went 3-1 for the day.
http://www.upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=34&id=5900
i'm too tired to say anything else except that i <3 smite.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Introducing: Becky, Ethan, and Agnes
Name: Becky Vasquez
Nickname: none
Hometown: Seminole, FL
Year: 2012 (Freshman)
Course: 2
Height: 5'3"
Favorite Position: Cutter
Personal strength: cant think of one \\ what?! there are so many!
Personal goal: learn how to pull
Favorite ultimate memory: playing savage the second day of lemony fresh (i think that was the one)
Other interests besides ultimate: reading, knitting, other crafty creative things
I can think of many of Becky's strengths! (I can't believe she said she can't think think of one.) Becky is one of our amazing first-year players this year. She's highly committed to the team and she's a fast learner. In zone D Becky gets a lot of Ds as a wing. On offense, she's a great cutter and has a high percentage of catches. She started filling in as handler during practices and she does really well in communicating as a dump and getting the disc back from a cutter.
Name: Kelly Casteel
Nickname: Ethan
Hometown: Falls Church, VA
Year: sophomore
Course: 3 (finally)
Height: 5'5"
Favorite position: handling in a ho-stack
Personal strength: I can catch one handed pretty well. I'm also good at being indecisive
Personal goal: Pay more attention to my surroundings
Favorite ultimate memory: That time Shan threw a high release backhand to Veena and we scored on BruteSquad
Other interests besides ultimate: not programming FORTRAN, bikes
Ethan's the quirky one on the team... always up to something... the other day she got herself locked out of her room so she came to practice in normal clothes. There are many other stories, I'm just forgetting them all right now. Anyway, Ethan has improved immensely this year. As a handler-in-training her dump cuts have gotten better and she has some pretty nice one-handed grabs when it comes down to it. On defense, she's an effective wing and on man D, she has good positioning/bodying.
Name: Agnes Chang
Nicknames: Aggie/Eggi, Angie, and a few non-English ones
Hometown: Currently Taipei, Taiwan. It's moved around a good bit.
Year: 1st year graduate student.
Course(s): Media Arts & Sciences
Height: 5'9" thereabouts.
Favorite position(s): mid? not sure. TBD.
Personal strength: patience, analyzing (over-analyzing? heh), and remembering useless details while forgetting useful ones
Personal goal: travel extensively and see a lot of things; maybe start a school someday
Favorite ultimate memory: unexpectedly scoring my first point by finding myself randomly in the right place at the right time
Interests besides ultimate: traveling, languages, baking, biking, music;
Anything else we should know about you: Prior to ultimate, Agnes has never done anything more intense than swimming or cycling, and she is really thankful for the support and community from sMITe. She hopes she can soon discover/develop her strengths to better help the team (and stop being a deadweight ASAP!).
Agnes has improved so much this year in every aspect of ultimate: catching, cutting, running, running in the cup, throwing. She's heads-up on offense and uses her height to catch a lot of discs (which probably contributed to her favorite ultimate memory of unexpected scoring.) I'm excited to see her play this weekend.
Sectionals brackets are up! http://www.upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=34&id=5900
Btw they're in Burlington, MA this Sat/Sun... come watch us play!
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Round Robin
So we played in a round robin today instead of UMass. It was Northeastern, Williams, Tufts, and Dartmouth. It was windy and rainy and miserable all day. After our first game against Northeastern, we cut all our games short and didn't even play the last one (against Tufts). There was a lot of throws that got eaten by the wind and lots of zone O and zone D by everyone. I don't really have much to say but good job to sMITe for braving the crappy conditions and still playing hard every point for the entire day. I hope everyone is warm and dry now :)
On another note, Hatch has a website now! We do exist!
http://sites.google.com/site/hatchultimate/Home
On another note, Hatch has a website now! We do exist!
http://sites.google.com/site/hatchultimate/Home
Friday, April 10, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
Scrimmage against BU
It was warm, about mid-50s with ~20 mph gusty winds. We had about 13 people come out to the scrimmage. We worked on vert-stack, zone-O, and man D going upwind and trap zone and ho-stack going downwind.
Vertical: Improved throughout the game but we still need to work on basic things like stacking in the middle of the field, spreading out the stack, and not stacking too deep, esp because we were going upwind. Our cuts could look sharper too.
Horizontal: I like our ho-stack much more than I did at the beginning of the year. Our ho-stack looks really good, people are mirroring each other and not cutting each other off (most of the time). Sometimes we still have trouble starting too far from the handlers.
Zone-O: Handlers did a good job of swinging and making the cup run. I think they were trapping but it was pretty easy to break them. Amy had some really nice cross-field throws to the other handler/wing. We need to be more patient and not throwing risky throws up-field (up-wind). The poppers need to be doing a better job of moving to find holes in the cup.
Zone-D: We practiced both trap and FM. Downfield D looked pretty good. The wings/short deep/deep deep did a good job of passing people off and manning up on everyone down field. I esp like playing with Trisha when she's a wing and I'm a short deep or deep deep because she's assertive on the field and communicates well. Our cup movement could be a little better, cutting off the throw back to the handler when we're trapping and having a better mark. Also, we haven't talked about this, but our cup double-teams a lot. This means that the two people not marking needs to position themselves so that they're 10-ft away. I saw a few times that the on-point stepped off when double team was called and that's just silly. Also, when double-team is called, the stall drops two counts. Don't get phased and don't stop marking, just drop two stall counts. Same thing with disc space.
Man D: Oh, man D, the demise of this team. I think for the most part the mark knew the force and was forcing the correct way, but we need to be on our toes more because we did get broken around a lot this game. Although our man D has improved a lot since Easterns and Yale cup, we still get beat to the force side frequently. Also, man D is a code word for team D. We need to help each other out deep.
All in all, a pretty fun game... some noteworthy memorable things:
Anyway, Jin was saying that I fake too early and so by the time my dump is open my mark has already shifted to take away that backhand dump. So during this game I've been working on faking forehands (more like waving my wrist around like I'm going to throw a forehand) and then stepping over quickly to throw the backhand dump only after I see that the dump is open. And it works so well!!! I think I got it off the line every time I did it (probably 4 times during the game). And Amy/Trisha did a great job of swinging it as well. Ok I don't know why it took me so long to learn this but I'm feeling like it's my biggest accomplishment this year. =D I feel liberated, like I'm no longer scared of being trapped on the sideline anymore!
Vertical: Improved throughout the game but we still need to work on basic things like stacking in the middle of the field, spreading out the stack, and not stacking too deep, esp because we were going upwind. Our cuts could look sharper too.
Horizontal: I like our ho-stack much more than I did at the beginning of the year. Our ho-stack looks really good, people are mirroring each other and not cutting each other off (most of the time). Sometimes we still have trouble starting too far from the handlers.
Zone-O: Handlers did a good job of swinging and making the cup run. I think they were trapping but it was pretty easy to break them. Amy had some really nice cross-field throws to the other handler/wing. We need to be more patient and not throwing risky throws up-field (up-wind). The poppers need to be doing a better job of moving to find holes in the cup.
Zone-D: We practiced both trap and FM. Downfield D looked pretty good. The wings/short deep/deep deep did a good job of passing people off and manning up on everyone down field. I esp like playing with Trisha when she's a wing and I'm a short deep or deep deep because she's assertive on the field and communicates well. Our cup movement could be a little better, cutting off the throw back to the handler when we're trapping and having a better mark. Also, we haven't talked about this, but our cup double-teams a lot. This means that the two people not marking needs to position themselves so that they're 10-ft away. I saw a few times that the on-point stepped off when double team was called and that's just silly. Also, when double-team is called, the stall drops two counts. Don't get phased and don't stop marking, just drop two stall counts. Same thing with disc space.
Man D: Oh, man D, the demise of this team. I think for the most part the mark knew the force and was forcing the correct way, but we need to be on our toes more because we did get broken around a lot this game. Although our man D has improved a lot since Easterns and Yale cup, we still get beat to the force side frequently. Also, man D is a code word for team D. We need to help each other out deep.
All in all, a pretty fun game... some noteworthy memorable things:
- Clare running backwards to catch the disc over her head and then falling over (but still holding on to the disc!)
- I D'ed some girl a head taller than me when I was playing deep deep
- Kelly R made some really good in-cuts.
- On the sideline: Dump to Amy, swing to Trisha, break to Kelly(?) for the score.
- Our endzone worked multiple times. (horray!)
Anyway, Jin was saying that I fake too early and so by the time my dump is open my mark has already shifted to take away that backhand dump. So during this game I've been working on faking forehands (more like waving my wrist around like I'm going to throw a forehand) and then stepping over quickly to throw the backhand dump only after I see that the dump is open. And it works so well!!! I think I got it off the line every time I did it (probably 4 times during the game). And Amy/Trisha did a great job of swinging it as well. Ok I don't know why it took me so long to learn this but I'm feeling like it's my biggest accomplishment this year. =D I feel liberated, like I'm no longer scared of being trapped on the sideline anymore!
Introducing Heather!
Name: Heather Beem
Nicknames: H-Beem, Beemer
Hometown: Norman, OK
Year: 1st year Grad
Course: 2
Height: 5’3” \\ Heather! Are you sure you're only 5'3"?!?! Or did you mistype 5'6" on the numpad?
Favorite position(s): Deep, though my answer to the last question sometimes hinders my skill at this. I’m learning to handle now too!
Personal strength: Endurance
Personal goal: Get faster, more agile, and consistently throw well, even under pressure.
Favorite ultimate memory: Beating a team of super-athletic “Amazon women” to win the intramural ultimate championship in undergrad.
Interests besides ultimate: Music, traveling, exploring
Anything else we should know about you: I’m the first asian cowgirl you’ve met. (Seriously, the cowboy was my mascot in undergrad)
Heather is a great cutter and is always open, both in and away. And she always makes amazing catches - either really graceful one-handed catches for high discs in the end zone or sliding catches in the mud. And the fact that she can huck makes her an even more valuable cutter. She's also reliable as a handler in zone. So as you can see, she can play everything. =P
On zone defense, Heather plays in the cup and I think she's starting to play a little deep deep as well. She's never-tiring and always has a positive attitude on the field.
Heather played a couple years of ultimate at Oklahoma where she went to undergrad. Not sure how many years she has left.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
