Thursday, October 15, 2009

First sMITe practice! (for me)

New drill!: Give and go
I learned a new drill today! The goal of this drill, which I'm calling "give and go" is to work on quick releases and moving right after you throw (at least, that's what I got out of it). With a buddy, set up how you would set up in the yo-yo drill (or V-cut drill). If you don't know what either of those are, don't worry about it. Let's call the thrower Smeri and the cutter Doris. :)

Doris and Smeri set up about 10-15 yards away from each other. Doris makes a cut towards Smeri and Smeri throws it to her. Smeri immediately makes a "up-the-line" cut for Doris and Doris throws a short away-pass to her. Then Doris immediately sets up another in-cut and cuts in towards Smeri, again planting on the same foot. Smeri throws to her in-cut and immediately goes up the line for Doris. And so on and so forth. At first it looked really confusing and probably sounds even more confusing when you're reading it now (it did for me when I re-read my post), but it's not all that hard and when done right it actually looks really cool. Make sure you switch positions and then also switch the foot that you're cutting off of.

When you're throwing to the up-the-line cut, focus on leading the person you're throwing to (i.e. throw to space). It's easier for a person to see the disc and run it down rather than chasing something that's thrown "behind" them. In other words, throw to where they'll be by the time the disc gets there. After you throw, make sure to move immediately. In a game situation, when you move immediately after you throw, usually your mark isn't ready to follow yet and you can get a few steps on your defender! (A personal favorite of mine)

Next drill: 3 on 3, stall at 5
For the next drill we split up into teams of 3 and just played 3 on 3 from one endzone to the other. Offense can start wherever they want. Stall count was 5 and if the offense dropped the disc, they just picked it up and kept going. The goals of this drill was again to work on quick releases and moving immediately after you throw. Because the stall is at 5 and there is only 3 people on each team, everyone has to be cutting at all times. Fun times! :)

Scrimmage!
We started our scrimmage with 5s. Highlights included Clare's run-through D on Smeri on the first pass of the scrimmage, Mangpo's amazing 2-handed claw catches while jumping a foot of the ground, nice sharp in-cuts from Cindy, and seeing a lot of people like Heather, Daisy, and Anna step up as handlers. So exciting to see!

Home for me
I'm going home next Monday for a week and half. Hopefully that's enough time for my hamstring to heal. I played a game with Skoosh tonight and I realized that it still hurts when I sprint all out for more than 10 yards. :(