Nancy Sun
When I think about throwing long, it helps me to visualize a spring in action.
I try to activate four parts of my body that act as springs: legs, hips,
shoulders, elbow, and wrist. As I wind up for the throw, I think about
compressing these springs in turn and as I throw, I think about releasing each
of the springs. The legs are an important part of the step; I step out as far
as I can to still feel completely balanced throughout the throw. Step evenly
with your legs, rotate your torso through your legs and hips, drive your
shoulder, lead your wrist with your elbow, and finally snap your wrist. This
works for both the forehand and backhand.
When I am shooting for maximum distance, I try to throw the disc so it has
three stages of flight (credit for the “three stages of flight” terminology to
Tiina Booth and NUTC):
1. Disc starts with some inside-out (more i/o with more headwind),
2. Flattens out, and then,
3. Finishes its flight path by spinning in (still mostly flat) towards
your receiver.
A few details related to each throw:
Forehand. I think the most important thing to keep in mind when throwing a
long forehand is to focus on throwing hard, not far. Thinking about this
focuses me on keeping my form compact and makes me think about snapping the
disc quickly and hard.
When you watch a baseball pitcher, there is a moment in time where they have
not yet released the pitch, but their arm is moving forwards and you see their
elbow leading their wrist through the throwing motion. (A quick Google Image
Search brings
this.)
This same leading with the elbow motion is what I think about when I am about
to release a disc because it helps me get all the possible snap out of my
wrist.
A few ways to practice wrist snap for the forehand: Throw fast and flat (not
high arcing) blades with a partner. If you don’t have a partner, often indoor
tracks or gyms have these tall, heavy curtains that you can pull out and throw
blades upwards on. Also fun to try to catch the rebound.
Backhand. Visualize yourself inside a hula hoop that is suspended in the
air about chest height. As you bend at the waist, the angle of the hula hoop
changes with respect to the ground, but stays the same with respect to your
upper body. You can vary the angle of inside-out on the throw by bending at
the waist. When executing my throwing motion, I try to think about keeping the
disc in the plane of the hula hoop. Air resistance (including wind) will make
the disc flatten out.
Two things especially useful for pulling are to think about bringing the disc
behind you as far as you can during your windup and on curling it into your
wrist.
As with the forehand, focus on throwing hard, not far.
Nancy Sun
Catching The Pull
Mentally, catching the pull is often thought of as being a job that one can
only mess up, but the flip side is to think of it as an opportunity for a team
to jump start its offense. The seconds saved by catching the pull help to get
the offense in motion before the defense can set. I think of three main steps
when catching the pull:
1. Anticipation. Learn about the opposing team’s pullers, especially
focusing on the distance of their pulls and angle of the throw (I/O or O/I are
the predominant favorites). Obviously prior game experience will help, but
this can be learned during the course of a game just as easily.
2. Reading and Decision Making. For the pulls that I am going to catch, I
try to get my body to where I can catch the disc at chest height. I turn to
face the direction of its incoming path. For whatever reason I might decide
not to catch the pull (for example it is raining and/or the disc is coming in
at a really steep angle) I will get my body to where I think the disc is going
to be easiest to pickup and throw right away. This is easy for a floating pull
that settles nicely to the ground, but for a roller, anticipating the roll and
getting to the right spot can be tricky.
3. Execution. I want to pancake the pull at chest height and close to my
body. I focus on keeping my hands at 90 degree angles to each other (as
opposed to parallel) to eliminate misalignment and the chance that the disc
might flip out of my hands.
Transition From Catching To Throwing
The ability to catch and throw as quickly as possible is often undervalued as
a handler attribute. Fortunately, it is easy to practice because it can be
worked on as part of any throwing drill by trying to catch and release as fast
as you can.
Getting your feet into a balanced throwing position should be done
simultaneous to catching. Tenths of a second can be the difference between
hitting the swing or having the mark come on to prevent you from hitting the
swing.(Sidebar: from playing the Japanese women at Worlds, this was something
that they all seemed to excel at). As a right-handed thrower, I mostly pancake
with my right hand on top so that sliding into a backhand grip is very quick.
Coming out of the pancake, right-hand on top is also the most natural and
secure motion for me to enter into my forehand grip.
Nancy Sun
One of the attributes of teams that do well at Nationals and other high-level
tournaments is their handler defense. Many teams can do a pretty good job at
containing handlers (e.g. getting the mark on to stop upfield break throws,
adjusting to stop give-go’s, preventing up-the-line cuts). However, I think
there are only a few teams that have the personnel and strategy to
consistently pressure and generate D’s on handler resets—this includes
pressure on both the thrower who may or may not be a handler, and on the
actual handler who makes the reset.
I think that knowing which of these buckets your opponent falls into is
important to include in any pre-game scouting report. Especially if your team
is coming off of a game where handler resets were easy, it is easy for
offenses to get too comfortable, so knowing beforehand allows the team to do
some pre-game prep. Some useful drills to do are ones that emphasize decisive
handler motion and on throwing against tough marks.
From a team strategy perspective, there are a few adjustments I would make
once the game gets going and it is clear that reset cuts are getting heavy
pressure. The first is to calmly acknowledge that it is a little more
difficult to complete reset passes, and that we can make it much easier for
ourselves if we focus on three things:
1. As a thrower, look a little bit earlier. Give yourself more time so
that things are less rushed.
2. Assuming that as a team you are already used to doing this, remind the
thrower to fake and pivot. This makes the offense less easy to predict.
3. If you are responsible for making the reset cut, focus on anticipating
the throw coming. It may have been easy in the last game to just wait until
the thrower looked at you before moving, but now you have to take more
initiative. Take a look upfield to see what the thrower sees and check in with
your internal stall count. You know your teammates, so keep an eye out for
signs that they are about to turn to you. That tenth of a second you gain by
anticipating will go a long way.
From a individual perspective, one of the things I really like to think about
as a handler against teams with tough handler defense is “winning with your
legs, not your throws”. This reminds me to focus on being aggressive with my
legs to drive my defender so that I can put myself in good positions to make
easy throws.
Nancy Sun
Adjustments made before during a game can win…or lose a game. Pre-game
scouting reports or prior encounters can give clues for how each team’s
offense and defense should come out of the gate. However, there is no
substitute for actually playing the game and making real-time evaluations.
There is a fine line to walk between jumping the gun on an adjustment and not
acting soon enough and I think that one of the hardest jobs of a team
strategist is this evaluation and subsequent decision for adjustment or non-
adjustment.
In the given situation, it sounds like the defense tried to take away the
opponents first option (banking on a low likelihood of being beat on the
opponent’s second or subsequent option), but the opponent made an effective
pre-game adjustment, and kudos to them. Halftime is a natural time for
adjustments to be made to happen and in this particular situation, I would
absolutely change up the defensive plan.
In close games, teams trade points, teams take turns going on runs, and at the
most basic level, teams settle into a rhythm. One of the goals of a defense
should be to make the offense uncomfortable, and clearly the opposing team is
feeling pretty at ease with their star thrower being forced away from the
disc. The decision for whether the defensive adjustment is a zone, clam, a
straight up mark, backing man defense, etc., should be made with your team’s
strengths (and other external factors, like weather) in consideration. If the
decision is to stay with man defense, the other factor to consider is the type
of defender to put on the thrower. For example, on other team’s big throwers,
there can be much success to be had with rotating smaller-in-stature handler
defenders who specialize in challenging the dump pass with more physical
defenders who cover and hold lots of ground on D and provide a huge mark.
Whichever method ends up being chosen, the goal with the defensive adjustement
should be to disrupt the offense’s rhythm enough to get a couple turns (and
defensive scores) and shift the momentum of the game.
Nancy Sun
Tryouts are such a weird time for me. It’s exciting the season is starting and
so many people want to tryout for our team, but at the same time the decisions
can be stressful and as much pressure as one might feel when trying out, the
team is also some amount of pressure on the team being tried out to find a
good fit. Since there are a few different options in Boston, it is very
important for our team to put our best foot forward and we try to do it as
accurately as possible. We try to have a complementary mix of teaching and
evaluating so that people can get a good sense of what the team is like
(values, personality, strategic sets, etc) and the team can get a feel for
what the tryouts can bring to the table. While there do exist specific skill
sets that we look for each season (more on this in a bit), at the core, Brute
has always had a strong emphasis on athleticism and strong fundamentals:
catching, throwing, good decisions, and man defense. It is also important for
us to see that people are coachable and able to adapt to different/new
situations. All of these characteristics together paint a pretty accurate
picture, albeit an overwhelmingly general one, of the type of player we look
for taking on our team.
Attitude and personality fit, while both are very important intangibles that
are taken into consideration, have never been deal breakers for us. One of the
reasons for this is because we already have such a diverse range of
personality on the team - we have teammates who like to ask questions,
teammates who are outspoken, teammates who are silent, teammates who are
emotional, teammates who view the glass as half full/half empty, etc - and
this is something we embrace and have never had a problem with.
At the beginning of every season, we take inventory of the team and evaluate
the roles we need to have filled, based both on evaluations of previous
seasons and on personnel losses. Every year without fail, one of the hardest
roles for us to fill is the dynamic handler (big throws, big target, touch the
disc a lot types) and inevitably, we never have enough of them. Some of the
other past specific needs have included: deep defenders, stopped disc cutters,
possession handlers, and big marks. This isn’t to say that we only look for
people with certain skill sets, but rather we do tailor practices to focus on
teaching and identifying these skills. The general philosophy is to increase
the quantity of people on our team that are good at a certain skill, so
sometimes we have tryouts who already fit one or more of our needs, but the
tryout process is also a lot about teaching and in that case, it is just as
important for us to see improvement from weekend to weekend.
So I guess this has all been more about the tryout process from a team
organizational perspective, but if I had to give anyone advice about trying
out for our team, I’d just encourage them to be themselves and have fun out
there. We try to maintain an atmosphere of openness and transparency, so if
anyone has thoughts/ideas/questions, just tell/ask someone. Don’t be scared of
asking questions or for feedback and don’t worry too much about “fitting into
a system”. Work hard, have fun, and play ultimate, because that’s what we are
all together to do.
