The Paga (driving) experience

These are my thoughts on my Paganello 2012 experience. I hope they are of interest, many apologies if you think they might be and then read them and get thoroughly bored.

When Callum first suggested driving to Paga I was apprehensive, not just the actual driving part but because it was Callum who was asking. I trust Callum with everything but he will be the first to admit that at times he is not the most organised and on occasion doesn’t come up trumps. My nervousness was, therefore, because I thought that he might not sort all the stuff that he said he would do in time. He did and I will eternally grateful for him being the backbone of one of the best trips of my life.

Cycling to Burla (in September 2010) is still, in my opinion, a better journey and sense of achievement than driving to Paga this time but I can now proudly say that I have braved Italian drivers in an automobile which I am dead chuffed about. The driving itself turned out to be fairly effortless – having James (Horsfield aka Jizzy) as a navigator and general entertainer made life for Callum and me far easier. We made one slight wrong turn in Italy – the signs for Piacenza simply vanished – but otherwise driving along the French motorways were enjoyable, followed by zipping along some Swiss made roads and finally across Italy to Rimini.

The single thing that made the trip extra tolerable was our Swiss stop-off with Callum’s Aunt and family. We were treated (on the way to Italy) to raclette (melted cheese over potato – wonderful) and then (on the way back) to the best tasting veal and accompaniments that I can ever remember. Callum’s uncle (Dan), a butcher, proudly told us that he had not only cooked the dinner but picked out the calf and slaughtered it himself! This might make some people uncomfortable but seeing how proud Dan was with this made the choice of seconds or not an absolute no-brainer: I needed more food.

Paganello itself was, as ever, the best tournament I will ever go to. I had fun with my team and other (roughly) Brighton based people, played some ultimate and am proud of my personal party efforts…

Thursday night is, if you don’t know, the free red wine night. I had a few and ended up, apparently, in pretty much the fetal position behind the stands trying to stop the world spinning around me. I was eventually taken back to our flat (luckily a 4 or 5 minute walk away) and put to bed. Friday morning was tough but what made it easier was hearing that Frank was nearly taken in an ambulance but was sorted out by Ashley turning up and, in Jesus style, telling Frank to get up and walk home – a task he achieved without fuss.

Friday came and went. For Mohawks it was a late start and only two games (against the weakest two in our pool) so not too tough on the legs. I, for one, was delighted by this as my body was not completely ready. The evening was quiet to say the least and just one pint after a couple of flat based beers was plenty for me.

Saturday was an altogether different kettle of fish – four games for me plus Shocker got to play twice in the arena! We won our first (which was important to play up, rather than down) and very nearly got to seven-all against SeXXXpensive (who ended runners up) which impressed us plenty. The party that evening was good fun although I am disappointed with how scared Ultimate players are with gentle moshing, and I am sure John Maule will agree with me. It wasn’t particularly hardcore moshing but people looked terrified and so an awkward circle formed around us.

The best thing, however, to come out of Saturday was a question as to me, Therapist, by Selina. I was sitting next to her in the stands watching Shocker where upon she turned to me and said:

“Do you have a nickname?”

I was stunned into silence. After a while she realised her most catastrophic of mistakes and said:

“Oh of course. I sometimes think ‘Rapo’ is your real name”

Thank you, Selina, for reducing me to tears.

 

I’m sure most of you are bored of reading this by now, so I will stop very soon, I promise.

 

Sunday brought wind to Rimini. Wind to the extent that games were postponed for two hours! Eventually we played and lost in a very passive match but then we had the game of our lives in an up-wind, down-wind, extravaganza. Our opponents won the toss and by all accounts thoughts that that was going to be enough to win the match but little did they know the might of Callum, Shimmy, Kneetu, Frank & Ash (who played the first (and majority of) up-wind point(s), if memory serves) and, although Mohawks were one-nil down it took our opponents about 12 attempts to score, and Mohawks got oh so close. This set the tone of the game up perfectly – we put our down-wind offense in on our second or (at most) third attempt and then did battle again. They scored again but after a long slog, we then comfortably tied it up at two a piece, Then we got our breakthrough. Absolutely fantastic offense, a time out called followed by an IO break from Frank to Ash – we’d got the break and with it, effectively won the match! (We scored another up-wind point at the end, too, winning the game 5-2).

Monday is as Monday does. We lost our final game and then, I for one, got nicely tipsy in the stands watching the finals. If you get the opportunity then watch the mixed final! An absolutely incredible match, I won’t give the score away for those not in the know but definitely worth getting to see if you possibly can!

So, as a summary… The biggest comparison from this year and last is the driving rather than flying, obviously. It was different, obviously, and I did miss the horrific train ride from Bologna but obviously took two days to arrive rather than the 6 hours or so for the flyers amongst us, but did eat like Swiss royalty (if they’ve any) on the layover.

I cannot thank my driving companions Callum and James enough for keeping me awake and entertained during what could have been a journey filled with awkward silences and misery. You guys were both fantastic all the way to and from Paganello, and I almost long for squeezing back into the Micra and just sitting there for the day.

I guess there is only one question that remains… Would I do it all again?

Yes.

In a heartbeat.

“Foul? But I was just punching you in the…

I’m still processing a load of stuff from the weekend – most notably our ‘grudge match’ game, which has given me whole load of stuff to think about in terms of no-contest rules, how to beat drama and why we even play ultimate. Once I have that sorted in my brain, there’ll be a post on it for sure. I also owe Lucy a post which I promised a few weeks ago – so don’t panic, boss. It’s coming too.

This one’s a pretty brief post, about boxing out, position and bidding – because something this weekend reminded me of it.

This weekend, I went to jump for a disc and found I couldn’t – due to my mark running into the back of me as I took my approach steps.

Last year, I was punched in the face (accidentally, obviously) while jumping to catch a break-side knife indoors.

These two things have a few points in common: both times I had position on my defender (through the thrower’s efforts, not my own, I hasten to add) and both times my foul call was responded to with “I was just going for the disc”.

Oh, and both times, it ended up being contested and sent back.

First thing I want to make very clear – I do not view these pretty standard and clear fouls being contested as bad spirit on their part. This isn’t a post about how to recognise when you’ve fouled someone, or even a more useful one (possibly) about boxing out. This is a post about how to deal with that one phrase which is the derailer of almost every contested foul conversation.

“I was just going for the disc” is possibly the least useful phrase to use in a call, for starters. Of course you’re going for the disc – we’re playing ultimate. What’s the other explanation of what you’re doing? “I wasn’t going for the disc, but you were, so I thought I’d hit you”? No-one thinks that. No-one calls foul thinking that (or at least I really hope they don’t). Do me a favour – stop using that phrase.

Mini-rant over – this post is really about how to talk about the foul in order to explain to the defender that they have fouled you. In both of the calls I mentioned above, I found myself unable to convinvce the other person of this. And it’s because I didn’t mention the magic words – the words that are the bane of the “just going for the disc” approach: I had position.

This is the key point. When you and your mark collide, because you’re both running at the same speed to the same point, someone will say “we were both just going for the disc”. What they mean is, “we were going for the same space, and got there at the same time”. When you have position and your mark clobbers you, and they say “I was just going for the disc”, what they mean is “I was trying to get the disc, but you were in the way”.

Position is about having your body in the way, about giving your mark no other option if they want to ‘go for the disc’ successfully than to foul you. When you get fouled while boxing someone out, you haven’t ‘failed’: you’ve achieved your goal – the disc is yours. Unless they contest it.

Ah.

So, how do you convince them? I haven’t quite got it down yet – but I think the key point I’ve failed to raise in conversations like those above is that of position. If you can explain to them that yes, you understand they were going for the disc, but unfortunately you had put yourself in a position where they could not do so without fouling you, then by persisting in their explanation of “just going for the disc” by their own admission, they’ve just fouled you. They couldn’t go for the disc without fouling you – and they went for the disc.

Maybe that’ll work, maybe it won’t. Go test it out for me.

You can go hard or you can go home…

I warn you now this blog is going to be a  bit long and have quite a bit of information for you to ingest and in some places be inexcusably cheesy! So grab a cup of tea and make sure you are sitting comfortably and I shall begin 🙂

I am sooooo excited for UWON, this is where we can hold our own and being reigning champions, go back and defend our title. However this is only possible if we work well as a team as well as individuals. Therefore I thought it might be helpful to try and establish our team aims and commitments before the tournament so we are all on the same page and united as a team to make sure we do as best as we can 🙂 Im hoping you all agree  with everything I say, but if not we can discuss this as a team and come to a compromise 🙂

Firstly, my main aim of the weekend is for everybody to have an amazingly fun weekend 🙂 This is the main tournament for us, what we have been working up to all year and we want to go there and play our best competitive ultimate, but also have a laugh and enjoy ourselves whilst doing it :). Therefore I would ask you  to respect mine and Rhona’s decisions. If you don’t agree with us or  think we have missed something glaringly obvious please do tell us, but make sure it is at an appropriate time i.e. before/ after a game or whilst walking back to a line, not whilst we are trying to call a line or during team talks. I’m sorry if this sounds a bit dictator-esque, but from my experience as a player over the last few years I think teams have worked best if there is clear leadership and everyone respects the captains 🙂

Related to this point there are going to be times when we are going to call a line; everyone on this team has their individual strengths and weaknesses, so we need to make sure we get the strongest combination of these skills on the line at anytime to maximise our success in each individaul game to succeed at the tournament 🙂

Thirdly, sidelining! To me this is more important than how  far you can throw, or how quick you can run. Sidelining and team motivation are what will win us this tournament!! Therefore when you are not on the pitch you are the sideline, this should not be thought of as ‘oh Im not wanted to play im just going to stand here and get bored’, NO,  this is where I believe you can have the most impact on the team, being the eyes for everyone and letting us know whats working and whats not and encouraging us all. I will be expecting every single one of you to be supporting and encouraging from the sideline, we have enough people on the team to ensure that we have nearly a full team on the sideline, so we should be the loudest team at the tournament!! I personally feel that everyone plays better when they know they have the whole team behind them, even if someone is just shouting ‘Go Mohawks’ it gets me pumped up and gives me that extra energy boost to go out and run my hardest for that point, who knows I might even lay-out haha!! So shout and be loud and be proud of being a squaw!! Sideline is the most important position on our team 🙂

Penultimatly although we won last year, it doesn’t mean we are going to do it again this year, if anything it is going to be harder, we are going to have to want it even more and focus on winning each game individually. We are only going to get to the final if we put in the effort to deserve to be there. We need to go out into every game as if its  the final and make sure we are playing our best. There are a lot more women in ultimate this year, so we cant rest on our laurels and think that they were easy last year, or all their good women have graduated; look what happened against Uriel at Indoor nationals when we thought that!! I want us to play hard (mentally and physically) both Saturday and Sunday at this tournament, we are paying more we need to get our moneys worth haha!!

Finally, because we have enough players for nearly two teams you have to be willing to sub on and off the line regularly. I have decided to bring a lot of so that no-one is on the pitch for too long and we can make sure that we have people who are constantly on top form and want to run hard for that point;if your not putting 120% into that point your no good to the team being on the line. From personal experience and following Womens last year I think one of the secrerts of our success was that we always want ed to be on the pitch, but we also realised that if we were a little tired or worn out we swap with someone; so I often found myself playing a point or two and then swapping. This allowed me to put in 150% each point making sure that I played to my best!!

Finally (again, I know im waffling now but I promise I will wrap it up now :)) We are only going to do well if we are commited as a team: One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team. The main thing and most important thing I want us to make sure we focus on is having a good time and playing as a team!!! Remember there is no ‘I’ in team, I am going to be cheesy and quote the three muskateers now, squaws is all about ‘all for one and one for all’. We are a team, we are the best team, but we only will be if we play together as a team!!!!

Sorry this is very long but hopefully you agree with me on these points 🙂 In the wise words of Will. I. AM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjIwmJMqrco – “You can go hard or you can go home”!

Lets go Squaws!!!!

The Grudge Match

When you read the general theme of my last post (‘Leave the Lie Detector At Home’), I’m guessing quite a few people had the same thought: “yeah, most of the time no-one’s lying or cheating, but what about that bunch of ****s from <insert rival team name here>?”

Maybe your team doesn’t have a grudge match. Maybe you don’t have that one particular team who it’s HORRIBLE to play. That team that you anticipate the possible match up with before the tournament, even if they’re not in your pool. That team that you’d consider poking your eyes out rather than play against because ‘they’re such dickheads’.

But maybe you do. I often find that having a bad game against a team once generally turns into having a bad game against that team again (without doing anything to avoid it, that is). So, as I promised Therapist, here’s a few thoughts on that ‘grudge match’ – what’s going on psychologically and how you can try to salvage spirit in these games.

 

What we look for, we find

 

Humans, in general, are pretty rubbish scientists. There’s a considerable amount of research that suggests that when asked to test a statement or hypothesis, we seek out only facts which would confirm it.* Equally, we’re very good at forgetting pieces of evidence which contradict our hypothesis. Apply this to the grudge match and you’ve got a recipe for disaster: you go into the game with all your knowledge of how they’ve been terribly spirited before, and hey, guess what, you find new evidence for this theory. Lots of new evidence.

Furthermore, we interpret this bad behaviour that we’ve looked for and found completely differently to our own behaviour (which probably isn’t perfect considering it’s a grudge match). Our behaviour in this game we see as externally driven (it’s because they’re a bunch of dicks that it’s hard to play spiritedly against them) and context-specific (we’re only unspirited in this game). In contrast, we perceive their behaviour as internal (they’re behaving like dicks because they’re dicks), global (they behave like dicks against everyone) and consistent across time (they’re dicks at every tournament). In psychology, this is called the fundamental attribution error – we undervalue the impact of situational factors on the behaviour of others.

So, if they’re terrible people to everyone, all the time, why the hell should you treat them with respect? Why should you attempt to play spiritedly? Chances are you struggle to remember the answer to that question during the game, and it all goes downhill…

*the irony that this was the researchers’ hypothesis and they’ve confirmed it is not lost on me, honest.

 

Whatever happens, happens always

 

Psychology suggests that we not only go into those games looking for incidences of bad spirit (and find them), but that we go in expecting to see poor spirit, and this in turn actually has the potential to generate precisely that behaviour.

Expectancy effects are pretty phenomenal – if two people have conversations with the same stranger, but one believes that stranger to be a friendly person and the other believes them to be unfriendly, the two people behave in such different ways towards that person that the other person reacts – and reacts in the way that in turn confirms that original information. The ‘friendly’ stranger is greeted more warmly, sat closer to, engaged in more lively discsussion and in turn responds with warmer body language and more enthusiastic responses. The ‘unfriendly’ stranger experiences the reverse of this, and responds in kind, thus ‘proving’ their nature.

So not only do we underestimate the influence situational specifics have on the behaviour of our competitors, but we actually fail to realise that sometimes we are those situational factors.

Imagine you’re bringing down a high floating disc. Another player jumps at the wrong time, from the wrong angle, and wipes you out – a clear foul. What if you know that the team you’re up against has done this before? If this is your ‘grudge match’? You get pissed off. You loudly and aggressively call ‘foul’, and start muttering under your breath about their failures of spirit. They respond by contesting it. You infer that they are a terribly spirited team – how else could they contest that call?

Having calls made aggressively against you is unpleasant and tends to make you want to be aggressive back. Either you’ve got to care enough about your own spirit being good, rather than theirs being bad, or you contest it because you want to punish their poor communication.

Imagine that exact situation happens against a team you’ve had well-spirited games with in the past. Maybe you don’t even call foul straight away. You start with ‘ouch!’ and then probably tell them ‘foul’ – but the way you call it will suggest that you expect them to be entirely reasonable about it, will make them feel like you think they’re not a complete moron, and will make them far more likely to uncontest your call. You conclude that they are a well-spirited team, like you already knew, because they gave up that call.

We have the ability to elicit behaviour from our opponents, just by expecting it.

 

So are grudge matches doomed to remain grudge matches forever?

 

Er, no. Here are some ways to avoid what’s going on psychologically.

 

They’re people too

No, seriously. Those ‘dirty cheating scumbags’ at the other end of the pitch. They are human beings too. It is easy in the grudge match to get sucked into playing harder just to win the match and ‘prove’ who was right about those calls last time you played. Don’t give in to it. People have lives off the pitch. To view them as only your opponents on the pitch is dangerous, and leads (I’ve found) to reckless bids, and poorly discussed calls. The latter makes a game nasty and makes both your teams look bad to spectators. The former can seriously alter someone’s life.

 

Disprove your hypotheses; expect the unexpected

Go into the game looking for good spirit. Interpret ambiguous situations as good spirit (not cynicism, or the mimicking of spirit). Go into this game trying to convince yourselves that they’re going to be the best spirited team you play all tournament. Give them a fighting chance to prove that they’re a well-spirited team – you’d ask the same.

 

Recognise the Grudge Match

Other advice aside, I’d say this is the biggie. Recognising what’s going on in the grudge match is actually half the battle. Knowing that you’re psychologically wired up to a) confirm that they’re horrible people and b) cause them to behave like horrible people is a pretty big first step.

You’re going to have to work extra hard in a grudge match to be well-spirited, to not make dodgy bids, or calls, or even just to call correct things maliciously (every little travel…) or aggressively (“foul, you fouling ****!”). Maybe they’ll be working hard as well. Maybe they won’t (from your perspective). But if you value spirit of the game enough, does that matter? It’s bad enough for one team to abuse the rules/spirit (if that is what they’re doing): don’t get sucked in too.

Chances are you’ll find the game much better spirited as a whole, and much more enjoyable.

Spirited Thoughts Part 2: Leave The Lie Detector At…

This is probably the biggest thing I have changed in my own approach to calls, and it’s shockingly simple.

 

Nobody is lying to you. And nobody is cheating.

 

The fundamental assumption that people do not make calls they know to be untrue is integral to spirit of the game. The rules are written not to punish those who break the rules, but to make sure that whatever should have happened, does happen. Equally, they make the implicit assumption that people will not purposefully call things which are false.

Let me just say it again. People do not call rubbish.

Sometimes this assumption is hard to stick with when, from your perspective, someone has called rubbish – something that is physically impossible given where the disc went/when you collided/whatever. But it’s true. People make calls because they believe that is what occurred on pitch.

Well, maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t. That’s not my point. My point is that as players, we need to believe this is true for spirit of the game to ‘work’.

When you discuss a call, if you think someone is purposefully lying to you, what are you hoping to achieve? They’ve already made the deliberate decision to lie to your face, and make a false call, so why exactly are they going to take it back? Discussing a call with this thought in your head is not going to make you behave like a nice and/or spirited person – and it’s not going to get them to ‘give it up’ either.

If I’m discussing a call, it’s because I know what I think happened, and I want to know what the other team’s players think happened. I’m rarely trying to ‘convince’ the other person to back down, to uncontest or retract the call – I’m trying to match up my reality with theirs.

Discussing calls becomes ridiculous if you believe that people are likely to lie to you. So don’t. Trust your opposition. Believe that people are telling the truth as they see it. Yes, sometimes, our brains will get the better of us, and we will not have seen stuff right, in which case we should be able to listen to a calm explanation of the facts and realise we saw stuff wrong. With the ‘no-one is lying’ attitude, you’ll be better at explaining those facts to other players, without coming across as aggressive and confrontational. Equally, you’ll rarely walk away from a call feeling cheated or hard done by, which is pretty damn awesome.

So yeah. No-one’s lying to you. Except maybe in that call afterwards where you have to line them up in order of age…

SotD: Giving Back

A few months ago during one of our practices Felix was berating us, the experienced players, for not helping freshers enough, people were not staying after the experienced practice and were not helping freshers. One thing he said at that moment still sticks with me and I think it will for a very long time. He had said “This is your way of giving back to the club, this is where you learned the game and now you give back by helping other people.”. These weren’t his exact words but you get the idea. For experienced players the importance of giving back might not be so apparent so let me try and explain.

I started playing ultimate in Turkey, a country with a population of over 75 million. The number of ultimate players in the country: around 200 is my guess (it’s growing very fast though). There are so few teams (6 active teams -4 uni, 2 club-  in 2 cities, 3 or so teams are trying to be formed) that Club and Uni teams play together in tournaments and we always play Round Robin. I’m giving all these numbers so that you can guess the amount of experienced players: very few. Apart from the 21 (plus a few more) players that have played at Windmill last year, no one had played outside the country.

In an environment like this, it’s very hard to develop skills beyond a certain point (which isn’t too high), there aren’t many players you can ask questions to. If we had an experienced player visiting, I would stick right behind them (well not in-game), watching their every step, asking everything I can think of and talking about tactics. I was obsessed but didn’t have a lot of people to teach me. I watched highlight videos over and over again, tens of times, watching every small detail in players’ movements, fakes, throws, cuts.. I watched this highlight video of Oregon Ego hundreds of times, at least twice a day (they have good videos btw). I watched Cody Bjorklund (6) obsessively, he’s still one of my idols, showing me that big guys can play really good ultimate too (I was a tad fat when I started playing ultimate). I learned forehand hucks watching him and trying his throws with my girlfriend. Guess I should start doing it again since something’s wrong with them these days.

So what does all this have to do with anything? Well now that I am in Brighton where ultimate is really good (tons of national players, lots of amazingly good players and athletes and all of them extremely friendly) suddenly I was in heaven. I wasn’t the one helping people out, I was the one being helped out. I could go and ask someone what I was doing wrong and immediately get an answer. To have a coach like Felix with years of experience, amazing people like Shim and Rich helping you out at every step.. Well forget all that, just even having the chance of being able to watch players like Ash, Callum, Robbie, Rich, Felix, Dyno, Meg, Bob, Longface, Pencil, Fetu, Mental, Edgars etc. etc. (just a few of the names that popped, so many more).. All these amazing players not just playing great but trying to help you if you ask for it. I can not emphasize enough how important this support is to a beginner, even just having the chance to be around these people is huge.

I remember at one of my first practices, I asked Bob how to throw a push pass. I had been trying since I started playing and had had no success. She just explained it to me in one sentence and suddenly I could throw them. It was never explained to me in the right way before, so she didn’t even have to show me, it just worked. All I needed was a definition that made sense to me instead of hours of practicing the throw in a wrong way (of course now I have to practice it the right way for hours).

I think that even beginners who are serious or will become serious about ultimate are not aware of how lucky they are in Brighton, or anywhere where there is good ultimate with nice people. One can work really hard, do the physical, the theoretical and the mental work but experience can only be gained on the field and the input of experienced players can triple or even quadruple the pace of the learning curve for beginners (does this sentence make sense?).

All this is why I was really struck by what Felix said about giving back. Not just to a club, but also to the sport of ultimate. I know that all these people who sacrifice so much for ultimate do it because ultimate changed their lives one way or another. That’s why we give back to this beautiful sport, so that others can get injected with the poison too.

So I’m talking to you experienced players, give back.  For the people who need and want it it means much more than you can ever imagine. Never forget what ultimate did for you and what it can do for others too. Spread the word, help out, give back (instant karma gain guaranteed).

Dude out, peace.

(Shimmy did not edit this one, that’s why the English is even worse than the previous post, sorry guys)