Nationals - Stanford

Stanford was a game filed some of the most intense highs I’ve experienced in frisbee. Stanford kept things close early on, like most teams. We had our first break at 4-3 and then continued on a 5-2 run to go up 9-5. Stanford was the first team to punish us with their handler offense. They rarely throw downfield to cutters save for Tom James – their Callahan nominee. They relied on lots of handler resets and scored a majority of their goals with throws to handlers or hucks from handlers.

Clap spike

Their backfield was hungry and continued upline cuts for longer than we were used to - they were still looking when the handler was 10yds up field. It took us until 4-3 to figure it out and once we eliminated the upline threat they were hopeless. They used the inside forehand well but once we caught on they were basically neutralized.

I got some great marking advice this tournament, which we shared with the team but at nationals it’s hard to implement fundamental changes like marking technique. Think of a circle on the ground around the thrower, this is how most people mark - their feet somewhere on the circle. When you take away the inside your feet are following this curved line, and then to take away the backhand you shuffle around on the same circular arc. STOP THIS

Take that distance you travel on the arc of the circle from hard inside to around and stretch it flat, it’s long, you are covering a lot of ground if you’re moving on the mark, so to be more effective make this line shorter.

Instead of marking on an arc, mark on this straight line – like when you draw frisbee on a whiteboard the marker is always denoted by a line with force, this is good. This means that when you are taking away the inside you are not right up in people’s shit. You are at the end of the line and actually further away from the thrower than you think. As a thrower, it is much harder to throw an inside with the mark back further.

I break inside by throwing through the mark; it’s easy to throw under a hand – around a leg etc. When the mark is back there is suddenly this wall of mark that is intimidating and cannot really be broken inside

Continue on this line to stop the around. Instead of curving stay on the line, again you are back from the thrower more than you would expect but this stops the around for yardage gain. I’m not talking about a no dump mark just a normal mark.

So you really only have to move on this straight line – the shortest distance between two points. With good footwork this is a great generic mark and stifles non-huckers. I’ve now incorporated this into my mark but I change it throughout the course of the count. If I see the thrower looking past 10-15 yarders I adjust and If I feel they are committed to the dump I adjust.

Good throwers have great vision. If you can look to your dumps but always keep the hucking option (40-50yd) you are a more effective weapon.

Stanford plays through Tom James, watch the highlight video they made of him – catches/throws goals, gets Ds. That same video though gave us some great insight. He really only hucks forehand and he releases right on the ground. The great thing about CUT 2009 was that it didn’t mater how good the other players were, we always had better matchups. I’ve never seen Kanner lose a matchup battle over the course of a game. And when we can switch out Kanner for Jerome or Luke, it’s discouraging for the offensive player. Not to mention all Tom’s favorite receivers were rarely open – Evange/Christian/Grant on the # 2-3-4 cutters, we win each of those battles.

The highlight video from the UPA doesn’t provide much insight. A couple of times you see Stanford score on stall 9 throws, a symptom of our defense. We are breaking a lot and Stanford isn’t getting Ds

The Potters

At 10-7 Tom James makes a late bid on an under and lands on Kanner’s legs, Kanner goes down. At first I thought Kanner has hamming it up a little – Stanford was making bad bids, desperation, who wants to lose? He stayed down longer though. He was lying on the ground face up as Dadbob jogged over to do some stability tests. I remember this all very vividly. I knelt down by Sam who had his jersey pulled over his face and he said, “this isn’t happening” over and over again.

Kanner is not fragile, to see him so vulnerable – clearly hurt was an awful feeling for me and the rest of the team. Thinking about a torn acl made me physically sick – I stood up and walked away to an empty part of the field as tears ran down my cheek.

Kanner is an incredible player and teammate and leader. He trains with a desire and passion that I had never experienced. Our relationship has changed a great deal since I first met him at Jr.Worlds. It was the fall before his freshman year and we knew we’d be teammates soon but he seemed distant. We did not click at Worlds. Partly because I had a bad rap with the Amherst kids – Tiina Booth – whether deserved or not.

Freshman year he played lots of D line, I played only offense. We didn’t party together outside of CUT and there was still a divide between us. It’s hard for me to pinpoint the moment where this began to change. But it did. He has a great mind for frisbee and our weekly meetings to discuss strategy and workouts were exceptional. Bouncing ideas off each other, laughing as we thought up gut wrenching drills – good times. We started hanging out more and whatever was between us disappeared. It came full circle a week ago – when for the first time, Kanner stopped by our apt just to hangout – a send off to Jerome and I, maybe, but I’m so proud to have been his teammate and to see him at alumni weekend for years to come.

Kanner was eventually helped off the field; I was under the impression he was done for the rest of nationals. Luke subbed in and we scored the point, I was in a daze and I could tell Stanford added an extra step to their game – seeing our captain down. We called a timeout and I felt the same feelings as the Pitt game, there was no way we were going to lose this game, not now. That was a weird huddle. You've seen films where the generic halftime/huddle speech whatever, is "DO it for XXXXXXXX" and you see everybody get pumped up. And it's silly, but in that situation that's all we said. Lets fucking win this shit for Kanner. And it wasn't corny like in the movies, it was empowering. I was so angry - instead of the cool resolve we played with at the end of Pitt – we were emotionally on fire. It helped we had a lead so we could play looser, which we did, and was effective, but the intensity we had on defense was unmatched. Stanford struggled for their last 3 goals while we dominated for our 4.

I didn’t feel tired, I expected to dominate my man, I expected CUT to win. 15-10. Kanner came up to me after the game – walking – thank god – he hadn’t seen but the last points – coming back from the trainer. We hugged – he was still shaken up – again I remember this very vividly he just kept thanking me. I was thinking we’re in this shit together. You weren’t alone on that track, in the weight room, aching after tournaments. We both want this team to succeed more than anything. We played for you Kanner, because we are all apart of the CUT.