I asked Sonny if I could come to Scam's practice and bring a friend while on Spring Break, which he allowed.
Practice was supposed to start at 5, which is when I showed up. About 6 were there when I got there, and everyone warmed up as they showed up, which involved running about a 1/4 mile lap and dynamic warm ups, with no static stretching. We got started around 515.
Squeege seemed to be coaching Scam, or at least just running this practice. Either way we started out with a sweet drill that had no disc work in it.
The drill was set up like a flat-Y, with two cones (nalgenes) about fifteen yards apart and then two more cones (discs) another fifteen yards on both sides, forming a flatish-Y.
Squeege then proceeds to talk about how there is almost no physical play in the college game, and that if you plan on playing club you best get used to it. He says that this drill is purely conceptual -- there is no "mock field" and it is just to learn how to play with a man on your shoulder.
The drill is a bit hard to explain through text, but I'll do my best. There are two lines, one being offense and the other being defense. The defense decides which side is the "force" side and lines up on that side of the first nalgene, and is allowed to be up to one step ahead of the offender if he feels there is a great speed mismatch. You "win" on offense by getting to the force side of the second nalgene and then busting to the "break" side. You "win" on defense by not allowing the offense to get to the force side of the second nalgene and making him go on the break side of the nalgene, and then both sprint to the "force" side. The actual winner is the person who gets to the end of the flat-Y first, whichever side you end up running on.
The drill looks like two people putting their weight into each other trying to gain an advantage until right before the second nalgene. The reason why the offense still goes to the force side of the Y when the lose is that since the defense is already on that side they have a head start to the cone. Likewise, when the offense wins, they go to the break side since they start on that side and will have a head-start to the break-cone.
The point of this drill, on defense, is to learn how to use your body to prevent where the offense can go -- to dictate to the offense rather than the other way around. On offense it is basically defense against the dark arts, to learn how to get around a defender who is bodying you.
This was a great drill for today, as it was very windy, and since the drill required zero discwork it can be done in any conditions. I went through the drill roughly 7-8 times and we did it for probably ten or fifteen minutes.
Next up was short 50/50. There are two lines similar to the long 50/50, and the thrower throws a short, low pass that requires one or both of the people to lay out. This is basically a layout drill.
This teaches you how to lay out at the earliest possible moment since if you don't, your opponent will. This drill is taxing on the designated thrower as it requires extremely difficult passes. The runners should run about five yards before the throw is made, and the throw should be placed so that it allows one of them to make a play.
After that Squeege had us huddle up and went into some layout mechanics. He said that most of the weight when you fall should be on your thighs and forearms, and a bit on your chest. He explained that laying out shouldn't hurt much as most of your momentum is going forward, so you slide on the ground instead of just falling onto it.
He also stressed the importance of trying to catch it with your thumb down and attacking it from above, and explained that it is important to not "corkscrew" when you lay out, as aside from it being taxing on your body, on very low throws you will often spin or hit the ground before you get the disc, making it much harder to grab.
This segued into a very basic layout drill. Everyone paired up, and one person got on their knees (lololol). The other person then throws them a disc from whatever angle the catcher feels comfortable, and the catcher then essentially falls in order to try to catch the disc. The focus of this drill was to learn how to fall on your forearms and thighs in a low-risk environment. We each did three sets of 5 "lay outs" and alternated with our partner after each set.
Next up was the layout circle. There are a few discs (3-5, number is mostly irrelevant) and everyone stands in a circle except for one person, who is in the middle. The object is for the people on the outside to throw a lay-out-D-able pass to someone else around the circle, and this continues for as long as the person in the middle wants to be there. As Squeege said "Stay too short, and you look like a pussy. Stay too long and you look like a hero, but you might get hurt". He made everyone stay until they got three lay out ds, and no one stayed longer. It took people anywhere from 3-5 minutes to get the requisite number of d's.
Then we did indian sprints for about half a mile, but I dropped out about 1/3 of the way through cause I died. That was the end of practice.
The post-practice huddle included encouraging people to do work-outs outside of practice, and emphasizing the importance of a deep, versatile bench. Sonny and Squeege stressed that if you have a question to ask, and even if some people seem unapproachable they still love talking disc.
I'm not sure if the lack of discwork on a windy day was planned, or if the layout drills on a soft-ground day was planned, but practice ran very smoothly. No one got water between drills, they just went to the next drill. No one talked while Squeege was talking (except Sonny sometimes but he doesn't count).
It was obvious that some members of the team were not friends (outside of the team) with others, but it did not affect practice at all. Practice had a upbeat, fun feel, with plenty of heckles (especially during the lay-out circle) and Squeege would routinely compliment anyone who showed good effort.
Squeege was very approachable, and did not discourage questions about anything. People messed up the "flat-Y" body-defense drill multiple times, and he just pulled them aside and explained it. He paid attention almost the entire time and got people amped up. He pulled many people aside and offered advice when they messed up.
Fuck conclusions.
