A Short List

The Van Buren Boys headed east to Boston last weekend. As so many VBBs have already blogged on what happened, I'll steer this blog in a different direction.

A short recap of the action includes: 10-12 loss to GOAT, the eventual champions, a 11-15 loss to Truck Stop, which wasn't actually that close, a 4-15 loss to Boston, which wasn't actually that close..., a 11-13 loss to Pike, outnumbered in the seventh game of the weekend 9 to 30+ (at one point I counted 7 on the field, 7 on our sideline, and 15+ on their sideline), a win against Mephisto, Zebra Muscles, and HOV. Okay, so the wins are not that impressive, except maybe Mephisto, but only a little.

Thinking to myself on Sunday, I wondered whether The Van Buren Boys would possibly be the 17th best team in the country. So far, dating back to last year at Motown Throwdown, we've handled every non-nationals team, yet lost to all the national qualifiers. Not sure if GOAT even qualified last year, so maybe they are 17th, we're 18th.

Okay, so we only had 13 VBBs, far less than the 25 or 26 we'll have during the year.

So, why is this the short list? Well, on the flight home I thought of a short list of things that The Van Buren Boys need to work on to be more successful this year.

-Guarding dump cuts better
-Poaching without completely losing track of the player you are guarding
-Quit face-guarding in situations where it doesn't help you make a play
-Quit relying on "up" calls
-Play last back a little wiser, we were begging them to score on us at times, and they did
-Less frantic marks
-A better grasp for the rules and the current rules changes
-An unwillingness to allow backfield swings
-Better communication on switches
-More leadership before games, especially on the first one of the day
-Players realizing when they've played too many in a row
-Handlers either committing to cutting upfield, or staying put
-Offensive stacking
-Stack placement on the field
-Stopping roller pulls or letting them go out the back
-Making better throwing decisions
-Condescending to throw to upline 10-yard gainer instead of the 30/70 huck
-Not settling for the 50/50 huck, and even money here is generous
-Cutters not freaking out when they don't catch it in the endzone
-Dump cuts need to happen sooner
-Thowers need to lead the dump cut out into space instead of throw it directly to the dump
-Not side-stacking on the same side of the field that the disc is coming in on
-Attempting some shorter break throws
-More fluid cutting that keeps the disc moving
-Not throwing hammers when it is windy
-Reading the disc and catching it at the height of your jump
-Knowing when you need to attack a disc and when you can let it fall into your hands
-In zone offense, not making a thrower break a mark just to dump the disc backwards
-Not sending so many players deep in zone offense, we played a lot of 5 on 7

Well, that's just a short list of things we need to work on. Luckily, we have one round of practices before the next tournament.

So, that post seemed a little negative, well, it was supposed to be more of a joke. I think we're in good shape, but we do have a lot to work on. We are an athletic team, but not a very fundamentally based team. In a division full of pugilists and prizefighters, we're more of the backyard or bar-room brawler types. Not a whole lot of technical skill, we'll just try to beat you into the ground or get beat trying.