Voice Post

            Although it was a bit tricky to find a blog with a distinct voice, I think I found one with a more somber tone which comes from the way he presents his day at possibly his last Ultimate Frisbee tournament.  The blog is called Parinella's blog and it talks about many facets of the Ultimate Frisbee experience.  The author also displays his go with the flow personality that seems to stick with him throughout his Ultimate career. The blog author starts with a quote of himself about the fact that he was thinking of hanging up his Ultimate Frisbee cleats.  The quote gives a sense of his personality through his reflection of his previous self and his change of heart.  It gives the reader a quick background of his relationship to the game without divulging too much information.  After the big self quote he says “Another year, another Nationals”; although his shows his love for the game you get a sense that he is almost tired out by the sport, and maybe the culture and people.  From this phrase, he doesn't seem to be overly excited to play on his team in pretty big tournament, the National Championships.  This is NOT the normal sentiment towards Ultimate where there is a giddy feeling to getting on that nationals field.  A line that stood out from the section on his physical condition was “my neck muscles are sore now” because it adds to sense of his weariness in the game physically and mentally.  Phrases alluding to what used to happen give a sense of his beloved pastime like “Wife and son stayed home this year. Just me and 1500 of my closest friends”.  This sentence also reveals a bit of sarcasm because he is generalizing all of the Ultimate community as his friends even though he sees the people changing and the culture changing.

            On a more general note, he uses short sentences to show his emotion to whatever situation he is speaking about.  Some examples are “Second game was uneventful” or “I don't know what's next.” Or “it’s all good”.  These tid bits give his writing a flare off his personality, it gives him a laid back and go with the flow kind of feeling, which kind of ties to the beginning of his post where he says “Another year, another Nationals” right after his story about his last time he was going to play competitive Ultimate.  The section about the “beer tent” also brings out his go with the flow and spontaneous personality because of the way he phrases visiting the tent: “just to see who was there” and to drink “gunni”.  This shows that he is kind of re-living his good old days.

            His last paragraph almost merge these two personality traits of being happy to play if anyone else wants to play and accepting the fact that he isn't going to play Ultimate for too much longer. He displays a lot of nostalgia and sadness through his word choice like “get the band back” and “it’s all good” and “it is what it is”.  I think these word choice decisions also show the loss of the capability to choose to play or not, it is out of his hands.

            The UltimateStrategy and Coaching blog is written by Martin, who seems to be an Ultimate Frisbee coach in person.  This blogger regularly watches club ultimate frisbee matches and is up to date with the direction of the sport.  He focuses on the current news in the Master’s Ultimate National series.  He has very good insider, insight towards the sport and gives not only a newcomer but an Ultimate player a good view of the inner workings of the Ultimate Community and leagues.

            One of his posts highlights one of the problems of the national championship system which is the roster turnover.  Roster turnover refers to the fact that rosters are not very constant in the Ultimate Frisbee world, whether it is club or pickup games.  This presents a problem for strategically planning because the players on the other team can be random.  His solution to this problem is to make the team’s strategy very modular and experimental; the team should be prepared to use many different defenses.  The importance of a coach that recognizes the weaknesses of the opposing team is vital to the defenses that are thrown at the other team.

            Martin also describes the necessities of a coach in Ultimate Frisbee.  Not only has he been a coach on and off, but attended a USA Ultimate Coach Certification session; this only provided very basic information according to him.  What is interesting about his perspective is that he evaluates himself as a coach and in this manner you can see inside the mind of an actively working Ultimate leader.

            Coach Martin does not enjoy the new leadership in the Ultimate competition organization, named Ultimate Players Association.  It has been re-branded to USA Ultimate and he feels that the new CEO does not value the concerns and desires of the new players and coaches in the Ultimate Community.

            I think this blog relates to my blog in several different facets including the topics of USA Ultimate and coaching in general.  Although the blog is not strictly academic, it provides a breadth of information from one coach’s perspective which can be very valuable.  Each of his topics or posts are pretty detailed and gives pertinent information if you are connected to the Ultimate Community as a casual follower on the internet.  I also think playing Ultimate Frisbee and being an active part of the Ultimate Community in real life is required because some of the things he references are common topics among Ultimate Players.   Therefore, I think his audience is the Ultimate Community.  I think this blog could feed my work because of some of the new topics that Martin brings up from a coach’s (or outside) perspective since I am only a player.  I think the different perspective will not only bring different viewpoints on some of the topics I discuss in my blog but bring new ideas and issues to the table that I had not thought of before.  Following and interacting with Martin’s blog will be an interesting endeavor

My Ultimate Friend

My search for someone online that enjoys finding Ultimate Frisbee stuff was actually harder than expected.  Not only did I want to find  a person on the topic of Ultimate Frisbee, but one that was specifically interested in the strategies used in the game.  Using diigo turned out to be fruitless, so I tried me luck on the delicious website.  The searches on Ultimate lead me to one of their public users and they had a decent amount of interest in Ultimate.  This person actually had some websites on Ultimate Frisbee unknown to me.  Here are some of the interesting and useful ones: 

Ultimate Rob’s blog seems to be a well established website with articles on almost any aspect about the sport of Ultimate Frisbee or even disc sports in general.  I think Ultimate Rob is a great resource for improving yourself as a individual player with throwing skill, physical fitness, and keeping on top of the rules.  Ultimate Rob also has a section on psychology, which is unique to most websites about Ultimate Frisbee.  This part of the blog explains how the mental aspect of the game can effect the the events that occur on field greatly.  For example, he has a section on the "pull' which is the first throw of the game similar to a kickoff in football.  In Ultimate, Ultimate Rob explains that a well placed pull allows the defense to get set and show their "intent"; basically this allows the defense to set up and get into the right mindset to shut down the offense.  A pull is a very minute part of Ultimate Frisbee in most people's eyes, but Ultimate Rob brings attention to this play because it almost serves as the anchor for the rest of the point.

One of my favorite Ultimate Frisbee blogs was also publicly linked by this dude: The Huddle.  This blog website is always an easy read for any Ultimate player wanting to learn about strategy or individual tips and tricks.  The Huddle is separated into Issues and Features.  The issues usually are tidbits about skills needed in Ultimate, which is really helpful for a player wanting to improve.  The features are more of whats happening in the Ultimate world and the growth of the game from an insiders point of view, this will be very useful to me in the future for my blog topics.

One of the websites I did not know about is this wikipedia type page for Ultimate: Ultipedia. This website has a huge scope of the history and links to a lot of teams around the world.  Although it is pretty weak on the strategy, it gives a thorough background on how the game was created and progressed over the years.  It also provides information on all notable teams and tournaments available for the Ultimate Community.  This website seems like a hub for all Ultimate related information and directs people to whatever they are interested in.  I will be exploring this website further in the next couple weeks.

GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS

                Men are better than woman at sports. Men do not play on women’s teams.  And a man playing against a woman is not fair.  These are the unspoken rules of sports in a nutshell.  I would say that I understand why these social norms exist because they coincide with other ways that women are treated differently in daily life; for example if a woman is trying to carry something heavy, it is a MAN’s job to carry it for her because we are strong and tough and never break sweat.  In sports, I want to believe the gender divide has only to do with fairness because as everyone knows men are biologically slightly taller, stronger, faster blah blah blah.  I guess Ultimate doesn’t care about these norms for one reason or the other, probably because of the fact that Ultimate Frisbee grew up with the hippies and therefore their mentalities were transferred upon frisbee.  

During pickup games and even specific leagues, men and women are allowed to play on the same team and to play each other.  Not only can they be on the same team but they can match up man to man however they would like, there are no rules on who has to play who (besides the fact that there should be equal number of each gender which is determined by one of the lines each point).  I think this is a HUGE advantage for the sport.  You can play with girls?? That’s how we pull in men at the our USC involvement fair, and it seems to work like a charm.  The only trick is to make sure that the girls are there!  The interesting part about playing with girls in Ultimate Frisbee is that there is not a stigma against it, its not just allowed by the rules.  As long as everyone on the team understands some of the basic principles of the game, it seems to work out quite well as a competitive match.  One of the results of this is the extra sense of community that this brings because it is less of a “men’s club” and more of a extended family feel, and I think it is one of the parts of frisbee that make it so comfortable to just join, learn as a new player, and just to be interested in general.

One thing that does change when playing with girls is that the guys seem to try a bit harder to show off hahaha, this is inevitable and slightly amusing to me (I feel like I can't stop myself from doing it neither).  There is just something that happens when you start playing with women, where you have the need to prove yourself.  Some Ultimate Frisbee girls have actually told me that watching men play did change their perception of whether they liked or disliked that person, so its not just in the men's heads.  But either way, I think this is harmless form of showing off for the girls and just adds to the excitement of playing on mixed gender teams, it really is that fun!

Success! Our turnout for the first practice for the Men's Ultimate Team was great.  At least 30-40 new guys (mostly freshman) decided that it was time to bail on all those fun parties on Thursday nights and pickup a sweet new game.  I feel like sometimes that parties are the only thing that people enjoy around here, but the strong new class of freshman give me a little hope every year.  You are probably thinking that Ultimate Frisbee is still just a game, why should people change their plans for a game?  I feel like this mentality permeates USC more than other universities in the US.  Despite having 17,000 students, only around 50 play on the team.  For me, there's something skewed about those numbers.  Ultimate is THE college sport.  It has all the elements.

1. free form lacking any strict rules if  need be. 

2. supports creative ideas for strategy, jerseys, cheers for your team and other teams

3. You can throw a frisbee anywhere.....as long as you dont hit anyone

4. it has cool traditions like dressing up to play croquet, one of my classier moments in my college career

5. Frisbee's look awesome in flight!

So why isn't the Men's Ultimate Frisbee team teeming with new talent? I don't man, I don't know.  My only guess the blanket of greek life here at USC and it's college football traditions.  I could also have something to do with having almost no green on our  campus, 2 turfs fields is where we practice and there is  a quad where we have to throw over the foot traffic.  However, our Ultimate team is very resourceful and we make use of what we have, and more importantly the city that we live in.  There are many types of frisbee sports that we use to bring interest to Ultimate Frisbee.

One of my favorite types of Ultimate is beach ultimate.  Contrary to your belief  beach ultimate frisbee requires a whole new set of skills.  A great Ultimate frisbee player on grass does not translate into a great on sand.  These beach days or tournaments usually have a casual but competitive tone ending with some kind of hang out session or party later in the day.

A favorite among many Ultimate Frisbee players is Disc Golf.  It is exactly what it sounds like except the targets are statues or any land marker instead of a hole like in golf.  Disc Golf gives a chance to release all your power into your driving throw to see how far you can accurately target something.  Although Disc Golf does not get much publicity, there are courses specifically made for Disc Golf all over Los Angeles and it is a good place to practice throws and technique.

At USC we have a game called "mini" which is a variety of Ultimate Frisbee which is a 3v3 matchup and gameplay never stops.  The only difference between mini and regular Ultimate is the fact that when the offense scores in the endzone, the field switches and the offense can go to the other end for another score immediately.  We use this when we have limited field space and to keep our bodies fit for the spring season. 

Between all these games and the quirky traditions, Ultimate Frisbee brings in a wide variety of people.  Our team is happy to teach and play with people of all skill levels.  The USC program is growing quicly, and we are working hard to make this happen.  Hopefully with some of these interesting tidbits of Ultimate, we can at one point be one of the largest club sports on campus! 

  

LAYOUTS

With a deep breath and a wince, I grabbed my wobbly right arm and prepared for the all too familiar pain.  My shoulder sluggishly scraped into its socket.  Grinding away at my strength of will and literally my bones.  And FINALLY the shoulder socket opens its gates and agrees to let my arm to plop in.  It’s all over now. I carefully test out the arm to see how bad it is, but the ligaments tense up into a knot like a shoelace tie that you pull on too hard in first grade. My body has betrayed me.  All for a flying plastic toy.  So you’re probably wondering was it worth taking the chance to injure myself, maybe it was a national tournament or something of significance? Nope, it was just a normal practice this fall.  Also, this has already been the fifth or sixth time I've dislocated both my shoulders.  Unfortunately, its back to months of physical therapy for me.

To be honest it was all my fault, I was too eager to get back on the Ultimate playing field even though I promised myself I would not be on the field again in 2012.  I am not the only player I know of playing much too early for their injury to heal and I guess you could look at it to a testament to how much enjoyment people get from playing and being in the Ultimate community.  Both my arm injuries happen on one kind of play in Ultimate frisbee called the layout or “going ho” because your body is creating a horizontal line.  It looks like this:

Or if you want to see some live action:

Laying out for a defensive play or for a huge offensive gain is one of Ultimate’s most glorious plays.  No matter if you’re part of the finals club game or just a random throwing session with your buds, a layout shows how far you are willing to go for the game, teammates, and to impress the ladies.  I think the athletic speed and agility required to execute a successful layout grab or D (defensive play) distinguishes Ultimate Frisbee from a group of friends tossing a frisbee on the beach.  

Although it seems like it, laying out isn't just heaving your body as far as it's willing to take you.  Not only do they require a bit of bravery especially in crowded parts of the field, but the execution of the layout also requires quite a bit of skill and technique to keep the play relatively safe.  One key point of completing this play in a safe fashion is to lead with your chest, which should be taking the force of the landing.  Another important part is that the jump should be in the horizontal direction which will allow you to extend your body and hopefully give yourself enough to catch the disc.  This blog does an extremely thorough job explaining each step of the layout or this one to promote laying out safely.

Even with Ultimate still not in the mainstream, layouts get at least a little airplay on sports news channels and I think that demonstrates some of the legitimacy in Ultimate Frisbee  Maybe the key to taking the sport to the next level is to layout more?  Go try laying out and spread the word! I gave my cleats to an off-campus friend so I can't get tempted into playing, so I'll be researching techniques and strategy in the meantime.

Hey everyone!

Let’s dive into some of the trademark skills of Ultimate Frisbee which define a team and each individual’s style of play.  This will also give a glimpse of some strategy involved with this sport.

Throwing is an integral part of the game since you cannot run (besides pivoting on one foot) in possession of the frisbee.  As a thrower in possession of the disc, you ARE the focus of the defenders and your teammates; you have control of where the frisbee goes and movement of your players.  The throwers, often called handlers, usually have calm and cool personas because they are experienced players and need to make the best decision on where and who to throw too.  Each possession counts and should be valued.  

I am sure most of you are familiar with a pretty basic frisbee throw called a backhand which looks like this:

But unlike most sports, there are at least six very distinct types of throws that I can list just off the top of my head, and each one has some important variations.  As a player, I think of throwing as the artistic and aesthetic side of ultimate frisbee.   With throwing skills, an individual can unravel a whole defense by finding weak spots with accurate and decisive throws.  On the flip side, inexperienced throwers can become very nervous and clog up the offenses flow.  Seeing a pull (like a kickoff) hang in the air and hammer throws that twist and turn are some of my personal favorite feats of ultimate frisbee throwing skill, and never fail to amuse an audience your parents and friends.  Playing Ultimate can be a very creative endeavor, and I like it that way.  Each individual has their own throwing style which adds wrinkles to your team identity…..and some trick throws to show off for the ladies.

Since throwing is such a controlling part of the sport, one of the most important defensive positions is the mark which is the person guarding the thrower.  The mark's job is to prevent the handler from having a free throw to any part of the field.  Unfortunately playing the mark won't provide many highlight reel plays to impress your lady friends, but it's THE position that anchors the rest of the defense.  In a basic defensive set, the mark's job is to block the thrower from putting the disc to the right half of the field:

Behind #17 would be considered "right" half for my example

While the mark (#17) does his job, the down field defense will be on the left side of the field:

In a perfect world, the whole field is covered and you are unstoppable.  But like everything in frisbee, it is situational and there is always counter strategies to every strategy.  A handler with skill and quick pivoting can keep the mark off balance to throw to the right half of the field effectively breaking the defense; this is why a throw to the right half is called a "break".  Also, one of the offensive players can simply out run their defender in the spot they are trying to guard.  Frisbee is not a sport to be taken too lightly. 

I’m pretty sure a lot of you didn't think that any frisbee games could have much strategy, or even rudimentary rules.  Just a few years ago, I was no different than you.  Before joining a team, playing frisbee for me consisted of chucking the frisbee as far as possible, hoping someone would come down with it.  Ultimate frisbee however is much more elaborate than that and I hope I gave you a glimpse of the intricacies of the strategy used.  I feel like these schemes build a team’s identity, it definitely dictates how aggressive or passive or cool a team plays. 

Frisbee players really love pie.

This is partially a lie. Not all frisbee players actually love pie although I doubt that your team would complain if you brought some post-game celebration pie. Plus, you’d probably get a quirky pie related nickname.

So I’ll divulge my findings on this pie situation. I was exploring the roots of the actual frisbee disc in an article called “The Origins and Development of Ultimate Frisbee”. The seeds of the sport were sprung at Yale University circa 1887, where students would buy “Frisbie Pies” from a bakery and throw them like modern day Frisbees after they feasted on the delicious cobbler held inside (Griggs 2009).

There’s a debate on whether it was either pie tins or cookie tins. One Yale student’s account is pretty convincing in this important distinction: “I clearly remember the cookies; and I also recall that the cover of the tin box was used by the older kids just the same way Frisbees are now used” (Griggs 2009). But after talking to the widow of the Frisbie bakery, the official story the frisbee legends go with is the pie trays.

All that the sport of frisbee needed to grow was a frisbee made to fly, not made to hold pie. So in 1948, an inventor created a plastic version of the pie tin and improved it with several prototypes. With a solid frisbee design in place, the game grew to a “Frisbee Football” type of game which was the precursor to the best version of all the frisbee games, ultimate frisbee (Griggs 2009).

I know some of you are wondering about how ultimate frisbee works, so I’ll be explaining some basic rules and situations today hopefully without boring you with too many details:

Ultimate Frisbee is played 7 on 7 and is considered a non-contact sport; but incidental contact always happens. There is a stall count which the person guarding the thrower will count out loud to 10 seconds (this is kind of like a shot clock); before 10 seconds the thrower must throw it to a teammate to reset the clock or it is a turnover to the opponent. You cannot run with the disc, but you can pivot on one foot like in basketball. You must throw the disc to advance it to your teammates. If your teammate drops the disc or a defender deflects it to the ground, possession is turned to the opposing team. While both teams are on the field, play continues until one team scores or until a foul is called. Catching the frisbee in the opponents endzone will earn your team 1 point. Games are played to a score selected before the game starts, usually pre-determined in the tournament rules.

So, I’m going to show you a video and I here’s a list of ultimate frisbee keywords you might encounter.
Handler=a throwing position (much like quarterback in football)
Cutter=a receiving position (much like receivers in football)
Mark=defender guarding the thrower
Someone screaming “inside” or “around”=people on the sideline giving the mark information on where to move
A break=scoring on a point in which you started as the defender
Pull=the first throw of the match (like a kickoff in football)
Huck=a long pass
Dump=a short pass usually to another handler for no gain to reset the stall count


The easiest way to see how Ultimate Frisbee looks like is by video so just check this club match.




Griggs, Gerald. "The Origins and Development of Ultimate Frisbee." The Sport Journal12.3 (2009): Academic OneFile. Web. 2 Sept. 2012.

Hello to everyone that loves or is interested in Ultimate Frisbee,

Dunking in basketball, bending a shot in soccer, and striking a golf ball for a hole in one are impressive feats of physical ability in sports. But, have you ever had a moment when you were impressed by a frisbee?

Watching my coach sling a frisbee like a shot putter in the Olympics and having the frisbee soar swiftly across an entire football field, amazed my middle school self in an instant. Unfortunately, my turn did not look nearly as glorious as my plastic disc fluttered, careened into a tree, ricocheted off a fence, and barely missed Mr. Adam’s, my intimidating math teacher, car in the faculty parking lot. Although my physical skills were not honed in yet, my interest did not dwindle and I was not the only one to try this new game among my group of friends. Don’t get me wrong, most of the school never heard of frisbee as a sport and there was only one frisbee provided during break, which we elected to hide in a crevice in between our science and math rooms buildings after recess. Not many people played frisbee and it seemed to create its own niche even in middle school. Little did I know I would be launching accurate hucks with my own ultimate frisbee team just a few years later in college.

Currently, I am exploring the world of ultimate frisbee and leading a college team on the west coast. I like exploring new offensive, defensive, and leadership strategies used in ultimate to get my team as ready as possible. I want to divulge a swig of ultimate frisbee’s history so I can focus on the counter culture of the sport, the things that I want improved, how to get involved, and the direction of ultimate frisbee in Los Angeles and abroad.

As many of you frisbee goers understand, ultimate (ultimate frisbee) is not only a sport but a way of living. Most people, myself included, are involved in several facets of the sport: frolf (disc golf), casual summer leagues, club teams, and many more. This way of thinking and living usually is usually light hearted and a bit comical. For example, the Los Angeles Organization of Ultimate Teams (LAOUT) hosts a quirky hat tournament where each player is encouraged to compete in ridiculous, home-made, or otherwise interesting hats to use during a game and the tournament will have special rules governing these hats. The funny thing is that these matches will still test your physical limits and you will usually be finding yourself panting on the sideline. The “ultimate” community is a unique haven of casual but competitive environment, where sportsmanship takes on a new meaning with the self-refereeing aspect of ultimate frisbee. This also has to do with the fact that a lot of ultimate frisbee players like to hang out, drink, and generally have a good time with each other outside of playing ultimate frisbee.

I am blogging about this up and coming sport because I want it to have some exposure outside of the ultimate community since it receives limited media exposure, and frankly when it does get media play, it is played off as childish and trivial. I want this to be a conversation among frisbee players and non frisbee players, where knowledge and news about this unconventional sport can flourish and spark interest.

  I hope I have already convinced you in becoming involved in the awesome ultimate frisbee community.