IT'S A GREAT DAY FOR ULTIMATE!!!: 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