This weekend, Torontula headed back to Bowling Green for a college tournament. We also went to Bowling Green last spring and had a spectacular time. The same was true this year. The fields are good, the hotel is very close to the fields, the competition is reasonable, the food options are great, and Bowling Green just seems like a nice place with nice people. I've never been downtown Bowling Green, but the University area is nice.
Pictured Above: At CUUC'07 Morgan receiving a pass with Inian chasing. I'm in the foreground (Photo courtesy of Kirsten Taylor).Unfortunately, we could only scrounge up 11 guys to go to this tournament. I decided I would make a run at playing every point for the whole tournament. I got close, but the increased competition in the finals against the eventual winners, Bowling Green Alumni (13-12), caused my knee to hyper-extend on point 115. I played a few more points when our guys had injuries, but that was about all my body could take. Oddly enough, I don't feel more sore than after any other tournament this year and less sore than my first tournament of the year.
The most interesting thing about the whole experience was how the quality of my play decreased in relation to the more fatigued I got. This included poorer throw execution and worse decision making. I've noticed this effect in the past, and many people have pointed out the correlation between fatigue and performance, but during this experience I felt and saw how fatigue hurt my game.
I made some horrible decisions on the second day against Michigan B (in the quarters). In general, our whole team was making bad decisions in this game. Caffeine helped clear up my mind, and a focused effort on simplification of choices also helped improve this area of my game. My throws, however, did not improve even after a concerted effort to focus on execution. This doesn't mean I was missing my target, but the usual touch and accuracy that I put my throws was not there. This made each throw a little harder for the receiver to catch and in some cases resulted in drops.
Overall, I was just surprised on how much fatigue changed how I could play. Going to extremes illustrated this, and I wonder in other situations how the errors may be due to fatigue that is not so obvious. I guess I have another motivator for how important conditioning is.
PJ
2 comments:
I can agree about the effect of fatigue on the decision making and on throws. I can't say, however, that I've ever felt so sore in my life.
what i found interesting is that my field of vision completely shrank the more tired i got. thinking about it after, by the end i couldn't see anything more than 10 - 20 metres ahead of me - although that may also be the limits of my throws.
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