I found a great explanation that I will use here to frame the rest of this post.

Passion – when people admire you for it

Obsession – when you do it too much and people think you’re weird

However, how does one truly impact an industry, a culture, a generation without people thinking they’re weird? Especially when what you choose to be passionate about/be obsessed with is different from what everyone else is doing.

What happens when you’re literally the only person doing what you’re doing? Do you keep going because you have such a strong belief in what you’re doing? Do you keep going because you know you have the ability and the opportunity to impact a lot of people in a very positive way? Do you keep going because you love what you’re doing and the more you do it, the more you see the potential?

How long do you keep at something before you decide it isn’t worth it? How often and how much do you listen to the opinions of others? Do you reach out for help from your friends and family? Do they believe in your journey?

I truly believe that the difference between passion and obsession is a fine line. I believe that it is defined differently by different people.

Why am I asking this question? I admit that people think I’m weird for what I do. I’ve been made fun of but through it all, I do what I do because I deeply love throwing a frisbee. It’s like meditation for me. I don’t just throw because it’s fun. I throw because I’m good at it, and because I want to be better at it.

Do people think I’m weird because I’m passionate about frisbee and they don’t understand frisbee? Or do they think I’m weird because I am obsessed with frisbee? I would think the first because I don’t consider what I’m doing as an obsession. I think obsession means that it impacts you and those around you in a negative and harmful way.

Sure my involvement in frisbee has cost me thousands of dollars. Sure it’s taken up a lot of my time that I could have spent developing friendships and relationships. I’ve no doubt lost relationships because of the time I spend doing what I love. Ideally I want to involve as many people in my life as possible in disc sports. For me, it’s a lifetime of living an active lifestyle. There’s a reason we joke “when a ball dreams, it dreams it’s a frisbee”. There truly is no other toy than a frisbee.

So I ask you, what do you think the difference between passion and obsession is?

We’ve all heard the story of how Michael Jordan got cut from his high school basketball team. So how did he end up in the NBA and become one of the greatest basketball players of all time?

This famous quote from MJ explains it quite nicely:

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

We must not be afraid to fail. We must understand that the only way to become better is to put in a lot of time practicing.

How much time? Well, according to Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, roughly 10,000 hours. Just how much is that? Well, if you spend 3 hours everyday for the next 10 years, that’s roughly 10,000 hours. Sounds like a lot doesn’t it? Well, in order to be the best, you have to earn that title.

Think of the greats in history – Wayne Gretzky (ice hockey), Michael Jordan (basketball), Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Mozart (composer) – the list goes on and on.

What do you think they all have in common? Surely time spent practicing.

There is also another “secret”. When you spend time pursuing what you love – when you spend time practicing your craft – you will meet people who will help you along the way and give you opportunities that you never could dream existed.

Think of this quote:

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

It’s so true because there is no such thing as “luck” really. Most of the people we consider “lucky” actually have worked very hard and spent many hours in order to have the opportunities to even be in the position for something “lucky” to happen to them.

As you start to think about this upcoming year of ultimate, start to plan how much time you are willing to put into your game. How much time every week are you going to spend throwing, catching, working out, running drills, learning plays and playing games? Because the more time you spend, the better you will become and the “luckier” you will become.

Oh, and the more fun you’ll have. Throwing a 70 yard full field forehand huck for a point is much more fun than not being able to throw. The better you are, the more you’ll appreciate the hard work you’ve done to get there.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also, I’m running my first ever contest. To get all the details on how to enter, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD2gI-gqO4U&t=23m33s

However, it’s not up to your team to tell you where the disc is. Sure, an “Up” call will help, but you should also be aware and know where the disc is, where the offensive player is and be ready to make a bid on the disc.

Since the receiver already has the advantage, you must work on your field awareness in order to increase your chances of getting a D on the disc.

Here are a few tips to improve field awareness:

1. Don’t watch only the disc or only the receiver. Take snapshots of the field every few seconds so you can constantly adjust to what is happening on the field. Depending where you are on the field, you should also be able to see both the receiver and the thrower in your peripheral so work on that skill of being able to tell what is going on without losing sight of one of the other too often.

2. Instead of waiting for the receiver to make a move, try to anticipate what they are doing and react first. This can be accomplished by trying to be in between them and the disc – this will help increase your chances of getting a D.

3. Work on your defensive positioning. As much as you can see what’s going on by looking around and trying to quickly take snapshots, it also helps to be in the right position. What is the right position? Well, that depends on many factors but a good start is to be in between the receiver and the disc so it’s more difficult for them to get the disc.

Dan “Stork” Roddick is a long-time disc sport champion and organizer in both the U.S. and internationally.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stork was an early star of the game of Ultimate with college champion Rutgers University (with a record of 45-1), where he was Irv Kalb’s favorite scoring target, and he was a winner of national and world championships in individual events including disc golf, freestyle and accuracy.

Stork was one of the driving forces behind promoting and supporting Ultimate and all other disc sports through his role as head of Wham-O’s sports marketing department from 1975-92, ensuring sufficient financial support for the UPA (now USA Ultimate) in its first decade of existence.

Besides providing direction and support to TK (Tom Kennedy) and others for their efforts in the U.S., he also was instrumental in the international arena, serving as World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF) President from 1986-1992 and as secretary from 1998-2003.

An Eagle Scout in his youth, Stork has written numerous articles and books on disc sports. He is credited with framing Ultimate’s defining “Spirit of the Game” philosophy which has guided play for the past 40 years of competition.

No matter who the captains are, no matter who runs your team, you have to respect them.

So much of a game can be determined by which team adjusts first or adjusts at the right time. A good captain/leader will make that judgement call at the right time. The team who wins is the team who listens to that captain and commits to that change in the play in order to be successful.

How does a good team accomplish this? It’s done by the players on the team knowing their roles, respecting their captain and as the title implies, shutting their mouth.

I won’t disagree that a good team will also welcome input from the players but in a game, when even the slightest adjustment can determine a win or a loss, the team has to trust the captain.

When the players on a team focus on their role and their position and they let the captain worry about making the adjustment – that’s when a team will see success.

The time for players to speak up is after the game, when there can be open discussion and when you can figure out what was done right and what was done wrong.

During the game is not the time to figure that out. Why? Because it takes away from the focus of the team and that indecision and discussion can ultimately lead to a team losing.

The captains can have that discussion but they have to trust each other to come to an agreement quickly and with the knowledge of what will be best for the team based on the individual skills of the players, based on what the team has worked on at practice, and based on what other adjustments have already been made in that game.

The best team is the one who works together and I believe that is done when the captains lead and the players play.

What is your approach to making adjustments in a game?

Is it because you love throwing?

Is it because you love going to tournaments and getting away from home once in a while?

Whatever the reason, we all love this game. Those of us who play it, get it. Those who don’t, make fun of us, wonder what ultimate is all about but they’ll never truly understand our passion for the game until they’ve driven 18 hours only to play 3 games, lose 2 of them, and get knocked out of the tournament (college regionals double elimination format).

I play the game because I love throwing and I love competing. Being on a team of individuals who are all committed to being the best they can, who are all driven to succeed and who live and breathe ultimate is a wonderful thing.

Sometimes, somewhere between the desire to win a tournament and the frustration that comes when only 5 people show up for practice, some of us lose focus and lose sight of why we play and love this game.

When that time comes, and it will, you either retire, or you sit back, look at the bigger picture, and you reclaim the passion you once had.

I’ve had that happen. Many of us have when ultimate is our life for so many years.

Keep yourself in check. Think about why you play ultimate.

And then lace up your cleats, go layout, and keep throwing the disc.

Why do you play ultimate?

These activities stemmed from the introduction of the Space Saucer in the Mid-fifties, and the Wham-O Pluto Platter disc hitting the market place in 1957.  The packaging of the space saucer urged buyers to create games.  The underside side of the Pluto Platter disc had the phrase “Play Catch – Invent games” engraved in relatively large bold lettering.  Each subsequent Frisbee model that Wham-O created and sold also had that phrase engraved onto each disc.  The people who bought those discs indeed obeyed; they played catch and invented games, all kinds of games and activities.  But they didn’t need to be told by the packaging and discs to do so.  Even people playing with tin lids and pie pans before the plastic discs were available created flying disc games.  The plastic era just made this phenomenon happen more often and in larger numbers.

The best and most significant example of this phenomenon came from the Healy brothers who hailed from Minneapolis MN, and summered in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

They bought a Pluto Platter Frisbee in 1958 and promptly invented a game they called “Guts” Frisbee, with which, along with basic accuracy and distance throwing contests, they challenged each other and friends of theirs to see who just who was the best Frisbee thrower.  This Frisbee activity developed into an annual contest which they eventually dubbed the “International Frisbee Tournament”.   Although it became well structured and organized, it was still quite regional, and unknown to Frisbee players beyond those whose were invited to this annual event.

This began to change somewhat in 1964.  The Healy brothers were having so much fun with this annual IFT event that they began submitting news releases to local newspapers in an effort to attract attention to the event.  They also created a tongue-in-cheek “International Frisbee Association” to further hype the fun of their activities.

Somewhere along the line Wham-O became apprised of this annual Frisbee activity of the Healy Brothers, and thought that this might be a good way to promote their product and increase its sales.  This led to Wham-O adopting the Healy Brother’s fictional “International Frisbee Association”, and offering promotional support to the growing IFT event.

In 1968, a very significant occurrence took place that basically turned out to be the foundation for the beginning of the unified cohesive Frisbee culture of today.  Wham-O made the decision to promote Frisbee using the “International Frisbee Association” and started publishing the “IFA Newsletter”, which was a periodic newsletter about Frisbee activities that were happening all around the country.   This newsletter was sent out to each member of the International Frisbee association, or “IFA” as it came to be known.  Wham-O offered membership and subscription information on each Frisbee package being sold.  Thousands of Frisbee buyers joined Wham-O’s new version of the IFA, and started reading about the Annual IFT that that the Healy Brothers held each year in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.   The IFT started to grow rapidly in size, and by the mid-seventies became the absolute mecca for Frisbee players all over the country.

The newcomers to the IFT brought with them the games and activities they had created and had been playing.   They learned about Guts and other activities they hadn’t thought of.  The IFT regulars learned new things from the newcomers.   The event became a great mixing pot of Frisbee ideas and activities, and all this got chronicled in the IFA newsletter for even more disc enthusiasts to see and learn.

The organized cohesive Frisbee culture was born.  Wham-O jumped on this development and hyped the heck out of it, successfully promoting sales beyond what anyone had dreamed.  The IFA newsletter became the Frisbee enthusiasts’ bible and the IFT became a huge annual convention for Frisbee freaks everywhere.

Another important thing happened in 1968 that paralleled this development, but was totally independent of the IFA/IFT Frisbee scene.   A group of Frisbee enthusiasts from Columbia High school in New Jersey invented the game of Ultimate.  The popularity of their game spread fast to nearby high schools in New Jersey, and they soon had a high School League going.  Graduates of these schools brought the game of Ultimate to their colleges, and by 1972, there was a significant amount of colleges competing actively in Ultimate.  In 1973, a core group of Ultimate organizers made the trek to the IFT, and the rest of the Frisbee community got introduced first hand to Ultimate.

In 1970, a third important development in Frisbee began, also totally outside and separate from the current Frisbee culture of the times.  A small group of guys invented DDC and also discovered that they could play the game of golf with their Frisbees, they formed a Frisbee club and met once a week to compete both in DDC and Frisbee Golf.

They continued this activity for three full years before they found out about the IFA and its newsletter.  They had thought that they were relatively unique in their avid Frisbee activity.  They had had three annual disc golf and DDC championship tournaments, and were curious about how many other Frisbee players were playing disc golf.  They decided to host a big national scope tournament in 1974 to find out.  They wrote Wham-O about the event and put up a brand new 1974 automobile as first prize to ensure that the event would attract a lot of attention.  A notice went into the IFA newsletter, and by the end of 1974, the isolated Guts, Ultimate, and Disc Golf play were merged into one big Frisbee culture.

These three disciplines were not looked upon as separate disc sports.  Disc players considered themselves as “Frisbee Players” with a bunch of different activities to play. Every Frisbee player did them all.  The sport was called “Frisbee” until Wham-O Started to vigorously enforce its Trademarked “Frisbee” name.   Up until that time, everything had been “Frisbee this or Frisbee that” as in “Guts” Frisbee”, “Frisbee Golf”, “Ultimate Frisbee“, “Court Frisbee”  “Frisbee Horseshoes”, etc.   Because of trademark enforcement, these names slowly over time became “Guts”, “Disc Golf”, “Ultimate”, “DDC” etc.

Freestyle competition developed within the one big unified Frisbee culture, and as such, it became another of the activities of the sport know as “Frisbee”.  In 1975, there was the Ann Arbor Indoor tournament, the Octad, the AFDO, the IFT, the Canadian Open, the WFC, and the Jersey Jam, in that order, with a few smaller guts tournaments and a few big Ultimate tournaments sprinkled in-between.  That was it.  It was still the sport of “Frisbee”, but the separate activities were getting more sophisticated and beginning to get a culture of their own, especially Ultimate.

When Ed Hedrick left Wham-O to form his DGA business in 1976, disc golf took a large step toward becoming a sport unto its own.  Many new people came into disc play though disc golf, and had never heard of the old IFA Frisbee community.  They were from outside what had been the “Frisbee Culture”.   They didn’t think of themselves and “Frisbee” players.  They were “Disc Golfers”.  This was the start of the evolution of separate disc sports.  By 1976, Ultimate was rapidly becoming a sport unto itself.  All the new high school and college kids being introduced to ultimate also didn’t really know much about the IFA based Frisbee community.  They were Ultimate players. With the advent of the FPA later on, Freestyle started to become a separate sport.   DDC grew within the Frisbee culture, but it too eventually began to evolve into a sport of its own.

So from 1968 through 1973, aside from Ultimate players and that small isolated 1970-1973 disc golf /DDC scene, virtually every new Frisbee enthusiast had been pulled into Frisbee through the IFA-IFT Guts Frisbee Culture.

But from 1974 on, the IFA/guts scene was no longer the main source for new people getting into Frisbee activities.  The guts game started to wane, and the other disc activities started to wax.

The WFC and the NAS series through 1982 managed to keep the “Frisbee” culture together as one entity despite the evolution of Disc Golf, Freestyle and Ultimate into sports of there own.

With the mid 80’s demise of the IFA newsletter and the “Frisbee Disc World” magazine it had evolved into, the unified Frisbee Culture took another hit.  But the annual US Open that replaced the WFC, and the formation of the WFDF, helped to forestall the complete metamorphosis of the Frisbee scene into separate sports.

When the annual US Open series came to an end, even the WFDF and the Seniors Overall annual event could not hold back the forces pulling the Frisbee culture into separate disc sports.  This evolution is unstoppable and will continue for as long as disc sports are in existence.   Soccer and golf are both “ball” sports, but they really don’t have much in common even though their ancestral origins came from the same root source way back in time.  Can you imagine Pele trying to beat Phil Mickelson in a golf match?  And can you imagine Phil Mickelson keeping up with Pele on the soccer field?  The same goes for disc golf, ultimate and freestyle.  They are all “disc” sports, but do not have a lot in common anymore.  Ken Climo (one of the great disc golfers) can do some decent freestyle moves, but would never make it into the finals of a big freestyle tournament, nor would he get invited to be on an all-star ultimate team.  But put those ultimate and freestyle players into in a disc golf match against Ken, and they wouldn’t touch him with that proverbial ten foot pole!

There are still some high level overall players that can play well in any disc sport, but that number is getting smaller and smaller.  The fact of the matter is that we now have very distinct disc sports run by their own distinct governing bodies.  There truly is no longer a sport of “Frisbee” as there use to be in the 70’s.  Sometime in the future Ultimate and Disc Golf will inevitably become as separate as soccer and ball golf.  Some people already treat them that way.  But there are still some people who are unaware of any disc sports and they still mistakenly lump anyone with a disc into a generic ”Frisbee Player” category.  But the separation will continue to evolve.  I think that “Frisbee” per se will never be in the Olympics.  But perhaps Disc Golf and Freestyle may be Olympic sports someday, and most likely Ultimate will be also; but all as separate sports.

Rob McLeod, a resident of Calgary, will travel to Beijing, China from November 30 to December 4, 2011 to set a Guinness World Record in the sport of frisbee on China Central Televison (CCTV).

“Ever since I was a kid I bought the Guinness Book of World Records through the school book order; I dreamed of one day having my name on those pages,” said McLeod.

The Woodstock, New Brunswick native will achieve that dream thanks to CCTV, and China’s longest-running entertainment show Zheng Da Zong Yi, which broadcasts Guinness World Record attempts to a national audience of 50 million. McLeod has a guaranteed entry into the Guinness Book, as he will complete an event that doesn’t currently have a record associated with it: most targets hit with a frisbee in one minute. The targets will be 50 cans set up along a specially constructed 26-metre long table.

“I want to expose more of our Chinese audience to the art of playing frisbee,” said Liu Ming, director of Zheng Da Zong Yi. “With Rob attending our show this year, we are very glad and honoured.”

McLeod, 29, is the current Skyhoundz Xtreme Distance World Champion and World Record Holder in the Men’s Classic division with his canine partner, Davy Whippet.

“I love throwing a Frisbee, it’s my form of meditation, and to see all the opportunities that have come from doing what I love, is truly an incredible feeling.”

For interview requests, please contact:

Rob McLeod
(403) 618-2946
rjmcleod@gmail.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

According to Wikipedia, Stancil Johnson is a psychiatrist and frisbee enthusiast, a member of the International Frisbee Hall of Fame and the Disc Golf Hall of Fame, and in 1975, he wrote Frisbee: Practitioner’s Manual and Definitive Treatise.

I own 2 copies of that book and it’s amazing how detailed the book is and how not much has changed in the 30+ years since he wrote it.

The first quote I just love because, unlike a ball, a frisbee doesn’t have a predictable flight path. Since it behaves like a wing and can glide and float depending on the wind and can fly with a curved flight path depending on which hyzer you have on the disc, a ball really would dream it was a frisbee.

When a ball dreams, it dreams it’s a frisbee.

The second quote is great because it’s less about the object itself and all about the connection between us and the frisbee. From all the time I’ve spent throwing, I can honestly say that there is no better feeling than watching a frisbee fly into the air. It’s truly incredible everything you can do with it. To know that I can throw the frisbee 2 football fields or I can throw it up into the air and have it come back to me and it all depends on a few variables, that will never cease to amaze me.

Frisbee joins Man’s greatest tool, his hand, with his greatest dream, to fly.

As an honourable mention, I provide you with this dialogue from an episode of Family Guy (The King is Dead, Season: 2 Episode: 7):

Peter: Mr. Weed said whoever comes up with the best idea for the big Christmas toy gets a huge bonus!

Chris: Why don’t you invent the Frisbee, dad? That’s an awesome toy!

Meg: The Frisbee’s already been invented.

Chris: Then how come I’ve never heard of it?

Indeed I see this wherever I go – there are still a lot of people who either haven’t heard of frisbee or haven’t seen or played it before.

Why is that?

I think it comes down to marketing. Sports like football, hockey and basketball are well known because there are millions of dollars being spent on advertising, there are pro leagues and thousands of pro athletes. Frisbee doesn’t have that to our benefit and instead we grow it still at a grassroots level. I had the pleasure of interviewing John Kirkland in Fort Collins at the 2011 WFDF World Overall Flying Disc Championships and he made the point that because of the way our society works, if you put money into something, it will work.

We’ve seen that with pro sports and so why, although frisbee is inherently different on the most basic level (comparing the frisbee to a football or baseball), is it still not as big as the other sports? We just need the right people driving the growth of the sport but I think that is happening in the US with USA Ultimate and Tom Crawford. I think the approach they’re taking is good by getting kids to start playing when they start in school so by the time they hit high school, they will want to play frisbee (ultimate, disc golf, ddc, etc). Ultimate is becoming huge at the college level as well which will help grow the sport in the next 5-10 years. For help on choosing the right school, guidetoonlineschools.com is a great resource.

From my own experience playing all sports, none of them compare to frisbee.

Not even close.

And it’s because of the frisbee that it’s different.

John “Friz Whiz” Kirkland

A tremendous all-around competitor, Kirkland was voted the disc athlete of the seventies. He won the men’s World Overall Championships in 1977 and finished second on three other occasions, as well as winning several individual world titles.

He is still very active in the scene and continues to inspire future world champions.

I was contacted by a television network in China and they’d like me to fly to China to attempt some frisbee world records on their show live in front of their audience.

However, the world records I suggested won’t work so I need some creative ideas on what I could pitch them for a frisbee world record attempt.

Send your ideas to rob@ultimaterob.com or leave them in a comment.

Thanks!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Whatever it’s called, it’s hard to explain. My mom played in college back in the seventies but still doesn’t know quite how far the sport has come since then. My dad has seen a game here and there, but never enough to recognize the athleticism and commitment that it requires. I’ve given up trying to tell my coworkers why I return from long weekends with a red face, scrapes on my hips, and a noticeable limp. A teammate says that he’s pretty sure his coworkers think he plays rec-league soccer on the weekend. I envy his position. It’s better not to have to explain.

I’ll try anyway.

Last weekend, I traveled with my team to northern Washington for the regional qualifying tournament for the 2011 Ultimate National Championships. We’d get no coverage from ESPN or articles in the local paper. The sport is at the stage where live coverage consists of live-blogging from a start-up magazine and an audio stream from a writer who knows a few names here and there, but generally calls the guys on the field by their numbers.

Our team is likely one of the 10 best teams in the country, and probably the world. We compete in the toughest region in the country, home to a perennial national champion (Revolver – San Francisco), a fiery team of athletes that gets all the “press” in our sport (Sockeye – Seattle), and a Canadian team (Furious George – Vancouver) with tradition and history and the accent to go with it, eh? But nobody gives a shit. Outside of those few teams that play at the highest level, ultimate is a passing hobby like fishing or darts.

When we lost a heartbreaker in the game-to-go to nationals, defeated at the hands of Furious, who we’d beaten just a few hours earlier, we collapsed into a circle of silence. A normally boisterous, playful, jovial group of men couldn’t find the words for… anything. We looked at each other and at the ground, and for ten minutes thought about another season coming up short of our goal, another story of “almost there,” another trip home filled with wonder at what more we could have done.

Those that know me know that I hate to lose, but this loss was magnified by the core of people who lost with me. I told the team that this loss hurt not because we wouldn’t be going to nationals, but that we wouldn’t be going to nationals with this team. Instead of thinking about how to prepare for the next tournament, we were left wondering whether the preparation we’d made for this one had been enough. The experience was over, wrapped up tightly with a final chapter that came a few pages too soon. And while the next volume will undoubtedly contain new characters, new challenges, and a whole different storyline, we weren’t ready for that to begin.

The hardest part of the loss came surprisingly over the next few days, when I didn’t have the team around me to share the heartache. It came when I tried in to explain the loss to my friends in text messages. It came when I tried in vain to tell Kristine about the way that we’d exceeded outside expectations and undercut our own. It came when I began to tell my parents about the tournament and decided not to even try it–that the story of our disappointment couldn’t be understood without the context that only our team knew about: a summer filled with two four-hour practices every weekend, workouts on top of workouts, hours of thinking and preparing for the game, competition and collaboration, bickering and arguing, triumph and failure.

Only our twenty-seven guys knew what we knew. As winners, we’d have ridden high with emotion. Everybody likes to offer a congratulatory pat-on-the-back or a high five to a winner. Human beings can relate to triumph, regardless of the medium of competition. They want to share the glory, ask what’s next, hear your tale of conquest.

Losing is lonely.

When you lose, your year is swept away with the other also-rans, the only record of your season marked by points on the board that you posted against the champ. And in ultimate you don’t have a fan base to pick you up off your feet and tell you to “get ‘em next time,” no press to tell you that you shocked the world. All you’ve got is the lonely, heartbroken stare of your teammates, looking off into the distance wondering what more they could’ve done to keep that season going just a little longer. Sure, we’ll “wait ’til next year,” but it’s going to be a long, lonely offseason.

From the blog: http://ianbrookfisher.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/losing-is-lonely/

To study more about how wording affects our views on things, you could check out this site.

If your team is one of those teams that takes themselves seriously, then you probably have goals.  And if those goals are appropriately high, then you probably have a team ahead of you that you need to beat (unless you play for Fury or Revolver). Maybe your goal is to make the second day of Regionals or make Nationals or make quarters or win everything. In all divisions, those teams on their respective bubble are wondering how to knock off that team just ahead of them.

Maybe you’re Rhino trying to defy the odds and finish top 2 at Regionals. Maybe you’re Scandal and you draw Fury in quarters at Nationals.

Now don’t get me wrong; maybe you’ve played them tight a few times. Maybe you’ve even beaten them at a summer tournament. But how likely are you to beat that team in an elimination game when it matters most and when both teams are focused and peaking?

In games like this, your “A” game can’t beat their “A” game.  Maybe your “A+” game can beat their “A-“ game, and if that’s the case and your teams are that closely matched, then maybe you take your chances and hope things break your way.  But if the disparity is more extreme, then your measures need to be more extreme if you’re gonna bridge that gap.

Going toe-to-toe with a team that has better throwers and better athletes is a sub-optimal strategy. You need to get the other team off their “A” game.  This should be obvious, but how many teams out there all seem to have the same offensive strategy of try isolate their receivers to make vertical cuts while their handlers dink it back and forth… defensively, it’s man-force flick. There are plenty of good strategies in there.  Unfortunately there are a bunch of teams out there who are better at it than you are.

Every year in Sarasota, if there’s significant wind, there seems to be a Cinderella story of some team that beats their seed on the back of their zone defense. Florida in 2000? Fury’s comeback in 2008 in the finals down 10-1.

Didn’t the Condors take down DoG in 2000 thanks in large part to bringing back the out-of-fashion straight up mark?

Don’t let them have their first option all day long.

Defensive adjustments are the most obvious way to try throw a kink in an opponent’s plans, but there are offensive looks that will force the other team to adjust. Maybe you run a split stack. Maybe you send your deep cuts from the dump position. Maybe your incuts down the lane clear laterally to a break cut.

One of my most rewarding ultimate experiences was as the 8 seed in the quarters of British College Nationals and upsetting the 1 seed by running a German offense and a 1-3-2-1 zone (Shout out to the Sussex Mohawks!).

Flip the script and make them think about how they play you.

Take risks.  You’re not gonna get enough wide open cuts against a superior opponent. Throw some hammers. Get your team used to throwing hucks that tail to the far corner. Hang discs to the endzone rather than take a marginal dump throw. Jump out early on a team, have fun doing it, and let them know you’re having fun doing it.

Which brings me to my last point.  There’s a certain level of gamesmanship that can knock an opponent off their game. I don’t necessarily recommend all of these tactics, but being loud, talking trash, marking hard, getting physical… even making a ton of travel calls… they’ve certainly been a part of more than a few upsets. Most teams out there have a narrow comfort zone.  Play outside of it.

Good luck to all the teams in the Series.

From Brian Lo’s ultimate frisbee blog: http://bestperspectives.blogspot.com

To learn more about sports psychology, www.onlineuniversities.net/ has info on classes.

Guelph were the 2010 Canadian University Champions and Carleton finished third.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This video looks at some nice play by the deep O players in zone O. Some of my favorite plays from the last couple of seasons.