Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Mark me tight - Shame on you

Marking is one of the most fascinating elements of defense. What can one person do in preventing the next throw from going to specific spots on the field? Plus who doesn't like seeing a nice hand or foot block.

Pictured Above: A few of us at a tournament in Binghampton, NY (2006). From left to right: me, Tim Fowler, Dante Reino, Tim Chapman-Smith, Norman Farb, Taylor Martin, and Alex Schneider. We had a +40 differential Saturday and then they cancelled the tournament.

One of the dimensions of marking that seems to be the norm with some people is disc space. I find that many players are literally rubbing and humping the thrower with agressive marks.

Depending on the thrower and the level of play they will either accept this tight mark and reciprocate it or veterans will use the tight mark as an opportunity to reset the count any time they like. On the extreme and at lower levels, some throwers will get quite upset with the actual contact.

Regardless, as a coach/captain one thing that drives us crazy is watching a tight mark get the count up to about 5 or 6 and then the mark being too aggressive and causing a foul that allows the count to be reset. Of anything to ask your players, is to give space at a high count and avoid contact on a pressure throw since in many cases these are the situations which result in a turnover. A foul is a get out of jail free card that you can't afford to give away.

PJ

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been trying to work on stepping back from the mark at Stall 6 or 7, you have the really tight mark up until then, back off, and watch as the thrower loses his "free pass."

Peter whats your thought on throwing through a tight mark and calling foul as you throw it? Against the spirit of the game?

Peter Andrew Jamieson said...

To Oliver...it's a tough skill to learn to be calm around crazy marks. Drilling might help like three-man. One of the benefits of a tight mark is they're ussually easy to break. This can shutup a mark pretty quickly.

To Rahil...Tight marks are against the spirit of the game, so throwing through one doesn't seem unreasonable. But do two wrongs make a right.

PJ