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Chain: Building A Core
by Adam Sigelman
Good club teams often have a core of stars who have played with each other for a while. Looking at Chain Lightning's roster last year, I was struck by how little turnover the team experienced. With a few notable exceptions, last year's Chain team was the same team that lost in the semifinals in 2008, bolstered by the addition of five rookies, all of whom Chain used in key defensive roles (e.g. Robert Runner and Patrick Dempsey). Chain's O line, with the exception of Asa, was the same O line that lost in the semifinals in 2006, only with a few more years of experience under its collective belt. And these guys are far from being beyond their athletic prime — the average age of the O-line was 27.
Contrast Chain's roster with that of my team, Ironside. The average "tenure" of Chain's roster is 4.3 years. That's almost 1.5 more years than Ironside has existed. The average tenure of Chain's O line, where on-field chemistry is arguably much more important than on the D line, is a whopping 6.3 years. On Ironside, that number is 2.0. Even if you look at how long Ironside's O-line has played Open Ultimate in the city of Boston (either for DoG, Metal, or Boss Hogg), the tenure only increases to 3.7.
Watching Chain play in Sarasota, I saw a team that played with great chemistry. Throwers seemed to know exactly where cutters were going. Cutters saw space and cleared effectively. I didn't see as much trouble resetting the disc with Chain as with other teams. It was clear that the group of players on the field for Chain knew each other and their tendencies well.
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Thursday, April 8th, 2010 |
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