Sidelines: 2010-09-17

This is a busy weekend in this part of the world with USA Sectionals [editor: originally said Regionals], CEUUC, Stall Fall, and Harvest Fall all happening at the same time and completely saturating the market.  Things have gotten so bad that I’ve had to import a friend from the Yukon to play at Stall Fall with me.  The Yukon folks!  That’s over 5000 km away…over 3000 miles!

This week on “Sidelines” we have:

FSU Ultimate Frisbee (DUF) Highlight Reel

Chicago Heavyweights Refereed

As you may have read on the combo recap and gallery post by Jon Hines CHC had a showcase game refereed…and was kind of boring.  There’s a thread on rec.sport.disc where one of the players in the game talked about his experience:

I played in the game, and agree that it was boring, and a relatively unproductive experiment.  The main reasons: the refs focused heavily on travels and offsides, and the teams were not playing high-level ultimate.

The refs called a lot of travels.  The lesson: players travel a lot more than is called in most games.  I personally got called for 3 or 4 in this game, and never got called for a travel the rest of the weekend.  Playing with refs that are attentive to travels should lead over time to players traveling less.  But it didn’t happen within this game, and that really slowed things down.

The refs paid very little attention to contact away from the disc.  I and several other players actively tried to push the boundaries of allowable contact, and we never got called for it.  I switched from watching my man on D to hand-checking or holding him with one arm so that I could survey the field; still no calls.  Fouls on marks and receptions were more likely to be called, but still at a lower rate than in a typical open game.  I think this was because the refs were trained observers, who are used to watching for calls that are contentious in the current self-called game.  The kind of off-disc fouls we were playing around with would rarely happen in a normal game (because they’d almost always be called), so observers aren’t used to watching for them.

Early on, the flow of the game was good, but it degenerated into bad hammers and stupid hucks.  Most folks were uninterested in playing defense.  Experimental games where the results matter (in the context of the tournament, or public opinion) are way more productive.

Still, it was pretty nice not having to think about calls – just play until the whistle blows.  I think the big changes I would make for future experiments are (1) focus a bit less on travels, for the sake of the experiment, and (2) focus more on the kinds of “can I get away with it” violations, like contact away from the disc, bumping on the mark, etc.

Bring Your Disc To Work Day

By all accounts it was a success and beyond that it was picked up a bit Internationally.  Is this something that we should push for globally?  Sludge posted the following image in “celebration”:

More great photos from Santa Cruz, this time they’re from Alexander Yuen of UC.

Lastly, on rec.sport.disc “Crazy” Frank has posted about a new motion offense with regards to Disc Hoops.  If you don’t know what any of those terms are or who Frank is then it’s probably best to scroll back up and forget I ever mentioned it.  For the rest of you:

There’s been a battle brewing with Frank bashing Ultimate and the usual back and forth over the last few days.  This is not unusual.  What is unusual is that Frank has actually posted something that might be interesting.  Now to be fair I’ll mention that I like the guy, have played with him, and that top players in the Bay area regularly play with him and attend his “clinics”.  There might be something that we can draw from the clinic on November 13th at Stanford but I’m not sure if it’ll be game changing without the dribbling of Disc Hoops.  After all, this is a guy that throws standing straight up ambidextrously.

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