Scobel Wiggins Photography

Lauren CASEY
Player: Stanford
Coach: Stanford (Current)

What are the best ways to get new players involved on a college team?

• Be visible early: participate in any new student events like admit weekend and orientation. We often set up a table with CSTV footage playing at the activity fair or set up a scrimmage at any outdoor events. Throw outside of practice in high traffic areas.
• Flyer dorms and visit house meetings.
• Emphasize that all returning players are critical for recruiting outside of formal events. We've had many roommates, classmates, and friends join the team because our players promote the program informally.
• Target ex-varsity athletes out of NCAA eligibility or students that attempted to walk-on to varsity teams. It's hard to find these people, but one approach is to flyer grad-student housing and athletic facilities.

What sorts of drills/practice formats have been successful in introducing the sport, as well making it fun?

Since most college players have never played before, throwing is obviously critical. We do lots of focused throwing, trying to have captains or coaches move around to offer as much one on one advice as possible. We emphasize mechanics (not accuracy) at first, and remind new players not to be discouraged by low completion rates. Also because throwing is frustrating to many new players, we try to isolate throwing work from many of the drills we do early on (and encourage rookies to do a lot of throwing outside of practice). It's typically more "fun" to work on skills that new players can pick up relatively quickly, in order to help them feel an impact on the field as soon as possible. Specifically:

• Drills that focus on cutting, emphasizing timing and spacing. We do a lot of huck drills and go-to drills in the fall.
• Defensive drills are great for people who have played team sports in the past and who already understand the concept of shut-down defense.
• Small-sided games (3 on 3 or 4 on 4) are a good way to help players who get lost or feel helpless in a standard scrimmage. They have no choice but to get involved.
• Lots of scrimmaging with one specific focus.
• Sprints or plyos. We don't shy away from these in the fall because they're good to encourage serious athletes to stick around, and to help us gauge the speed and fitness or our tryouts.

What off-field things can you do to make being on the team a priority for a new recruit on the fence about committing?

We organize weekly "office hours" at the student union, Frisbee golf, or parties to help new players get to know more of the team and help integrate new players into the community early. Showing new players that we do a lot as a team outside of practice helps appeal to players who are looking to find a social activity. Also, while we normally don't have a workout schedule for the entire program in the fall (before the A-team has been selected), returning players typically start running and lifting together outside of practice. Making these sessions known and open to new players helps appeal to those who want to be challenged athletically.

Finally, our returning players are asked to pay extra attention to a few rookies each. They offer advice and encouragement, invite them to throw outside of practice, and check in when their rookies have missed a few practices. This helps to make sure that everyone feels welcomed and like they're part of the program from the start.

Also, what qualities do you look for in a brand new ultimate player? What skills should they have, and what skills can be developed?

• Athleticism—speed and jumping ability can be worked on, but a strong base has to be there to develop an impact player. In college women's ultimate a strong athlete will find a role quickly, even if their disc skills are lacking initially.
• Coordination—body control and hand-eye coordination are difficult to develop. While catching and hand-eye can be improved by practice, I think catching ability can serve as a metric for coordination. A new player doesn't necessarily have to be a great catcher, but if they are initially, you can tell they have a strong foundation of hand-eye coordination that will enable them to pick up disc skills more-quickly.
• Coachability—how well a player can translate advice or the principle behind a drill into their play says a lot about how quickly they will develop new skills.
• Commitment—because club sports are self-motivated (and there are no real consequences for slacking or quitting) commitment to the sport and to the team shouldn't be overlooked.
• Aggressiveness—desire is hard to teach.

Can be developed:

• Reading/Catching—new players that can't catch very well may not be used to the unique flight of a frisbee. I think that catching can be improved through practice, especially the elements of catching unique to frisbee. However, I think it's harder to develop the basic hand eye coordination behind catching (something many athletes started developing early in life) than it is to develop throws or reading (which are often new).
• Throwing—many of the best players from our program started as terrible throwers. Good throws initially are much less important than athletic ability.
• Field sense—field sense is a nebulous term that is often sited as a valuable asset of tryouts, and while it's true—someone with a good sense of spacing and timing is likely to be a good player—skills that fall into "field sense" can be developed. Many great ultimate players came from individual sports like track or swimming and learned defensive positioning and cutting for the first time on the ultimate field.