Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Time-saving form letter for August 25th
As a service to the community, I am providing this letter. With a few simple text replacements, this letter should be appropriate for blog entries, letters to the UPA, and most of all, posts to rec.sport.disc.
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SUBJECT: Let (team) play!
I just heard that the UPA is not going to let (team) play in (location) sectionals. This is ridiculous!
From what I heard from a friend of somebody on the team, (team) had their roster 99% legit on the UPA page at the deadline, but they just needed one more day to get those last few names in. They were only ONE DAY LATE!! It was probably the UPA's fault anyway, because the site was pretty slow on the 24th. There was no way (team) could have predicted that.
(Team) is one of the top teams in the (division) division. Without their presence in the fall series, the (division) championship will carry an asterisk, because we'll never know what (team) would have done.
I know the UPA loves to screw people, and say "rules are rules", but they should make an exception here. (team) didn't do anything wrong, and deserves to play.
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If you plan ahead now, you could be all ready to send it out on the 25th. If you don't get your post out until the 26th because you had to do all the search-and-replace stuff on the 25th, you have nobody to blame except yourself.
I wish every team the best of luck in lodging complaints this fall.
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SUBJECT: Let (team) play!
I just heard that the UPA is not going to let (team) play in (location) sectionals. This is ridiculous!
From what I heard from a friend of somebody on the team, (team) had their roster 99% legit on the UPA page at the deadline, but they just needed one more day to get those last few names in. They were only ONE DAY LATE!! It was probably the UPA's fault anyway, because the site was pretty slow on the 24th. There was no way (team) could have predicted that.
(Team) is one of the top teams in the (division) division. Without their presence in the fall series, the (division) championship will carry an asterisk, because we'll never know what (team) would have done.
I know the UPA loves to screw people, and say "rules are rules", but they should make an exception here. (team) didn't do anything wrong, and deserves to play.
---------------
If you plan ahead now, you could be all ready to send it out on the 25th. If you don't get your post out until the 26th because you had to do all the search-and-replace stuff on the 25th, you have nobody to blame except yourself.
I wish every team the best of luck in lodging complaints this fall.
Monday, July 23, 2007
The importance of saying stupid things
Not counting league, I've been in a leadership position on five different teams, including my current club mixed team. As I've gotten older, I've gradually become a little more aware of the way other people take my comments, and it's definitely affected the way I talk when I'm addressing either the team or the individual. A couple things I've figured out:
- There's a limit to how many detailed ideas a team can absorb in a huddle. I'd generally say that that number is one, or (on average) slightly less than one. I think that, oddly enough, this is why saying what I would consider stupid or pointless comments are so important. Comments like "they're tired, if we keep running hard we're going to run away with this game" are, on the face of it, pretty pointless. I mean, when I say that, I don't think there's a single person on my team who
1) was thinking "gosh, we can win this game without working very hard", and
2) was convinced of the error of their ways by my comment.
But that's not the point. The point is twofold. One, these sorts of comments are easily understood and get people agreeing with what you are saying, which helps set up any more meaty comments you have in store. Second, there's really nothing better to say there, because too many ideas is just as bad as none at all.
- In order to help people get better, you really have to treat them like individuals. What I mean is that you have to understand how they deal with failure and how they take criticism. There are some people (I am one of them) who are perfectly willing to discuss the thing(s) they screwed up that point the moment they leave the field. But there are other people who both need time away from the play, and need for constructive criticism to be couched in positive language*. This is more common when I'm dealing with women, but it is NOT just a male/female thing - there are definitely women who want to discuss things right away, and there are men who I really have to walk on eggshells with.
OK, I'm done icing my left heel and my right ankle, so that's enough for now.
* for clarity - when I don't "couch things in positive language", I still avoid expressing anger/frustration at them. My "non-positive" approach is a straightforward "you did X, this is why Y is better". Particularly on a mixed team, I try to make sure people know it's unacceptable to lapse into the pointless habit of screaming at someone when they screw up.
- There's a limit to how many detailed ideas a team can absorb in a huddle. I'd generally say that that number is one, or (on average) slightly less than one. I think that, oddly enough, this is why saying what I would consider stupid or pointless comments are so important. Comments like "they're tired, if we keep running hard we're going to run away with this game" are, on the face of it, pretty pointless. I mean, when I say that, I don't think there's a single person on my team who
1) was thinking "gosh, we can win this game without working very hard", and
2) was convinced of the error of their ways by my comment.
But that's not the point. The point is twofold. One, these sorts of comments are easily understood and get people agreeing with what you are saying, which helps set up any more meaty comments you have in store. Second, there's really nothing better to say there, because too many ideas is just as bad as none at all.
- In order to help people get better, you really have to treat them like individuals. What I mean is that you have to understand how they deal with failure and how they take criticism. There are some people (I am one of them) who are perfectly willing to discuss the thing(s) they screwed up that point the moment they leave the field. But there are other people who both need time away from the play, and need for constructive criticism to be couched in positive language*. This is more common when I'm dealing with women, but it is NOT just a male/female thing - there are definitely women who want to discuss things right away, and there are men who I really have to walk on eggshells with.
OK, I'm done icing my left heel and my right ankle, so that's enough for now.
* for clarity - when I don't "couch things in positive language", I still avoid expressing anger/frustration at them. My "non-positive" approach is a straightforward "you did X, this is why Y is better". Particularly on a mixed team, I try to make sure people know it's unacceptable to lapse into the pointless habit of screaming at someone when they screw up.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Behind the wall
I had an interesting conversation at a recent tournament with a guy who played on a high profile college team around a decade back. This was one of the top teams in the nation, and it was also one of the teams that had a reputation for aggressive play and bending the rules. This was before the days of (widespread, well trained) observers, and the gray area for rules abuse was much bigger. He was in a very different place as a player now, so he offered some interesting inside perspectives to me looking back on those days.
I've always been curious about what it was like to be on those teams, because they had to know, on some level, that they were blatantly breaking some rules and were winning through intimidation (in addition to talent). And yet, while these teams had always freely admitted to enjoying a physical style of play and occasionally fouling as a result, I've never heard admissions of intentionally breaking the rules. Despite this, these players have often seemed exceptionally mellow and friendly off the field. This contrast - nice guys acting in a way that earns them hatred, and then being somewhat dishonest about it - seems jarring to me.
A few tidbits I got from this conversation:
- He basically confirmed hat there was a (largely unspoken) rule on this team that you back your teammate up, no matter what the call or situation. And you do it vocally. That was just the culture of the team. That's not too different from a lot of teams now, I suppose.
- Although he couldn't be sure, he was fairly convinced that many of the worst fouls /calls/infractions that the team leaders made were made intentionally. That's no shocker, but what I found interesting was that he thought the motivation was not to get that one possession, but rather to control the pace/style/mood of the game.
- Most interesting to me was an anecdote he told about a bad call he made. He had a layout catch that he got his hand under, but the disc was down. He called it up, and stood by his call after a huge argument broke out. Nobody on his team said a word in dissent at the time. Over a week later, however, after a team meeting, one older player on the team pulled him aside and said "if the disc is down, call it down".
So, you get total support at the time of the call, but on some level, at least some players on the team wanted to win without making any obviously bad calls along the way. So, the culture of SOTG did seep in to these teams, if only to a tiny degree.
I've always been curious about what it was like to be on those teams, because they had to know, on some level, that they were blatantly breaking some rules and were winning through intimidation (in addition to talent). And yet, while these teams had always freely admitted to enjoying a physical style of play and occasionally fouling as a result, I've never heard admissions of intentionally breaking the rules. Despite this, these players have often seemed exceptionally mellow and friendly off the field. This contrast - nice guys acting in a way that earns them hatred, and then being somewhat dishonest about it - seems jarring to me.
A few tidbits I got from this conversation:
- He basically confirmed hat there was a (largely unspoken) rule on this team that you back your teammate up, no matter what the call or situation. And you do it vocally. That was just the culture of the team. That's not too different from a lot of teams now, I suppose.
- Although he couldn't be sure, he was fairly convinced that many of the worst fouls /calls/infractions that the team leaders made were made intentionally. That's no shocker, but what I found interesting was that he thought the motivation was not to get that one possession, but rather to control the pace/style/mood of the game.
- Most interesting to me was an anecdote he told about a bad call he made. He had a layout catch that he got his hand under, but the disc was down. He called it up, and stood by his call after a huge argument broke out. Nobody on his team said a word in dissent at the time. Over a week later, however, after a team meeting, one older player on the team pulled him aside and said "if the disc is down, call it down".
So, you get total support at the time of the call, but on some level, at least some players on the team wanted to win without making any obviously bad calls along the way. So, the culture of SOTG did seep in to these teams, if only to a tiny degree.
