Captaining my first team

Several months ago, a friend of mine whom I play pick-up with asked me if I wanted to help him captain the team in the upcoming Chino Hills Fall League. At first I was a bit apprehensive, figuring that I was comfortable with taking a back-seat role on the team and just playing and not worrying about the "captainy" aspects of Ultimate. However; as I thought about it, the more I was up for the challenge and eventually accepted the offer.

So I've been playing competitive ultimate for about 3.5 years now, and it's amazing to look back and see how far I've actually developed in terms of my field sense, disc handling, etc. One thing I didn't put an emphasis on in terms of my development as an ultimate player was leadership. Most people don't really know that I played high school volleyball at the varsity level for 4 years and captained the team my senior year. I knew what it was like to lead a team through tough situations and to encourage unity in a team oriented sport. I believe the reason that I didn't have a desire to lead an ultimate team in the years past was based on the fact that I didn't know enough to lead. Ultimate was and is still pretty novel to me and even now I am still trying to understand offensive strategies and what not. I was the wide-eyed, confused little handler who got ridiculously confused while playing and I had to learn the most out of my mistakes.

Fast forward 3 years later, and I've had that much more experience playing with teams such as UCI, LA Metro, and countless pick-up teams. I picked up as much as I could, learning from the various captains and leaders of the teams I was a part of. When asked to captain this team of pick-up players known as "rocket-sauce," I had to really think about it. This was a group of huge variety, ranging from new first-time players, to people in their 40's who have been playing ultimate for longer than I've been alive. There was a wide range of skill levels, styles of play, and mentalities on this team and I knew that the hardest part would be to get our team playing well together.

We're playing our last league game this friday for 3rd place. We put up a regular season record of 4-2 and lost in the semi-finals 12-15. We did have loose practices, with several drills putting emphasis on dump swings, breaking the mark, and end zone options but for the most part, the work was all done in-game.  The difficulty for me was in calling lines. I had never called lines before and now realize how much is needed to call the right line and the right moment. I had to think about who had which throws, who was fresh, who was playing well, who wasn't... and trying to find a good dynamic with the team. Getting everyone playing time was most important, but I still wanted to call lines that made the most sense for the moment.

Then there was dealing with the heated moments. We weren't playing well, we were dropping, throwing things away, etc. etc. I had maybe 4 or 5 other people telling me what we were doing wrong, what we needed to do... many of those ideas conflicting with each other. I remember calling time out and telling everyone to just breathe. Slow it down and we'll figure this out. 

Didn't work...

Some players were still hot-headed and getting on my case for not putting on the right match-ups, or not exploiting their weaknesses, calling the wrong lines, etc. It was a rough night for me and even though we lost that game, I don't think I would have handled it any differently. I learned a lot from that night, that I can't deal with every single person in the same manner. I'm a guy who's all for teaching through encouragement and discipline, however I realized with some people, I need to be more firey with. It's all about finding a way to get your team to buy into your system and to execute it with them knowing that it works. 

Being in the leadership role for a team isn't easy, and I'm still learning to lead by example on and off the field. I hope one day to be able to captain another group and I still have Rocketsauce this coming quarter to captain. I'll definitely be open to criticism, encouragement, and tips of the art of captaining an ultimate team. I'll keep ya'll posted. Till then, listen to your captains. Play hard, do it for your team.

-Hammie