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.