"What's a crop?"

Posted by Bill

Great game of 7 on 7 yesterday. The wind was blowing 15-20 mph and we really had to work on our short game but the teams were pretty well balanced and play was good.

Strong winds don’t deter some people from trying long passes. Your's truly got one to sail nicely early in the game and it wound up going off Brook’s fingertips in the end zone but encouraged by that near miss I kept hucking away, at one stretch about 4 times in a row down the field trying to hit Tim with one as he seemingly kept sneaking behind the defense. But either the wind would pick it up or I’d turn over the flick, or zip one into the defender’s arms and never found much success with that. Of course I was relieved to see I wasn’t the only one having trouble. JQ let loose with one of his golf slice shots that he likes to start out of bounds and come slicing back in to a man running deep…well it sliced back in, all the way across the field, and then all the way out on the other side…mad wind!

So he and Bob tried to stick to their short game for the most part and handled well, feeding Hollan, Tom, Erik, Jason & Fred as they found lanes to cut in.

There was some really good defense being played yesterday and even when you thought you had a throw in, sometimes the wind would hold it up long enough for the defender to get there. Phil made a great play on one nice zip throw from Bob to a cutting JQ in the corner and got his hand up to knock it down.

For the gold team, Rodney did manage to find Thunder early in the game for a nice mid length score that looked like it was headed over Scott’s head until he jumped a little, got a hand up, deflected the disc and it came down in his arms as he tumbled to the ground. And Mike at one point, after some frustrating discs off fingertips and throws in the wind, triumphantly spiked the disc after a score late in the game.

We tried to use the windy day to work on some formations and mechanics but when two of the more “experienced” players shouted back to directions of “force middle” and “shift force” ….” What’s the middle?” and “Shift what?” I realized that maybe we hadn’t practiced either of those things much or Rodney and Phil’s collective ability to pay attention was waning.

I was reminded of the scene in “Field of Dreams” with Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella and his ruthless, foreclosing brother-in-law Mark:

Mark: "Admit it, Ray. You've never liked farming."

Ray Kinsella: "That's not true."

Mark:"It is true. You don't know the first thing about farming."

Ray Kinsella: "Yes I do. I know a lot about farming. I know more than you think I know."

Mark: "Then how could you plow under your major crop?"

Ray Kinsella:"What's a crop?"

Uh….”What’s a force?”

For the sake of the discussion…in general terms the word “force” refers to the direction you are either trying to get the handler to look to throw, or the direction you are trying to make the person you are covering run to. And usually, the marker is trying to force the handler to throw to the middle as the rest of the defense forces the cutters to a respective sideline.

Then you have commands like “switch force” which you can use if the marker is forcing to sideline to get them to move their force direction for a few seconds so that the defender can catch up to a cutter that may be headed for that sideline, especially near the end zone. The basic idea is to force a team to throw a long ways across the field.

Maybe we’ll take 5-10 minutes prior to game time today and just work on a couple formations.

Thanks everybody for a great game yesterday. Weather is going to be perfect today. PULL!