Can You Hear the Grass?

Fat and Mediocre takes 4^th at Metro New York Sectionals for the third straight year. You can finish ahead of us, or you can finish behind us, but we own 4^th place, 100% of the time and that’s just the deal around here.

We went into the tournament with 23 rostered players. We ended up with 12 each day. Ended the weekend with a 4 – 3 record, winning the ones that counted to take a bid to regionals. First time going two years in a row! Neat.

Some quick hits:

Didn’t horse stomp so much on hucks this season, and I tightened up my pivot to be more consistent and give me better angles of attack. My slightly sore Achilles reveals that I’m still stomping sometimes. I also run on my heels sometimes. Bad. New cleats might help, my good orange boys finally gave up the ghost during a meaningless semis game vs colt and I had to gorilla tape them back together for the rest of the day. In retrospect, playing for 2 years with falling apart cleats probably explains my ankle and Achilles problems as much as the horse stomp does.

Running track prior to the tournament, I tightened up my running form with much more efficient arm movement. It did not really pay off, because I was only able to hit my top speed during our second game of the tournament. Maybe next year!

Bobble drill paid off. I completely missed a goal catch and then saved it on the third bounce. Bobble every day, yall.

That said, while I only had 3 drops I can remember, all were difficult catches that physically I can make with ease, but mental pressure led to the drop. More practice would probably help with this. I didn’t get too many touches towards the end of the season so my disc confidence was lower than I’d like.

Ha-ha, “season”.

During tough moments of the tournament (any time I had to be on the field for more than 2 minutes, am I right?) I thought about something I said to a girl on the high school team I coach (city champs 2017!) back in 2016 when she was having confidence issues on the field: “no matter what else is going on in your life, school, relationships, family problems, etc – you don’t bring that on the field. When you’re on the field, it is your chance to make all of your feelings somebody else’s problem for a while”. It mostly worked. Coaching is awesome. “Advice is a givers’ present” – John Steinbeck

While waiting for my parents to arrive for dinner after day 2, I figured out how to nail delay my sketchbook. I’ve been trying passively to learn to nail delay since I was 14. It’s a lot easier with the sketchbook than an ultra star, but I’ll keep trying. This has nothing to do with F&M besides that it is a mediocre story.

As long as I keep throwing I’ll be fine. See you at regionals.