21 June 2007

Viewing plays online

Freisey prompted me to search for online videos/animations on ultimate tactics, plays and drills. Here is what I found.
  • The videopapers I have spoken about before
  • Java animations of 85 plays/drills, plus the ability to make your own.
  • Flash animations of a few plays, with the ability to drawn your own "coming soon"
Got any others?

Crikey, ultimate can be played by 100 000 people world wide for several decades with elite teams dedicating small fortunes to this sport... but we don't have focussed programs to share and distribute plays and tactics. The textbooks and online tools are only just emerging, taking baby steps. I guess this is usually driven by the dollar in most sports.

15 June 2007

A quote

I found a quote from the coach of the just crowned champions of the NBA, the San Antonio Spurs. In a competition with a draft and salary cap to keep parity among all 30 basketball teams, this team has won their 4th title in 10 years. During that time, they have a better winning percentage than every other pro basketball, baseball, gridiron and ice hockey team in the US.

Gregg Popovich:
"We don’t talk about how many games we’re going to win, winning a division, winning a championship, none of that stuff. No goals, none like that. Our goal is to get better every day, to practice every day, to treat the game with respect, and if we can come out every practice and every game, learning something that we did well or that we did poorly, we can go from there. But I think wins take care of themselves."

And Gregg on quotes and sayings:

"...all those trite, silly sayings always made me laugh. Like, “Winners always do this” and “Losers always do that” and whatever the hell it is…you know, “There’s no ‘I’ in team.” They’re so old and trite that it’s just silly. But this quote seemed to just make sense. It had an intellectual quality to it, where I thought if the players really looked at it, it’s not just basketball it’s life. You’ve read it so you know what it means. I think that quote is what it’s all about. That persistence in that quote says it all. If there is a system here, that’s the system."

What quote was he referring to?

"When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before." — Jacob Riis