When you are wrong

Congratulations - you were just elected to a leadership role. Your teammates believe in you and trust you to lead a their team into its next season. You feel pretty good about yourself knowing you having this trust and confidence working for you.

But hey, guess what? You can be wrong. About a lot of things.

Just because you are in a leadership position does not make you infallible. I feel too often leaders do not realize this and walk around on a high horse. You were elected to a certain position because of your capabilities and your teammates' trust you can get things done, but you have to realize when you are wrong.

This can be done in a variety of ways but it needs to be done. You need to have your coach (or fellow captain, experienced player) tell you when you are not performing on the field. Last weekend at our Indoor Tournament, I realized I was telling the team not to get beat up-line or protect the around, etc but I was not following through in my words. I told our sub caller to not put me in for a little (also because my foot was in throbbing pain) as a short of self-check. One person is not the best at everything and each person needs to realize that. If you play thinking you are the best, you will not be able to take criticism and consequently you will never improve your game.

Part of being a good leader is acknowledging when you are wrong and fixing that. Using the phrases, "I'm sorry","my bad", or something of the like goes a long way. It shows your team that you do care about them and it isn't just about you.

This doesn't just go to elected leadership. This goes to all of the players on your teams. You may have a stud on your team who for whatever reason wasn't elected to the position you hold, but he/she can still be wrong too. I feel it is more than okay to pull your star player if he/she is not playing to the team's style. EVEN IF HE/SHE IS SCORING ALL OF THE GOALS. I will definitely write on this point at a later date because I feel strongly about that topic - but right now, just realize your star players can be wrong as well.

I'm not quite sure if what I'm writing is self-explanatory or not. I'm in the middle of reading 287 pages about pirates in the Atlantic waters in the 1700s and needed a break and a reminder that I'm in the 21st century.

Michigan Indoor Tournament Recap

As I'm laying on my bed icing my foot and feeling like poop, I realized it would be a great opportunity to write about this past weekend - our Michigan Indoor Tournament held at our own indoor facility. We had six total teams in attendance: Michigan, Michigan B, Northwestern, Indiana, Northwestern, and Michigan State. Basically, this was a tournament with most of the teams from the Great Lakes Region who will be vying for a spot at Nationals at Regionals.

Indiana:
Flywheel's first game was against Indiana. I felt really bad because they got lost on the way and there was a basketball game AND a hockey game so parking in Ann Arbor was atrocious. They got to the fields with 20 minutes before game so they had a very short warm up. However, they came out firing and scored the first point. Flywheel was not going to let them happen again and came back to tie it up and to then take a lead and never look back. The final score was 13-3 in Flywheel's favor. Indiana shows a lot of promise. #1 is a left-handed handler who has great awareness for the game of Ultimate. She can put up some nice hucks and is not afraid to break the mark. #99 is one of their go-to receivers. She is tall, can catch, and put up decent throws. Overall they were a decent team. I feel with development they can be a big competitor in the region. This is not trying to diss on them of course, but rather to just explain our game against them. They will put up hucks, and while they may not be textbook throws, they can come down with the catches that matter.

Michigan State:
We then turned to Michigan State for our next game. The final score was 13-3 but it felt a lot closer than that. Flywheel was playing in the Infamous way which is more frantic and hectic. This caused our offense to act like they were on speed and make bad decisions and throw many things away. Additionally, Infamous brought a big sideline to cheer their girls on, while definitely throwing in some heckling, however appreciated that can be... Our rookies were able to learn about certain foul calls during this game which added to the learning experience of the whole weekend. After addressing a few issues, we finally settled down and got into our rhythm. Notable players on their team include Scheidt (#6), Kotsiris (#8), and one more of their handlers. I can't quite remember her number but she had dark blonde hair and could break the mark nicely. But next time, lets keep the game a little more spirited, eh?

Notre Dame:
(*I was just informed that this was the Notre Dame X squad - they still haven't decided on a roster yet)
Moving on to day 2, we faced the Womb of Notre Dame. Last year we lost to them at Regionals on Universe point because we lost the flip in an extreme upwind/downwind game. This year, we were not going to let them beat us with zero wind. The first half took an hour to play (7-3 Flywheel at half). Again, Flywheel lost its identity and played according to Notre Dame's style. They had one handler (shorter with long brown hair) who had forehand hucks that reminded me of butter - so smooth! Additionally they had a commanding presence in one of their backfielders (name of either Katie, Kathryn, Megan, or Molly - helpful I know...). For those people facing Notre Dame - she has longish blonde hair and every time I've seen her, she has been wearing shorter running shorts. Flywheel was inconsistent and not holstering. We have throwers who can huck it and we were forcing many throws that weren't there. After half, Flywheel finished the game in 15 minutes. A one hour half vs. a fifteen minute half... Obviously Flywheel figured out what to do and played our game.

Michigan B:
This game is always interesting. We love our B team and we want to keep the friendships there. However, they are just another opponent to us and we looked to beat them. The final score was 13-0. The spirit was maintained throughout and we had two rookie lines in which they each scored! Chelsea LeBlanc is an amazing handler on B team. Unfortunately she couldn't commit to A team because of time issues but boy would we love her! Her pulls are better than some of ours and she hucks it without fear. She is definitely their strongest player and hopefully she will be making big plays all year round.

Northwestern:
Flywheel was especially excited for Northwestern. We had been looking forward to this game for a while and got to our facility extra early to go over strategy for this game. We beat them last year at Regionals in Semis and wanted to keep our win streak over them. Flywheel and NW traded points all half but Gungho's break allowed them to take half 7-5. At half time we tried to figure out what was going wrong: our backfield defense was allowing too many in cuts and our handler defense was allowing too many strikes. We told the team at the beginning of the game that was their MO but yet they still beat us to it. Personally as a captain it was incredibly frustrating. I wanted to keep telling them not to get beaten in or up the line, but I was guilty of those things - as well as many of our other experienced players. We took a big breath at half and really analyzed their offense vs. our defense. We switched things up and took everyone's blinders off. Our team suddenly had field awareness and understood some key aspects about defense. We scored 8 unanswered points to finish the game 13-7. While I am super happy we won, I feel that Northwestern lost to us rather than us beating them. I don't know if that makes any sense, but I feel that we almost got a little lucky. That will not do at our next tourney - Pres Day. Notable players obviously have to include #77 Sara Miller, #4 Lien Hoffman, and #8 Sarah Hong. Miller is a quick handler who has very good throws: both IO forehands and deep hucks. She is constantly involved in every play and is always looking for the disc. Hoffman is a great cutter who reads the disc expertly and catches very well, not to mention her great defense. Last year she was a cutter but today she handled for a few. I don't know if that was because they were short of handlers or because that is her new role. In any case, she definitely stood out. Hong is another solid cutter with amazing hands, snagging loopy discs from the air.

So to recap our weekend, Flywheel went 5-0. We feel confident going into practice knowing what we have to work on and what works well for us. We have three short weeks before Pres Day and will be busting everyone's butts in order to make an impact in the Cali tournament.

Stressin'

I would like to say that I lead a pretty exciting, or at least busy, life. Granted many times at night or on the weekend you can find me lounging in my sweatpants watching football or just sprawled out on the couch discussing extremely mundane things with my five other housemates. But in general, I would say that I am a pretty busy person.

Last year was the first time when I REALLY became busy. I was elected captain last year and took it upon myself to do everything possible. While that was a good goal to do, that was completely unrealistic. I wound myself extremely thin trying to accomplish everything by myself without asking anyone on my team, let alone my other captain, to help me with things. My relationships suffered and in the end, I was not completely happy with everything. When elected captain again this year, I decided to not do that again.

Yesterday, I found myself stressing out to the max. I realized I was stressing when my roommate for three years came into the kitchen and I found myself extremely annoyed for no reason. Or when I was walking in the house and tripped over our living room rug and got mad at my other housemates. Or when I was getting peeved at KRAFT for making their boxed macaroni and cheese in not a good way. Obviously something else was the matter and it wasn't all of those crazy, ridiculous things.

It was then when I looked at my list of things to do and realized I had too much on there. I was trying to coordinate our Indoor Tournament, find a place to stay for Spring Break, search for plane flights, answer all of my team's emails, brainstorm different fundraisers, and figure out our team budget all while trying to read 123 pages about shipbuilding in the colonies in the 17th century and retain every bit of detail about it. Turns out we have a treasurer to figure out the budget, a fundraising chair to come up with details, my other captain to help with emails, and other members of the team that can look up SB destinations.

I would like to say that I grow as a person each year, especially between last year and this year. No one really wants to say they digressed between two years or stayed the same, so I'm going to say that yes, indeed, I did grow. Last year I would have continued to get mad at my roommate, pissed at my housemates, and might have even written to KRAFT making them aware of my annoyances with them. I would have done all of those while still keeping my task level the same.

This year, however, I am doing things differently. Instead of keeping everything to myself, I delegated tasks among the leadership of the team as well as our rookies as well. After doing so, I found myself a lot less stressed and lot more happy (I mean a decent amount of that could have something to do with my boyfriend getting back from class and making some oh so delicious potatoes... but also from delegating). So I encourage anyone in a leadership position to do just that: DELEGATE. For one, you will learn about your teammates and their strengths and weaknesses. But additionally, you will be putting trust in your teammates which can only make your team stronger. And finally, you will find yourself a lot less stressed so you can deal with things you are supposed to and focus your times to being the leader you were elected to be.

I'm not going to say you will never be stressed - because it WILL happen. You will have delegated every possible task and have aced your last exam, but you will still find yourself wanting to rip your hair out. But no worries. Take a deep breath and relax. This time will pass and when your tasks are accomplished, you will feel great.

(I should try to reread this post about 50 times this season...)

Goal Setting

Last night we had our first team meeting where we laid out our goals for the season. I find this to be extremely crucial for every team to do but I found myself asking why? I've done this every year I've been on the team and people tell me its something good to do - but really why is that? I ventured into the inner depths of my mind to come up with some answers to that question.

Without realizing it sometimes, setting goals allows you to assess the personnel you have on your team. Your goal cannot be to win Nationals realistically if you have an extremely inexperienced team with not the largest skill set. While you should always try to reach for the highest possible outcome, there is something to be said about being realistic while doing so. Flycc (our coaches and captains) came up with the goal to make it at least to semis of Nationals. We were able to even come up with this goal because we realized who we have on our team and potential we possess. Last year, in contrast, our goal was to just MAKE it to Nationals. We had only 6 returners on our team (and as much as I loved everyone on the team, none of them were self-proclaimed stars) and only 7 rookies by the beginning of April to round out our roster to 13. Unfortunately during sectionals, Tots tore her ACL dropping our roster to 12. When discussing our team goals we realized we were full of potential but realistically could not make it extremely far at Nationals because of the team strength/size. While I was definitely hoping to prove that wrong, we did have to be honest with ourselves. We ended up tying for 11th place and boy, that was an accomplishment! So long story short - creating a final team goal helps you analyze the players you have while allowing you to create a plan in order to achieve that goal. Also, make sure your goal is measurable. "My goal is to have our team do well". While yes, I would like that, it is not an effective goal at all. Instead change it to something like, "My goal is to have our team place first at Regionals so we get a bid to Nationals". Make sure its measurable

At the end of the day, you are either going to achieve your goal or not achieve it - in layman's terms: Fail or Win. I always get nervous when setting goals, especially team goals, because what would happen if we fail? If we don't make it to semis at Nationals, does that mean our season was a fail? Obviously the answer is no, but that is a common thought that goes through most people's mind (Well, I'm assuming here that people think a certain way. Of course, I could be extremely wrong and instead of making an ASS out of U and ME, I would only be making an ASS out of myself). But would does happen if you don't reach the goal? Throughout the whole season your team is working towards a certain level. Even if you never reach that, at least you tried - and got better on the way there.

Goals hold you and your teammates accountable for something. You can have many many goals throughout the season such as: Our goal is to make sure the girls understand ho stack at the end of this practice, OR Our goal is to kick everyone's butts showing them how out of shape they are, etc etc. It is important to have a lot of goals to keep everyone (especially the team leadership) on the same page and focused on a specific outcome.

At the end of the meeting, I asked all of the girls to write down four goals - two for offense and two for defense, one tangible and one intangible thing. These are not necessarily meant to be shared with everyone but I extremely like it. For one, like I said previously, it holds me accountable. If I am not working hard at achieving my goals, I am letting down my teammates. Additionally it allows me to track my progress throughout the season. If my tangible goal were to get better at low release I/O flicks and I saw myself throwing them in games (and completing them!!) then I would know I have been doing a good job at it. And then obviously if I'm not throwing them in games then I know I still have to work at that, etc.

So moral of the post is to create goals with your team and by yourself. They are good. They will bring good things. Your team, as a result, will do good things. You will feel good.

Good. Good.

Pre season agenda

After agreeing to this blog, figuring out my goals, and writing my first post, I realized this blog is either A) going to take up a lot of time B) something that I do semi often - but more because I remember I have to write a post or C) Have about 10 posts by the end of the season. Note that there is no option for posting a decent amount as a side project that does not take up too much time. I figured it is going to be option A because when hasn't something Ultimate related taken up too much of my time?! After my first post I started thinking about what I wanted to talk about, write about, and think about (in no particular order). While yes, I am going to cover the Great Lakes Region, I did say I would write down thoughts as a captain as well.

Topic for today: Preparing for the season.

Maybe at some point, I will go back and write about preparing for the fall season, recruiting rookies, fall tournaments, etc etc. However, my main focus right now is the preparation for the Winter (the main) season.

A few days before Paula (my other captain) and I left Ann Arbor for our respective hometowns for Winter Break, we sat down with our two coaches Julia and Naomi. This was our second meeting after the Fall season ended. In our first meeting, we looked back on the fall - what we liked, didn't like, needed to change, etc and finalized our tournament schedule. However at this second meeting we now looked to what the new season was going to bring. I felt it was extremely beneficial to separate the two meetings 1) Because of the length of time both meetings took and 2) to keep the focus on the UPCOMING season. It is extremely important to always look ahead. You definitely need to remember the past so you can learn from it (I'm a history major so I know ALL about studying/understanding/memorizing/learning from the past...) but you will never go anywhere if you are only looking back. So our leadership core sat down at Arbor Brewing Co, grabbed a beer and food, and hashed out details.

The first thing on our agenda was our outside of practice workout plan. Last year Flywheel did CrossFit training throughout the season as the main way to get in/stay in shape and boy did it pay off. I would never have imagined that me, a 5'2'' 104 pound girl could be deadlifting 150lbs by the end of the season or doing other crazy things with something called a kettlebell (in addition to gaining 25 pounds of muscle...or at least that is what I tell myself). Last year due to complications and injuries, we brought a roster of 9 to Regionals and 12 to Nationals. There is no way that we could have competed the entire weekend of either of those tournaments without doing CrossFit throughout the season. I have never been stronger or in better shape and I can attribute that to this new form of training. Clearly, we wanted to continue this workout plan for this season and the new bunch of girls. The unfortunate part of this plan is that it costs a good amount of money, money that each girl has to pay for out of pocket. We presented the idea to the team, made it known we can help out any girl that had financial issues, and decided to go through with the idea after the team gave us support. *We definitely wanted to do this plan. However, if majority of the girls could not afford it, we were going to drop it. While I know CrossFit was awesome for me last year, the season is about the TEAM and not the individual. Go with what the team says, even if you may disagree*.

The second thing we discussed at length was our Michigan Indoor Tournament. I'll save the boring story for my teammates, close friends, or anyone who really cares about it. Yes it is a tournament. Yes we will be playing other teams. But No, majority of the nation does not need to know what we decided. I mean, deciding length of games, format, other details? Ehh I'd put you to sleep.

Then we moved onto our season and our goals. In the past Flywheel has been a good team but we never spoke of ourselves in that way. Each year whenever we talk about Nationals at least 3 or 4 people knock on wood. We always use the term "IF we make it out of Regionals" or "IF we somehow made it to Nationals" etc etc. While you cannot count your chickens before they hatch, you do have to be realistic. While our goal is to make it out of the Great Lakes Region, we cannot stop there. Our goal has to be a certain place at Nationals. It is important to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of your team before the season starts. Additionally, you need to know the potential of each member and what the team can achieve by the end of May. The coaches and captains set our team goal and moved on to how to achieve it.

While I am covering my team, I am in no way going to discuss our strategic plans or what type of game Flywheel intends to play this year. It would be too easy for you guys! But what I can discuss is how we came to such decisions. While you may be set on running a horizontal stack offense, if you don't have the huckers, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense for that to be your primary focus. Or if you have stronger cutters you know you have to spend an extremely amount of time on zone to get your handlers comfortable with each other or knowing how to break various zones. You cannot make a decision about team identity or play until you analyze the players you have on your roster. I would like to say we did that correctly and came up with an awesome game plan on how to dominate this season! Of course, being one of those at the meeting, I am 100% biased on that decision. Maybe come April/May when we have played in a few tournaments we can assess our strategic plans.

Each team has goals and objectives on what to teach and when. However, sometimes something you teach can go extremely wrong and you have to change your game plan. So we only planned our first two practices and decided to meet after that to plan the next few. We wanted to keep going with other strategic measures but by this time, it was over 2 hours since we sat down, my beer had been gone for a while, and I was ancy to move my legs. We said goodbye, walked off all of the calories we had just consumed, and left each other until January.

This meeting was extremely beneficial to the Flywheel leadership and the team. While the team may not realize all of the planning that goes into the season, if the practices are running smoothly and efficiently, the team will benefit. Additionally, it saved a LOT of emails being sent over Winter Break. While I am the Queen Bee of email, I do appreciate not being bombarded over break with a whole bunch of questions. (Although I have to admit, it is now the 29th, I'm over that stage and each time I check my email and don't see a new one, I get sad. It is close to when I am heading back to school and I want to get back to seeing 10+ emails each time I open up Gmail).

Whew, that is post longer than I intended. Throughout this post I already came up with at least three more topics I can write on before my season gets underway. Whether or not I actually post them... we'll see. All I know is that its 4:30 and I have not worked out yet. This writing is effective for me but if I am not doing my part, I am not helping the team. So here is to running in 25 degree weather - all for Flywheel, all for my team.

First post

I made this blog about a week and a half ago but I've been putting off my first post. I've attempted about three blogs throughout the course of my life, all of them to end up failing. So I've been nervous to actually start this mostly because I'm scared of failing for a fourth time. But then I thought to what the consequences of me failing would be. And the answer is basically nothing. I would have an empty bog that some people would read and then just stop after realizing I was not continuing. So really, there should be nothing holding me back.

Michelle Ng approached me via email and asked if I would be a writer of a blog that would document my season and my thoughts as a player and captain. This is through the partnership of Without Limits so of course I said yes. I figured this will be a source for all things Flywheel while a writing up on the Great Lakes region as well.

Once I agreed to the blog I figured I should make some goals in order to make this more effective. For one, I hope to become a better writer. In school I write many many pages of historical writing. However, for a blog, I can't see that being too entertaining - well I mean I do but I figure I am not like the average human. Additionally I want to explore all of the depths of being a captain: the planning and the strategizing all while being a player and teammate for Flywheel. To add another goal, I want to become more familiar with the teams in my region. I know a tad about each team but not really because, honestly, I am focused on Flywheel in a national sense. I look to and follow teams like UCSB, Wisconsin, Stanford, and others because those are always strong programs. However, that is not doing my region any good. I need to get to know my teams - their strengths and weaknesses - and to give them credit they deserve. So that I hope to change. On a slightly smaller scale, I hope to become funnier. I feel that many blog writers have a dry sense of humor that makes readers come back. I guess this goes along with my first goal but in a certainly specific way. That last goal is definitely subjective and I will not know if I achieve it or not in the end. I will not like you as readers any less if you don't consider me funny. I can only like you more. But then again, I will not know who the exact readers of my blog are. So really, it does not really matter that much, or at all. This is just a bit of a personal element to this blog that I discovered while thinking about starting this blog. And why I chose to share that? Not sure. I tend to keep certain thoughts and feelings, such as wanting to be funnier, to myself. But this is the 21st century - people share all sorts of things online! So what the hell - might as well put that on my blog.

And by the end of the season, I just hope I am happy with this blog. Whether I achieve my goals or not, that does not matter (although it would be quite nice). This is an exercise that I hope to tell all captains they should partake in. Well, enough of speculating. This is the end of my first post and introduction to the blog. Here is to the 2011 season!