This past weekend, I traveled to UCSB to coach the new B-team from UC Irvine. Of the 15 players , most were new to the game while a handful of players were 2nd or 3rd year handlers who had played with UCI the past couple seasons. As a first time coach, I didn't know what to expect from the team as we only had 2 full practices before this tournament.
Overall it was a very fun but challenging endeavor. I have captained teams before and tried to make necessary adjustments, but the most difficult part was figuring out the best way to communicate positive adjustments to the team and through the captains. I believe that yes although I am a coach, that most of the tweaking and motivating comes from the captains who did a top-notch job at leading through example. The captaining core of Scott Lem, Travis Lee, and Adam Silver surpassed my expectations and there were many times where Steve and I wouldn't have to say anything during a time-out or post-game because the three of them, including Perry covered it all eloquently and succinctly.
In addition to gaining valuable experience through game-time experience, the members of the team also had a lot of fun off the field and most felt like it was the most fun tournament they had played in at UCI. (Woo hoo!). Things that I want to continue to work on are situation adjustments, or non-adjustments, reading overall team attitude, and to maintain professionalism and respect for my players as well as those on the other team. I don't want to be the "bad guy' coach that relies on discipline to get my players to do what I want to do. I'd rather have the guys do things on their own motivation while showing me the same respect that I show to them.
This will be a huge learning experience for me and after one weekend of coaching, I'm already viewing Ultimate in a different light.
In other results, NightLife-A (UCI), rolled their way to the finals only to be taken out by Chico State 12-14. I hear that it was a very heated game with many calls and what not, but despite being a very disappointing result, I felt like NightLife played very well and show a lot of potential to grow during the course of the year.
On the women's side, the big surpise was San Diego State. The 6-seed overall going into the qualifier, they rolled off big wins over UCLA-Y (13-3), Stanford-B (13-5), and Davis-B (13-2). They also won over a very suspicious UCSB-"B" 14-8, only to lose in the finals to Sonoma State. They seem to have a stable but ever-growing program that has shown recent success on top of a very good year last year. I'm sure having my buddy Spencer Barr coaching them has something to do with the recent and sustained success. Although they missed the SB Invitational by a couple of points, look for them to make some noise at College Trouble in Vegas and then in a very difficult women's section and region.
update: Women's division winners Sonoma State has chosen not to accept the free bid to SB Invite. SDSU will now be going. Congrats! [updated 1:30pm]
5 days of work... and then LEI-OUT 2010, Santa Monica Beach, CA.
Till next time,
-Hammie #10
1 comment:
Sonoma state was never planning on going to the Invite. This is the second year they've done that because the invite is on their move in weekend. They got an actual invite this year and are good.
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