Partnering with a government sporting agency, a group of Ultimate players and administrators in Medellin, Colombia are hosting a tournament as the focal point of a two-week Ultimate event including camps, meetings, and team activities.

Interested in more information? Check out www.tepmedellin.com. Look for the small red buttons to the bottom right, especially for the link to Brochure.

..The this is how we’d use it.

The following is our incredibly biased, totally subjective first take on the Callahan voting for 2009. The Callahan is a special award, and the voters (current college division players) are an extremely varied group. They’ve proven that there are many ways to win the Award in the past 10 years…

Best player on the strongest team? Check.
Leader of a rising team? Check.
Attention-grabbing surprise run to Nationals with an unheralded squad? Check.
4-5 year history of dominance in the division? Check.

This is a subjective award. We repeat; this is a SUBJECTIVE award, and there is no combination of factors that should give any candidate an expectation that they are supposed to win. Which makes it unpredictable, and fun, and irreplaceable as an icon of the similarly quirky, cutthroat, up-and-coming, competitive and passionate brand of Ultimate that we see in the College Division.

To sum it up; the Callahan doesn’t always go where we think it should, but it always goes to a great player that is a role model for the division and the sport.

With that said, here is our ballot if we were voting. Each college player gets only 3 votes, so that is what we are holding ourselves to in each division. Deciding between candidates was brutal. So brutal, in fact, that once we got to a top three we couldn’t bear the thought of trying to decide what order they should go in. Total cop-out…but it’s just too hard. We hope current college players go to www.callahan-mvp.com to vote, and that they vote for someone that they think deserves it and that would be a great role model for the next generation of players, as Jody Dozono, Justin Safdie, Fortunat Mueller, and Johanna Neumann (among others) were when we were just learning to play.

Women’s Division Ballot

Georgia Bosscher, University of Wisconsin
Georgia has been an absolute beast of a defender throughout her career (since the first time we watched her play at Team USA tryouts in early 2004). She’s an offensive star as well now, and her team has had great results as of late. She plays fair, she plays hard, and she changes the shape of the field for the opposing offense.

Andrea Romano, University of Santa Barbara
UCSB is a fun team to watch play Ultimate. You can see Dugan’s fingerprints all over an offense that takes the easiest pass available, even when that pass is a bomb. Andrea does the big things and the little things, and she is a leader off the field as well, as anyone that has worked with her can tell you.

Claire Suver, University of Washington
Interestingly, we had the same thoughts about Shannon O’Malley (the other Element player we thought might be nominated). Claire’s throws, intelligence and defensive experience make her an outstanding talent…but that has been true since her freshman year. In leading UW to a Regional Championship this year, though, Claire seems to have mastered some of her weaknesses as well. Spirit comes naturally to some people…and some people (like Claire, or Shannon) have a hot temper that they have to, for the better of their game, learn to master. Claire has done this, and that commitment has rubbed off on the way UW plays the game. We think highly of the Spirit portion of the Callahan Award, and we hope this vote is taken as the compliment it was intended to be.

A Brutal Decision
We can’t believe we don’t have a fourth vote for Emily Baecher. A testament to the level of players in this division.

Men’s Division Ballot

Steven Presley, University of Texas
Noted Ultimate serialist “Match” gets a lot of things wrong. In his endorsement of ‘Franchise’, though, we absolutely agree with the end result. Presley has been a force in the Southern Region for years, and he always seems to play his best when it matters most…we see shades of a Michael Zalisk here in his game and his attitude. That’s a very high compliment, in our opinions.

Mac Taylor, University of Colorado
He’s huge, he’s intense, and he is very, very skilled. Credit both his coaches and his own personal drive to improve that he has the kind of athleticism that can take over a game, but that he has forced himself to develop the skills to contribute equally. Watching him churn through the mud in Vegas when many teammates and opponents were huddling in their rainsuits was a glimpse into his determination.

Brodie Smith, University of Florida
His team didn’t make Nationals. He might have played his worst tournament at Regionals. But has any player more comprehensively dominated the division throughout the year? When we think about ‘best overall player’, it’s hard not to gravitate towards a player against whom other teams game plan for him as a handler, as a comeback-cutter, as a deep…he draws 7 pairs of defensive eyes when he hangs out on the far wing. Brodie has infrequently been labelled as ‘eloquent’ or ‘diplomatic’, and for many that will lose him their vote. And probably rightly so. But the dude wears his heart on the front of his jersey between the O and R in Florida. And this was supposed to be their rebuilding year.

Brutal Decisions
Tom James is a quiet, confident leader and he makes his mark in huge ways on O and D for Regional Champs Stanford, a team whose season-long record would not have seen them as a high seed at Nationals were it not for their Regional performance.

Joe ‘BJ’ Sefton was an inspiration. Had UW made Nationals he would have been our top vote, as this year’s UW team was a fun team to watch, and a team that played the way that old folks like to see.

Sometime on Saturday, May 2nd we hosted our millionth pageview. This is a big milestone for us!

Having it come on a Saturday (our normal lowest-traffic day) makes this even sweeter. We are especially excited about the increase in ‘background’ hits, as we are now taking nearly 2,000 hits per day on Saturdays. We’ll keep trying to pump out the quality content, so please keep reading!

This is why we keep going:

“I’ve been playing and coaching for a good bit now. While my collection of strategies, insights, anecdotes and drills learnt on the field, passed down from vet players or poached from other teams keeps growing, every issue of The Huddle that I read has something I had never thought of or helps illuminate a concept in a different way. The site is always great to read through as a player, but it’s been an amazing help to me as a college women’s coach.

Like all things disc, I know you guys do this for the love and not the money, so thank you for all the hours and hours of work you do on such an awesome site, I know it’s made a huge difference to me and to my team.”

— an East Coast reader

More to come soon, and a big thanks to everyone that has helped us along the way.

P.S. If you want to help, there is a way: thank your local Huddle Author! Let them know how much you appreciate their volunteer effort and time.

After a long absence, I was finally able to get back to the beautiful islands of the Philippines. With help from the Philippine Ultimate Association, we ran 4 clinics this past March.

Our first and second clinics were on the island of Boracay. This 4 mile stretch of sand and forest is home to a massive resort community, some of the best watersporting in the world, quite possibly the most luxurious beach in existence, and a thriving local Ultimate community.

Less than 8 years ago, members of Manila’s Ultimate community brought the game to the locals, many of whom were young, extremely athletic, and excited about a sport to fit into their schedules between kitesurfing, wakeboarding, and Dragon-boating. The Boracay Dragons were born. This is the same team that has lost only once on sand (in the finals of the World Beach Championships, in Brazil) and who has never lost in Boracay. Today, the Dragons are the tip of an iceberg that has 6+ teams on a tiny island, excellent support from local business leaders (some of whom play as well) and a growing reputation in Asia for a truly incredible level of skill.

Why so incredible? In any Ultimate community, we tend to see growth of skill in response to competition. The more high-quality opponents there are, the greater the ease with which players and teams can improve. In Bora, however, the Ultimate is extremely home-grown. The influences from top teams, even those throughout Asia, is present but light. The consistency of skill and organization of the Dragons team (and the 2nd Boracay team, and 3rd, 4th, etc) seem almost out of place in such a small Ultimate community. It is special, and it was fun to see firsthand.

Our first clinic was with approximately 15 of the Boracay locals, going through a 115 minute set of marking, throwing, cutting, and team defense drills (most taken directly or adapted from curriculum developed with Sockeye). This was the morning before the Boracay Beach tournament, and we didn’t want to overly tax anyone that was about to play 7-8 beach games.

The tournament was tremendous, and as part of the first American team there, I think we will start to see more North Americans making the trip. From the West Coast, the cost is comparable to Paganello, and the experience is just as unique and memorable. See future Huddle features on “The World’s Best Tournaments” for more information. One of the directors, PUA’s Mel Lozano, has written an excellent synopsis of the tournament which is posted here on the weblog as well.

Our second clinic was on the Monday after the tournament, and a not-too-hungover group of 25-30 adults stayed to work through 90 minutes of pivoting exercises, cutting techniques, clearing strategy, and zone offense. A special highlight was working with Scott Berens’ layout D drill where players were able to work on timing, taking aggressive-yet-safe lines to the disc, and contorting their bodies to get the block while avoiding contact. The sand takes a lot of the sacrifice out of this drill!

Afterward, we worked with the Dragons, who are heading to Paganello. All I can say to Paganello is, “Heads up!.” They’ll be coming into the Open Division seeded about 25th out of 48, and I (and anyone that has seen them play on sand) will be shocked if they don’t beat that final seed by a long way. Gauging their finish is an interesting question (and one that filled many post-tournament hours in Boracay). With only 8 players, it is going to be a tough weekend. But, until you see them run on sand, you really don’t understand the advantage that speed can be.

Don’t be shocked to see them make a run into the brackets. I would be surprised if they won the whole thing, since they are going to be giving up huge advantages in experience and height. Semifinals, however, is a distinct possibility. I will be following along with great interest this coming weekend.

The following Friday we rolled into Manila for a long day of Ultimate. In the morning, we ran a Team Philippines practice for 3.5 hours in the hot Manila sun. We started with a discussion of vertical stack and flat stack offenses, and we talked about trying to make practice as efficient as possible. Then we ran through the following practice:

• Dynamic Warmup
• Box drill, working on footwork, timing, and head-and-hand positioning
• 1v1 D Drills:
• • Without a disc, to work on positioning and footwork
  • With a disc
  • With a disc, including a ‘pre-run’ to work on the footwork out of motion
  • On deep cuts, focusing on running while finding the disc and boxing out
• Vert stack plays, focusing on handler motion and clearing cuts
• Vert stack 5-pull scrimmage, focusing on efficiency of practice time
• Playing while tired (this was extremely revealing for us!)
• Flat stack plays, focusing on clearing from the sideline
• Conditioning

Ultimate in the Philippines is young, and was driven by the work of very committed expats and the original group of talented local players. The biggest question for the team right now: who will be the second generation? That question was answered in the afternoon.

We ran a 60-person clinic for 2 hours that afternoon for players from the greater Manila area. We started with possession offense, working in groups of 4v3 and 4v2, using short-sided defenses to bring the focus to spacing and field vision (as opposed to simply running hard). We continued through stack cutting drills, where we applied cutting fundamentals to team timing. Adding in a single defender against 3 cutters allowed some read-and-react looks, and also brought home our points on clearing.

Heidi-Marie Clemens (my partner, and partner in crime on this oversea adventure) ran an excellent series of ‘buttonhook’ cutting and throwing drills, where we were able to focus on faking as throwers and cutters together. We scaled this up into 2v2 and 3v3 drills working on handling concepts and deep throwing vision and techniques. Then we conditioned until it looked like further pick-up was unlikely….then we played pickup for another hour. Good day, no matter how hot it was. Really good day.

Last November The Huddle applied for a UPA Innovation Grant. This past February we were informed we had won a grant in the sum of $750. Needless to say, we were very excited. The first dollars we’ve ever had come in for the site.

One of the first things we thought about doing was reaching out to an international audience. Recently I have been traveling in South America and Oceania, playing Ultimate and running clinics. We thought it would be a great idea to reach out to those players who could use what we’re doing on The Huddle, but whose English wasn’t that great.

We enlisted Juan Sebastien Galeano of Medellin, Colombia (a defensive speedster for Kie) to translate fifteen of our most popular and highly rated articles from 2008 into Spanish. He’s done a great job.

You can check it out here:
http://espanol.the-huddle.org/

Next up (hopefully): Chinese.