Introducing Clare!

Name: Clare

Nicknames: hops

Hometown: Newark, De

Year: 4th yr Grad

Course: HST

Height: 5'1''

Favorite position: cutter?

Personal strength: yrs of being an athlete

Personal goal: learn to play every position

Favorite ultimate memory: Reading/Hearing the Beaver cheer for the first time (maybe not my favorite memory but a funny one)

Interests besides ultimate: other sports, especially soccer, running, traveling, taking misc humanities classes b/c we don't take enough classes in HST, surviving graduate school

Anything else we should know about you: I played a few games of ultimate with friends in college, but could never *really* get into it. now I am hooked... must be thanks to sMITe!*

Clare is a little speed demon. Watching Clare/Smeri match-ups are the best because they're both so speedy. Clare's also improved so much since she joined sMITe in the fall. I remember the first practice she came to, she got open on everyone but couldn't seem to hold onto the disc. It was also very muddy that day if I remember correctly. But now she gets open on everyone AND catches the disc AND can dump it. All she needs to do now is learn how to throw a forehand :)

A random side note: we were very bad about taking pictures in the fall. I probably have a total of 10 or so pictures of sMITe at tournaments so many of my 'introducting ppl' pictures are going to be team pictures with arrows. Hopefully we'll be better about taking more pictures in the spring. =P

Introducing Emily! and practice yesterday

Name: Emily

Hometown: Chicago, IL

Year: 2012

Course(s): 3, 6

Height: 5'5''

Favorite position(s): popper, deep

Personal strength: running for a really long time

Personal goal (ultimate-related or not): do lots of different things in life

Favorite ultimate memory: layout practice (see pic above!)

Interests besides ultimate: eating

Anything else we should know about you: my favorite color is yellow

Emily is one of those super excited and motivated freshmen that any ultimate team is grateful to have. She's speedy on O, heads up on D, and learns quickly. I'm not sure if she's played ultimate before, but she's quickly shaping up to be a valuable asset on sMITe. The picture above is when Emily was learning how to lay out at Coffee Cup (put your arms out!). Soon she's going to be a layout machine!!!

Yesterday at practice we worked on defense switching on a vertical stack. (Like when you help someone deep and she has you covered under...) Then we learned probably my most favoritest defense in the world: clam! It was really fun and we had a lot of people so all the positions were filled. I hope everyone had fun because I did and I wasn't even playing D. =P Then we played a little keep-away because we only had half the indoor track. I totally got bowled over by Clare (5'1") once after I caught the disc. =P

Then we worked in breaking the mark. Everyone knows that I only really have one break: the low-release forehand, thrown so that I fall over almost every time from being off balance. I'm pretty sure that I travel half the time, I don't know I can't tell. Someone should watch me and tell me.

Anyway, Eugene was trying to help me improve on my backhand breaks. I feel like my pivot and windup to throw a backhand is so slow so even if I try and fake the backhand, it takes so long for me to pivot back to throw the forehand. Any tips? Should I just work on pivoting and winding up faster?

And then after practice I played MacFlugall(?) with a few of the guys and I wasn't the first one out!!

Meerkats!

It's been SO long time since I blogged... But then again it's also been a long time since I played ultimate. :( I went to my first IAP practice yesterday; practices actually started last week but I was in rural Wisconsin teaching middle- and high- school girls and science and engineering. But that's another story altogether.

We had learned I/O and O/I last week so we started off practicing that, and then Jin and Shuang taught everyone how to throw hammers, which was interesting. When I was learning hammers I always thought that it was like a kick serve in tennis, so when I try to teach other people how to throw a hammer the first thing I ask them is, "Do you play tennis?" And they always inevitably say no. Anyway, Jin was telling everyone to practice blades, and then a hammer is just a blade with a little bit of angle on it. I just hope that I won't have to be catching blade-y hammers later on this spring.

The focus of practice was defense so we started off with the mirroring drill. Somehow I was the odd man out so I got Shuangy as my partner. That little girl is fast. And she had this huge mischevous grin on her face the whole time she was cutting around. I was really tired. And it didn't help that I basically didn't do any cardio for the last month and a half.

Then we did another defense drill where you defend the up-the-line cut, then the clear, then the cut from the back of the stack (the one that's really confusing at first). I liked seeing Clare/Smeri match-ups because those two are so ridiculously speedy. It's fun to watch. :)

Scrimmaging was pretty fun. I forgot how much I like playing ultimate :) And we had 6's which was pretty awesome. Everyone was playing hard and making cuts and in general making some pretty sweet plays. A couple sweet plays: Clare burning her defense as she cut deep, Emily, Kelly, and Danielle making really nicely timed cuts, Trisha's hucks are looking really good. I'm really excited for sMITe this spring. :)

In the next few weeks/months we'll be introducing the individuals on sMITe 09 so you guys will know who I'm talking about. But in the meantime, some pictures from Coffee Cup:

Coffee Cup Team
Top: Ethan, Marie, Becky, Heather, Liver, Jin, Shuang
Bottom (all doing the Asian squat, mind you): Mangpo, Emily, Lydia, Karen, Danielle


I believe this picture was taken during a point.
And I believe that Danielle was in during that point.
But I could be wrong...


Emily trying to make a fashion statement.


And now some random pictures...

Babies and duck statues at Boston Public Gardens


Jumping pictures in Boston Commons


Who are you?

You? Him?

He's a panda

You're a panda

What are you going to do big guy?

Sit on me?

(Thanks Yang.)


Meerkats!


They're such conformists.


Cutest fattest baby in the world


Kids are just like little people.


Guess where I'm going to play ultimate soon...??!?!
And guess who I'll be playing with...?!?!?!
(Ignore the sketchy ad on the screen)

Edit: Oh!!! Guess what?!? Bryan and I got a really nice camera so you guys can expect to see a lot more high-quality ultimate action shots. YAY.