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Bide Your Time
by Tully Beatty
D, they say, is for dummies. But no D player worth their salt should have the ability to do anything more than stare at their big toe Saturday night at the hotel. Why? Because they should be too mentally taxed from keeping the stall count each time they step on the field for D. I'm not talking about counting the stall when marking your assignment; I'm talking about keeping the stall when playing D in the stack or spread. Any O player doing the same thing at stall 4 and stall 8 is giving their defender at chance at the grail. Of course you can't do it every possession of every point of every game early in the series and you shouldn't need to do it you're a 1 seed facing a 16 seed, but by the 3rd round at sectionals, it's time to say goodbye to Mickey Mouse Frisbee and work yourself into a mental lather; and if you're on a team that demands up-calls and a vocal sideline, then even better for you. Obviously it's more difficult when defending the spread, but if you bide your time and sit on a team's offense long enough and other defenders are digging in, you figure the O out and sometimes you get the grail, other times you see yourself in its reflection.
Hard to believe it's almost been ten years, but my wife's block vs RFBF in the '99 Mixed finals is the best layout block I've ever seen. The block earned her a concussion and the Llama a trip to Germany [and recently I read where someone said Mixed is for pansies]. A deep shot was sent to the girl she was guarding but Matt Hull leaped a got a finger on the disc, deflecting its course and Amy was able to come back under, layout and knock it down, simultaneously taking a knee to the back of the head and getting knocked the hell out.
On a lighter note, at Fools one year, I saw KD, after shot-gunning not one but two beers during a time-out, get a layout block on a dump pass that was thrown by the guy he was marking. The pass couldn't have gone two yards before he blocked it. It was pretty sweet.
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Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 |
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