Terrified of Nothing

I feel better than I have in a while.
While running among the darkening sky and rapidly reddening leaves, I had an epiphany of sorts. I've been depressed lately because I've been trying to live my college lifestyle and adapt to the realities of post college life at the same time.
But I'm not college Ben anymore. I'm post college Ben, and it is up to post college Ben to decide what post college Ben does.
Tell you one thing, I need to live a more active life, and find some long term goals to latch onto now that the arbitrary pressures of education and college ultimate are removed. I have to make my own goals.

This was a weird club season. I had a hard time making ultimate a priority, focusing instead on my comic book and dreaming about the future. I also did not get to play anywhere near enough, lacking wudi and missing college practice. Ergo, I lost momentum I had gained midway through the college season, and feel short in terms of cardio fitness. I did get my throwing game together by the series, and feel better than ever about my throwing fundamentals. I was throwing better in the wind at sectionals than at the begging of the season at less windy tournaments.

Falling short of making regionals hurts, but if we consider this the first year of a new team, it is not an end but motivation for next year. To paraphrase someone on some team, championship teams usually have to lose together for two or three years before they can win. We did not have enough chemistry, but with one season under our belts we can come back stronger next year.

The biggest failure of my season was the failure to focus on my fitness. That's been the story of my ultimate career. Now that college ultimate is over, I need to rebuild myself as an athlete as I cannot count on the "free" fitness of college practices and tournaments. I will have to do a lot of training on my own, a weakness in the past.

Another area where I struggled was handling in the ho stack. I've never played a disciplined ho stack where I was not trying to get the reset almost every possession. I was often spastic or lost, and really need to figure out that position.

My greatest success this season was my mental game. I spent a lot of time working on my field vision. In the past, I would often turn the disc over due to a failure to see a poach or errant defender. That was largely because when I had the disc, the field would blur. I would narrowly focus on one or two targets, and ignore other factors. The higher the stakes of the game, the worse that was.

At white mountain, I made a conscious effort to always have "eyes wide open" and see every player on the field and their relationship to one another. It paid off, and since then I've had better and better field vision. I also worked very hard to be mentally tough and not get nervous for big games. I threw a lot less turnovers due to poor field vision, nearly all of my turnovers this season were due to execution errors. It is a work in progress but the increased field vision and confidence will pay off down the line. It completely changed the way I play ultimate.

It was frustrating seeing people make simple execution errors in the final game at sectionals, seemingly because they were psyched out by the momentousness of the "game to go". I spent so much time working on my mental game to ensure I would not get pysched out by those kinds of situations. My new philosophy is that there is no reason to get worked up over a game of ultimate - nothing to be scared of, ever, no reason to ever lose confidence. Easier to say than do, but still. Mental game.

At least in part due to my increased field vision, my best points of the summer were all zone offense. There were times where our offense simply shredded zones, moving the disc down the field at will. Our zone o got into trouble near the endzone, and also when handlers were reluctant to break the mark or continue swings. You can nearly always break the mark. Its not that hard.

This might be my last post in this blog. I need a post college blog now, that is about more than ultimate. Not to denigrate ultimate's role in my life, but to integrate it with my other interests, to balance my actions and create a full picture of who I am as a man, and who I am working to become.
Its been fun, thanks for reading.