What this Sport Needs: Stats!

This is Part 1 of things I think ultimate needs to become a more popular sport:

Today, I was on ESPN.com reading about Chris Paul's 61 point performance in high school. I was curious about what number pick he was in the NBA draft. The Hawks could have had him, but instead we picked Starvin' Marvin Williams. Then, I flipped through some Major League Baseball stats to see where Chipper Jones' bat put him relative to the rest of the MLB (he is still number 1 in batting average). After that, I missed Game 3 of Jazz-Lakers, so I checked out the box score to see how Deron Williams, Pau Gasol, Kobe Bryant, Carlos Boozer, and other players did in their game yesterday. While reading those stats, I became curious about the playing time of NBA players. I looked that up. Allen Iverson led the NBA in this statistic during the season, with Joe Johnson right behind him.

Do you see where I am heading? We need statistics in our sport. We need a centralized place where we can go and look up different stats from the weekend's tournaments. Statistics are entertaining. They are helpful for improvement, scouting, and determining the best players in the game. They also help record history. For example, what is the most goals one player has caught in a game? In a tournament? In a season?

Last year, our assistant coach kept statistics to help our team. We can see who stood out in a tournament, and who did poorly. It was very helpful.

The kind of statistics I would like to see for ultimate would be: Points played (offense or defense), throwing turnovers, catching turnover, assists, scores, hockey assists, breaks, hammers, poach D, layout Ds, sky D, hand blocks, fouls. Also, I would want this on a point-by-point basis, so we could take the statistics and come up with a game flow and perhaps a recap. We need to come up with a standard statistics template for ALL TEAMS to use. Then, teams need to get a teammate (preferably a rookie) to fill out the stat sheet on the sidelines. Then, after every tournament, every team would turn in a stat sheet to a central website where they would imput the statistics, organize them, and then publish them. With all these statistics, we could come up with different ratios and percentages that reflect players' skills. Also, if we decide to keep statistics, then we should do player profiles as well, which I will talk about on another day.

The addition of statistics would be great for a number of reasons:

1. Prepare Teams to Play Other Teams - Currently, the main way we prepare for teams is to listen to how other teams describe them. We ask other teams about their good players, their strategy, what type of offense they run, and what type of defense they run, who to put our best defenders on, etc. Also, since our coach plays club ultimate, he usually tell us what players he has seen before and their levels of athleticism. However, there are a lot of teams out there that don't have any club players/coaches to help teams get prepared for other teams.

If the ultimate community had stats, we would know which players are their "play makers", handlers, cutters, dunces, jumpers, best defensive players, etc. This would definitely help out with strategy and getting your team prepared before the tournament. Also, the early points wouldn't be filled with mismatches and quick scores off of hucks.

2. To Show Dominant Players - Numbers never lie (unless they are recorded poorly). It would be neat to see the statistics for the dominant players and how they stack up against each other. We can only argue who is the best handler, who is the best receiver, who is the best defender, etc. Also, with these statistics, UPA could give out more awards other than MVP - such as best handler, best receiver, best handler defender, best deep defender, etc.

Also, you can do team awards too with this. Which teams had the most D's? Who has the best defense in the country? We don't know unless we have statistics.

3. Help People Improve their Own Game - There are a lot of different things that get lost while you are playing ultimate. Since there won't be a recap, stats recorded, or whatever, people REALLY only remember if you won or lost a game. However, what about that stupid huck you had that went out of bounds on that first point. Turnovers are easy to forget. We don't want to remember them.

If we had statistics, people would be able to see where their game needs improve. If they don't get any D's, they need to rethink the way they are playing defense. If they are not catching any goals, they need to rethink the way they have been cutting (not all cutters are goal scorers). If you have been dropping discs, you need to work on your focus and concentration. Statistics are very easy to interpret.

4. It will help encourage teams to play hard in every game. If there is a team title at stake, teams won't be content winning close games with lesser teams. This is pretty debatable though.

Things to Think About: Teams can play in tournaments that will fluff their statistics or simply play teams that aren't as good. Would Centex and Nationals' statistics be weighted differently than small tournaments with bum teams? Who would put all these statistics together? We could have a Regional Statistician, which would be responsible for submitting the statistics for each team in their Region. Some teams play in more tournaments than other teams, which would then give them a higher amount of statistics. But, we could do statistics based on tournaments or even games. D's per game or D's per tournament. Also, different teams play a different amount of games in a tournament.

A Brief Note on Sportsmanship

At high levels, Ultimate is an extremely competitive endeavor. It's very difficult to be mindful of capital-S Sportsmanship during close games that significantly impact the rest of your season.

However, last Saturday, before the biggest game of either of our seasons-to-date, Jojah of UGA and Darkside of UNC-Chapel Hill met at midfield to share a moment of silence in memory of Eve Carson. Before the AC Regionals Semi-final match--a game that would give its loser a considerably more difficult road to Nationals--Jojah and Darkside transcended competition and reflected on the comraderie we share with our teammates and as an Ultimate community.

The game did not suffer for this reflective pause; both it and the game-to-go the following afternoon were extremely close and hard-fought 15-13 games, with no punches pulled between the competitors. But it was a game of respect--a game embodying "Spirit of the Game" in the highest sense of the term.

Eve passed away a couple of months ago. She was student body president at UNC-Chapel Hill, and she grew up in Athens within a few blocks of the UGA campus. Her absence is an unimaginable pain for those who knew her.

Eve would be proud that a game preceded by a silence in her memory would be one characterized by intensity, competition, and respect between teams of the two towns she influenced so greatly.

As I reflect, I realize it couldn't have been any other way. This realization is a testament to my teammates at Jojah, my bretheren at Darkside, and the AC Region as a whole, in which we can balance the highest competition with the understanding that fraternity is, ultimately, more important. Eve's brother Andrew plays for DUFF of Davidson, and no doubt the virtues he shares with her will further contribute to the strength of Sportsmanship in the AC, as well as Ultimate as a whole. I am proud to be an Ultimate player, I am proud to be in the Atlantic Coast Region, and I am proud to play for Jojah.

Amble

Thoughts on Cutting

Cutting serves as one of Ultimate's most fundamental and important skills. With well-made cuts, you can win even if your team doesn't have dominant throws. A familiar refrain on the Jojah offense the last two years has been, "beat them with our legs." That said, here are a few cutting philosophies from frisbee players and elite athletes which I try to apply. I apologize for the Jojah-centrism of this article, but my lack of interaction with great cutters outside of UGA requires it.

"Cut Mean": Greg Swanson relayed this to me. He heard it in a Terrell Owens interview. Whatever your opinions on TO, the man makes a living cutting up some of the best defensive athletes in the world; we would do well to listen to anything he says. There are a lot of ways this idea is phrased. I use "cut downhill", Coach AJ Tiarsmith repeats "just get the disc", and I've heard a ton of others("beat him to the cone", "don't be denied", etc.). It seems to me to be the most basic advice on cutting: when you cut, just get open. Sometimes, we hold back just a little bit when we're running cuts; we're not a hundred percent sure that we're going to get open. TO tells us to BE a hundred percent sure. Swanson gets a look of such determination on his face when he's cutting that you know he's going to get open. It's a matter of having aggression and a mentally tough approach to the game, and it's a piece of advice that, despite its obviousness, many of us stand to learn from.

"Run Forever", aka "The Louis": Louis, the standout Jojah receiver, owes much of his unheralded cutting success to phenomenal (yet somehow underrated) athleticism and field presence. But he's able to maximize those abilities by simply never stopping. In this, a cut from Louis is never "shut down"; if a defender stops an in-cut, Louis turns it into a set-up for a deep cut. Every step Louis takes brings him closer to openness. In fact, the most consistently effective cut I've ever seen is also among the simplest: Louis runs deep, his defender commits to the deep throw, Louis cuts under, Louis gets the disc. It is effective because Lou turns the corner better and faster and more sharply than just about anybody, but it is unstoppable because the defender must overcommit to the deep (otherwise, easy goal). By the end of a point guarding Louis, it feels like riding a bull--his movement is so constant that keeping him shut down the whole time is simply impossible.

"Break the String": this comes from Jerry Rice. Rice was never the fastest or the most athletic receiver in the NFL, yet he's widely considered to be not just the best all-time at his position but also the greatest player at ANY position the league has ever seen. When asked how he gets open, Rice said that he imagines a string on his chest connecting him to his defender. To get open, he visualizes breaking the string through jukes, fakes, and hard route-running. This brings up an interesting point: one common link among elite athletes in team sports seems to be their ability to utilize visualization. These athletes see themselves accomplish something, then they do it. Their success indicates that they might be onto something; we should try to follow their lead.

"Beat Him with Your Shoulder" (aka, "The Great Name" philosophy): Ben Bain is the king of this concept. An undersized former Jojah receiver lacking in blazing speed, Bain is revered around the frisbee fields of Athens for his constant ability to get open on open-side in-cuts. I asked him about it once, and he said it's all about positioning--just find a way to get your outside shoulder in front of the inside of the defender. (So, if they're forcing flick, get your left shoulder around your defender's right side.) From this position, you've got the inside track. The thrower just needs to give you a good lead, and you'll get it every time, because the defender must now go THROUGH you to get the d.

That's what I've learned and try to apply from TO, Jerry Rice, Louis G., Ben Bain, and Swanie. Do any of y'all--especially other successful cutters--have tools or strategies YOU use to get open? Dusty, Noah, Paul, Frank, others? Please post them in the comments; insights from these guys has proven invaluable, and I need all the help I can get.

Amble