I ask in huddles to spark the team up. It's asking a lot. And I ask it of you all not only in every huddle, but at practices and at workouts as well. Push yourself and us to another level; be the first Hodag to put in more. Am I asking too much? The question does not stay rhetorical; you answer it each time it is asked, through your actions.

And lastly consider this: compare the total number of open college teams that compete in the series with the total number of teams that are division 1 champions at the season's end. How grueling is the path that weeds us down? Are you each doing your part to propel us onward?

I hope the answer to my last question, from all of you, is, "yes." But of course, the real question here is, "are you doing more?"

Hh

One of the most important responsibilities team leaders have is setting and reinforcing team norms. Defining the right attitude for the team is the easy part; maintaining it throughout a season is the true challenge. And while it is the coaches, captains, and officers that set the team attitude, they can't maintain it alone. Deep in the season's doldrums, players from among the rank and file have opportunities to make an big impact on the team that go beyond the playing field proper. Their contribution in these times is powerful specifically because it comes from an unlikely place, and not the same tired voices.

This season with the Hodags presented the usual mid-season problems. Cabin fever sets in as the indoor season gets long, and tempers and frustation levels rise at practice when results fall below expectations. As we prepared for Centex, the bickering at practice was intensifying, and to my dismay it was coming from the elder statesmen of the team, those who should know better, who should be setting the proper example. Grumbles ran the gamut. If a mistake was made, it was someone else's fault. Someone wasn't working as hard as others. Some people were playing more (or less) than they should be. And so on, you get the point.

As I returned from Austin, I was frustrated and looking for a way to snap us out of it and recommit to working for each other instead of ourselves. And what a breath of fresh air, then, to finally arrive home and check my email and read this:

Dear Hector,

I wanted to let you know how much I truly appreciated the playing time I received this weekend, especially during the Tufts game. I know they forfeited, but I still felt extremely privileged and honored to start that game. Being lined up in the Hodag tunnel, hearing my name called, and having the opportunity to race through it was euphoric. During the eight points I played, I learned a lot from the mistakes I made and the positions I found myself in. The fact that there was a little less pressure made it easier to focus on the fundamental elements of the game, but it didn't change the intensity at which I played at. I just wanted to reiterate how grateful I am for the playing time I receive and that whatever is best for the team is best for myself as a player.

Hodag Love,

Shane Saddison-Bradford

Shane is one of our promising young players. A freshman this past year, his growth through the season was immense and powered by a fuel of the highest octane, a pure love of playing and a constant awareness that it is a privilege to do so. And to play as a Hodag, a team steeped in a rich tradition of success, culled every year from over a hundred tryout hopefuls, that concept of privilege is all the more true.

Shane's email was one of the highlights of my season. I forwarded it immediately to those on the team who needed to be reminded of its message; oftentimes as a leader your role is to get the hell out of the way and let the team learn the lesson themselves. The next three weeks of practice were the best we'd had that year, and we never looked back. And, as I'm sure the rest of his years on the Hodags will prove, neither will Shane.

Oh oh...

From the USAU's US Open website:

Co-hosted by USA Ultimate and the Colorado Springs Sports Corporation, the US Open is scheduled for July 4-8, 2012 at the Air Force Academy - a world class venue in the "amateur sports capital of the world", Colorado Springs, CO.

And then there's this photograph, taken yesterday. The large building in the foreground? The Air Force Academy's stadium. That photo is awesome in the way that Old Testament God was awesome. In other words, paralyzingly scary and full of fury.

Not gonna say something foolish like, "man-made climate change is real and it's happening," but if you look at a map of Colorado right now with all the wildfires labeled, it looks like the foot in a Tinactin commercial before it's sprayed with Tough-Actin' Tinactin. Compounding matters, there is a new wildfire barely over the foothills outside of Boulder, and the south part of the city has been placed on pre-evacutation warning. And our USAU offices are located in - you guessed it - south Boulder.

Today is June 27th. We're eight days away from the start of what USAU has promoted as one of its future flagship events. If you've got a rain dance, now's the time. Yo - Mel, Deav, Schotty - you're in my thoughts and prayers. Best of luck.

UPDATE: Shiiiiit. USAU sends out some info on the status of the fire and tourney.

 

I recently read a fascinating article in the New Yorker entitled The Caging of America. The author cited Harvard Law Professor William J. Stuntz's "The Collapse of the American Justice System" for his fairly radical idea that the Bill of Rights is in large part responsible for the justice system's current state, and that its flaw is that it was written not with the principles of justice in mind, but procedure:

In a society where Constitution worship is still a requisite on right and left alike, Stuntz startlingly suggests that the Bill of Rights is a terrible document with which to start a justice system—much inferior to the exactly contemporary French Declaration of the Rights of Man, which Jefferson, he points out, may have helped shape while his protégé Madison was writing ours.

The trouble with the Bill of Rights, he argues, is that it emphasizes process and procedure rather than principles. The Declaration of the Rights of Man says, Be just! The Bill of Rights says, Be fair! Instead of announcing general principles—no one should be accused of something that wasn’t a crime when he did it; cruel punishments are always wrong; the goal of justice is, above all, that justice be done—it talks procedurally. You can’t search someone without a reason; you can’t accuse him without allowing him to see the evidence; and so on.

This passage resonated immensely with me as I have been trying to piece together my philosophy and pedagogy toward Ultimate. My own education in the sport (which I suspect echoes the vast majority of experiences) consisted of rules and procedures passed down from teammates or coaches. When you're trapped on the line, do this; when we run play X, cut this way; if you're the primary reset, go this way; if we're in the endzone, set up just so (et cetera).

And here was my frequent response, and one that gets repeated on team after team everywhere: But what happens if...? What if the primary reset is there and I'm here? And what if it happens on the breakside instead (et cetera)?

Precious practice time flies as player after player has a slightly different scenario they want discussed. The problem you confront with rules and procedures for various scenarios while playing is that there are myriad variables one can consider at any given moment when playing a game, they are all in flux, and sometimes rules contradict each other. Frequently many of those variables are unnecessary distractions for one player but crucial observations for another player in a different part of the field. How do you distinguish between them?

Another problem, harder to notice but with a larger negative impact, is the cognitive processing time it takes to identify a situation and then recall the pertinent rule. Unless you are a seasoned veteran, this can take valuable time, and since everyone is moving, by the time you're ready to act, you're too late. Not by much, mind you, but in moments where success and failure are separated by fractions of a second the delay can be enough to tip the scales against you.

And so the search for a better way to teach the sport, a search for the ethics of inspired play, and the principles that govern it. The dictionary has a definition of principle that matches what I'm searching for: "a fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived". The word derived here is especially fitting, because a live disc in a game of Ultimate is a calculus of fluid dynamics.

And within this dynamic, correct decisions must be made in the instant; they must be felt and not recalled. Hence, the principled approach to teaching the sport. Our individual sets of principles helps us make decisions in our lives based on what we believe is right and wrong, and these are things we intuit and feel in the moment without having to think about them. Adults call it gut instinct, and we tell little kids when something doesn't feel right to "listen to the feeling in your tummy." And across disciplines, the best performers do not think of rules, but react to feelings.

Another benefit to teaching principles instead of rules is that principles are not scenario-specific and can be applied regardless of circumstances. It's this that will have the biggest positive impact to young players with regards to their learning curve because it will fundamentally change the way they experience the field during play, away from a player/endzone vision to one framed around space and angles.

To accomplish this, there are two necessary steps I am attempting to take, in my roles as coach of the Hodags and captain of Madison Club. The first is the identification and unambiguous expression of the principles of good play. The second is the creation of the activities that will, through practice and repetition, inculcate the team with a shared set of morals, defined by the dictionary as "founded on the fundamental principles of right conduct rather than on legalities, enactment, or custom".

It's a daunting task to tackle alone, so I have recruited help. I spoke recently with Bob Krier; a former Johnny Bravo teammate, intellectual acrobat, coach, and ingeniously original Ultimate mind, it was a series of exchanges we had before my move back to Wisconsin that laid the foundation for what I've done since. Back then we had batted around the idea of exchanging correspondence, questions and answers posed to each other in the quest to solidify our own approaches. What I proposed to him now, and he accepted, is that we hold this conversation in a public forum: my blog. Aside from Lou Burrus at his Win the Fields, there are scant people effectively articulating the deeper challenges that coaches, captains, and team leaders face throughout a season. After reading each of Lou's posts, I crave a conversation with him and other coaches where we can discuss the hows and whys of what we do, paying attention to the nuanced differences in our approaches. If this goes well I hope to invite a few others to join the conversation.

Just as Stuntz identified that the flaws in the US justice system stem from the procedural perspective the Bill of Rights is predicated upon, I believe that the current pedagogy of Ultimate is limiting the potential of players and teams to play Ultimate as sound, as symphonic, and as beautiful as it can be played. And so my search continues.