junk throws

Bane, or boon? Bad fundamentals, or a nuanced grasp of advanced concepts?

By junk throw, I mean anything that if a rookie threw away, he’d be immediately benched or cut. Depending on your environment, it could be a push pass, lefty backhand, or a thumber, or possibly a scoober, backhand to the forehand side, or hammer. It’s “If you throw that again, you’ll never play in this town again” throws. It’s “What the hell are you thinking?” throws. You get the picture.

(For that matter, it can also be one-handed catches, claw catches, and gratuitous layouts or failure to lay out.)

We all grew up with conventional wisdom about what works and doesn’t work. Someone recently mentioned to me how a younger player was complaining about why they were playing force middle, and this guy said, “A few years ago, we used to call that ‘defense’.” Things change. Sometimes the old strategy was a sound one but new strategies were built to adapt, other times the old strategy was a bad one that just happened to be the best one available at the time, and occasionally the old strategy was the best one but players just wanted to try something different. The point is that the favored strategy becomes “the right way to play” and is never again critically examined to see whether it makes sense.

So it is with some throws, too. I’m seeing more push passes these days, and we had a discussion last fall about lefty backhands. I’m prepared to say that these are acceptable throws, with the followings caveats:

• Don’t fall in love with the throw.
  
• Don’t use it to show off. I’m still ticked at some CU punk on Bravo who went out of his way to throw a thumber huck against us in the finals of Colorado Cup last year when they were up by 4.
  
• Don’t throw it because you don’t want to make the effort to try another throw.
  
• Be able to justify why you threw it instead of another throw.
  

The justification will be different in ultimate than it is in goaltimate, where quick decisions and creative throws are more necessary, and the cost of an incompletion is much less.

So, think of the push pass as a sand wedge or as a rescue club. Most of us should consider these as specialty clubs tailor-built for specific situations where our normal clubs might not work well. Just don't use them off the tee.

more on hucking practice

Last week, I discussed a hucking practice session I planned to do. I set up stakes at 35 and 45 yards away and tried to land a leading pass at the stake, and measured how far the throws missed the target. First, some observations on my success:

1. 35 yard throws were gimmes
   
2. 45 yard throws had unacceptably wide variation (i.e., I shouldn’t be throwing them, if that day’s results are my true level)
   
3. Error was attributable both to initial line and to curve
   
4. Forehands and backhands were about the same
   
5. Variation in range was less than variation in accuracy
   

But the main conclusion was that this isn’t the way to structure the practice. A huck isn’t a golf shot that has to end up close to the hole, but a 3-D throw where time is just as big of a factor in the catchability. While for every cut there may be an ideal throw, there are a variety of distance/speed/hang time combinations that result in sure completions. Also, the acceptable margin of error is not symmetrical, with more margin long than short. Finally, it doesn’t really matter where the disc lands, it’s where and how long the disc is at a catchable height. Without sophisticated equipment, I don’t think you’d be able to measure that.

So, I’d propose a slightly different setup. The setup is similar, with the thrower attempting to throw a pass that comes down to, say, 6’ high at a set distance. However, instead of measuring how far away the disc lands (a condition that is exacerbated by differences in disc stability), rank each throw on the following scale of 1 to 5:
5: pretty much as I planned
4: not quite as planned, but a sure completion
3: a throw where the receiver has a reasonable chance to come up with the sky or to chase it down if he’s really fast; a 50/50 throw
2: catchable, but not a throw anyone would be expected to come down with
1: uncatchable

For anything except a 5, make a note of how you missed, and see whether any patterns develop. You can also apply the same scale to your long throws in a game, although you also need to consider not just whether the throw did what you wanted but whether it was the right decision.

New Jersey invite

I was waiting for Alex to post first so that mine would appear at the top of ultimatetalk, but he needs the hits more than I, so I’ll get started.

DoG won the NJ Invite this weekend, besting the hosts 17-16 in the final. Alex and I drove down together, just like the old days, except that his two kids accompanied us as far as his parents’ house in Westchester County, and in addition to ultimate, we discussed potty-training, child sleep patterns, and the like.

On the various fronts:
1. I was reasonably satisfied with my performance. Many deep cuts, some of them thrown to me. Couldn’t get to two of them despite sprawlout bids, caught the others, most of them flat-footed. Melvin pointed out last year that I catch more hucks while on the ground than anyone else, perhaps trying to insult me, but unwittingly complimenting me on my fine reads. No embarrassing moments that might lead me to question whether I should still be playing. Devastating popping/clambusting against Pike. More than held my own against Hoagie Haven. And, most importantly, a devastating payback against one of the Pike guys.
Trey from the sideline: Hey, who's got Parimello?
Me: That's Parinella.
[passage of time]
Me: Nice game, Troy.
2. Best performance from a class of tryouts since ever. Usually at the first spring tournament, half of the tryouts are of such quality that I can comfortably forgo learning their names without fear of later embarrassment. Not so this time.
3. Introduced "Rules Corner" in which I discuss an arcane rule that I do not want to see anyone on my team calling but that we should be prepared to have called against us. (Gotta be ready for Bravo, after all.) Forch preempts me by making such a call himself. Someone directly to the right of the person directly to the left of me screams out, "Pussy call!"
4. Questioned the cult status of Hoagie Haven. Sure, it was good, but didn't appear to be worthy of the "if you’re anywhere near Princeton, you gotta stop here" name. I’m sure the Anchorman crowd is going to respond that I once again do not know what I’m talking about, but I just have to learn to live with their innocence.
5. Very interesting tiebreaker possibilities going into the final games on Sunday. It was a 7 team round robin with 4 games on Saturday. After the first round on Sunday, the top four teams were done with each other so all tie-breakers had been worked out. DoG had lost to Pike, Pike had lost to Twisted Metal, TM had lost to DoG and Potomac, and Potomac had lost to DoG and Pike. Each had one game left (over two rounds) against one of the bottom three teams. The finals would be DoG v Pike, unless DoG won, Pike lost, Twisted won, and Potomac lost, in which case it would be DoG v Twisted. The Potomac game was scheduled for the third round, which is when the finals were also tentatively scheduled for, assuming that Potomac wasn’t going to be in the finals. They couldn’t, as it turned out, but if they lost they wouldn’t have been included in the tiebreaker, which could have changed the way the criteria played out. DoG was in the Bnogo-like position of it being in our best interests to lose our last game, since our big point differential victories against TM and Potomac would have guaranteed their elimination. But we won, and Pike won, setting up the earlier final.
6. We lucked out on the weather. It poured all weekend in New England, but Saturday in NJ was 70 and sunny, and Sunday was in the 60s and overcast but dry. I packed expecting to be miserable in the rain, and so had to settle for being grumpy that it wasn’t the bad weather that I packed for. It’s tough being a curmudgeon.

Major League Ultimate

It’s about time, and I hope it works out. It sure sounds like a fun event to play in.

DoG is disrespected once again. The other three semifinalists averaged 7 players on these squads, DoG gets 1, and an over-the-hill one, at that.

Here’s an interesting take on why the Northeast will do better than expected. Pundits are already preaching that NW and SW will benefit from having so many regular teammates together. But it could be that there won’t be as much cooperation on those teams. Maybe Sockeye won’t be willing to install “their” offense because it will give away too many secrets, or they’ll install a limited version of it, neglecting some important aspects. Meanwhile, the NE will be forced to come up with a mix of offenses, no sub-group except possibly the defunct Pike will try to dominate, and everyone will just get along.

Where the hell is Tim Murray? I thought he had a post a few months ago about this event, but I don’t see his name anywhere. I should have had the foresight to blog about it too so that people would think that I had been invited but that I had to turn it down due to “commitments.” Which, of course, I did, as far as anyone knows or can prove.

(In fairness wrt the dissing, the NE is represented by 8 teams and 2.75 regions, while the NW is 3 teams and part of 1 region, so each team should have fewer representatives. Otoh, I suspect that if this had happened 10-15 years ago, the NE team would have looked much like the NW team this year, and the MA and C players would have found themselves on another team.)

hucking practice

So, I have a few frisbees of varying quality lying around my back yard, and sometimes I'll huck a few of them. Usually I'll only get to throw two of them before the boy insists on taking the next. On Friday, weather permitting, I'll try to do a mini-workout with about 10 of them.

I'm wondering how constructive this practice is. Experts get better by deliberate practice, implementing immediate feedback. But because these frisbees are all different, some of them drastically so, I might uncork identical throws back-to-back but get significantly different results. Probably I can limit this by getting rid of the worst discs, but there will still be some effect.

Anyway, what I'm going to do is similar to my wedge workout reported on previously. I have stakes set up at 10 yard intervals, and I'm going to try to huck to the stakes. While I won't have a calibrated swing for each distance, this should help me statistically assess my throws. What I'm expecting is that as distance increases, the error will increase linearly while I'm within my range, then explode when I try to force it (probably enough that I won't be able to measure it because the throws are going into the trees).

PS. Plyo workout last night, I hope I didn't hurt myself. Nothing is too sore today, so that's good.

Opening days

This weekend saw three opening days of sorts for me, in golf, softball, and hard ultimate-related workouts.

Golf: Mediocre round of 92 (handicap differential of 18.2). Poor distance control on nearly all shots. Horrible distance control on long putts (three-putted four out of four times that I had 50 feet or more on my first putt). Got one birdie on a chip-in, although even that one was a little bit lucky as it landed it three feet past where I wanted. On the plus side, I hit a few very nice drives, and most of the shots were respectable, and after all I hadn’t played since last year. But equally disconcerting was a little practice session I did on Sunday. I was trying to hit controlled ½ and ¾ shots with my wedges, but was all over the place with them, and was nowhere close to how far I thought I was hitting them. The theory behind the “3 x 4” wedge system is that you use 4 wedges with 3 swing lengths (called 7:30, 9:00, and 10:30, to reflect how far your backswing goes) and know exactly how far each of those goes, so you in effect have up to 12 different clubs that you can pick the one combination to match your exact distance from the pin, without having to rely on feel to dial in the distance. But if I have an 8 yard standard deviation on my 9:00 gap wedge, the system is useless.

Softball: We lost 20-19. Bad day at the plate for me, error-free but a little clunky in the field. Took six pitches, swung three times and put each into play, two of them lazy fly balls and one a medium-hard grounder right to the third baseman. The team did exceptionally badly in the field, with countless errors of all varieties. Our pitchers actually did pretty well despite the 20 runs, considering how many outs they had to get in most of the innings, and our other hitters did well. The real downside is that it was so cold that no one stuck around after the game for beer.

Workout: Ran 16 stadiums (sets of 2 big, 1 small, plus an extra one all-out at the end) on Saturday. I did some light workouts over the winter, plus of course goaltimate and soccer and a full-of-running Fools, but this is the first “normal” one, where both my legs and my lungs were taxed throughout. I ran these ones at about a 2.5 on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being sprinting each one and 5 being walking up. Gone are the days where I could run hard (say, at a 1.8 on this scale) and do a full set of 37 (there are 37 sections at Harvard Stadium, each with about 30 steps about 18” high), with pushups and situps thrown in, like we did back in 1992. Now there was a stadium workout.

more discussion on traveling

There is a thread on rsd about a clip of the day on ultivillage about whether a throw is a travel.

There is another factor at work here in determining the callability of the travel. I am distinguishing callability from legality here.

What makes a violation likely to be called? Two that spring to mind are:
1. Egregious violation
2. Clear advantage
2a. Breaking the mark
2b. Getting power on a huck

Some will argue about whether 2b is worthy of a travel call or not, and I'm not going to get into that today. But I read the commentary here, then I watched the clip, and came up with another factor:
3. Violator makes no attempt to avoid the infraction.

A defender who appears to try to avoid contact on a layout is less likely to be called for a foul than one who does not, even if the contact is the same. In this case, the hucker doesn't even seem to pay attention to his back foot. He just lets his back foot slide. It didn't drag, and it didn't simply roll over to his toe because he was exerting effort to keep it down and he made a powerful throw. A spectator or player who sees this play might intuitively feel that it's a travel not because he can actually tell that the foot moved before release, but because the thrower did nothing to prevent a travel.

I've made a few petty travel calls in my life, and have been irritated quite a few times by small travels, and I think those were due to factor #3 here. An example is the "handler hop" you'll sometimes see where a handler will catch a swing pass flat-footed and will take a little hop-step to the continue side. Beau's travels might fall under this category, too, as he walks back and forth about the same spot but isn't really setting himself up for anything.

Frank H might be on track with his belief that the soft love policies of ultimate that have allowed these routine, no-need violations to go unpunished have resulted in a less fundamentally sound game. But that, too, is a discussion for another day.

score one for the forces of good

Word on the street is that Zip decided to renew his contract with DoG for another year. And the rumor mill (which apparently is two steps less reliable than the street) is saying to expect that at least one top player from out-of-town will be wearing the DoG orb this fall. Combine those with the return of old stalwarts Jim and Al, increased confidence and experience for the rest of the boys on the heels of our surprising performance at Nationals last year, and things are looking brighter for DoG than in any year since at least 2002.

Ever the pessimist or possibly realist, I had some discussions with DoG leadership over the winter and suggested that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that whichever team that the Pike guys signed with would be the stronger team (and one might almost hope that those guys had enough confidence in their own abilities that they felt that way; I think most gamechangers actually do feel this way, but only the more obnoxious actually say it to others). But not any more. Last year it took me until sometime between the end of Regionals and Day 2 of Nationals to really believe that the team could achieve something big. This year I’m sold already.

Now, back to college seedings.

claw vs pancake

I posted this to rsd the other day in response to someone’s claim that pancaking is the only way to catch:
[quotes from Zaz’s book deleted]
If I had to give a single rule of thumb, I'd say that you'd catch more passes using the pancake if all you're doing is standing and catching with someone, but you'd catch more passes in a game using the rim catch. I'll cite an example from yesterday. In the first point of the Fools semis yesterday, I cut back to the disc with Jay Dono close behind. The pass was about head height. If I was by myself, I could have taken a little hop and pancaked it at chest level, but if I tried that in this situation, Jay would have had the time to get there first. Instead, I ran through it and clawed it, and even then I think he touched it enough that it almost spun out of my hand. Pancake = block (but not a drop), rim catch = chance for a catch. Had I not caught it, someone could have cited this as an example of why the pancake was preferable, but they would have been wrong for this situation.
I liken the pancake catch to a two-handed catch in baseball. It’s how beginners are taught, it’s more secure on your basic catches, but there are plenty of circumstances where it’s not the right catch: a first baseman stretching for a throw, an outfielder diving for a catch, a shortstop going into the hole. And for an experienced, athletic player on a routine catch, it’s just as secure and might help the player get in position to throw.

I know that some good players (even a great one like Paul Greff) swear by the pancake and I’m not going to try to convince them to switch, but the rim catch is a more natural catching motion. We have opposable thumbs for a reason. A rim catch is just two one-handed catches happening at the same time.

The real benefit, though, is that it can be easier to catch in a game. You don’t have to slow down to catch the disc (and you can avoid getting run over by a flailing diver), you can reach a few inches further, and you have better feel (once you get used to it). Additionally, since the disc is already in your fingers, you can quickly take your grip for the next pass (and if the pass is at head height, you don’t have to hop as with a pancake).

If the disc is at chest height, I’ll usually pancake it, especially if it’s windy or if there is no pressure from the defense. But for higher passes or ones where a block is possible, try running through the disc and catching it with your fingers. And take a look at the book for more info.

“This is our year”

The mantra of the ShortFatGuys, mostly jokingly, I think. (It’s hard to tell whether a team with this name could possibly take itself too seriously. But I’m further polluted by the fact that I speak only in clichés (e.g., at double game point, I might say, “This is an important point, guys”) during tournaments like this, except for the rare moments where I completely lose myself in the game.) Borrowing from Groucho Marx, I said more than once that I’m not sure I would want to win any tournament that the ShortFatGuys could win. We’ve all read about the origins of the SF(^O)G over on Billy’s blog, I hope. The team has been around for 20 years now and has never won a tournament. We’ve been in the hunt each of the past three times I’ve been at Fools with the team, but we blew a huge lead against WeSwill in the semis the first time, got outmatched last year in the finals by some offshoot of Pike, and lost a close one to eventual champ BOMB this year.


We’re an old team (on Friday, we could not put out an under-40 line), but almost everyone either still plays club ultimate (although mostly Mixed) in the fall or once played on the DoG O. Most of the older guys are also more handler than receiver. These two things allowed us to play something not completely dissimilar to a motion offense. We certainly didn’t kill the other team with hucks, but still moved the disc around in all directions just fine. We did suffer at times from unforced throwaways, but we can easily attribute that to rust. I also gladly credit goaltimate with one of my throwaways as well as a once-in-a-lifetime beauty of a sharply-bending beach backhand for a goal. Goaltimate encourages quick decisions and throws, and while that is good for speeding up your thought process, it’s bad if your brain already moves quickly. Thus, I found myself a yard from a goal looking for a 2 yard push pass for the score, and instead saw a 15 yard cut. Instead of switching to a forehand grip, I simply lowered my hand and threw the disc how I was holding it.

We started the weekend off slowly with a loss to Middlebury. What killed us was our huck defense. Our strategy appeared to be to encourage them to throw deep (not that they needed any encouragement), then trip over ourselves to give them easy catches. I think it was in this game that I went from baiting the silly long throw after a turnover to giving up pursuit of the long cutter within a second. Next up was the Mennonites, who kept the faith despite having difficulty scoring. 15-6, SFG. They finished in last place, so this may have been their best game of the weekend, but they probably should have scored even more goals against us, making several turns near our end zone. Final game of Friday was a rematch of last year’s final, with similar results.

I felt, well, not exactly tired, but weak that day, as if I was recovering from the flu. I wasn’t wheezing or feeling like my muscles were going to snap, but I felt a bit old again and not particularly excited about another year of playing. But things improved markedly over the next two days as I got my second, third, and nth winds, almost enough for me to become overconfident in what I can still do. Damn kids got nothin’ on me, still. You’re all punks, too. You know who you are.

This left us ranked 11th of 18 after Day 1, with games against the 6th, 8th, and 12th ranked teams on Day 2. The Canadians (winners in 2004) were first, sporting all-white ensembles complete with sporty hats. We jumped out to a big lead, and I started to worry that maybe we’d crush them and demoralize them so much that they’d fold up and do badly the rest of the day, thereby hurting _our_ ranking in the “juggle format”, blatantly and without credit ripped off from the Pittsburgh scramble format. But then they scored a few to close within 1, and we eked out a 3-point win, which did nothing good for our ranking. I noticed that both teams occasionally employed one of my most brilliant defensive innovations, the Indefensible, which leaves a deep cutter open by 10 yards for a 60 yard throw. It turns out that this throw is incomplete a shocking percentage of the time, even for those who consider themselves huckers. Keep an eye out for this. A real key to this is that the throw has to be a really long one that requires the thrower to put everything he has into it. Most guys have big enough of an ego to think, “I got that throw.”

Next up was an Ironman-less Penn reunion team. Things started out bad for them and never improved. We played well, but the 15-5 victory was more indicative of the way they played. My beach throw probably broke their backs, I reckon. On the sideline between games we discussed variations on the theme of calling a player’s girlfriend’s name in order to get him to cut. Best story came from Billy about some anal guy on the West Coast where they called his girlfriend’s name and everyone on both teams as well as on the sidelines cut at once. Also a good “nice ass” story from Marshall.

The wind picked up for our final game against the Plonkers, perennial contenders at this tournament. We managed to score an upwinder against their zone on the first point, added another right after, and soon found ourselves up once again by a bunch. A few giddy points later, we’d rung up another 15-5 pre-cap victory. I was a little fearful of the mighty algorithm still, afraid that our vanquished opponents would be ranked so lowly that our wins wouldn’t count for much, but when the final rankings came out, we found ourselves 5th, just ahead of our old friends WeSwill.

A bunch of really young kids were at the party that night. All weekend long, I would look around the breakfast area at the hotel or across the line and not be able to recognize (let alone name) more than one or two people (and they were on my team). It’s now been 20 years since I first almost made Nationals (losing the game to go with Pittsburgh in the Mid-Atlantic region in 1986 after being up at halftime). If a typical career is 10 years long, I’ve been through two full generations of players, with yet another one bursting onto the scene. UPA ultimate has tripled in that time. More potential customers, I guess.

Quarters began badly, with us reverting to our turnover-laden (no offense, Billy) ways. Luckily for us, the Wilmington team wasn’t so efficient themselves, and we were only down 2 or 3 when we started playing a little more cleanly. Worm finally showed up after his ride was an hour late due to forgetting about daylight savings time. At halftime, continuing our philosophy started the day before, we looked ahead by exactly one game, picturing ourselves down by 4 at half in the semis to BOMB, and reminded ourselves to stay within 2-3 to keep it respectable. Returning to the present, we continued to play well, stretching it out to a 14-11 lead before closing them out 15-13. Overall, despite their hailing from Wilmington and us knowing it all, the game was pleasant and without incident. For the weekend as a whole, the only real contention came from an overeager young Canadian marker who had a few too many legitimate fouls in a row to be forgiven easily.

Repeating a stock line, I asked the captain of our semifinal opponent if he wouldn’t mind getting started since we had another game to play after that. We scored to start the game, but not before a humorous trip over your own feet, bobble it three different ways drop in the endzone by one of our players. We managed to nearly fulfill the prophecy, as we found ourselves down by 3 at half, then gave up the first goal of the second half. I saw my wife, told her that we’re down, they’re better than we are, but we still might win, and it looked like we might, as we clawed back to tie it and even took the lead as the cap went on. But it wasn’t to be, as they scored their next three possessions while we turned our next two, and the ShortFatGuys were able to keep their streak alive.

Our success, such as it was, is a testament to experience and skill, such as they are. We did better in windy conditions, worse when it was just a matchup of athleticism (even on long throws, which are both skill and strength). It does seem amazing that a team with a median age of at least 40 could still do so well in a tournament like Fools, which despite being much less prestigious and competitive than it was a few years ago, is still tough to win. Overall, I sensed a little too much of the West Coast philosophy of huck and hope, while simultaneously being a little envious of the free-wheelin’ fun.

Props to the weather for being warm this year instead of floody, and to the beer truck for being open during our fourth-round bye the first day. They should have provided more chairs right next to the taps, since my back and legs got stiff standing there for an hour. Jeers to the beer truck for not operating on Sunday, and for being too far from my fields on Saturday.

And for those interested in whether I’m playing again, yes, it looks like I am. I felt pretty good running around those last two days, didn’t have any real aches or attitude problems, and got that first tournament out of the way. Guess it’s time to buy another pair of cleats for the year.

rule of thumb for call nerds

If you have to review a video frame by frame to see if a call is correct, then it's not a bad call. It might be incorrect, but it's a justifiable call if it's that close. Exception: if it's a non-contact violation (such as a travel) and you need that degree of granularity to show that the violation actually happened, then it's a pussy call. There is just no way that a player (who is, of course, also attempting to play ultimate besides being a ref) in real time can discern this.

That is all.

Should TDs be paid?

Yes.

In the old days, tournaments were supposed to be run at cost. There was a threatened boycott of Fools in about 1990 because the TDs included their own substantial time as a cost of the tournament (if memory serves). Only gradually did it become even ponderable for TDs to "make money". Even now, though, I would be surprised if any TD got a decent wage (say, more than minimum wage) for his work.

The UPA Series really should be different because the players do not have the option of voting with their cleats and skipping the tournament for something else. The TD really is just the director of the event, not the owner, and so doesn't deserve the entrepreneurial rewards.

So, I'd break down the "profit" into two components:
1. A fair wage for the work going into running the tournament.
2. A fair return on the investment (and risk) of running a tournament.

I think we've reached a point where #1 is permitted (really, 15-20 years ago it was not) and ought to be the standard, although I'm not sure what a fair wage would be, especially since the TDs generally also need volunteers to line fields and man tents, and if the TDs get paid then the volunteers will want to be paid. And maybe we're breaking ground on #2 with the professional services of Cultimate. The NUA couldn't make a go of it.

Then again, in the real world prices are determined by supply and demand, not by the actual costs of producing the product. The actual costs relative to the price then can affect the supply, as producers either rush in to garner profits or else rush out because they can't make a profit. For other participatory sports, it seems that the going rate is about $5-10/hour for short events (1-4 hours) (a four hour round of golf goes for $40, indoor soccer is about $10/hr, my modified fast pitch softball league is about $3/hr, gyms sell one-day passes for $10). By this token, players should be willing to pay about $50 per person for a tournament, but somehow this seems excessive. One of the attractions of ultimate is that it is such a cheap sport to play (just need a pair of cleats, a piece of plastic, and the occasional ACL surgery).

The bottom line is that we've become spoiled (or perhaps we should say, "Ultimate doesn't make people spoiled; it reveals that people are spoiled") and might have to be willing to accept capitalism and all the good things that selfishness does for the world.

Why college ultimate sucks

• The hype
  
• The blather
  
• The innocence soon to be lost
  
• Kids today are soft
  
• etc.
  

Nah, I'm kidding, sorta. College ultimate has a lot going for it. In some ways it's a better sport than club ultimate, in that you have a fresh cast of characters each year, the players are less polished and so more prone to exciting greatness or disappointment, and they're not jaded by years and years of having to listen to the latest overpumped superstar who actually isn't that good.

I don't read the college sites (collegeulti and icultimate) too often, if at all, mostly because I'll never see any of these teams play, and I resolved this year to waste my time more productively. But the recent turmoil on rsd due to some critical comments at collegeulti reveals that we still have a way to go before we're really out there. (A similar turmoil ensued when Kenny D criticized the Ultimate History Book and some players.)

We're still an insular community that protects our own, even if they deserve it (rather, even if the criticism is correct) and even if they can protect themselves. Heckling from fans is ok, just as long as it's not too personal or too accurate. It's cruel but not unusual for fans of pro or college teams to make loud requests to remove certain players from the game for bad performance, but such action would (rightfully?) be considered out of line at an ultimate contest. Ultimate reporters rarely point the finger at players or even teams when they don't play well, and when they do name names, they too are regarded as uncool or harsh.

kid picture

 This is one of my favorite pictures of my son, taken when he was about six months old (he's 2 1/2 now) starting to eat solid foods. He does much better now.
 

what's good about stats

From "CMMI: Guidelines for Process Integration and Product Improvement" by Chrissis, Konrad, and Shrum (btw, I would not recommend to ANYONE that they read this unless they have to):
"The purpose of Measurement and Analysis (MA) is to develop and sustain a measurement capability that is used to support management information needs....
Specifying the objectives of M&A such that they are aligned with identified information needs and objectives...
Providing objective results that can be used in making informed decisions, and taking appropriate corrective actions."

Translation: take measurements of something useful that you can do something about.

The best parts about stats are that they're objective and can be used to aid in decision-making, both individual (making better choices with the disc) and team (allocating playing time or determining strategies).

The easiest way to improve with stats is to identify strong negatives (or to use them to prove their existence to doubters). Player A is 1 for 10 on his hucks. Player B throws away 2 break marks a game. The team has not forced a break when playing zone D all year. These things will stand out on their own without any additional analysis needed. The corrective action will require some analysis, but you know that you have a problem. For Player A, you need to decide whether to improve his throws, tweak his decisions, or get him to stop hucking.

The next thing to do is to establish baselines, which won't be the same for everyone, owing to skill level, role, and reward-level of their throws. 88% completion might be borderline acceptable for an aggressive thrower who racks up a lot of goals and big yards, but cause for action for someone who only dumps it or who takes risky but not useful throws.

Now, at this point I'm not expecting anyone to actually establish numerical baselines. Besides being too much work, there are probably too many other confounders that your limits wouldn't be legitimate. But you can, as a captain or coach or even as an individual, establish goals for each player. Be aware, though, that a player might overcompensate on the risk/reward decision in order to improve that completion percentage. (In the earlier stat entry, gambler asked whether anyone played to the stats by making suboptimal decisions. I commented at the time that stat-padding (going for fantasy league stats instead of smart, solid play) was limited to blowout games, but I neglected the other side of suboptimal play.)

Maybe the largest benefit of stat-keeping as we know it is that it forces introspection. Although a player may deceive himself, he is also the one who is most aware of each of his plays. Stats can force a player to look at each of his miscues and reevaluate whether he made a good decision.

Finally, recognize that a Holy Grail of stats is not going to be available for a long time. There will not be any reliable way to roll up all of a player's offensive contributions into a single number. Accept this, and accept that any stat you keep is going to be just one aspect of production that is linked to the other aspects, and you might just find that you can learn something.

The outside world

We’re all Joe Durso, to some extent. In a strong contender for “Article of the Year”, Kenny wrote of him (and his ilk) “in the absence of mainstream acceptance, they cling to scraps of fleeting fame, seek out the company and comfort of those who recognize the significance of their accomplishments, and dream of a day when the world at large will recognize their greatness.” This is me, although I’m going to quibble over parts. I know that my accomplishments are possible only because we’re such a small and minor sport that the Div I athletes don’t bother with it, so I’m not looking for the world to acknowledge my greatness, any more than I want them to acknowledge my Div C modified fast pitch softball championship (yeah, Cougars!). But I do want the world to understand that it is an accomplishment worthy of my time and effort.

I enjoy being a minor celebrity (or, as Corey said on the podcast, “add a few more ‘minor’s in front of that”) in the world of ultimate. I appreciate being around people who feel as strongly about the game as I do. And yes, I’m a little bit afraid of the day where ultimate is not part of who I am but simply part of my past (a very special part, perhaps, but still in the past).

And as for clinging to scraps of fleeting fame, well, yes, there is that aspect, but the larger part is the thrill of the chase. You put in all the work in order to have a shot at, well, greatness. But even for those who seek the limelight, what makes for greatness is not the acknowledgment of the outside world, but the acknowledgment of your inner self that what you are doing is important to you. But the thing is that almost all of us need some confirmation of this from the outside world. It is a rare man who doesn’t care in the least what other people think, and kudos to Mr. Dobyns for having that in him and for being able to move on to other important things in life. (Check back with me five or six years after I retire; maybe things will look differently then.)

Also to the point is that “the outside world” is not the 6 billion others who inhabit the planet, but those who we come into contact with, and those close to us. Kenny’s mom would load up her wagon and drive 10 hours to feed Kenny’s teammates, even when Kenny wasn’t there. His older brother played, married a frisbee chick, and still coaches. Do you think he’d be so dismissive of the outside world if this part of the outside world did not acknowledge the importance of the game to him? My parents and my personal outside world have for the most part embraced my commitment, and that has made all the difference.

Here’s a guess that Kenny or Artie can check on sometime: when Joe Durso won his first national championship, his mom probably told him, “I guess this means you can give up that silly game.”

The perils of stats

I love stats, and always have. When I was 5, I would quiz my mom about stats from the backs of baseball cards. I kept track of Little League stats, wrestling records, golf scores, everything. And in ultimate, I have a record of every tournament since 1992 (and the game scores for those first few years, too). Whenever I have a chance, I've taken individual stats from videos, and was part of a team that recorded every pass back in 1991.

But sometimes I wonder what it's all for. There are a few problems with stats that might just overwhelm their usefulness.

1. Small sample sizes.
2. Other things being equal, ....
3. Field position.
4. False normalization.

The first one is a bane for all sports. You'll hear "so and so is 2 for 18 against this pitcher." This has almost no value in predicting the outcome of their next encounter. Even if you have 100 passes, there is still some chance that a 90% passer will outperform a 95% passer. A lot of studies have shown that the "hot hand" is mostly just a figment of the beholder's imagination.

The problem with the second one is that they're usually not. 3 for 3 is better than 2 for 3, if the passes are the same length, but if the first passer completes dumps that put the disc on a trapped line while the second passer attempts upwind hucks, the second one is more useful. Over time, some of these things wash out, but there will still be outstanding differences resulting from usage patterns. The ideal solution is to compartmentalize the stats as much as possible, so that you separate hucks from dumps, O points from D points, zone from man, strong opponents from weak opponents, but then you get back into problem #1.

Field position (and wind) is just a subset. 40% scoring efficiency might be great if you're starting from your own goal line going upwind, but horrible when starting in the red zone.

False normalization results from the zero-sum aspect of the game. Baseball fielding has a similar problem, in that no matter how bad your defense, you still produce 27 outs in a game. You'll get 15 goals if you win no matter how bad your opponent or how bad you play. Sure, you'll have turnovers, just as you have errors or "defensive efficiency" (percentage of batted balls turned into outs) in baseball, but it makes it impossible to compare players on different teams. Having good teammates will actually hurt your raw stats in either ultimate or baseball (for fielding; batting stats will improve) because you'll have fewer opportunities for yourself.

What to do about this? I'm not sure. It's a bit of a problem, since we need to have a large sample from all levels in order to come up with a good model of how the game works, but no one wants to put in all the effort if they won't be able to do any actionable analysis immediately. But if nobody does anything, then all we're left with is conventional wisdom about what the smart move is in a given situation.

I'd like to see more situational analysis, measuring tradeoffs. For instance, if you have a 20% chance at pulling it OB, is it worth the risk of trying to land it within 10 yards of the sideline? How effective are set plays? What's the difference between having the disc on the line vs in the middle of the field? &c.

More O/D crap

Over at the PuPs, I've been spewing stats about O and D value. Here are a few points I want to make about value:

• Value comes from being better than average or replacement.
  
• If the difference in a particular skill between good and average (or best and worst) doesn't translate into a substantial difference in points or turnovers or runs, then that skill isn't that valuable to the game.
  
• However, it may be true that the skill is a threshold skill, where you have to achieve a certain level just to play the game. For instance, weight for an offensive lineman in the NFL is largely uncorrelated to value, but you have to be at least 270 or 300 lbs to be able to play. I guess we could also call this a fundamental skill in which simple competence gets you 95% of the value of mastery.
  
• We've all been commingling two discussions about value, one being whether an individual offensive player is worth more than an individual defensive player, and the other being whether team offense is more important than team defense. The first issue, I think, is pretty clear for most sports and most players. A top offensive player is involved in a higher percentage of the plays than a top defender. A "shutdown" in ultimate just results in a few seconds wasted (which can of course help create a turnover), while a successful cut clearly increases the odds of scoring. A 20 yard reception from 40 yards out might increase your scoring efficiency from 70% to 80%, but if that cut is shut down by good defense, the efficiency might drop only from 70% to 66.5%. (Here's how I got these numbers. I assume a team is 90% from the goal line and that they lose 5 percentage points every 10 yards. At 20 yards out, they're 80%, and at 40 yards out, they're 70%. For the shutdown, what completion percentage would you expect on a dump where you turn at stall 5? Multiply that by 70% to get your new efficiency. Say it's 95%, then 70% * 95% = 66.5%. You might also need to factor in the yardage loss, pushing it down to maybe 64%.) And you can only cover one player. (Exceptions to this would be a great middle middle in the zone or a great defensive center in basketball who can influence every drive into the lane.)
  
• This is almost an aside, but while there may be an expectation that the offense should score every time, the reality is that offenses score only about half the time, which is also about the rate of scoring in the NBA (fluctuations in points per game are as much a function of pace (possessions per game) as efficiency). I maintain that even for the top of the game, a large percentage of the turnovers have little to do with what is considered "hot D" but is just a matter of being close enough to remove some of the margin of error.
  
• While I don't play on the D team anymore and I follow the disc when I'm on the sideline, I still see an awful lot on the field when I'm playing O.
  

Oh, yeah. Offense rulez!!!

Last and first

More random thoughts to end and begin the year.

The boy just loved his new train set and didn't play with anything else the whole day. He does seem to be Inertia Boy, where whatever he's currently doing is the thing he wants to be doing next, but this was a whole new level. He also whined incessantly whenever the train went off the track or the two cars became disconnected. kids, whattya gonna do.

Field sense is tough to teach. My wife asked me tonight whether field sense was in the book. At first I said it wasn't, but then decided that it was, just not using that phrase. Much of the Cutting chapter was about when to cut and why, trying to give people guidelines (but not rules, since nothing always applies). But we should have been more explicit in talking about field sense. But I'm still not sure how to drill it into someone's head, other than forcing them to think about it. The stages of field sense are: No clue, will understand when explained to, will recognize right when it's too late, will be able to recognize in time to execute, will do it instictively, then the final stage of recognizing it immediately but being too damn old to do anything about it. Hopefully, you'll have a few years in between those last two stages.

I'll freely admit to reference-counting in the Ultimate History Book. Mooney wins the DoG contest hands-down, so much that he needed to be subindexed ("Mooney, Steve, 62, 68, 113; on Death or Glory, 102, 103a, 115-116; influence of, 47, 86, 94, 130; in Japan, 164; on Philly 8, 114; in Japan, 164; on Rude Boys, 54, 58-59; on Titanic, 67, 76; at Wugc, 162). Seeger was under-referenced, but most others were in fair proportion. It's fun to just look through the index for names, although sometimes I wondered why the hell so-and-so was worth a mention. Didn't make it to see how often Dobyns got mentioned yet.

Speaking of which, he's back. What's the over/under before he appears here to say he would never appear here except to wonder what the hell has happened to the game?

And Mike G, too. He might make an interesting podcast guest, or he could just be Bill O'Reilly. You decide.

Boy those west coast kids just like to chuck that disc. Kids today.

Newsletter arrived today. One bad thing about the UPA getting up to speed is that the articles have already appeared online, so there was nothing new in the stories of Nationals. I had hoped that Shelton had gotten some second- or third-hand reports on the "other" semi that started an hour before the important one and that did not start out 5-0, but no, it was the same old song.

Were there really only 81 turnovers in the women's finals, or did they just not record some of them to be nice? There were 48 in the first 4 points, 26-22, so Riot only had 13 turnovers for their last 11 goals. 63 TOs in the men's final (8 by Cruickshank, surprisingly), 93 in the Mixed final (10 each by Pat Hard and Tim Hertz; 73 by men; 23 of 26 assists by men, 18 goals caught), and only only 29 in a Masters final played on a less windy Saturday.

Continuing my Luke-like review (but with capitalization) of the Newsletter....

No mention of Corey in the Lei-out Beach League article.
American Jews teaching frisbee in Israel, sounds like a great thing for them to do (except I think they spelled the author's name wrong).
Some ads and public service announcements. Ooh, get this, the UPA has the nerve to suggest that people read through the rules first if they have a college eligibility question.
2004 financial statement was in there. UPA added $175K in net assets in 2004, very nice. Got an extra $225K in dues and $75K in nationals fees, 50K in sponsorship and donations. Spent an extra $40K on the Champ Series plus added a new line item for Nationals Teams costing $113K. I think they may have decided to separate the costs and fees for the Nationals tournaments instead of rolling them into "championship series".
Ah, super, Kyle Weisbrod scolds players who behave inappropriately/rudely. Glad to see it, although it's also sad to see things change, in a way. Dobyns alluded to the milk toast (sic) teams today who weren't obnoxious assholes like his team. It was a different day back then, when you could do what you wanted in anonyminity and obscurity (although that wasn't the point he was trying to make).
The pictures are good, but I hope that the ones on the devoted page were not the 10 best, in the UPA's opinion.

Ok, time to watch the New Year ring in.

More on the Hall of Fame

On the other HoF thread, someone asked who will be the first DoG player enshrined. I said it was Mooney, if for no other reason than he's so much older than the rest of us.


But he will be one of the "inner-circle" members of the Hall. Bill James, the baseball stat guy/writer/Red Sox employee, has studied baseball's Hall of Fame a lot, and we've drawn from his insights in crafting ultimate's Hall (disclaimer: I'm currently on the HoF Committee). One of the ideas concerns "peak" and "career" value.

Sandy Koufax is the classic example of a "peak" HoFer, someone with a short career (just 12 years in the majors, only six of them as above-average) but at such a brilliant high that you can't ignore him. Eddie Murray is a good example of "career", as he almost never led the league in anything but was pretty damn good for a pretty damn long time.

Well, Mooney is one of the tops in ultimate for both peak and career. His career value easily outdistances the rest of the field, even Kenny Dobyns, the only other player in the discussion when you combine your "peak" and "career" top 10 lists into "best player ever." (I write this only because I know neither of them will ever read this.)

It will be interesting to see how DoG and NYNY populate the Hall over the years. It will be a few more years until most of the core of those teams become eligible. As a rough guess, each team will probably have about five HoFers and another five guys who belong in the Hall of Very Good, guys who were either one of the very best for a short time or guys who were consistently excellent but never one of the elite of the elite. But these numbers really depend on how the Hall plays out.

A maximum of 5 players and contributors can be elected per year. There is currently a backlog of Hall-worthy players, so you'd expect that there'd be five new inductees each year, but it's possible that qualified candidates will split the vote and thus only three or four will be inducted. (There is a multi-step process to make sure that this isn't too much of a problem.) I'll guess without calculating that it will take 10-15 years for the Hall to be really current, such that the leading candidates in any given year will be those who just hit the minimum age (48 for men/45 for women this year, moving down to 43/40 by 2010).

It's an unfortunate reality that some of the early greats will probably not make it because of the dense field.