ultimate

Ramblings on a Thursday

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 19:45 on 13 August 2009

Today was a day of car and San Mateo. Kris had a doctor appointment in San Mateo at too-early o'clock, and needed me to drive him to the appointment and pick him up from the appointment. We've done this deal before, so I knew what to expect with the two to three hour wait. What I wasn't expecting, though, was having fewer than four hours of sleep the night before and needing to sleep.

After waiting with Kris in the doctor's office's waiting room until he was called in for his appointment, I went out to the car, crawled into the back seat, and passed out. I didn't manage a deep sleep of any sort, but I did manage to doze well enough that only the combination of many doors slamming in the car next to me and the screaming of a full bladder could wake me up. And wake me up they did.

I am, for the record, still amazed at how many people think that standing next to your car means you're leaving, and that they have the right to honk at you to enourage you to hurry up, even when you're not leaving. I succeeded in having two cars wait in the lot behind me, turn signal on, waiting for my parking spot, as I crawled into the back seat to pass out again after going to the bathroom. Because, you know, I must be leaving my parking spot, right?

After Kris was done with his appointment, and the two of us back home, I managed to work. That I managed to work among the cacophany of life happening in the house is a testament to my ability to focus. Between Heather's cooking and cleaning (did I mention bestest-roomie-evar? Thought so.), and the dogs' confusion that both Kris and I were home AGAIN oh-boy-this-means-food-and-walkies-and-lots-of-petting, the house was teeming in movement. Of course, my concentration actually meant putting up a gate and closing the door to the doggen, but, hey, sometimes we need a crutch, right?

Tomorrow, the Emerald City Classic starts, a three day ultimate tournament in Seattle. It used to be Spawnfest, I think, for the Mixed Division, but the division has become large enough to catch the attention of the Open and Women's tournament director, and the two merged. I could be wrong about that, but I think that's what happened.

Originally I had planned to go to the tournament and take stats. I don't really know why I keep torturing myself in this way. I enjoy playing with the team. I feel so lucky to be a part of such and amazing group of people. Standing on the sidelines, however, knowing that you won't go in and run run run, feel the grounds as you push off, the thunk of the disc as it stops spinning in your palm, the clench of the stomach as you pour everything into your legs getting them to move fast enough under you to keep from falling over forward, gosh, that's torture, even if the numbers that you get from the stats are fun and entertaining and quite enjoyable.

OF course, heading over to see Ben and Lisa afterward for a couple days, trying to fit into their schedule, was the real reason for heading off this weekend, and the biggest reason I'm disappointed I won't be going. Although I'm finding the 10-12 billable hours a day refreshing for the bank account, I'm finding missing out on that visit more disappointing.

Heather, however, is going to Seattle. She needed a ride to Mountain View to meet up with Warren and Steffi, who were driving up to the airport to catch their flights also to Seattle. Since I was heading back up to San Mateo to hang out briefly with Pickett, I offered to take Heather to SFO. When Mark asked for a ride, I knew I had volunteered well. Instead of a solo ride to San Mateo, I could drop both Heather and Mark off, too. Fun.

Hanging out with Pickett is awesome. I didn't stay long, my body wanting to shut down, despite my backseat nap this morning. I did manage to see his new garden, from the soil and seeds I dropped off two weeks ago as a thank you for taking care of me during my last migraine. I was sad to see the compost I gave him had lots of grass seeds in the compost, but Pickett seemed good natured about it.
Pickett and Nichole are talking about raising chickens in their small urban lot. She had selected the breeds she liked and had found a source, also. Pickett, however, was worried about the start of work for him after the summer off and the influx of family coming into town over the next few weeks.

You know, I think Pickett is the only other person with garden square footage rivalling mine. His strawberries are far more productive than mine are, though.

Oh, and 280 is so much faster that 101 at 5:30 in the evening.

Way.

I'm going to bed early tonight.

The water tank rides again!

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 20:25 on 25 July 2009

Okay, yeah, nothing really to do with the lyrics, but the Revolution part, yeah.

Went to Stanford today to write down every throw Mischief players made today at this year's Coed Revolution. The coordinators (some from Los Angeles, no less) had asked for water help, and the water tank was available. I have to say that getting up at 7:30 am for a tournament is hard. Getting up at 7:30 am for a tournament I'm not even playing in is even harder.

Still, the lighting was interesting in the morning.

And the sloshing of the filled tank in the back of the truck didn't cause me any seasickness what so ever.

No.

None.

Really.

Okay, maybe a little.

Today's games were nominally uneventful as stress goes. Hanging out with the team is always a treat, but I sometimes feel quite displaced from the team, that it's no longer my team (it's not), and made up of only some friends, instead of the whole team being friends. *shrug*

Practice!

Blog Instead of being asleep at 13:09 on 25 April 2009, kitt created this:

I went to the Mischief practice today. My knee's been killing me, with my still being unable to go down hills, but the practice was at Baylands, which is close enough to home that I really needed to go. Unfortunately, I was five minutes late, and had a rough time warming up. My best part of the practice was the first 3/4 of my warmup lap. Sigh.

I did, however, take my new camera. It's an EXIM instead of my current Canon favorites. I bought it because it can take pictures up to 1000 frames a second. Of course, such speed depends on 1. being able to actually center the subject of interest properly in the frame, 2. being able to push the button at the correct time, because you have only that one second and 3. being able to live with some really tiny pictures. Although I can take 3k x 2k pictures for about 3 seconds at 30 frames a second, the 1000 frames a second pictures are around 200 x 100 in size.

Also known as tiny.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, I'm still working on the 1 and 2 of that 3 item list.

I figure, once I manage to offload the images to my computer, I'll be all set. The documentation with this thing, though, hoo boy, CRAP.

I kept up with most of the practice, declining to participate in the huck drills. I had such a hard time with the five on five opening games, though mostly in confusion whether or not we were hot-subbing or only between points, that anything requiring all out sprints were just not coming from my legs.

As one of the last drills we did, we ran a zig-zag marking drill, where each player in a group (we split by gender) marked a disc that was thrown zig-zagging down two parallel lines of players, for a total of maybe 15 throws per set. I managed to tip three discs and actually handblock one, missing another half dozen by only a tiny bit. Oh, how I wish my arms were an inch longer. Of course, if they were an inch longer, I'd probably want another. Yeah. Of course.

Practice under pressure

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 15:53 on 8 February 2009

I posted this over at More Fist Pumping, but figured I'd cross post here, too, since few people seem to read or even post at MFP these days.

Start by reading this article about how to avoid choking under pressure:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-avoid-choking-under-pressure

One of the aspects of doing well under pressure is to practice in pressure situations. In particular, setting up fake high pressure situations so that when the real event occurs, everyone both can handle it and knows he can handle it.

One way to create high pressure situations at practice is to ask the team to focus and play hard. This can work well if everyone is sufficiently motivated, but doesn't work as well as the practice wears on or even through out the season. Putting aside internal motivation (which should be an incredibly high motivator), how else can high pressure situations be created during practices? How can we simulate the pressure from Nationals without playing against another team from Nationals who is just as fired up as we are?

Well, how about keeping statistics and reward those statistics?

A college that had a dominant women's soccer team would track all its players' speed by running sprints at the end of each practice. Every one lined up on one line according to speed, the fastest on one end, the slowest on the other. At the end of each sprint, the order would adjust, with the faster person still at the one end, but the middle runners adjusted according to who crossed the line first. This particular way of running sprints made it easy to see who was faster and slower, as each person was next to others who were close in speed to her. At the end of all of the sprints, the order would be recorded and posted.

The result of the sprints tracking was that the slowest person was incredibly motivated to become faster. The article I read went on to point out that the slowest freshman one year became the fastest sprinter by her senior year, because of the motivation from the sprints.

We could have a similar setup at practice for sprints, sure. It would help motivate those in the middle, and keep those at the fast end honest in moving!

Speed is only one aspect of the game, however. Scrimmages at practice could also be tracked, as the teams are fairly stable after they're declared at practice (and fairly stable through the season as offense teams and defense teams are selected). At the end of practice, keep the team divisions, but make a note of which team won how many scrimmages, maybe even how many points. Keep track of those values and rank the players on how they did, either by points or by scrimmages won.

I don't know that I'd recommend keeping stats on scrimmages the way that game stats are kept at tournaments. That requires a lot more commitment from a non-player.

The trick in tracking statistics, however, is to make sure every player continues to grow and expand upon his skill set. If you're tracking how many turnovers a player made at practice, she's going to stop trying to throw those throws that are *just* beyond her reach. Yet, practice is when you want her trying those throws so that she *can* make them in a game: you want growth at practice, not withdrawal.

Possibly having a non-tracked practice for people to try new positions and throws could also be beneficial.

For this reason, I would strongly argue against tracking "how many turnovers I had at practice." The skills and drills parts of practices don't lend themselves particularly well to statistics, and are opportunities for growth that shouldn't be wasted.

Of course, the true source of pressure in sports comes from actual competition. Heading out to a tournament and experiencing the pressure is a better source than the artificial pressure of tracking scrimmage stats. Just make sure the tournament's level is high enough, and that the team learns at the event, as even a loss is a chance to learn.

Huh. Well look at that

Blog Instead of being asleep at 08:03 on 31 October 2008, kitt created this:

If you get close enough, you can still take good (though still not great) pictures even with a small camera.

We're number one! Er... sorta.

Blog Posted by kitt at 21:46 on 30 October 2008

At the beginning of the day, we came into the tournament seated number one of sixteen teams. At the end of the day, we're still seated number one, but we managed to keep that spot in a strange point differential, head to head, power pool format way.

I tried to run pounds for taking stats in the first game. I made sure I had a new binary. I made sure I had lots of battery juice. I made sure I had the team name in and ready to go.

What I didn't do, however, is make sure the undo function was working properly. After three points and two incomplete undos, I switched away from the computer and back to the paper notebook for keeping stats. I'm a little annoyed that the program didn't work, this being the last opportunity this season to actually get it working right, but I'm also not-so-secretly relieved to have a paper trail on the actions. Of course, I'd rather have a video of all of the games, but I can't find anyone willing to give up five days to help me out with this stuff.

Maybe a clone IS the way to go.

I spent most of the day bundled up under four layers of clothing, and still cold. At one point, LT, in his jersey, shorts and sweat pouring down his face, looked over at me and asked, "How can you stand all of that? Aren't you hot?" I immediately answered back, "Actually, I have a fever. I'm pretty cold right now." I wished I had brought more clothing to the fields.

So, we lost our first game to Chewbacca Defense 13-15, having been up 8-4 at the half (my commentary from my twitter posts, which I kept up to date fairly well today):

mischief 0 v chewbacca defense 0
mis 3 chew 2
mis 5 chew 2
misch 5 chew 3
misch 7 chew 3
misch time out
misch takes half 8-4

wow, the only warm spot here is in the porta-potty

misch 8 chew 5
misch 9 chew 6
misch 9 chew 7
wind picked up a LOT misch 10 chew 8 on 4 turnovers

wind, the sport's great equalizer misch 10 chew 9 on wind aided turns

misch 11 chew 10
I hate this wind. misch 12 chew 11

misch 12 chew 12 on more wind aided turns. no, this isn't painful to watch, why do you ask?

fuck. misch 12 chew 13

andy comes in, easiest score we've had. misch 13 chew 13, chew still up the break

misch 13 chew 14
misch 13 chew 15

As Mark says, "Sometimes you take the easy road, sometimes you take the hard road. We're taking the hard one."

We then won our game 15-4 against Cougars, who were the last seed in our pool:

game against cougars

misch 4 cougars 0
misch 7 cougars 0

cougars [call time out with] no t.oouts remaining

misch 7 coug 1

wind picks up, has no effect on misch O, as Andy is in. misch takes half 8-1

da da da da da da 10 minute half, no action da da da da da da

misch 8 coug 2
misch 9 coug 3
misch 9 coug 3 on crappy foul contest
misch 10 coug 3 on nick to paul breakmark, layout grab
misch 12 coug 3 on drive that included 3 layout grabs
misch 13 coug 4
misch 14 coug 4

too much damned talk on the sidelines about point differential. misch 15 coug 4

Our last game of the day was against Barrio, who, like Chewbacca this morning, beat us in the first game of the day last year at Nationals. We needed to win this game to be in the power pools for tomorrow. We needed to win this game by more than three points to win the pool outright.

If we won the game, we would be both first in the powerpools going in tomorrow (as we could lose on point differential, but still have the head-to-head win for a record of 1-0 going in) and have redemption on the team for last year's loss.

We won 15-13, in a bitter, unpleasant game with observers who both don't know the rules and ruled against us in every call (which, could be valid, except for the "don't know the rules" part).

My twitter stream in reverse order, since I don't want to bother inverting it:

team in power pools with 1-0 record

13-12
kyle huck, mark pulls defender off, goes up too early, disc floats over both into gizmo's happy hands

bar takes too much time to pull? lose a time out

12-12
gizmo brutal catch from chucky to take it 12-11

sunya turn, gizmo block, foul called by mark, fresh with disc

11-11, game to 13, softcap on
11-10 on adam leventhal to adam brown

on a throw that she couldn't see because she was running the wrong way, she called pick after realizing her woman caught the score.
liz penny sucks

softcap horn should go on any moment
fresh to andy toe in layout for 10-10
bar guy laid out kicking chucky in head
9-10

doyle callahan for 9-9

8-9 kyle to giz from giz block
7-9 emily to paul
6-9 after half

half time la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
barrio takes half 6-8, observers called in on previous point. down by only one break

6-7
4-7

misch 4 bar 6 on a 13 turnovers point
long point 7 turns so far. bar calls last t.o. in half

3-6
zone d failed 2-6
2-5
1-5

I give. this is too painful to watch. misch 1 bar 4
misch 1 bar 3

heads up the collective butt. misch 0 bar 3
misch 0 barrio 2
misch 0 bar 1 on 6 turn over point

timeout mischief in first point

So, we're 1-0 in tomorrow's power pool play, even though we're second in our pool, having 0 on point differential (won by 2, lost by 2). Barrio is first in our pool, but goes into tomorrow's power pools with the loss to us.

Yeah. We're number one! Uh, sorta.