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What sorts of drills do you set up in the first days and weeks of practice? What should be the progression of introducing a new college player to Ultimate (i.e., what skills do they learn when and how)?

The progression I use when I structure practice for the semester/year is this: skills, then system, then roles. The goal is to end up with a good team full of good Ultimate players, and the key to this is to raise the bar for the entire team. "Raising the bar" is easy to do when you've got the luxury of being able to make cuts, but you need to find other ways to inspire the average level of fundamentals if this isn't an option.

Stress fundamental skills from the beginning to the end of the season—you're wasting practice time if your players can't throw and catch discs. I don't think anything I can say is more important, so allow me to repeat myself: you're wasting practice time if your players can't consistently make basic throws and catches. There is a myriad of drills every team uses: go-to drills, box and endzone drills, marker drills; but there's no replacement for hours spent throwing and catching a disc. The task is to inculcate a correlation between throwing time spent outside practice and your team's success, and you have to get your players to demand it of each other.

I can't over-emphasize the importance of a system that pushes for consistency early in the season. It is absolutely invaluable to have a benchmark early on for what a basic cut should look like, how you clear, and how you run your dump cuts. Yes, this will change later in the season as your team grows and learns to adapt, but setting a solid foundation will allow you to demand a certain level of play while you focus on expanding your team's repertoire. Further, much of that foundation is going to stay part of your strategy, and you should bring up the common threads in your gameplay within the first weeks of practice. Last, make sure that people subscribe to these in practice, rather than taking shortcuts in the heat of the moment. Unless you're specifically working on an exception to the rule, your fundamental system should never take a backseat to what you're teaching.

DRILL: 7v0. Run your very basic offensive system, endzone to endzone, with no defense. Tell your players to look off a healthy percentage of throws so you get the clear/reset timing down as well. This drill will help you gauge your team's focus especially: there should be zero turnovers with no one playing defense, and it should be a good workout if everyone's plugged in and running hard.

While most players will specialize to one degree or other in college, it's important that a role, talent, or focus should be supplementary to the task of becoming a good ultimate player—especially in practice and the preseason. Encourage players not just to work on weaknesses, but other specific roles. For instance, get everyone a chance to handle, since that will not only push their throws but better inform them how to make good cuts. Make tall kids work on being the 'fast kid,' and make shorter players go deep. Take advantage of the fact that there's nothing riding on practices and early-season tournaments. To restate what I mentioned above about not taking shortcuts, it may become necessary at times to remind your players that winning the scrimmage while forgetting your system or the day's lesson is not effectively using practice time.

When and how much of your winter/spring offense/defensive system do you introduce to them in the fall?

Offensively, I introduce the fundamental system as mentioned above. This includes the cutting cycle-- where the valuable space is, and how to get there and clear out of it-- and a consistent dump system. In the interest of creating small goals to achieve, it's also useful to teach a few set plays to try to get down at fall tournaments, especially for the purpose of getting the disc moving in a brick situation. Your playbook will probably change by spring as your team improves together, but going into a tourney with a few first-pass plays will help your team succeed in the short run so that you can explain after the game why those plays were appropriate.

Defensively, I focus on three things in the fall, and I'm sure this is nothing new to your team, too: man-to-man skills, the concept of team defense, and a few trap plays. Again—skills, system, roles. Start off by making sure everyone knows good marking technique, the importance of footwork, body placement. From there, people can grasp pretty easily the benefit of a consistent plan of team defense. Same as the brick plays above, trap plays on weaker throwers in tournaments/scrimmages are small goals to work towards—they create focus and will generate some energy when they work out right. Last, in the spring I'm a fan of splitting into O and D teams if it's right for the particular personnel that year; however in the fall I try to push the guys into not 'matching up smart' on the line. Always just playing whoever lines up across from them will hopefully help kick any fear of marking a 'better' player and encourage them to just focus on doing the job at hand.

For those young veterans (say, second- and third- year players coming into their first returning fall but not yet in charge) what should they be focusing on? Where can they improve the most?

Let me predicate this by saying that I passionately hate sophomores, across the board; they're all still freshmen but in denial.

Okay. Sorry.

Second- and third-year players have a dual responsibility: keep the bar high for freshmen by playing conservative possession offense, and run hard and play physical defense to keep the upperclassmen from complacency. A lot of pressure, but if they make it out alive, they'll be veterans. Sophomore and juniors should be making pretty big strides in all areas of the game: they're finally growing into their physical potential, they have a year of context into which to place this fall's lessons, and if they're still around there's less of a doubt concerning commitment.

Next, remind this class, the metal refined from the ore of last year's rookies, that they're going to be the senior class in two years. Not only should they have the goal to surpass their elders by the end of the season, they should be conscious of the on-and-off-field relationships they're forming with what's going to be the starting lineup of their final college tournament.

On a last note, remind the seniors that though their last year in college may be busy academically, not to forget that some resounding regrets and successes will take root on the practice field of that last year—and that some of the people they touch most profoundly are likely to be the freshmen on their college team.