Peri Kurshan
Team culture can often be overlooked as an important contributor to your
team’s success, both in the short and long term. The culture of your team
determines what types of players will be attracted to the team, will enjoy
playing on your team, and will stick around season after season. There is no
one “right” team culture, and it can be defined as much from the actions of a
single individual (founder, strong personality, etc) as shaped over time by
the collective actions and personalities of the group. Once your team is known
as having a particular team culture though, it is very hard to overcome that
perception, even once the reality has changed. So it is worthwhile identifying
your team culture (real or perceived!), nurturing what you like, and trying to
overcome what you don’t like.
Many aspects of team culture are neither positive nor negative, but depend on
individual preferences. Some players want to play on a team that’s known for
being hard-working and disciplined, others prefer to be involved with a team
that prioritizes having fun and giving people freedom to expand their personal
game. Some players want to win above all else; others want most of all to play
with people they like. Some people like playing on a team where direction
comes clearly and succinctly from above, others prefer a team where there is
room for more people to be involved in decision-making. Most of us fall
somewhere in the middle on all of these, but it’s worth figuring out where on
the spectrum the preferences of the team as a whole lie. It’s a good exercise
to do with your team at the beginning of each season- determine not only what
your team’s goals are for that season, but what the team’s priorities are in
terms of team culture. Sometimes this type of conversation will highlight the
fact that the team’s goals and team culture priorities are not aligned!
Once you’ve identified what you want your team culture to be, incorporate
elements of it into your practices and communications. Make sure to explain
why things are being done a certain way (e.g. sprints for turnovers, or taking
a weekend off so people can go play at a fun coed tournament) in terms of what
you’ve collectively decided is the team’s culture. Try to ensure that big team
decisions (schedule, type of offense, etc) are made with fostering the team’s
culture in mind.
For many of us, playing Ultimate is such an important part of our lives that
we can forget that when it comes down to it, we’re doing this for fun! It’s
worthwhile then to try to make sure that our team’s culture reflects what we
as individuals value most about the game.
Peri Kurshan
Practice planning can be daunting and it’s often hard to know where to start.
It can be difficult to strike the right balance between fun and intense,
learning and playing, covering everything and getting enough reps on any
individual thing, etc. In my experience, it helps to have a broad, season-long
outline from which to flesh out individual practices. This means having a
rough idea of all the different strategies you want to cover in a season
(specific offenses, specific defenses, fundamentals, etc), and making sure
there are enough practices to cover everything (and if there aren’t, then to
scale back your expectations of how much to cover in the season!). Keep in
mind that you need to save a few practices at the end of the season for
consolidation rather than learning new things. I’ve found that it’s better to
cover fewer things and have everyone really on the same page than to try to
cram too many offenses or defenses in. I usually try to cover no more than 1-2
concepts per practice (for a 4 hour practice- for a shorter practice scale it
back to no more than 1). It’s also useful to have enough extra practices
allocated for things that come up during the season, for example something you
realize you need to work on after a tournament.
Once you have your broad outline set, and you’ve decided what you’re going to
be covering in a particular practice, then it’s time to plan out the details
of how the practice will be run. On Brute Squad we start every practice with a
nice long warm up routine (it gets cold in Boston, and we don’t want any
preventable injuries at practice!), followed by a warm-up drill that involves
throwing with lots of touches, and enough moving around to build on the warm-
up. We then go right into a quick game to 3. The goal of this game is to
immediately get people’s intensity up and get them into the practice
mentality. Jumping right into a game gets people’s minds off of whatever else
is going on in their lives and helps them focus on Ultimate. It’s also good
practice for coming out strong, since there’s no time to come back from an
early deficit!
After the game to 3, it’s time to start introducing whatever concept we’re
working on that day, whether it’s a 3 person cup zone defense, or a horizontal
stack man offense, or maybe even just a focus on cutting fundamentals. Having
a large white board to use to explain concepts is often helpful, but after you
diagram it out, you may want to walk through it on the field as well. In any
case, keep the talking portion of the practice to a minimum- this is most
often where you’ll lose people’s focus if you tend to go on and on about
things. Keeping things simple is often better than giving an exhaustive
treatise on every aspect of what you’re discussing!
Depending on what you’re working on, it’s usually helpful to try to break
things down into minimal components, and then drill the individual components.
For example, if we’re working on man defense, we might start out by doing a
drill that just works on proper footwork and staying on the open side of your
player. Then after a while we might incorporate adjustments you make once the
disc is in the air. Basically, the more you can break things down, the easier
it will be for people to incorporate what you’re trying to teach. And if each
drill builds on the previous one, slowly putting the pieces together, your
players will get to solidify their muscle memory for one action while adding
another one. With all this drilling, you can see how one concept can end up
taking up a large portion of a practice!
Finally, you can only spend so much time drilling- it’s important to take
things back to realistic, game situations. We usually end practice with
focused scrimmages, in which we try to incorporate what we’ve learned that day
either by forcing the defense to throw a particular D, or by adding incentives
to the scrimmage (for example, if we were working on deep defense, we might
use a 2-point line to encourage deep throws). Ending on a scrimmage also
ensures that people get a chance to do what they’re really there to do- play
and have fun!
Peri Kurshan
The anti-reset mark can effectively make the backfield dump a very difficult
throw. Here are a few ways to prevent this defense from making your life as a
thrower difficult.
First of all, the D is most effective on a high stall count when you are
running out of time and options (and many teams will only shift their marks to
take away the dump once the stall count gets high). Looking to your resetter
very early lessens the chance that the anti-reset mark will be set in the
first place. In a similar vein, faking and pivoting early and aggressively
will make it less likely that your mark can tell when you’re actually looking
for the reset.
If you do find yourself with an anti-reset mark and a dump that’s covered up
the line, there’s a simple trick that you can use to make your remaining
options seem much less daunting: turn your back to the sideline and then
mentally rotate the field 90 degrees so that you now imagine your endzone of
attack to be in the direction you are facing. The mark will now be a regular
angled, force one-way mark, and the person at the front of the stack is now
standing in the open side lane.
Chances are their defender may not have adjusted to the mark opening up your
options to hit that front of the stack player. Make sure your reset handler
and their defender stay out of the way, preferably by staying back for the
dump so that the mark continues to force the same way. The front of the stack
player is now in a good position to either make a cut on what is now the open
side, or even better, simply wait for you to put a pass out straight in front
of you for them to run onto. From the perspective of what the real field
actually looks like, this pass will be a cross-field pass into the middle of
the field. With a little bit of float on that throw, you can put it out in
front of your target such that they run onto it with momentum towards the
break side of the field, and their mark trailing them on the open side- great
opportunity to a continuation yardage cut on the break side!
Peri Kurshan
When the disc is dead, always check behind your back to see where the first
threats are and position yourself to take those away most effectively. It’s
the one chance you have to see what’s about to happen behind you before you
set up your mark—use it!
I try to think of my arms and legs separately as a ’two-pronged’ defense.
Think of your arms as being on a separate vertical plane from your legs, so
that the thrower has to get through 2 vertical planes of extremities rather
than just one. Stand in marking form, with your arms outstretched, then step
your break side leg slightly back. Now when you are marking, it is
psychologically harder for the thrower to throw under your arm because they
can’t tell where your leg is (they know it’s farther back than your arm).
Vary your distance from the thrower. If you are always in the same place the
thrower has 10 seconds to plan out a way to break your mark. I like to start
out marking closer, and then as the count gets higher I move slightly
backwards, and eventually stand up straighter. This minimizes the chances that
I’ll foul the thrower on a high stall count, changes the way in which they
have to throw in order to break me midway through the stall count, and
standing up taller puts me in better position to stop Hail Mary hucks on stall
9.
As a mark, you can’t take away everything. Study your thrower. Try to mark up
on the same person over and over again, figure out what they like to do best,
and then take that away. Force them to throw something they are slightly less
comfortable with. Hopefully that throw will be less well-calibrated and less
expected from their teammates and result in a few miscues.
Peri Kurshan
Zone O is like a game of chess- you spend a while moving your pieces around
the board, not making much apparent headway, trying to find the weakness in
the other team’s defense, and then suddenly you see your opportunity to
capture their queen and it’s off to the races! Zone O also often showcases the
triumph of craftiness over athleticism. You don’t need to be faster or taller
or quicker than the other team- you just need to be skilled with the disc,
disciplined, and know how to take advantage of the opportunities that present
themselves.
Handlers in a zone need to be quick and have good breakmark throws- or at
least have a very quick release so that they get rid of the disc before the
mark can adjust. They don’t necessarily need to have great hucks, since it’s
rare that your hucking opportunities will come from behind the cup. They do
need to have great chemistry and experience working together, so they can
advance the disc quickly.
Many teams have begun implementing a 2 handler zone O. The idea behind having
2 handlers is that you’re more likely to have a numbers mismatch downfield
(since most zone D’s have at least 3 people in the cup). With 2 handlers
behind the cup, your options are to either swing the disc around to a wing
(where the wing is acting like a more traditional 3rd handler), or try to
advance the disc through the cup. One way of getting through the cup is to
have a handler “crash” the cup (run up into the cup and catch the disc inside
the cup, preferably right in front of one of the other cup members). If the
handler catches the disc in this position, it is easier to throw through the
cup since the shortened distance between the thrower and the cup means there’s
less time and range for the cup to be able to intercept those throws.
Once your handlers are able to reliably get the disc through the cup, the next
step is to make sure they have open targets to hit in the small window of time
they might have to get their throw off. The key to this is the numbers
mismatch. If you try to make sure that you arrange your upfield players in
such a way as to have a numbers mismatch in the “layer” of players directly
behind the cup, you will increase your chances of being able to capitalize on
that numbers mismatch (for example, by having 2 poppers being guarded by 1
short deep).
Now if you have handlers that can get the disc through the cup and receivers
that are open behind the cup, the next step is to capitalize on having broken
the zone: keep the disc moving so that the cup can’t re-form around you (give-
and-go’s, quick short passes), and look for long strikes. This is where your
huckers come in- if you can afford to put a long thrower in the popper
position, they’ll be in a much better position to get a long throw off since
they won’t have a cup around them. Typically you’ll find that the deep strikes
are more effective from the wings than from the deep position, since the deep
is often already being guarded by the defensive deep-deep. The offensive deep
is actually in a great position to cut in for a popper, since the defensive
deep-deep is unlikely to follow them in (and if they do, well, there go the
wings…!).
For a zone offense to be effective, the disc must be kept moving. Any
stagnation allows the defense to set up, take stock of where the threats are,
and regain the advantage. If you keep the disc moving, even if it’s just with
short easy throws, you will prevent the defense from being able to adapt
quickly enough and will eventually find the holes in their formation.
Peri Kurshan
I believe that what makes a team successful is its ability to use all of its
players. Most good teams have a few superstars- those players that are game-
changers and whose absence can really hurt the team’s chances. However, the
difference between good teams and great teams, I believe, lies in how the team
utilizes its role players. Ultimate is truly a team sport, and if the top
players on a team aren’t supported by a solid and confident group of role
players, the team will have many exploitable weaknesses.
For clarity, I’m defining a role player as someone who doesn’t have top-notch
skills in every facet of their game (although hopefully they have top-notch
skills in at least one part of their game, or else they’re unlikely to get on
the field much!).
So how do you use and build up your role players? First of all, everyone on
the team must be given a role that plays to their strengths. Secondly,
everyone must know exactly what their role is (and isn’t!). If everyone on the
team is asked to do the same things, and expected to achieve to the same
degree, then some people are being set up to fail- you’ll be asking them to do
things that they’re not able to do. And with failure comes lack of confidence,
which causes more failure, etc. Instead, the team strategy should be designed
to maximize the number of times players are put in situations in which they
are likely to succeed. This means the strategy should depend on which players
are on the field, and conversely, which players are on the field should depend
on your strategy for that point. If your strength is being a great receiver,
you should be expected to cut deep a lot, but then the team should make sure
you have a high-percentage option to throw to. If your strength is as a big
thrower, you might be expected to take more risks with your throws than other
team members. If everyone is clear as to what they are and aren’t expected to
do, people will be able to set themselves up to succeed as much as possible.
So how do players ever improve, if they’re only asked to do the things they’re
already good at? This is a very important question to address, since pigeon-
holing players into very specific roles can lead to them getting frustrated
and bored, or at the very least to slowing their improvement. On our team, we
divide the season into two halves. In the first half of the season, everyone
is encouraged to work on expanding their game. We focus a lot on fundamentals,
and teach the same things to everyone. This doesn’t mean that everyone has a
green light to go crazy. Rather, people are encouraged to work on things that
are just outside their comfort zones, so that they push the envelope and work
on expanding their repertoire. In the second half of the season, we ask people
to take stock of where they are. The team leadership works with individuals to
clearly outline roles and expectations that will enable the team and the
individuals to maximize their rate of success.
Peri Kurshan
The field shrinks when you reach the endzone.
Your defender no longer has to worry about your deep cuts, and so can front
you by a larger margin. The pressure builds- a turnover here in the “red zone”
seems particularly disheartening. All of a sudden, everyone is cutting at
once, forgetting about rules and technique, just anxious to get the disc and
finish the point.
However, it is precisely here in the red zone that it becomes all the more
important to remember your team’s strategies and offense. Does your team like
to cut from the back of the stack in the endzone? Don’t cut off other cutters
by flaring out laterally from the front. Does your team look to score from a
handler cutting up the line? Don’t make a cut from the stack that leaves you
hanging out in the front corner.
It’s important that teams have a clear idea of how they want to score in the
endzone. For some teams, patient resetting by the handlers will allow star
cutters the time they need to set up their cuts. For other teams, the aim
might be to get the disc into the hands of their star handler in the middle of
the field, and then rely on them to break the mark to whoever is there.
Whichever the case, it’s important for the cutters to know their
responsibility, the cutting patterns they should be running, and most
importantly, how they should be clearing!
One way of establishing an effective cutting system in the endzone is by
having it be position-based: for example, perhaps whoever is at the back of
the stack has the priority and responsibility to cut. Everyone else knows not
to cut off the cuts coming from the back of the stack. Another way to maintain
order in what might otherwise be chaos is to have a player-based system: have
a designated scorer whose role is to make cuts in the endzone. This latter
technique has several advantages, one being that you can figure out which of
your cutters is best at getting open in tight spots (or has the best ability
to grab errant throws), and give them priority in the endzone. Another
advantage is that you can separate the roles of your cutters such that the
designated endzone scorer is not your go-to yardage cutter, and might have
fresher legs than the other cutters on the field.
Whenever people are cutting in smaller spaces, errors are harder to correct
for, since the disc is in the air for less time, and there are more defenders
in the area. So it’s important that your cutting technique leave you as much
ability to correct for throwing error as possible.
For example, to hit a receiver cutting laterally across the front of the
endzone (i.e. when the path of the disc will be roughly perpendicular to the
path of the cutter), the thrower needs to place the disc at exactly the right
spot- too far in front of them, and the disc will be out of reach, too far
behind and the defender will snatch it up. For a receiver coming from the back
of the stack, or for a handler cutting up the line to receive a short away
pass, the path of the disc is more similar to the path of the cutter, and so
that cutter can make small adjustments of their trajectory to compensate for a
disc thrown a bit more towards one side or the other. So, once you know that
you’re the cutter whose role it is to make the cut, it’s important to set
yourself up in a good position, so that you can make a cut that maximizes your
ability to complete the play.
Lastly, a good endzone offense probably either swings the disc back and forth
to allow cutters to time their cuts off of a swing, or works on getting the
disc into the middle of the field and then trying to keep it there. Try to
avoid having the disc stuck on the sideline for too long, as then the usable
space for your cutters is even smaller…unless your endzone strategy is to
score off of hammers to the opposite corner.