On the endzone drill

Last year I was a huge proponent of the endzone drill. Some might recall the captain's meeting where I argued that we should do it for twenty minutes every practice.

Oops.

Well, I like it still. Its a useful drill for teaching teams flow, and with the addition of defense its fairly sound.
However, as many others have pointed out it has two problems: That it only involves one disc, and that it leaves too many players standing around waiting. One can argue that at least a few players are usually standing around in a vertical stack offense, but I'm likewise becoming disillusioned with the way the Gunx run vertical stack.

Tell you what, in 2009 I guarantee the Gunx will be running the endzone drill. But I plan to approach it differently. I feel that running it will smaller groups will increase the efficiency, or at least decrease the downtime. Maybe six people per group. That seems a small number, but only two people are ever really active at the same time. Also, it will put more pressure on the players to hustle back to the stack. Too many people jog or walk back nonchalantly, which teaches about six terrible habits at once. A three person stack should sort that out I daresay!

Also, I want to discourage the other team leaders from using it as a pre game warmup. Lately, doing endzone drill before a tournament game leaves me wistfully imagining getting a few pulls in instead. On the other hand, I am not a warm up expert. At the moment I don't have a personal routine and my feelings about stretching are generally negative and most likely ill informed. But I'd much rather throw five long backhands than stand in a stack for five minutes and get three cuts in. The double disc go-to drill seems much better for an active warmup. Hmmm....

Yes perceptive reader, you are right in thinking that this post was inspired by/is a blatant rip-off of a recent Jim Parinella post. You win a gold star.