I had a bad day at practice on Tuesday. Hit BP going deep with a full field, upwind forehand early on, but then after that just experienced a gross confluence of personal offednesses. Check it:
Missed Big Nate with a breakmark flick that got D'ed by Vince; threw a breakmark flick off EBay's chest (my fault? pretty hot and maybe a little behind him); missed EBay with a big IO flick (too far); missed Big Nate again deep with a huge upwind backhand (apparently not upwind enough); couldn't cover Justin on an in-cut; missed Josiah on a flick downfield (though that one, Cisco ran a poach into the scene and it probably otherwise would have been okay); missed EBay with an up-the-line floater (he laid out and dropped it); threw a hammer between Dad Connole and Brent who watched it fall to the ground (okay, that one I won't take the blame); couldn't snag a over my head laser huck from Brady (though he was fouled and we got the disc back); had to break off a cut with Brent in the lane and had Jose throw it to where I would have been; and to top the terrible day off, threw a big backhand (upwind, again) to a wide open Nate - only to have Vince appear out of the dusk (it was 7:50 MST on a field with no lights - Vince seriously materialized out of the sunset) and jump up for a poach D.
Yikes - any way you slice it, even with my qualifiers and attempts to deflect blame, that's 8 or 9 turnovers in a single bleepity practice. Yikes. I handle the disc a ton, and we had little to no cutting in this game - both BP and I ended up making mid cuts by default, ugh* - but still, this is terrible by all measures.
* - Trust that BP and I are both handlers by nature and while we are both serviceable mids (he even moreso that I), it wrecks the dynamic when your throwers have to make all of the cuts, particularly since if we throw to one another, there is no one else who cuts. Like I said, Ugh.
This is (fortunately) the second time this has happened in my Ultimate life, a day where every throw was just off by a touch, either to me or from me. The other was a legendarily bad game with Polaroid in a fall league game in Cambridge that ended in a tie; same deal, everythrow was just a foot too far out in front of people. I mean, sure, there have been other Bad Days - ACLs, ankles, shoulders, knees, elbows, etc. - but these types of "what the hell is wrong with Nyet today" days are a rare, um, treat.
Step 1: Overanalyze - a lot of this was due to our aforementioned lack of mid cutting and me getting a little too aggressive. Okay, dial it down. Some of it was also from general disorganization on the part of our O, which was missing some people and across the board (not just me) had a very, very bad day. So just systematically lowered percentage throws on the whole for the day, and just a confluence of bad coin-flip (dice roll, blindfolded number chart, whatever) outcomes.
So: Need to recognize a lot earlier that 1, my throw are a little off, and 2, our O is discombobulated enough to require ultra-conservative strategy. That was the big mistake, more than the bad throwing - I'm gonna have off days, hopefully infrequently, but even Ichiro and Luis Castillo drop flyballs now and then. Okay, so big fat, aurally excited note to self: BE SMRTER, EARLIER. Okay.
Step 2: Purge bad day via longish blog post that no one will care to read except you, embracing the act of writing as cathartic and devoid of communicative purpose. Done and done.
Reset, reset, power button, pump cartridge up and down, power button, reset, power button, remove cartridge, blow on contacts, re-insert cartridge, pump cartridge up and down, power button ... phew. Ahhhh...
Alright, I'm good to go again for the weekend. UUDDLRLRBAselectstart. Next Ultimate content will come from Saturday morning's competitive scrimmage, played at 7 AM on a day that is forecast for a high of 117. Ohboyphoenixultimate.
No comments:
Post a Comment