3/6/2006 - Chilly Wind... A Great Day for Zone

Today's forecast called for a 30% chance of rain starting at 6pm with 5-10 mph winds. The temperature was a chilly 60 degrees. With this in mind, the captains decided that we needed to take advantage of the hazardous weather conditions by focusing on zone. In most windy, and especially rainy, weather zone is thrown because these weather conditions severly hamper even the shortest of throws.

Practice began with a shorter warm-up run around the only upper fields and then standard stretches. After this, the team was split into A and B. The B team ran the cup drill. This drill begins with a circle of people and a 3-man cup. Once setup, the cup guards the man with the disc while he or she tries to pass it around the circle. The focus of this drill is on the cup and their ability to shut down the throw.
The A team ran a full mock zone with 7's. Unlike previous practice, a new zone was used with the standard 3-3-1. However, instead of forcing middle, the cup forced sideline and used the wing as a fourth member of the cup to cut off the sideline like the 3-2-2.

Initial setup with Dark on Offense and Light on Defense
Darks:
Handlers - Raph, Bob, Danny
Poppers - Grad Matt, Adam
Deeps - Guy and Grad Mike

Lights:
Cup - Box, Alphabater, Prez Eric
Wings - Ng Mike, Sam
Short Deep - George
Deep Deep - Steve

The defense was a little hard to grasp at first. In this zone, there is a permanent mark rather than someone always on the left and right side of the cup. Essentially, its a called as mark, driver, and back of the cup. Once the kinks were worked out, the defense worked well. After learning the defense, A team did a quick endzone drill before scrimmaging with the mandatory 3-3-1 zone. The teams were slightly adjusted as well.

Darks:
Danny, Matt, Sam, Bob, Guy, Raph, Grad Matt, Prez Eric(?)

Lights:
Box, Jerry, Grad Mike, Alphabater, Ng Mike, George, ChrisP, Steve

During this first game, dark tore it up with their defense. The 3-3-1 worked incredibly well, stopping the offense by their third throw if not less. An effective cup was ran by Danny, Sam, and Raph. After the turn, dark jumped on offense with a quick score. This continued to a roughly 4-1 run by light.
The second game held no restrictions. However, dark quickly pulled ahead with Danny pulling a D and then a layout Callahan off of Jerry's first throw, much like he did at UCSB. As that was not awesome enough, Steve threw a high backhand, which had both Sam and Danny fighting for another Callahan. Sam caught it in the end.
This 3-3-1 trap sideline cup lead by Danny and Sam pushed light to a 5-1(?) run. Danny ended with an amazing 7+ handblocks as dark's permanent mark. As a way to reset and for light to recover their bearings, a new game was called to 3, with the caveat that the losers would have to run the difference in sprints. Light got it together and was able to pull this one out 3-2. Matt took the punishment a little further and modifed the punishment to 100 push-ups and 200 sit-ups.

The tension and competition in these games were high. Although the rain and wind caused some bad throws, the defense was great nevertheless. Curious to see if the new zone will work without these hazardous weather conditions. MVP of the practice has to go Danny with his amazing handblocks and callahan.

The full team scrimmage was cut short due to the increasing rain and cold. They were only able to get in a game to 3, which light ended up taking.

Team dinner was at In-and-Out.