 here
was a bicycle road race movie made in the ‘80s called
American Flyers, incidentally one of Kevin Costner’s
earliest works. In one scene a cycling team is analyzing old
race footage, and Costner points to the exact moment where
he gave up in a race, where he lost his heart and the drive
to beat his competitor. He still finished the race in second
place, putting in some effort, but in slow motion he goes
over the video several times, showing the point where he was
mentally defeated.
American Flyers is not the place to look for many defensive
strategies, but this scene effectively illustrates a similar
mistake made far too often in ultimate: giving up on defending
a cutter who is coming back to the disc.
When defending against a cutter who makes a good cut under
(inside, or back towards the disc), many players will let
them catch the disc for a ten or twenty-yard gain, thankful
that they defended against the deep throw and a large yardage
gain. As in the aforementioned movie, you can watch from the
sidelines and see the point where defenders give up; where
they don’t sprint back with the cutter and don’t
try to close the separation. Correcting this error is the
first act of the two-step plan to defensive glory.
It may take a lot of effort to accelerate with the
receiver, especially on a long point when energy is
waning. Your quads will burn as you play catch-up, but
there are many opportunities for the D-block if you
go back hard after the cutter. The thrower may put up
a less-than-perfect throw, and instead of being there
to block the poor toss your receiver has time to adjust
and make a catch. It is also much harder to catch running
at full speed, which a cutter must do if you’re
tailing them closely. Just being in the periphery may
be enough to make a receiver fumble the disc. As well,
if the thrower sees a defender charging towards a cutter,
they may decide not to put the disc up at all.
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If the defender is lagging up field however, the thrower
can confidently put a nice easy pass up to the receiver.
These are all straight-forward reasons to take step
one.
So, you didn’t surrender on the under-cut and
are hot-footing it up behind the intended receiver.
The thrower decides he can safely make the throw and
put up the disc. You accelerate towards the receiver
and as the disc is about to arrive in his grasp you
stride forward with an outstretched arm for the D-block.
Unfortunately the receiver reaches the disc mere inches
ahead of you, and all you manage is to swipe their hands
after they caught the plastic. You hear a supportive
shout from the sidelines, “Oh, nice try!”
as you don’t quite get the D-block. How many times
have you shouted out the same thing after someone else’s
near-miss? Watching this particular defensive effort
from a teammate always leaves me mumbling to myself
in frustration on the sidelines. Overcoming this erroneous
tendency is the second and larger step to defensive
glory. Some of you are still wondering what the error is, not recognizing
the possibility that this play held. My teammate Money
knows the situation well, as I’ve spent years
preaching these four words to her: Get Off Your Feet.
Get off your feet doesn’t mean lunge around a
defender and land on your feet. Unless you have gorilla
arms and can scratch your knees without bending, a lunge
at best only gets you a foot or two closer to a disc.
Get off your feet means lay it out, horizontal and outstretched.
A proper layout where you launch forward can gain you
at least your height in distance. This will get you
in front of your defender; this will get you closest
to the disc for the block or interception.
A layout itself is not easily taught, and I’ll
save that discussion for a future article (partly because
I still have trouble not injuring myself on landing,
as continued shoulder damage demonstrates.) |
We’ll assume that you’ve already got a
layout of sorts, and look at the necessary aspects of
a layout D-block.
First and foremost, the defensive bid needs to be clean,
meaning no contact with the intended receiver. You’ll
often hear the argument over a foul, “but I got
the disc first!” This may or may not be valid
reasoning— it’s far more gratifying to get
in and out clean, hitting only plastic. This is the
first priority.
To get to the disc which is so tantalizingly close in front
of the receiver you’re following, you’re going
to need to go to one side of the receiver’s body or
the other (over the top is frowned upon as it usually means
that you’re going to land on the cutter.) A savvy thrower
will see your position coming in with the receiver and put
the disc to the opposite side where you won’t be able
to reach it even with an extended layout. The only way to
combat this is to not choose a side until the plastic is flying,
and hope you can still get in quick enough.
Once the disc has been thrown, you’ve figured out which
side you can reach it and you’re within range, you have
to transfer from a full run to being airborne. In one fluid
motion you need to roll your weight forward, ahead of your
feet and launch from your toes, sending yourself outward rather
than upward. You’ll find yourself flying through the
air, past the side of the defender and hopefully within reach
of the disc. You’ll need to reach towards the disc with
one arm, still keeping clear of contacting the other player.
Depending how close the intended receiver is, you can either
catch the disc outright, which is preferable, or you can smack
it out of the way. It takes a fraction of a second longer
to catch the disc so if the play is close just swat it and
hope that this contact with the plastic will disrupt the intended
receiver’s catch.
After contacting the disc you will find yourself in an awkward
position in mid-air, Superman-like with an arm reached out
sideways, and falling fast. |
