The shape of a season
As the club season is nearing its end and the college season just gearing up, I've been thinking about how a team shapes its season. A full season seems like a long time with plenty of opportunities to learn and practice a wide range of skills and strategies, but really there is never enough time to perfect everything. The leadership has to pick its battles and decide what to focus on for that season. What will your team excell at?
The reason I've been thinking about this idea in the context of the club season is that one way I've been mentally preparing myself for Nationals is by analyzing my team's strengths. This process involves three things for me: identifying my team's strengths, anticipating how other teams will view and try to minimize those strengths, and visualizing the appropriate adjustments we have also practiced. Especially for offensive strengths of a team, this involves a "punch" and "counter-punch" arsenal of weapons. To develop those weapons is a process that takes all season. So right now, on the eve of Nationals, the ground work has been laid and all you can do is hope that the right decisions were made back in April, June and August about what to focus on for the season. It can be easy to list all the things you didn't spend enough time on, or all the plays you never really fine tuned, or all the permutations of your various zone Ds that still need work. But, there's never enough time to do, let alone perfect, everything. It's a matter of choices.
Which brings me to the incipient college season. For a college team, nothing is set in stone yet and there are a myriad of different approaches to take to the season. Is this the year to try a new offensive structure? What about a new zone O attack? Are there any different defensive looks that you want to try? Often the fall is when teams take stock of their returners and try to maximize the potential they see in the personnel on their roster. There is a tendency to want to change certain things in order to improve on where the team ended up at the end of last year's college season. Change can be good, but you need to have a plan to go along with it.
I think the first question to ask at the beginning of the season is, "what is the team's identity?" Is this a defensive team that prides itself on playing pressure person D to get blocks? Is this a team that tries to let its athleticism shine? Is this a team that focuses on playing possession offense? Sometimes a team will have more than one thing that it really identifies with. Those touchstones are what you can build your entire season around. They can guide what skills to focus the most on. They can guide how you chose players for your team during try-outs. They help develop mental toughness and focus in your players from the start of the season. They are what players rally around and feel pride in.
Working towards a team identity is just one step of creating an effective season plan. Having goal-setting meetings at the beginning of the season is another part of creating a plan. So is outlining what specific skills and strategies the team hopes to have by the end of the season. Identifying what you need to learn from the start of the season will make things a whole lot easier by the end when you have to have faith your team had a good plan to start with.
The reason I've been thinking about this idea in the context of the club season is that one way I've been mentally preparing myself for Nationals is by analyzing my team's strengths. This process involves three things for me: identifying my team's strengths, anticipating how other teams will view and try to minimize those strengths, and visualizing the appropriate adjustments we have also practiced. Especially for offensive strengths of a team, this involves a "punch" and "counter-punch" arsenal of weapons. To develop those weapons is a process that takes all season. So right now, on the eve of Nationals, the ground work has been laid and all you can do is hope that the right decisions were made back in April, June and August about what to focus on for the season. It can be easy to list all the things you didn't spend enough time on, or all the plays you never really fine tuned, or all the permutations of your various zone Ds that still need work. But, there's never enough time to do, let alone perfect, everything. It's a matter of choices.
Which brings me to the incipient college season. For a college team, nothing is set in stone yet and there are a myriad of different approaches to take to the season. Is this the year to try a new offensive structure? What about a new zone O attack? Are there any different defensive looks that you want to try? Often the fall is when teams take stock of their returners and try to maximize the potential they see in the personnel on their roster. There is a tendency to want to change certain things in order to improve on where the team ended up at the end of last year's college season. Change can be good, but you need to have a plan to go along with it.
I think the first question to ask at the beginning of the season is, "what is the team's identity?" Is this a defensive team that prides itself on playing pressure person D to get blocks? Is this a team that tries to let its athleticism shine? Is this a team that focuses on playing possession offense? Sometimes a team will have more than one thing that it really identifies with. Those touchstones are what you can build your entire season around. They can guide what skills to focus the most on. They can guide how you chose players for your team during try-outs. They help develop mental toughness and focus in your players from the start of the season. They are what players rally around and feel pride in.
Working towards a team identity is just one step of creating an effective season plan. Having goal-setting meetings at the beginning of the season is another part of creating a plan. So is outlining what specific skills and strategies the team hopes to have by the end of the season. Identifying what you need to learn from the start of the season will make things a whole lot easier by the end when you have to have faith your team had a good plan to start with.
posted by Gambler at 9:55 PM
4 Comments:
This is EXACTLY where I am in thinking about our upcoming season, Gwen, although I doubt I could have put it as articulately as you. I have a folder marked Spring 07 where I put any random piece of paper from camp or intramurals or the fall series with some specific idea of what I want to work on with my new team.
We don't really have the fall to prep, as most of my players are doing football or soccer or cross-country, and we aren't allowed to hold tryouts until the 3rd week of March, so our learning curve will be steep. Luckily I do know these kids pretty well, so I already know where some of our weaknesses and strengths lie.
My constant admonition to myself is, "Keep it simple, stupid." I will have the tendency to try to teach too much, and, in the kind of brief and intense ultimate season we experience, I believe less is more.
Tiina,
With such a short season, it becomes even more important to decide on which things to focus. Of course, by now I'm sure you have it down to a science with Amherst. That's actually one of the huge benefits of an established program: you know what works and what is realistic for the time you have.
When Fury fundamentally changed its offense last year, one of the challenges for the leadership was coming up with a new season plan for which skills and strategy to emphasize and in what order.
Gwen,
Thanks for this post. I don't really have much to add its all there......
Helpful stuff!
-G
actually, maybe we can have a NW ICultiamte, a SW ICultimate, a NE ICultimate, etc - you get the picture? that way it take some of the burden off of you and we could have www.icultimate.com be the main site with links to these sites. and, we could still have player/team features at the main site.
i know how to make a website (although nothing to write home about). surely we can get some other folks to step forward as well....
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