Scobel Wiggins Photography

The Midwest Throwdown Skills Clinic was nothing short of inspirational. I couldn't stop smiling as I looked across eight fields covered with more than 200 Ultimate players motivated to improve their skills. But even more satisfying was witnessing the impact of the clinic the next day during competition: watching a player teach a teammate techniques she learned in Anna Nazarov's session on marking, seeing another player practicing Dominique Fontenette's fakes during her pre-game throwing routine, and my favorite story from the ISU Women Scorned blog, endorsing Gwen Ambler's clinic on jumping:

"In the following point, a floaty disc went up and proceeded to get attacked by three hands…As they landed on top of each other, no one dared to let go. After getting up, Magic yelled "I LEARNED THAT AT THE SKILLS CLINIC!" After a little bit of discussion but mostly laughter, disc went to the offense (us) and Mag proved her new skills with a put to Bosco for the point."

I love this story! We wanted the clinic to develop skills, build camaraderie, and be fun. This anecdote shows that we had success with all three.

Background

The growing parity within and between the Southwest and Northwest regions is exciting to follow, and the skill level of the players is impressive. But at a national level there remains a dramatic difference in skill between the West Coast regions and the others. There are many factors contributing to this disparity, and the Midwest Throwdown Skills Clinic addressed one: access to coaches.

Nothing is more valuable than in-person instruction, guidance and feedback when it comes to individual skill development. The Midwest Throwdown Skills Clinic responded to an identified need to connect players — specifically those from the Central, South, and Great Lakes regions — with experienced instructors. The goal: improve individual skills on a large scale, ultimately creating stronger teams and stronger regions.

An Idea

The post-competition skills clinic concept takes advantage of the tournament setting where players and coaches are concentrated in one location at one time, focused on Ultimate. The idea is to recruit instructors from the pool of coaches attending the tournament and local clubs to teach lessons after the last round of play on Saturday. The TDs offered Midwest Throwdown as a venue to pilot the idea, another way to leverage the expertise of the eight coaches participating in the UPA grant-supported Roundup Division.

The skills clinic was an hour and a half, broken into three 25-minute sessions. Players pre-registered for three lessons from 12 offered covering a variety of individual skills (see lesson descriptions). We capped lessons at 18, maximizing participation but still allowing for some individual feedback. To expand the reach of the clinic we emphasized to participants the importance of sharing what they learned with their teams, and we took video footage of the lessons to use for further outreach.

Results

The response to the clinic was amazing! Within 48 hours of opening registration, we had filled to capacity of 216, with those registered representing 22 different teams! The players were really excited and enthusiastic about the opportunity to learn from such talented coaches.

The post-clinic survey returned 103 responses (48% response rate) with some valuable feedback:

Demographics

• 87% had never attended a skills clinic before Midwest Throwdown.
• 49% of respondents play for teams without coaches.
• 48% have been playing Ultimate for less than 2 years.
• 24% had <1 year of playing experience, 24% were second year players, 20% were third year players and 31% had been playing for more than 3 years.

Reactions

• 58% described the length of the lessons (25 minutes) as "just right" while 40% thought they were "too short."
• 70% of respondents said the length of the clinic (1.5 hours) was "just right" while 23% thought it was "too short."
• 79% described the technical level of the lessons as "just right" while the remaining 21% thought they were "too elementary."
• 89% would definitely attend a similar skills clinic again at a future tournament, and the remaining 11% indicated maybe they would attend.
• When asked what they liked most, the most common responses addressed the variety of topics, or the competency and enthusiasm of the coaches.
• When asked to select the most valuable aspects of the clinic from a set of options (respondents could select more than one), the top three responses were "learning new skills" (72%), "learning new drills" (58%), and "inspiration to improve, keep playing Ultimate" (55%).
• When asked which resources they usually consult when they want to improve an Ultimate skill (respondents could select more than one) the top three sources were teammates (92%), coaches (49%) and Internet (49%).
• The most common suggestions for how to improve the skills clinic were: offer two longer lessons instead of 3 shorter lessons, and target lessons to specific skill levels.

What participants are saying...

"They gave us new ideas for drills that would be easy and appropriate to bring back to our teams."

"I liked being able to hear plays and ideas that had been explained to me before, explained again from a different perspective."

"I liked the small groups, and the way it bonded people together for the next day of competitive play. It was really fun to play against girls that were in my clinics."

"It was obvious that teachers of each clinic were really excited about what they were teaching us, and wanted us to learn. I also really liked that we got to actually try out the skills we learned during games the next day."

"It was also really cool to be hearing what these baller Frisbee players do on the field, and to realize that it's doable."

Keely Dinse, current University of Michigan coach