Link Friday - Why we play, math minds, and banking humorless

There are some good links out there:

• [Featured Blog] check out Lion-Shark: An Ultimate Blog.
• [Featured Tournament] ffindr.com is adding results to tournaments (for example Disco Inferno). I'm hoping to see some integration with the score reporter, which is my preferred scoring database.
  
• Excellent article on some thoughts on why we play Ultimate.
• For those of you who've never understood implies well (one of those things that I never really got), take a look at this great book on "how to think like a mathematician". I don't know if this pdf will be around forever.
• Finally, some humor that sadly is funny...

PJ

Poll Thursday - Logo nogo, onto the College season

In the end:

• UNT takes the college division. Either one or more supporters were willing to click and click again for the victory. That's commitment.
• Blackfish edges out Monster in the open category.
• Guillermo Y Compania takes the UPA championship category. If anyone has some pictures of the logo on their jersey, I would be interested in seeing it.

That being said, all of these logos on Jerseys would be interesting. My personal favourite (after my old favourite Sub Zero logo) is El Diablo's, and I'm glad they took the best of the rest round.

Sometime in the future I'll have a contest between these 3 finalists, but back to my standard poll questions: When do you think is reasonable time to run the next logo battle (poll right).

PJ

That Guy - Hidden Superstars

I've been quite busy with work and interviews, and sadly my dreams are filled with thoughts of simulated and annealing instead of Ultimate cuts and theory. For this reason, more of my ideas are coming in another field at present, so don't expect too much brilliance from me.

Fortunately, various readers pass on tips and articles that they think others might be interested in. If you're up for a long read, then check out this article on Shane Battier of the Houston Rockets (tip David Sheffield). I've only made it one page into the article, but the mood suggests we're getting into methods of identifying key players without the standard statistical or heroic play.

I've alluded to the other end of this problem in Ultimate. The guy who always gets the flashy D, but is likely poaching or gives away every other easy in cut. More important is identifying the quiet guys who shut down their man or make a key cut to open space. I'm sure we've all felt like we were doing the right things and not being acknowledged for it. The bigger question is how do coaches and teammates recognize these contributions, so the player isn't lost or deemed unworthy.

PJ

Link Friday - Very quiet on the link front

Pretty quiet on the link front, and I've been busy. My links this week are:

• [Feature Tournament] - I'm heading off to Ohio for an interview soon, and one of the most famous tournaments from the area - Poultry Days.
• An interesting up-date on Wisconsin/Sub Zero happenings here.

PJ

Poll Thursday - Logo Battle Finals

El Diablo wins the best of my rest from last week. Onto the finals:

College Division:
UNT
Caltech Women

Open Division:
Monster (Fall series)
Blackfish

UPA Championships:

Guillermo Y Compania
Alpha Cobra Squad

PJ

Coaching Emulation - Part "A" of the equation

In the past few articles, I've been focusing on emulating coaches that you like to help you become a good coach. That's all good, but the one person you should really breakdown and emulate is - no not yourself - your best teachers. The teacher that inspired you and taught you how to do something so you understood it after working at it for a while uses key skills that you'll need to be a good coach.
The reason that teaching is so important is a huge portion of coaching, at the level we will likely coach, will be teaching. This means, that you need to learn teaching skills to the range of learners out there. You have to motivate them to learn. You have to push them through the tough times. Probably hardest of all, you have to break down skills into teachable parts. It's not easy.

I've had a number of teachers throughout my life. No one in particular comes out as the best teacher to emulate, but collectively I've observed their approaches to teaching ad evaluated how successful they are.

If coaching is your goal, then start observing both the taught and teaching. These free observations can potentially show you how to approach the teaching side to coaching. Talk to teachers and ask them about common problems. How do you motivate? How do you convey difficult subjects? How much preparation do you need to do?

PJ

WINNER Announced - CO's first competition

As I posted in early November that I was having a contest for logo design for either The Friars or the blog (The Cultimate Opinion). Well, I chose a concept design by Matrhew Peerce as the winner. I'll be working on making some jerseys with this design and shipping one to Matt for his efforts. You can see a version of the logo below:


I liked the look of it, and I think a stain glass entry also would have caught my eye. I plan on making black jerseys with the logo on the front and some writing and a number on the back.

Congratulations Matt.

Also, if anyone comes up with a logo for the blog that I like, then I'll also send a shirt your way.

PJ

Link Friday - Hodag Jerseys and Jerkhacker

Links this week:

• [Featured Tournament] Happening this weekend: Trouble in Vegas.
  
• Consider ordering a Wisconson Hodag Jersey in their upcoming order.
• Airplane hack or as they call it Jerkhacker. This idea is brilliant...and if you're one of those recli
  
• Making your own 3-D camera. Not sure if this would be great for Ultimate, but some DIYer could give it a run:
  

PJ

Poll Thursday - Logo Battle prelude to the finals

Results are in. Yes they're fixed, but it's all in good fun, and it's more about exposing some of the logos you might see on the field around the world. I'll have the final poll next week.

In the college division:
UNT vs. Caltech Women - in the battle of the vote fix

In the open division:
Balckfish vs. Monster

In the UPA Championship Division:
Guillermo Y Compania vs. Alpha Cobra Squad

This week I'll have a vote for my personal favourites (minus GOAT and Sub Zero) that didn't make it further in the votes:

El Diablo

Ring of Fire

SD united

RPI

PJ

Statistical Coaches to Emulate - is it for Ultimate?

As much as I look to famous coaches to learn from them, the ones I really get excited about are ones such as Billy Beane of the Oakland A's who was made even more famous with the book "Moneyball". These are the guys who leverage science and mathematics to get an advantage in sport.

The new coach for the Detroit Lions NFL team, Jim Schwartz (this article) , fits into this category as the guys who study the numbers and its relation to the games they're involved with. This area of sport application fascinates me. I hope to make the field one of my research streams as I become a faculty member at a University.

Does it apply to Ultimate? Well, one challenge, as many have discussed before, is the lack of collected data for our sport. Baseball, the favourite for sabermetric research, is a game with many head to head battles that can be quantized. Football has clear stoppages that also can be quantified. Smooth flowing, lower scoring games such as hockey, football (soccer), and Ultimate are harder to quantize.

Flowing sports tend to place more value on systems and human intuition in analyzing what and how to achieve goals. Is there a way to capture this intuition quantitively? I have some ideas, but the unknown makes this area fascinating. Thoughts? Collaborations?

PJ

Coaching by emulating

Last week I talked about becoming a coach and some simple advice on the process. If you're interested in coaching Ultimate and you do what I do with my interests, then you search out information and people to emulate who have success in the area. For example, when I was in love with basketball, I used to read autobiographies for players and coaches in search of what made them great. I, clearly, remember reading anything I could find on Zen Budhism because of Kareem Abdul Jabbar.


Unfortunately, in Ultimate we don't have a huge range of people to emulate (with the exception of a few such as Tiina Booth, Michael Baccarini, and Matty Tsang) and the few we do, we're not likely to have regular access to. This reminds me of two of the autobiographies I read in my basketball days - Pat Riley's and Phil Jackson's.

My feeling with these autobiographies is they may give you some nuggets on how to manage superstars, but as I previously discussed we're not likely to be coaching in that domain. Instead, we might want to be looking to emulate coaches at lower levels.

One article I read was about Pat Summit. She seems like a great candidate to study. She took over the Tennessee ladies basketball team and has built a program that stands supreme in the world of College sports.

The best quote from the article is:
“This job is all about the relationships,” Summitt said, “so obviously that’s rewarding.”

This fits into the ways to coach. The article is a good starting point into summit, but next, I'll have to see if I can find some information on her program and how it was built. I'll see if I can get my hands on "Reach for the Summit" and "Raise the Roof". These two books were written by summit and will give some insight into her ways. Unfortunately, my time is limmitted.

PJ

London Snow and Renewed Faith in Synchro Team Warmup

Two days short of my first year in London, it's snowing today and the snow is staying on the ground. So much so that the city is grinding to a halt. On my walk to work, I was reminded of the time when Toronto had a snow storm and had to call in the Army. I was living in Ottawa at the time, and we had a great laugh at Toronto's expense. Well today, all snow ridden northerners around the world can have a good laugh at London.

The two funniest things I saw on my way to work today were snow clearing and snowmen. First, for anyone familiar with snow as a child, we've learned to make snowmen in a certain way. The key is starting with a small ball, and rolling it around to pick up more snow until you have one of the classic 3 balls for the snowman. Of course, as Calvin and Hobbes has taught us, snow art has many paths. However, the snow in London is perfect for such a snowman construction, and yet the five snowmen I saw on my way to work were all more of a piling of snow where clearly they were looking for classical construction.

Even funnier was some of the tools that people were using to clear their snow away. Obviously, there's no need to keep a snow shovel for the one or two days of snow a year in London. Still, a shovel of some sort seems appropriate (garden shovel?). Anyway, the first person I saw used a 2 foot by 4 foot board of plywood. This was the effective person. Next, I saw a person clearing about 50 meters of side walk in front of a hotel with a dust pan. Finally, my favourite was a women cleaning here tiled front stairs with a mop and some water. I can only imagine what will happen when the front freezes.

-------

On a more to topic note, I've been wondering about team warmups where the attempt is made to warmup all together. At UofT we used to enforce our warmup run in double file. Lately, I've been of the mind that team warmups should be left to individuals so that they can prepare in their own way and for their own body.

Well, research is suggesting that I'm wrong and that some for of synchronizing leads to better teamwork. I'm back on the team warmup wagon.

PJ

Link Friday - Coaches, your next blog, and Boxee

My links this week are:

• [Highlight Tournament] Wonderful Copenhagen is one of the top European tournaments for both men and women.
• This week's coaching theme (as Mackey mentioned) will continue into next week. There's two coaches that I'll highlight.
• If you're going to make a blog on Ultimate, the common choice for outlets is blogger or wordpress. These are fine, and if you advertise like me, then you can make a few dollars (which I redistribute in the Ultiamte community). If Bukisa was around when I started, I might have done things differently. They pay $3.95 for 1000 pageviews. That's a very good price.
• Finally, this article on Boxee suggests that you can remove your cable box completely with this $200 device and some technical know how. Unfortunately, for those of us not in the Us (not sure about Canada) we can't get some of the online streamed channels. That will change for me soon.
  

PJ

Poll Thursday - Logo Battle IX - Round II

From last week Caltech Women, Blackfish, and Alpha Cobra Squadron move into the next round.

This week:

College
UNT

NYU

MIT

Illinois State

Open
Stockholm Syndromes

Monster (Fall)

UPA Championship
Sub Zero

Guillermo Y Compania

PJ

I want to be a coach, but how?

I, personally, have had great opportunities to coach Ultimate and basketball over my years in these sports. My next endeavour, which is undecided as yet, will hopefully be my greatest effort into the coaching ranks, but who knows. I've made some comments on becoming a coach or player in this post, but today I'm going to focus on a strategy to becoming a coach.


The simplest route to coaching is to volunteer to an open position. These positions, if they exist in the first place, are good starting points, but tend to deal with learning Ultimate. If you're interested in this, these positions will exist in many forms. Also, if you want to get into high-level Ultimate coaching without taking on teaching jobs, then please tell on how you achieve this. I believe that the "teaching Ultimate" road is the main road into Ultimate coaching.

Next, if you're goal is to build and coach a team that plays at a more competitive level, then you'll need to find a position in which year to year there exists a stable team. This, likely, means high school, college, or club teams are the target. To get a coaching position for these targets, is not plain and simple. There are advertised positions on RSD that pop up from time to time, but these are far (spatially and temporally) and few.

High school coaching tends to be the domain of the high school teacher. Even if you find and build some form of program, school politics can result in you losing the coaching position. I would recommend targeting college or club positions, but even these positions will be hard to maintain. Also, as I've argued before, club positions remain a strange beast in the world of Ultimate. This means a college coaching position should be your first target.

Walking into a college Ultimate program that doesn't have a coach and becoming the head coach for the team is not a likely proposition. Instead, a slow approach is probably the best option. If the college team has a B team (C, D, and E also work), then as a starting point volunteer to coach one of these teams to develop newer players. This approach over a few years and if you're a good coach will give the rapport with players and experience to move into coaching stronger teams and developing a program that you've always dreamed of.

If the Ultimate team is small and doesn't have additional developmental teams, then volunteer to be a team manager that also provides developmental sessions for beginning players. These might be clinics for new players to attend.

Your dream program, in any case, will take years to establish. Team culture evolves slowly, but this is the advantage of working with newer players. These players over the years will become the leaders, and leaders in many cases define team culture for a college Ultimate team. Keen new players are your most important allies in developing a program and becoming a coach.

This, of course, is my imagined plan - September/August being the starting date.

PJ

Bball coaching tips ... for the up and coming Ultimate Coach

Here are some great coaching tips from Coach Silver. I've highlighted tips for highschool coaches in blue and all coaches in red.

------------------------------------
"THINGS TO THINK ABOUT DOING THIS SEASON"
By Duane Silver

1. Have a teacher of the week and have him/her come to the game and introduce them to the crowd before the game. If you have two home games in a week you will need to pick two teachers. (You might pick teachers that are not crazy about hoops.)

2. Always have the Principal in the team picture. After you get the picture back put it in a frame an give it to him/her. This is the greatest political move you can possibly make. (Billy Gillispie taught me this.) This has been our top email we have sent out in the eight years of doing this.

5. Coach your best players the hardest! If you don't, the other players will turn against you.

6. Write down your philosophy and stick with it all season. Don't change. If is not written it cannot be done this year.

7. This may sound a little crazy, but you need to lose a game to make point to your team. (John Chaney who was at Temple University did this throughout his career.) Who cares if you lose a game. I bet no team will go undefeated this year in Texas.

8. Tell the parents in advance you will not talk to them about their daughter or son's playing time. If they bring it up say "I'm sorry, but we are not going to talk about this! Be Strong!

10. "You can't run off a good player by being too hard on him or her." (Bear Bryant)

11. You have to bring it every day in practice and so does your best player.
------------------------------------

These tips, though targeted, at high school basketball might help out an Ultimate coach as the job becomes more and more common in our sport.

PJ

Link Friday - Goals and

My favourite links this week:

• [New Blog] The Ultimate Shubbard.
• [Tournament] Gender Blender - Fergus, ON, Canada
• Related to the goal setting article this week, a commenter suggested pair coaching at Noomii. It looks like a good approach for achieving some goals.
  
• Here's a paper on the up and coming creation of a multi-touch user interface. Any thoughts on how an Ultimate video game might be made given an interface like this.
  

PJ

Poll Thursday - Logo Battle VIII - Round II

UNT moves on from last week.

We'll we're into the second round.

College


Falmouth

Caltech Women

Amherst

Open


DTB

DoJo

Blackfish

UPA Championship


El Diablo
Alpha Cobra Squadron

PJ

Goals in Pairs

My new year goal number one is coming into view. I'm 188 lbs (85.7 kg) with all my gym gear on. That's 3 lbs off my goal weight.

Pictured Above: GOAL!!!

I still find it hard to get to the gym every day for a workout, and as much as it's useful to tell people your goal to help you achieve it. I've found that two people making the same goal (or similar goals) is much easier. In this way you feel even more accountable then just to your inside voice.

I've talked about this before, but this goal technique has huge potential if you're looking to achieve something challenging (such as getting to the gym in the morning). For example, commitment with another person to improve your throwing results in someone who will make the same sacrifices to get out and throw every day. The same is true in the gym, on the field, or at the track.

Based on this concept, you would think that having three people committed is even better. This is, actually, a case of diminishing returns. Unless the activity your goal is related to needs three people, then you've passed critical mass. In this case, if you don't show up for the planned work, then you won't be missed so much, and you don't get the same feelings of "I have to get there so I don't let down Kirk".

This doesn't mean you shouldn't allow more people than critical mass, but it means you need to restructure the commitment aspect. If you want three people in the gym, then plan your workout and allocate some critical job for each person. For example, Kirk brings the skipping rope, Peter brings the disc, and Norm brings the stopwatch. All three of these things have to be at the workout or it will be a failure.

You've probably been hearing the viral information from Malcolm Gladwell and his 10,000 hours to expert motif. Those 10,000 hours can be much more enjoyably spent with another person.

PJ

The Asian BlockStack?

North America seems to be trailing in one category in terms of Ultimate development - the Ultimate vlog (video blogs). Thinkulti reminded me yesterday that I got an email for Asian Ultimate TV over the holidays on their recent efforts to build something along the lines of BlockStack in the UK.

I watched the sixth episode to get a feel for the show. Shane (can't decipher last name) runs and appears as the host on the show. The first part includes an interview with Manu Karan from India based Ultimate. The interview looks into the expansion of Ultimate in India. Interesting perspective on Ultimate expansion, if that's waht you're interested in.

The second half of the episode goes into highlights from a recent tournament in Taipei accompanied by some electronica music.

Overall, the quality of the footage is reasonable and the content is there for all of us who can't seem to consume enough Ultimate media. That leaves South America, Europe, and North America the remaining continents with strong Ultimate and no internet TV representation. I wonder who's going to step up next.

PJ