In the whirlwind that is my ultimate-filled August and September, this blog was not at the top of my priorities. But since Steamboat's season ended with a second place finish at Great Lakes Regionals (Santa Maria deserved that game), and my homework taken care of for now, there are zero excuses for me to not continue this blog.
Toxic's season so far has been pretty great. Our average practice attendance has nearly doubled from 7 to 13 girls. Our roster currently stands near twenty players strong - NINE of which are freshmen. It is fairly normal for the 1st years to outnumber the older players at a practice (which is simultaneously depressing and cool). We've been having three practices a week, and actually having enough players at them to do real drills (not just savage 3v3 games). And it at least feels like I have a better idea of what I need to teach my players. However, a good number of the freshmen came here already knowing how to play which is awesome and definitely makes my job easier.
So far we've competed in one tournament: Purdue's Lafayette Layout IV. We went 1-5, but that record does not at all reflect the several close loses we had to teams that in theory should have handled us quite easily. Defensively we are going to have an amazing year. Hopefully, we'll have our offense nailed down a little bit more by the time we head up to Columbus for Ohio State's Fall Brawl on October 25th and 26th.
For the first time this year, we also formed families. Well. I divided everyone into four smaller groups by randomly drawing names out of a hat. Logically because there are four groups we decided to name ourselves after the four Hogwarts houses. There will definitely be a sorting ceremony next year. That's way too much potential to pass up on and would make for a great party. Houses accumulate points when they do stuff outside of practice (like watching Netflix), and when individuals show up to practice. I'm planning on awarding a "house cup" (baked goods) about every month. As far as I can tell, this is helping everyone feel more at home with at least a portion of the team and helping everyone want to stick around.
For the first year since I've been here (reminder that I'm a third year in a five year program), this team feels like the start of something big. It feels like the beginning of a program, and my goal is to be the spark that ignites people's desire to learn more about the game of ultimate and the Spirit of the Game. It's gonna be a great year.
I'm going to do my best to return to posting updates every practice or so (no promises).
-Kelsey "Beo(wulf)" Gibboney
Toxic's season so far has been pretty great. Our average practice attendance has nearly doubled from 7 to 13 girls. Our roster currently stands near twenty players strong - NINE of which are freshmen. It is fairly normal for the 1st years to outnumber the older players at a practice (which is simultaneously depressing and cool). We've been having three practices a week, and actually having enough players at them to do real drills (not just savage 3v3 games). And it at least feels like I have a better idea of what I need to teach my players. However, a good number of the freshmen came here already knowing how to play which is awesome and definitely makes my job easier.
So far we've competed in one tournament: Purdue's Lafayette Layout IV. We went 1-5, but that record does not at all reflect the several close loses we had to teams that in theory should have handled us quite easily. Defensively we are going to have an amazing year. Hopefully, we'll have our offense nailed down a little bit more by the time we head up to Columbus for Ohio State's Fall Brawl on October 25th and 26th.
For the first time this year, we also formed families. Well. I divided everyone into four smaller groups by randomly drawing names out of a hat. Logically because there are four groups we decided to name ourselves after the four Hogwarts houses. There will definitely be a sorting ceremony next year. That's way too much potential to pass up on and would make for a great party. Houses accumulate points when they do stuff outside of practice (like watching Netflix), and when individuals show up to practice. I'm planning on awarding a "house cup" (baked goods) about every month. As far as I can tell, this is helping everyone feel more at home with at least a portion of the team and helping everyone want to stick around.
For the first year since I've been here (reminder that I'm a third year in a five year program), this team feels like the start of something big. It feels like the beginning of a program, and my goal is to be the spark that ignites people's desire to learn more about the game of ultimate and the Spirit of the Game. It's gonna be a great year.
I'm going to do my best to return to posting updates every practice or so (no promises).
-Kelsey "Beo(wulf)" Gibboney