Practice (3/28)

This was our first full outdoor practice of the spring, and the first practice any NYU ultimate team had ever held at McCarren Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. To my pleasant surprise, we had a full, let field for two-plus hours, which is unheard of in Manhattan without a permit. Granted, the field was mostly dirt, but after playing ultimate in the city for six years, I was thankful for the space.

After throwing and running, we ran the Carleton dump-swing drill for about 20 minutes. It's a good drill because, as its name suggests, players get to throw a lot of dump-swing passes, and there's a lot of running involved so it's a good workout as well. But it takes a while to get the hang of, especially for newer players, so after about 5 minutes of poor cuts and throwaways, Ken and I would stop each group if they made a single error and we would make them go to the back of the line. Once we started doing that, the players had a real incentive to pay attention and concentrate on the footwork and timing. Sure enough, the started improving a fast rate.

Next we worked on the footwork and timing of the butterfly cuts. We also threw in some continuations and dishies. Hopefully we cleared up some of the confusion regarding the cuts. The handlers were still shaky though Krisztina and especially Lisa got off some very nice hucks.

Our third drill was a simple huck drill since reading and tracking deep throws has been a problem for our cutters all year long.

With several players needing to leave early, we spent the last 15 minutes of practice reviewing our pull play. We had two teams of 6, and each team received 5 pulls. It was pretty sloppy, definitely not nearly as good as their capable of running the play.