Irish juniors teams - I'm just looking for some thoughts

Given that the call for applications to be on the NSB for the European juniors championship is out at the moment, I’ve been thinking about the juniors set up a bit. I’m not sure whether I want to apply to be involved in it again next year or not. In any case, I’ve been writing down some of my thoughts on the good and the bad of the juniors set up last year. If anyone is considering applying to be a part of the juniors coaching set up next year (or knows someone else who is), and wants to ask me anything about it, feel free to email me (or add a comment here). 

There is one idea that I’ve been thinking over that I’d love to hear thoughts on.

For the juniors in 2009 and 2010 we ran a weekly practice session in Dublin. I’ve been thinking about how worthwhile it is. In many ways, a national team practicing so regularly like a club team should give a big advantage in terms of team chemistry. But, at the level that we’re at, improvements in player skill and general playing experience makes a much bigger difference to results than team chemistry does. To improve as a team, focus on improving the player’s skills and general playing experience, not so much the team's chemistry.

The most obvious way to go about this would be if all the players played with club teams. If we take all the juniors and put them in a completely separate section away from the experienced senior players (as has been the case) they won’t learn that much. But if they were all on club teams with more experienced players they’d gain a greater understanding of the game much more quickly.

Does anyone care to offer me their opinion on the chances of the juniors all being integrated into the club scene? I’m not imagining them all necessarily making the first team of the best club in their city, just being a regular club member that trains weekly and hopefully gets to a tournament or two. Or maybe club summer league, or whatever.

any thoughts?

The Ireland junior open team

My brother has been working on a document about teaching ultimate in schools. He asked me if I'd write a piece about the junior national team for it. So that any new schools players or coaches would know the situation regarding the team, how to get on it, what's involved and so forth. He sent me a few questions, and my answers are reproduced here.

Just for anyone that doesn't know, I was the manager of the Irish Junior open team in 2010, having been an assistant manager in 2009. The 2010 team was put together for the World junior ultimate championships held in Germany at the beginning of august. While the 2009 team competed at the European junior ultimate championships held in Austria in 2009. The European juniors championships will happen again in 2011 and Worlds again in 2012.

As for next year, I'm not sure if I'll be involved. Either way, the set up could all change in the future, so don't think this is a reliable guide to what might happen in 2011.

Be warned, this gets long.

On rereading this, I'm thinking it might sound like hard work. It is hard work, but its fun too. Ask any of the players that played for the Irish Juniors in 2009 or 2010 about it. I bet they'd recommend any eligible player to have a go.



Quick recap of what you did this year with the junior setup. When were trials, and trainings (how many were there), and what did you do at trials and trainings?


Try-outs and selection

At first I sent out some email calls for interest. I requested all interested players to email me to say which division they were interested in and eligible for. Mainly to figure out what divisions we’d likely be able to field teams for. I mean one of junior open, junior women (for which you must be turning 19 or less in the year of the competition), under 17 open and under 17 women. We have yet to field a team in any junior division other than junior open.

The first selection events we had (which we called tryout zero A and B) were the Irish schools indoors championships and the UCD beginners tournament (which were on consecutive weekends at the end of Januray). Most of the eligible players that the junior’s management team didn’t know were playing at one of these two tournaments, so it gave us a good chance to get to know the available player base.

Next we had 2 proper open tryouts. The first was a week into February, and the next about 3 weeks later. Any and every eligible player was welcome to attend.

Finally we had an invite only try-out. Where about 30 or so players were invited to attend. This allowed us to have a really close look at those players with a good chance of making the team before we made the final selection.

When I say ‘we’ here, I mean myself, the juniors manager and Seamas Kinsella, the coach, with help from selectors Mark Earley and Roger ‘Podge’ Beatty.

Training and practices

Last year, we had a team with a majority of Dublin based players, although there was also a contingent based in Cork and Limerick. As such, we had a weekly Dublin practice session (only mandatory for those based there, with non-dubliners expected to attend a weekly practice session local to them). And then we had a number of full squad weekends (mandatory for the whole squad), which were about monthly. The first one was in Limerick; the other 3 or so in Dublin.

There was also a fitness plan, involving some weekly core work, leg work and sprints.

Friendlies and warm up competitions
We had a few one off friendlies against various other teams often as part of the whole squad weekends - just to get some game time together as a team.

We entered the Dublin club summer league. Wednesday evenings in a Dublin park. From about June as I recall. Obviously, this was mainly for those based in Dublin. 

And to warm up for the tournament, we entered the UK junior club nationals; a great learning experience. in 2010 that was in Birmingham, on about the first weekend of July. So most of the lads got some cheap flights over (1 or 2 hardcore juniors got a bus and a ferry). The team camped at the venue. (with the aid of one big tippee)

What did you look for when picking the squad and why? And in what part of the game did players have the most shortcomings in?
There aren’t many very experienced junior players in Ireland. In general, the majority of the team is made of players who have been playing for less than a year. As such, the major shortcomings of most of the players that try out can be put down to a lack of experience playing the game, this means that players can be lacking in some basic skills, tactical awareness and so forth. As the selectors, there is no choice but to accept this. So while it's great to see skills and tactical awareness, we also look out for a willingness and ability to learn fast, commitment / enthusiasm and athleticism.

What advice would you give to any upcoming juniors who would like to try out for Ireland.
Firstly – the simple advice: try to make a good impression.

• Attending every tryout you can, shows that you’re good at showing up.
• Being on time for tryouts would give selectors the impression that you’d be on time for practices, or eventually for matches at the tournament.
• Taking on board anything that the coaches say to you, shows you’ll be willing and able to learn as the season progresses.
• Try to seem like a ‘good team mate’. If you’re a jerk to the other players trying out, it really won’t seem like a good idea to put you on a team with them.

Next - the more detailed stuff.

Picking the squad has usually gone like this: the first half of the squad or so worth of players are usually fairly obvious choices. These 9 or 10 or 11 or 12 guys stand out as the best players, which all the selectors agree on quickly. The next 3 or 4 or 5 players generally don’t take too long to agree on either. In terms of skill, athleticism, experience and commitment, they’re looking better than the other guys there. The last few guys selected are generally very hard to decide on. Choosing the last 3 or 4 guys out of 8 or 9 players with a realistic chance is difficult.

And so, my advice to anyone trying out for these teams in the future: don’t hope to scrape your way onto the squad by being just about good enough. Even if you really are the 19th best player and there are 20 spots, the selectors might make a mistake (regrettable but very possible). Aim to be in the top 10 players that the selectors have no question about choosing. For the juniors team I'd say that being athletic and skilful compared with the other guys trying out should get you into the top 15 or so, but its experience that will make you stand out as one of the best there. By experience, I don’t mean how long ago you started playing; but rather how high a level you’ve been playing. If you join a club team full of good players and get plenty of game time in high standard games you’ll look like you have experience, like you understand what's going on. If you spend 3 years playing exclusively with absolute beginners, you won't get the same effect.

Anyway, if you’re reading this having only just started playing a week ago, and the tryouts are soon, don’t despair. you'd still have a shot at making the team, like I said, there's generally not very many experienced players there. and the last few guys to make the team are really tough to choose. Realistically, the guys that get selected in this group are unlikely to called as a  handler for offence on game point (although nothing is impossible). As such, around this borderline area, fast, fit defenders will probably get selected over the slower handler types. I think athleticism does better than skill to a certain extent around here.

Experience has shown me something about comparing two guys at the start of the season; one who’s fast, fit, jumps high and lays out but can’t throw too well and another who’s slow and un-athletic but can throw well. By the time the peak of the season comes around it’s more likely that the fast guy has learned to throw than the slow guy has learned to be fast.

What If you’re some sort of non-athletic type. First step, become athletic! By which I mainly mean get fit. Don't just try to figure out how you can make a team based purely on skill and intelligence. The intelligent thing to do is to get in shape. Everyone has to play D. So do what you can to be in great shape. Realistically, if athleticism is your major weakness even though you're doing all you can about it, you’ll want to make sure you get into the team by being one of the best, most skilful players there. If you’re hoping to squeeze in as the 19th player picked onto a 20 man squad, you may be disappointed. Go get yourself the highest level game time you can.

Tryouts

Here's a quick summary of the format of the tryouts from previous years. (subject to change in the future). 

They usually consist of a warm up, some basic throwing, a few drills designed to show certain skills, and then a few games. All run and watched by various coaches / managers and selectors for the team. 

When I ran it we had a few different parts.

1. Throwing. Everyone threw in pairs, I came around and had a look. I was mainly looking to see who had fundamentally good technique (grip, stance, etc) as opposed to whether a particular throw was accurate or not as I walked past. I saw loads of throwing, from everyone. I'd often have asked a player to throw a few particular throws if I hadn't yet seen them (e.g. "throw a few backhands there, I've only seen you throw forehands"). I also often asked to see low release throws, longer throws and inside out throws; just to see how advanced anyone was at throwing. Such throws demonstrate a real control of the disc or possibly show up more clearly any flaw in technique (some people can only release throws from one particular height, it seemed). 
2. Sprinting. We had everyone run a timed sprint. Just to make sure that when it came to a selection meeting I wasn't calling guys athletic based purely on looking athletic. (of course in games we'd try to look at acceleration and agility and all too, but pure straight line speed was useful to know about and really easy to measure).
3. Huck and read drill. This was also to look at athleticism in a way, and also catching ability and ability to read the disc in flight.
4. Leading passes. Just since previously I had only looked at throwing skills in a static sense, throws in games have to lead receivers and inexperienced players often don't have the timing down. 
5. We may have done some other drills at the some other tryouts, possibly looking at forcing (the most important defensive skill in my opinion).
6. Games. There was always a game at each tryout; drills can only show so much. In general, we'd make some teams and just stand back and watch, only interjecting sometimes to change the teams or to ask for specific things (as in we asked everyone to only play man defence, we occasionally requested guys to mark specific players or requested certain lads to handle or to cut).

Finally, some advice for these tryout games. Be sure to get properly involved. At times, in previous years I've thought some guys were hiding on the field for fear of being seen making an occasional mistake. It's not like the team is picked by a process of elimination, you can't make it by hiding! Now obviously, try not to throw the disc away every time you get it, but don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of mistakes made, just keep up a total commitment on the field, especially on defence, and try with all you've got to show that you belong in an Ireland jersey.

No discussion 'foul' and 'contest' calls

There are many ways to be unspirited. Some of them bug me more than others.

This one is fairly self explanatory. A player calls "foul" and their opponent immediately calls "contest". One player tries to explain what they think just happened. The other is already sending the disc back to the thrower (or asking for the disc back if they are the thrower); they're not listening. This gives the impression to me that they're only making or contesting the call to advantage their team, rather than fully considering the play in question.

Breaking other rules, like for instance fouling somebody, can be seen as purely accidental. But refusing to engage in a discussion seems a less accidental way of breaking the rules. And it bugs me.

The rule:
"1.3. ... players must:...
1.3.4. explain their viewpoint clearly and briefly;
1.3.5. allow opponents a reasonable chance to speak;..."

If you think you're right, okay. Tell the other player why. They might retract the call.

If you just want to gain an unfair advantage, well, the rules are such that you can do that, but please humour them. Pretend it's the scenario where you honestly think you're right. Let the other player explain their point of view and then choose one detail that you can say you saw differently. Contest the call based on that. People will think you're more spirited.

Blog Link - a piece about gamesmanship in ultimate

I just wanted to point out this. From the ultimate blog 'win the fields'. (and the second part)

A post (a series of posts I guess) about gamesmanship in ultimate.

It's a really interesting read.

Update on Teaching People to Throw a Forehand

This post represents some further thoughts on this. If you're interested, see my previous piece about it.

I got thinking about this again after reading an article on the Thinkulti blog. It looks at the plane of release of a forehand. It's interesting enough. Read that, and an older post on the same blog more specifically about teaching a beginner to throw a forehand. 

Given it's university recruiting season, I guess this is quite relevant right now. If you have a university team,  you're probably teaching a new batch of beginners how to throw. If you get it right, you'll be laughing. If you're not so good at it, your club might be known for its lack of disc skills for years to come!

Of course the reason I care so much about it, is that there's a good chance that this seasons new college players make up plenty of next seasons Irish juniors teams. (With which I may or may not be involved). Every year I have been involved, there are plenty of players that come to the try-outs with really dodgy forehands. 

Having talked it over with the other Irish junior open coach from this year, its not just elbow in ribcage throws we see, (see my previous piece about this), but more generally forehand throws released with the wrist much higher than the elbow. (and not able to throw any other way). Which makes it incredibly hard to learn inside break flicks and very low release flicks.

I think the forehand grip angles discussed on that piece on the Thinkulti blog, could be a related issue. 

Anyway, best of luck to anyone teaching any beginners. 

IFDA College Recruitment Guide

The blog's been quiet for a while. I've been busy. I intend getting back to the Ireland caps topics soon, and there are also a few other topics I've got in mind, but for now, I'm going to talk about recruitment.

The IFDA recently released a very early version 0.5 of their planned college recruitment guide. Basically it's an edited version of the various submissions they had received. If you're on pookas, have a read of it. There's some great stuff in it.

Structuring the Recruitment Document

I think the best thing that could happen to the document next, is for it to get structured in some logical way. Both to make it easier to read, and also to make it easier to build on. Once the document has a sensible structure, deficient sections will stand out and any conflicting opinions also become more obvious. I replied to the email saying as much (and offering to help with it).

A preliminary structure idea could be as follows:
1. overall / being organised / having a meeting about it.
2. PR during the first few weeks.
3. recruiting day.
4. retaining the people that signed up, and turning them into active club members.

How version 0.5 measures up against that proposed structure

As it stands, the document has plenty of thoughts on getting plenty of people to sign up on clubs and socs day (or freshers week or whatever you call it). I find amusing the mentions of the strategic placement of "hot guys" and "hot girls" at the recruitment stand (possibly because its true).

Where I think it might be lacking is in the area of early term PR on campus. I thought there might be more about this in the document version 0.5. Maybe its just that there wasn't much variety in what was said, and plenty of repeated stuff got edited out.

Anyway, that section would focus on PR before sign up day. It would include stuff about posters, about being visible on campus throwing, wearing club merchandise, having as many articles in every campus publication as you can and mentioning ultimate enthusiastically to anyone you're talking to.

Retaining Beginners

Stuff about retaining the beginners could get interesting. I imagine there could be various different opinions on it.

I think this section could get further subdivided into
A - training
B - tournaments
C - club sociability

Possibly what sort of players you want to recruit and retain could be worth some discussion. I think any club has a finite capacity for active membership; you're unlikely to add 100 new active members to a club (although I understand plenty of clubs sign up more than this nowadays). There just isn't the space at practice (and possibly the existing club members haven't the ability to remember that many names). So perhaps a club needs to think about exactly what sort of players they really want to try to keep.

Increasing the Natural Capacity of a Club

Before anyone gets too carried away with being selective, it is possible to expand the natural capacity of a club. Try as hard as you can to recruit and retain more players before you start to pick and choose. I think UCC managed that last year. If you run a few separate practice sessions aimed at different groups, then the practices won't be overcrowded and no one needs to remember absolutely all the beginners names. This probably even holds true for socialising too. There's an upper limit on the size of a tight-knit social group. Only so many people can comfortably hang out in a living room. If a big club has multiple smaller tight-knit groups it allows space for more newbies to become active members.

Anyone from UCC tell me if I've got that right?

What sort of beginners will stay playing

So, once there's room for plenty of newbies, it's probably still true that you'll not be able to get all of those that sign up to stick around. And who sticks around will largely be determined by what you do in the first few weeks after the beginners join. For instance, if you do drills involving quite a bit of sprinting, then people that like sprinting will stick around.

Also, who becomes a regular is determined by who you get to know; who the experienced players become friends with. If all the experienced players spend all their time making friends with final year student newbies and 1 semester foreign students, they'll have no time to get to know the first years (that's bad).

Labeling players when playing defense in ultimate

When playing D, against a team you know nothing about, you might make a few judgements based on appearances. (Perhaps it's using stereotypes?) It can be a bad thing. It's unreasonable and unfair to assume things about people without evidence. But people do it all the time. And anyway, in this situation, if you're wrong you only disadvantage yourself rather than the person you're stereotyping. 

For instance, the stereotypical fat player, is slow. (this often turns out to be true, but not always!)

"I'll mark the fat guy"

-your lazy teammate. 

The fat guy must be a handler (a handler with great throws)

The old guy too. 

The tall guy is probably a receiver.
The guy wearing runners and tracksuit pants must be a beginner.
The guy wearing loads of gear (underarmour, tights, visor, gloves, some sort of support on every joint), is either really really good or really really bad. It could go either way.
The girl playing open, won't be cutting deep.

I'm sure you're thinking of exceptions to each assumption as you read them. It would be a dangerous game to rely completely on a stereotype assessment of an opposition player, without any supporting evidence.

As a game goes on, you might make comparisons between the guy you're marking and the other players you've played before, while trying to figure out how best to mark them. That's still basically labeling them, but now you have some evidence. I have said things like this to myself: "he plays like a fat handler despite being trapped in the body of a much thinner man". Maybe I'm getting into the categorisation of players, which could be a whole other blog post.

How to use this
If making quick assessments based on appearances is widespread, a team starting on offence can use it to their advantage. Basically, send your fat, old, deceptively fast guys deep, early on, for easy goals. While your tallest players make sure to stay well out of the way (since they have the fastest and best aerial defenders).

And at a low level fun tournament, wear jeans for the first point!