What More Can I Say (southside remix)

Here's the thing. Nothing changes in without massive effort. That is for sure. And it is daunting to note how little our daily actions, tough and meaningful as they may seem, can alter the flow of the river of life, or whatever.

I was thinking about this kind of thing last night, could not sleep at all. Finished a pretty wild novel (The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, a for-sure headtrip) and it left me reeling and lacking the sandman's gift. Ended up watching the Toronto Rush home opener on youtube (check out the 37:00 mark to see captain Gabe fall over for no visible reason. Love you Gabe). At one point, they cut to a shot of a young Rush fan, waving his arms in the air and screaming at the camera, rocking an oversized jersey.

We were not even that young when we played pickup in Carmel, and had to deal with an indifferent faculty and a certain subgroup of our peers who felt the need to call us faggots on the regular just for chasing some plastic around now and then. We also dressed a bit weird, but like c'mon. One day I will write about it and spin it in such a way that it seems like a really melodramatic coming of age struggle, which it was, sometimes. That was probably the most adversity I have faced in my ultimate career. Its only gone up in terms of support from peers, school, work, etc. But we did our part to advance the sport, such as we could, and it was a little drop in the big bucket of our sport, our mantra, whatever, which is of course a small part of whatever else is going on on Earth at any given time.

And maybe that young kid, ten or twelve years old, goes to school in his Rush jersey every week and gets made fun of by his peers for caring so much about a sport they've never heard of. But he'll have the last laugh because down the line, our legitimacy is building, because of his and other drops in the bucket, its almost ready to tip and splash the unassuming populace a little, capture more hearts who have not, as yet, gone home with layout mud from head to foot, or stayed up all night watching their friends compete on ESPN, or been kicked off their high school football field for playing pickup without supervision from a faculty member.

Simple Things

On the way home from work, I had a very basic epiphany that sparked an idea for a blog post. What was it?

Maybe: how much Stonefish/Boomslang drama will there be this season, and will it make me feel like I am in college again?

No no, that was not it.

Oh yeah: dumb jokes aside, I was practicing pivots after closing up at work, and showing some of my coworkers how to throw a forehand. I've been helping coach a  brand new high school team this spring, and thus teaching a lot of basic forehand. And I guess its finally paid off in terms of my own game: tonight, I realized why my throws were so goddam bad last year.

Hah. They were, they really were. And I was not throwing enough outside of practice to realize exactly why.  I threw the least turnovers I ever have as a handler, but I struggled with hucks and forehand breaks (my goddam prior bread and butter). They were occasionally good, occasionally very bad, often mediocre at best. Mostly mediocre. And the reason why is that while I have become more learned in how to throw properly brain wise, my muscles have forgotten the goddam basics.

My muscle memory has never had a great shelf life. It used to drive me nuts in high school when we'd stop throwing for winter (other than sophomore year, when we literally threw every day). I always threw outside until at least the end of november, and would get back by the end of February. I had a buddy who would quit before Halloween and come back in April, just as good as he had been, while my form would have suffered and have to be at least partially relearned.

So basically, when I pivot, I pivot into an outside in throwing position. If I thought about it and wound up, I could usually put something good together. But trying to huck off a quick pivot, and ya'll know I have an itchy trigger finger, often resulted in a big blady forehand or a backhand way out of bounds on the left side - my default pivot to either side yields an outside in throw probably 7 out of 10 times. I don't think enough while playing to correct that mid pivot.

This actually helped my backhand a little: I learned to break outside in, a really dirty and useful throw, as long as the wind is not behind you or too gusty. But other than that my throws are a lot worse than they could be. So I guess thank goodness I figured this out now. Its crucial for both my game and sanity to throw a lot in the upcoming weeks, and I need to practice with goddam intention and fix my goddam pivot.

Its really not a hard fix it just needs lots of reps, and I need to remember to use the off hand to drive the disc to the proper orientation on both sides. Without the off hand in play, pivoting while switching grip takes at least a half second longer. Maybe that's part of the problem, I stopped using my off hand to drive.

Throw throw throw throw throw, etc.

Much love, blog friends.