Double Dip

Couldn't resist a Sports Guy quote of the day:
"I like Ron Artest. He's my favorite NBA player who was ever suspended for a season for attacking a fan."

The Spew

Where was The Spew when I needed it in college? Idris recently wrote a great post about different approaches to improving if you're a 2nd or 3rd tier college/club team. Coming from a borderline 2nd/3rd tier college team (and that's a generous title for a team whose best finish was 4th in the Central in 2003), it's advice that we somewhat used my senior year in 03. Build a solid base of talent (4 players on that team now on elite club teams), focus on what you do well (setting up long throws to our few tall and fast guys) and be realistic about what you can accomplish. That was also our best recruiting year.

It's just amazing to me how seemingly obvious points like those made by Idris and especially those in Zaz and Parinella's book are missed by most teams and players. Other than at the elite level, I think it has more to do with a lack of previous high-level athletic experience. Yes, it does have to some do with the lack of basic ultimate common knowledge established by years and years of competition (ie football, baseball).

I have to add that "seemingly obvious" applies to my current knowledge of the game, not my college self, which is the point of this whole mess.

Everyone on a newer team (especially those new to the game) has a tendency to see the team they're playing as doing great. I know I did. Then my team got better, and I couldn't believe that I thought the previous year was quality. We missed obvious strategy points and didn't set clear expectations.

At one point in my junior year, we actually established set groupings: 3 groups of 4 people, and 4 groups of 3. Each combination of 7 would play 2 points, and then another would rotate in. How stupid does that seem in retrospect? We were just looking for some kind of organization but had no idea how to go about it. It had everything to do with our leadership, which vastly improved when Ross and Dale were captains the next year.

We knew we wouldn't be able to grind out wins against better teams. So we went with the long ball as our two primary receivers were better than most of the college defenders in the region. As someone so astutely pointed out, we "hucked, hucked, and hucked. And if that doesn't work, they huck it some more." The result? The best finish (for us at least) resulting from a change in philosophy late in the year.

Oh, and the chicks really dig the long ball.

Must be winter...

because the trick knee is acting up. Snowing, melting, snowing again. Minnesota is such a wonderfully schizophrenic state (as are the drivers). If you're looking for any real point to this post, I apologize for the lost time.

Sometimes I just feel like posting some comatext.

Fox 9 Investigates!

Those of you in the Twin Cities Metro probably know about the flak Fox 9 has been getting about their hard-hitting exposes on things like psychics, naughty massage parlors, and underage college hockey players who drink. Shocking, I know.

Well, chalk up another profound story last night. Titled "Injury Plague", Fox9 did a story on the prevalence of serious injuries in high school athletics and their supposed increased frequency.

**Disclaimer: Keep in mind I have a degree in statistics, have torn my left ACL twice, and nearly burst a blood vessel yelling at the TV during this broadcast. The facts are as close as I can remember as I may or may not have blacked out in the middle from extreme exposure to stupidity and lack of context.**

Interview subjects include:
1) A female soccer player who blew one ACL, rehabbed for five months, and then proceeded to blow her other knee out (ignoring the classic case of over-compensation on your good knee when trying to come back too soon, although Fox9 only admitted that women are 4-8 times more likely to suffer a knee injury than men)
2) A male baseball player who wore had to have serious elbow reconstruction, which Fox9 blamed on overuse (ignoring that throwing curves year-round since age 9 or 10 does most of the damage)

Their grand conclusion? The increase of injuries is mostly due to an increase in the number of participants and improper deceleration. They also made the bold statement that football has the most injuries of any sport.

Now that's mind-blowing shit right there!! Even if the injury rate per 10 kids had decreased, an overall increase in number of subjects could still result in more total injuries as compared to last year or the year before. Combine that with better diagnosing abilities and better ortho docs and voila, more injuries! These people would be better suited to investigate the relation between the number of pirates and the average global temp.

Basically, all they were able to prove was that kids playing sports in high school get injured (especially football players). Congrats, your Edward R. Murrow Award is in the mail.

The Unword of the day is "webshite".

This definitely describes this space.

Natties

6th place. Not too bad considering we came in ranked 10th. Our quarterfinal game with eventual champ Furious George seems to be getting lost in the mix (16-15 defeat with us up 14-12 pulling to them), much like our high finish. I think that's better for next year as flying under the radar is always a good thing.

We basically didn't try in the game to finish 5th (which I wasn't too happy about). The top 5 US teams earn an automatic bid to Worlds in Perth, Australia. Seeing as the Canucks with Furious won this year, we were automatically the 5th US team and earned a spot! I've already stopped eating and turned my furnace to 50 degrees to save money.