commissioner conflict

This ESPN article describes really well how the NFL players feel about Commissioner Goodell. I'm glad they were able to find players that can describe their feelings about him without reverting to name calling (James Harrison is a great player, but seriously Harrison you shouldn't be allowed to speak to the media anymore about stuff like this). Goodell needs to learn how to gain the respect of the players. Right now he doesn't seem to care what the players have to say about anything, which you think would be counterintuitive considering what his job is. I'm not asking for him to be best friends with all the players, but you'd think that he'd at least look to gain the respect of the guys that are actually playing the sport.

ninja volleyball?

I'm half convinced this is made up, but possibly the most amazing thing ever

iron man

So there was a 2 hour documentary on tv today following various stories of people who participated in the 2010 Iron Man in Hawaii. It was really amazing stuff. It of course followed some of those elite athletes who won and were really competitive in the race. But it wasn't the stories of those guys that I enjoyed watching.

I really loved hearing about all the "normal" or "average-joe" people that entered the race. Mainly because those are the ones that we can actually relate to. Racing isn't their career, it's just something they really want to do. There's a few stories about a guy who survived cancer, another one who had a heart transplant, a hard working mother of 4, and my personal favorite Lew Hollander who completed his 21st Iron Man last year. He's quite a sight to behold, because he's got the greatest mentality of keep on trucking even if he's 80. I met one of those at the sprint triathlon I did this past May, which leads me to believe that that's the mentality of their generation.

They did a great job at the end, especially, showing all the normal people who were finishing around the midnight cut off point. There's something about seeing those people push through all that pain and insane 16-17 hours of swimming/biking/running. Even though I know that I'll probably never be able to do something like that it's cool to think about it.

USA!! USA!!

wow! Did you see that women's soccer game vs. Brazil? I was 9 years old when the 1999 women's team won the world cup and I've still got the Mia Hamm jersey hanging in my closet to prove it. As a soccer player at that time, I loved that time and remember every minute of it. I really hope this 2011 team does that same thing. I'm thinking Abby Wambach and Hope Solo are the new Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly. But seriously the game is on again at 11/12 central time tonight, so watch it, it's amazing. Go USA!

By the way, have you noticed that USA seems to care more about the women's world cup team then about the men's? I think that's the one major sport in the United States where you can a women's team is cared about more then a men's. It's probably because the women's team has actually won a world cup, but that's neither here nor there.

just for fun

well...whatever floats your boat. My favorite part was when the dad said "Very proud of my son, that’s why we sent him to college, to play Quidditch"

ultimate frisbee: offense

Alright here's the basics of ultimate offense. First off, there's 7 players on each team. The players on the field are split into handlers and cutters. For the most part there's 3 handlers and 4 cutters.

Handlers: handlers in general tend to be the brains of the operation and the safety net for other players to throw to if nobody else is open. They're kind of like the QB of a football team except they have to work together really well. Handlers usually have the ability to huck (throw far down the field) both forehand and backhand. They do less running than the cutters, but are always looking and reading the other players movements. It's every players job to know how fast other teammates can run/what kind of cuts they make so that they can place the disc perfectly, but handlers are especially responsible for this. For the most part they line up perpendicular with the long end of the field.

Depending on where the disc is on the field/who has it, the handlers switch among themselves. They switch between the left/middle/right positions. It's their job to "swing" the disc, which means that they pass the disc laterally between them to get the disc from left-right and visa vera. This allows cutters to get open on both sides of the field and makes the defense run that much more.

They look down the field for open cutters, and hopefully are able to get it down field. Because it's common sense that you can throw the frisbee across the field as much as you want, but that doesn't help you get it down field to the end zone. Once they get it to the cutter it's the cutters job to either throw it back to a handler, who has hopefully run up even with the cutter, or if they're good enough to look down the field to an open cutter. But, it's the handlers job to be there as a safety net if the cutter can't find another cutter to throw to. The disc will go back to the handler who can throw it to a handler on the L/R side and the process starts all over again.

When it comes down to it, good handlers make a great team. You can't expect to win games if you don't have handlers who can't swing the disc and huck it down field. I once played with a handler who wasn't very fast at all, but she could always anticipate where the disc was going to be. She was always the best player on the team because of this fact; she knew where to be at the right time. Even though every player benefits from being fast, it's not as necessary for handlers as it is for cutters.

Seeing how long this took to explain I'll cover the role of the cutters in a future post. At later dates I'll go over: offensive and defensive plays, types of throws, and probably random facts about frisbee.

ultimate frisbee

Given that I played ultimate frisbee for Mizzou for a year and a half, I figured I'd spend a few posts talking about the ins and outs of ultimate. It's my favorite game to play cause all you need is a disc, field, and some friends. I hope by the end of it you will understand that organized games require a lot of skill, anticipation, teamwork, and amazing cardio. Ultimate is so much more than just running around trying to catch a frisbee. i'll probably split it into offense/defense/tournaments/miscellaneous. So be expecting those sometime in the next few weeks