akrish

NY invite was a huge wake-up call for Dire Wolf. It was our first where all of the teams were at least at our level, meaning that we couldn’t just cruise to victory in any of our matches. Our offense looked frantic and sloppy, and in many of our games it felt like we simply couldn’t score. As a result we ended going 1-5, with big losses to regional rivals Bear Proof, Oakland Ultimate, and Medicine Men. Our only win came against Dead Rabbits, and even there we struggled offensively which made the game a lot closer than it should have been. By the end of the weekend it was clear that we have a lot of work to do if we want to be successful in the series.

The two big things that we really struggled with were zone offense (it was fairly windy) and end zone offense. For the former, we haven’t really had many windy practices, so our offensive style has always been to through big hammers and blades over the defense’s cup. When it gets windy, these become really low-percentage throws and this resulted in a lot of turnovers for us. Patience is essential to be successful against a zone, but we aren’t the kind of team that will swing the disc from sideline to sideline again and again, and as a result our offense repeatedly turned the disc over.

The story with end zone offense is pretty similar. We weren’t willing to be patient and ended up rushing a lot of throws, practically giving away the disc. I should also point out that we were missing three of our starting handlers who are all very comfortable breaking the mark and this was evident in our end zone offense, which is usually solid.

It was a horrible weekend, but I think there were some positive takeaways. For the most part, our defense was pretty good. We ran a lot of different different defensive sets and we were good at adjusting, recognizing a teams weaknesses, and capitalizing on them. In fact, our defense generated a lot of turnovers, it’s just that our defensive O couldn’t convert the turnovers into goals.

Off of the field, we had a great time in the city. My car got in fairly early on Friday night, so we had some time to walk around, get some New York style pizza, eat at a crappy diner and grab some ice cream. On saturday I got to meet up with my brother and a friend from high school and eat dinner with them before meeting up with my team at shake shack. And on Sunday we went to Stage Deli, which is apparently a famous new york deli, before starting the drive home.