Training

Yes, training will be on this Sunday, weather permitting. We will again persevere with Oakman Park as the primary option for training. If there is AFL this weekend (I will go early and check) we will try and use UQ oval 7, which is the one at the round about at the start of Fred Schonell Drive in St. Lucia.

3:30 - 5:00

Oakman Park or UQ oval 7

Bring light and dark

Fun

See you there!

BUML news

In today's day and age sometimes we can become too expectant of our governing bodies. We want information right now and sometimes its hard for others to keep up to the demand of everyday life.

Now, for your convience, one man (insert :: no its not me) stands above the rest and promises to maintain a website that will automatically display a leaderboard based on the recorded results of the matches. No more will you have to differentiate between Div 1 and Div 2 teams. No more will you wonder why Heroes are third last even though they have only lost 1 game. No more will you wonder why on earth QUTies appear to be the best Monday night team around, despite the fact they are in Div 2 (no offense).

You'll find the website at www.bumlladder.info. The official draw is still available from the BUML site, but it is fairly hard to read. Importantly you should know that bumlladder.info is not the offical BUML ladder but this still is, if you can decipher it. View the (unofficial) deciphered version here.

If you would like to help keep this ladder up to date, please submit the results of your match on the bumlladder.info contact page ASAP after the game.

Agent Orange In Vietnam

New Jersey's have arrived for the entire HUC. Yesterday, being a day when we remember the atrocities of war, I considered the irony of having Agent Orange shirts made by Zone in Vietnam....


.....lest we forget.

Tactic of the Week: The end-zone pass

That last pass into the end-zone is always the most difficult.  We have all, at some point, been guilty of rushing a throw or celebrating a catch before we've caught it and turning it over.  Here is my perspective on strategies to maximise scoring and minimise turn-overs.

Why do we turn it over?
There are two main reasons we turn it over in the end-zone: Space and Psychology.
When youre on the endzone line you only need to pass the disc half a metre to score and all too frequently we try to only pass it that half a metre to one of three cutters trying to get to that half a metre distance which is being clogged by their defenders as well while the dump is screaming at you and the sideline is screaming at you and the count on eight.

You will notice that the above sentence is long without any punctuation.  It gets a bit confusing and frenetic to read, and this is what happens on the field near the end-zone.  We crowd each other, everyone tries to get involved cutting all over the place, and the thrower's arousal levels shoot up.  When you combine this with the tendency of both cutters and throwers to want to make it easy to score by passing it half a metre, the naturally limited space of the end-zone, and the extra pressure of a throw 'to score' and a catch 'to score', it becomes easy to see why there are so many turnovers in or near the end-zone.

How do we fix it?
There are a number of things that will help, first and foremost is:

Stay calm
Above all, stay calm.  No matter how much a cutter gets frustrated with you, take your time and throw good options.  You're in no rush, and there is no extra pressure on you. it would be the same if you were passing it out of your own end-zone.  Remember that it's just a throw like any other you've done a hundred times.

Dump
Dump, swing, score.  There's a reason the drill is called that, but how many teams do you see in game situations actually dumping and swinging it a few times before attempting the throw in?  Lots of patience at utilising your dump will help you score.  Handlers should be able to dump at 90-95%, so use it!  Each team and player will have a preferred count or situation to dump in, which leads onto....

Have a plan
Too many teams assume that everyone knows what to do in the end-zone, and it ends up the usual frenetic scramble.  The more disciplined your players are, and the more you create and implement a plan for scoring, the more often it will happen and the less you'll turn it over.

Use the space
The end-zone is (I only just did the maths..... weirds me out a bit) 666 square metres, and the longest possible throw (across diagonal corners) is 41.15m.
Most of us have adequate throws to cover any of this area, and should not be afraid to throw to a good cut.

What can cutters do?
Similarly, Cutters can help make things more efficacious by:

Knowing when to cut
One of my favourite things to do when I find myself in the end-zone is stand still and look around.  Usually others will be cutting, and hopefully clearing, which then gives me the next cut.  Knowing when to cut is helped if you...

Have a plan
As above. Have a plan, stick to it. And...

Clear out (re-stack)
Use good faking and 100% effort cuts.  If you don't get it, bust back to the stack. Hard.  This creates more room and easier throws for your teammates.  Remember that it's a team sport, which one of you catches the disc doesn't matter, as long as someone does.

Use the space
If you use a three out, four in set up for end-zone plays, and you start with  one player standing five metres out of bounds laterally (each side), and 2 players out of bounds deep, you have massive amounts of open space to cut into (remember that with out of bounds, both your last as well as your next contact must be with the field proper).  Your job is to create high percentage options for your thrower, and you can be as creative as you want in doing so.  Remember that half metre passes to clogged spaces are much, much harder than you would like to think.  Sticking to a plan will help utilise the space.


In a nutshell
Stay Calm. Dump. Have a plan.

 

The last couple of Mondays have seen me rise from my bed to greet a cloudy day full of threats of a downpour. But it seems that today is different, today is the day the threats became reality. Keen Frisbee blog readers (trolls?) will have seen that the rain has lead to the closure of UQ and recently Annerley as well, with Griffith expected to follow shortly.

What does it mean for us? If you would indulge me for a second I will pull out, dust off and consult the Heroes Ultimate Club Guide to Life. It seems that and I quote "in times of trouble, when the outlook is dark, when the prospect of a regular league match has been torn asunder, the only option available to followers is simple. It is to visit a local drinking establishment."

This is where the HUC guide to Life finishes. Leaving the specifics up to any who would dare to don the esteemed mantle of HUC Party Officer. And as it happens, that would be me. Upon examination of previous material such the 5 P's, the 'other' 5 P's and when frisbee doesn't win; I would like to follow the tradition and invite everyone to Archive Beer Boutique from about 7pm onwards and it is located at 100 Boundary St, West End (the good pub below Uber).

This is a chance to get to know your fellow team and club members without the pressure and distraction of having to chase plastic. A chance to talk to that cute girl or boy from your team. A chance to wet your whistle on some good quality drinks or food if you desire ($10 gourmet burgers).

Skill of the Week- Attitude (What I've learnt from the best)

I love watching finals at Nationals. The superior skill, fitness, and structure is superb to watch, but one of the things I love watching is the attitude of the players.  Watching these games always reminds me that top players still make the same mistakes I do: they get broken, they get beaten, they throw it away, they drop it.

The big difference between me and these players (apart from the skill and fitness) is what they do after any of these things.  Where I get frustrated, down on myself and ruminate, these players do not.  Where I feel like a failure, these players have more resilience.  They use any lapse as immediate motivation and have a faster transition/reaction.

In the open final at nationals, one Colony player was wearing his heart on his sleeve, almost to the point of histrionics.  Some of his reactions were unpleasant to watch, and had a visibly negative effect on his teammates.  The effect of our attitude on our team is something we should never discount.  To be the best players we can be, we need to use any frustration from errors as motivation to do better next time, rather than self-indulgently wallowing.

The most important thing I have learnt from watching the best is about attitude.  Every player gets beaten and broken, throws away and drops the disc.  The best players approach any game with the attitude of acknowledging and minimsing this, and only ever responding to disappointment with improvement.  This is the attitude that I plan to emulate.

Browntown Takes One In The End Zone!!

After scoring early, Heroes fell asleep on the sideline and on-field with some uninspiring play and sloppy marking, allowing Slamtown to huck to unexpected receivers. Heroes were down 4-1.

With a demand to improve on the basics (completions, aka throwing and catching) and a request for more sideline talk, the quality of play lifted. A few Jangles to Bevan plays came off and Adam D went on to have a blinder, beginning with some hard puppy pressure to force throw aways. Adam used his reach (he has height, but have you ever seen him jump) to swat the disc away from the outstretched hands of receivers. He hit every dump, but my favourite Adam play was when George made a great cut under on Horo and Adam came streaming and screaming through to collect the Dishy in power posistion and wind-up that big arm of his to huck to score (Morrell receiving? on the back line in the middle).

The positivity definitely lifted and the sideline talk kept everyone in the game. I remember getting caught out early on with players streaming down my wing and no sideline talk, but this changed in the second third. I think Slamtown took the half after long discussions saw a spirited Fox backing down to a solid argument Slamtown's best politician.

There were some exciting moments, when we got SFC to stall count 9 a number of times, but they got away with stuff like scoobers to Jody and the traditional Heroes-mac-on to Al. James Larkin was one player we failed to shut down. For the amount of D's we got and shots we had, our conversion rate was very low.

Sebastian worked really hard in the second half, but the real Brown-town belonged to neither Sebastian or Jody, but that of little brother, not-the-rapper Chris Brown. Chris Brown had 16 attempts to score in the end zone. Often perceived as cutting hard, handlers would float it out in front of Chris, only to see him time and again, labouring, stumbling and seeing the disc float out the back of the end zone. This lead to much taunting. To claims that we thought he was cutting, Big Brother Sebastian lamented "People often think that about Chris?" Jamie was of usual harshness: "Are you going to catch it this time, Chris?" Yes, it reminded this blogger of those who had come before him. Like Trevor, Watto and Tomsteve, the young Ceasar seemed cursed.

Finally, I think it was Bevan, pulled one out of the sky and Chris was found all alone in the middle of the end zone. Bevan put it in at about the height where all our hearts were, the throat, with Chris finally obliging and taking a sitter. The crowd went wild!!! (*insert tumbleweed)

In the end I think we went down 14-10, but I may be wrong.

Sunday Fris!

This Sunday, 3:30pm, Oakman Park. Get there a bit before to cleat up and throw. Will be running a drill or two and then playing some pick-up or ultimate style'd game.

Also I need to invest(igate) in(to) markers sometime... hmmm.

See you all Sunday!

Heroes ladies at nationals!!

Back row L-R Jo, Brianna, Carla, Robyn, Alana, Monica, Annie, Vanessa, Aurelie.
Front row L-R Laura, Izzy, Adilia, Justine, Chantelle, Bron
Lying in front - Sylvia



A number of the Heroes ladies represented Queensland as part of “Red Betty” the development team from Queensland's ladies' ultimate club, Black Betty. For the majority of these ladies, it was their first Nationals and the first time they had played a high level, multiple day tournament.

Red Betty, being a developmental team, were seeded second to bottom. Unfortunately, the bottom team pulled out of the competition a few weeks before. Red Betty were therefore seeded 15^th out of 15 teams.

One way of summarising Red Betty's results is to say that we held our seeded place, which is what a lot of teams aspire to do...

But to simply say that Red Betty came last is to discredit the hard work and development of the ladies that occurred over the weekend.

Above all else, I think the ladies walked away with an understanding of what high level ultimate really is. In Brisbane, unless you play these national level tournaments, there is just no high level ladies ultimate available to watch or play. Watching the ladies final, the Heroes ladies were able to appreciate that ladies ultimate is fast, it is aggressive (in the sense that the women attack the disc, do not give up and get fired up) and it is skilful. I hope that all the ladies implement this in to their league games (you have to play like it is high level ultimate to be able to create high level ultimate).

Heroes were represented by Jo Ashdown, Brianna Fyfe, myself (Robyn Dowley), Alana Folkes, Vanessa Brown, Adilia Murabito, and Chantelle Smith (apologies if I have left anyone off the list).

Even though only one week has passed since Nationals finished, the games and individual player's performances have honestly become a bit of a blur to me.

Some that I can remember:

• All of the ladies keeping on running and not giving up, despite being tired.

• Alana having sticky fingers and scoring a few points from wayward discs in the end zone!

• Jo running and running – in the cup, going long, cutting to the right places when needed. Jo also has brilliant forehands which she pulls out to use occasionally. Jo you should force your way into the handling line on Discheads on occasion to build your confidence in your throws. They are there, you just need to know it!

• Bri's constantly improving handling skills – I honestly think you are already a great handler, you just need to find that confidence! Bri was also another reliable cutter who bailed me out of a high stall count on more than a few occasions. Bri was also really great at keeping the spirit levels of the whole team up, especially me when I had a bit of a breakdown on day 2.

• Chantelle is another great receiver. She is quick and is fast developing a sense of field awareness. With a bit more experience she will be an unstoppable receiver.

• Vanessa came into the team at a very late stage, as we needed players desperately and she was kind enough to volunteer herself. This put her at a bit of a disadvantage as she did not have the build up of skills that the other ladies had acquired through the few months of regular training. However, she still managed to slot right into the team, picking up the few plays that we had and playing them efficiently. I also remember being on the sideline with Vanessa for a few points with Vanessa constantly calling to the on-field ladies, helping them with where they should be, calling out when their player was getting free in a zone etc. This was really encouraging to see as it is a very difficult task to get the players engaged in sideline play in ladies ultimate.

• Adilia being her usual steady handler self. It was great to have another experienced, steady handler in the team.

I look forward to being able to see the continued development of these ladies, particularly through WUFL. And given the new skills these ladies have gained, I am pretty sure defending champions Wonder Women will have a fantastic season!

Thankyou to all of the players in Red Betty. It was a pleasure to captain you all!

one we should have got

In a week of sore muscles and tired legs, the bpl continued as per normal and heroes stood against the new kids on the block the bandidos (sporting their striped alternate strip, one that I personally enjoyed more than their regular kit).
To be perfectly honest and in a strange turn of regular events, Heroes went in favourites and we certainly expected an easier win. But walking up to the far field (after being kicked off 3b as the rumour mill suggested to me) I past some fairly experienced throwers putting their cleats on so I thought I would have to play through my own personal illness. But in saying this the young Bandidos are very....Raw. And i didnt think we d have to much hassle dealing with them. And indeed we didnt with five mins to go at 12-8. Then, and whether it was due to tired legs or just not enough focus we let bandidos put five on the board to take the game to 13 all at hard time cap.
Readers will notice I went straight to the point (the end of the game) because alas the ultimate played was not at he highest quality and the game just played out.
Credit to the bandidos getting their first points in BPL.
To be perfectly honest Heroes will come out next time our two teams meet and the next game wont be so tight.

just a bump on our journey to holding the fourth and final semi final spot this season.

Sunday Training

Weather permitting, we are going to attempt a training session tomorrow afternoon 10th April at 3:30 at Oakman Park. As we have not trained in a while I'm not sure if we can use cleats and if the venue is free? If Oakman is not playable I propose we try Moore Park in Indooroopilly.

Oakman at 3:30 or Moore Park if you are late and noone is at Oakman.

Bring a black and white, water bottle, caps, fun.

Skill of the week- Reading Spin

Have you ever found that you have perfect positioning, your defender is two metres behind you, you're calm and focused, you attempt a one handed catch and it simply bounces out of your hand?

Have you ever found that you don't expect to catch a disc, but you throw a hand out anyway, and the disc just seems to stick in your hand?

Most of the time this has to do with which direction the disc is spinning.  Learning to read how the disc is spinning is as important as learning how to read the flight of the disc, and this post will be dealing with how to do just that.

First of all, when catching (and especially one handed) you need to stop two forces, the linear force, and the rotational force.  To catch a spinning disc one handed, you need to catch it at the back (to stop the linear force) and on the side of the disc spinning toward you (to stop the rotational force). It is, actually, that simple. Here's a diagram to help visual people:

So how do you know which way the disc is spinning? Regardless of whether someone is lefthanded/right handed, or throwing forehand or backhand, the disc will always spin toward the thrower.  If you go out and watch someone throwing, you'll see what I mean.

One of the very best things about learning to read spin is that once you get it, you don't have to actively think about it when throwing.  You will automatically adjust your catches to cater for how it is spinning.  Spend an intensive few throwing sessions practicing to read spin and catch the disc one handed, and you'll be amazed at how your catching improves.

Heroes at Nationals from an (insider's) outsider perspective.

HUC had a truly outstanding representation at Nationals across a number of teams.  Given I was able to play with and against a few of you, I thought I'd give a brief review of what I saw.

Quoll
Dan and Gavin acquitted themselves in outstanding manner with the Tassie team.  They both slotted seamlessly into the structure of Quoll and had a number of critical and inspiring moments on both O and D.  Dan was his usual irrepressible self, constantly cutting hard and going for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th efforts.  Dan took a crucial layout grab backing up for a poor throw, and Quoll went on to score the point.  Gavin similarly had fantastic positioning throughout the weekend, with very solid throwing and catching.  Although an injury slowed him down in a few games, a standout moment was a great read and top-of-the-jump D off a threatening throw.

Firestorm Ignition
Playing for 15th was a fierce and competitive game, and I got to see a few Heroes in action that I hadn't seen before.  Jamie had a great game, taking a number of fantastic grabs and getting a D or two at critical moments. His talent is very clear and it will be good to watch him become a superstar. Adam Dowley was solid in handling and a lynchpin of Ignition's attack.  Safe hands at the back with reliable throws, it's great to see Adam at HUC.
Sebastian continues to improve every time I see him play and this was no exception.  He took two super grabs that I can recall, one a full stretch layout to score.  In this game, Sebastian's confidence and assuredness was the most improved aspect of his game.
Although I was often too busy grinding my teeth to notice the opposition, I do recall Chris using his super-leap and hands of iron to take a screamer of a one-handed catch above a pack of friend and foe alike, all of whom where comparatively standing still.
Super-sub Carl came on for a point, and I had the pleasure of marking him.  Ignition scored, and I didn't shut Carl down well enough, so he takes the points on that one. Apparently two stuffed ankles trumps a tweaked hamstring.

The Betties
To my chagrin and disappointment, I didn't get to watch any of the Heroes girls playing at Nationals.  The feedback I got was they enjoyed themselves and got a lot out of it. I'd love to hear more from those who played/watched.

It is great to see so many HUC players out and about at national tournaments.  I can't wait for more!

(apologies to anyone I missed)

AO vs Tsunami Match Report

Well given that Nationals is done and dusted it seems that there is a bit more time to grab a hold of. That means more blogging. No doubt there will be numerous posts regarding Nats on the various blog sites we link to, and hopefully one or two on the HUC site, but for now I offer you a brief match report from our Div 2 BUML game.

Now as is the case with the other two Heroes BUML teams we had a number of players backing up from Nats and surprisingly none were tired/slow but rather excited to have another game, including myself with a badly strained knee that restricted me to 50% pace and an awkwardly painful limp. We were however missing Bev and Em to illness and Sam (with good results in his school's cross country today) to study. Recognising only a handful of faces in Tsunami I was not expecting the level of play that they brought. Every player on their team seemed very confident with the disc which was wonderful to see given they are a majority of beginners. Because of this they started strong and it took a while for us to get right in the game. Eventually we were hitting our strides as a team using both unders and longs effectively. Dstrel played an excellent game with dynamic handling and front of stack movement. Vanessa beat her girl every time providing easy options for the handlers, and ate up every disc - high, low, whatever. Emily S scored a brilliant goal (her first I think). Alex looked comfortable with his field presence and was getting the disc often because of this. He was also putting the force on the right side every time without having to stop and think about it! At half time we set a goal of not letting our man get free when on D and as a team we achieved this, which was my personal highlight of the game. Because we played at UQ it was a disappointingly shorter game, with the final result 11-7 to Tsunami.

One thing the shorter game did bring about was the desire for more Disc. Almost unanimously the team cried out in our post game debrief for Sunday training.