Labels:
drops,
Niji,
practice,
recap,
warming up
Yesterday's practice went with decidedly unstable results.
I rushed into scrimmage since i was late, and started playing without doing any active warm ups or throwing, save biking a couple of km (google maps says 3.9km). This had immediate effects...
Right away, I dropped two throws to me, perhaps in a row? First point on, throw to me from the catch off the pull, and then a dump throw to me right after we got the turn back. To my defense, the first was lazered to me from point blank, and the second was thrown to me as someone was clearing out from in front of me. But, to my not-defense, I should have caught both. Obviously, the cause of these drops was an inadequate warm up and mental preparation, and perhaps the giddiness that remained from sprinting 4km through traffic on my bike. I haven't dropped a disc like that in a long time, and I was pretty pissed at myself, to say the least. This led me to commit other simple mistakes, such as rushing a throw to an in-cut and launching the disc a little too high for my receiver (another mistake I hadn't committed in a long time). But I recovered somewhat quickly, and got my head in the game. I proceeded to forget about my drops, and thus, never dropped after that.
As the first 50 minute game progressed, I started making more and more plays, which was nice. But, at first, I had committed a couple of turnovers, where I threw deep (break side) to a streaking cutter (who had beat his man by probably 5 paces at least every time) only to be poach D'd by a vigilant defender. Now, obviously this is my fault for putting it, but had those defenders been more occupied with defending their man, the result surely would have been different, too. Especially since the throws would have been easily completed if not for the poach. They were really pretty throws too... :/ Anyway, I had a chance to layout on this senior kid, which I should have done, and I rued it even more when he turned around and threw a blady flick that I forced him to throw with a lot of pressure that somehow still landed in his targets hand with 3 defenders on him. Note to self: lay out first, ask questions later. I started getting a bunch of D's deep, by positioning myself well and baiting throws to my man, as well as help D'ing by poaching.
Important point to take away from today: All my upwind hucks, most (all?) of which were flick puts worked. Perfectly. Hit my targets in stride. On the other hand, my downwind hucks, perhaps from fear of putting the disc too far, did not work as well, and in fact would end up a little too short, and a little too floaty. Now that don't make no sense at all does it? Oh well. I'll figure it out. I also had a couple of miscues to freshmen who didn't know where I wanted them to go, but then they adjusted, so its all good.
Cool new thing I did today: IO flick half-field+ in cut throw. In a ho-stack, everyone was cutting into the open side (in and out), but this left the break side wide open. So, I made eye contact with a senior cutter who had been cutting deep until then, and preemptively threw a low IO flick to the break side for at least a half field gain into that receiver, who had started to cut into it. Then I did a similar thing but with a high IO flick for 1/3 of the field, to an in-cut. Boom, roasted.
