25th May 2014
Day 3 was spent in preparation for the upcoming tournament which starts in a day. The teams had two session of Ultimate as usual. The morning was spent doing the drills that was part of the curriculum. In the evening however the coaches had the freedom to devise their own training plan according to what the coaches thought was needed for their team. Many teams choose to run drills that ended in scrimmage with another team. The afternoon was spent painting T-shirts that would serve as jerseys.
The team names and the logos they chose were created and voted on by the campers. The heartwarming fact is that all of them ended up being inclusive of the different regions the campers are from. Most of them had multi-lingual names. My team was called “Magizhchi (Tamil) Mast (Gujarati) Ghilleria (Hindi)” which translates roughly to Ecstatic Happy Squirrels. They picked squirrel because they are happy animals and run about continuously without tiring.
The t-shirt painting broke many barriers (Gender, Language, Ultimate Skills etc) and helped with the team bonding. The campers loved the idea of having a jersey and painting their teams names and whatever else they wanted on their shirts (We had a kid who is barely 4 feet tall walking around with Brodie Smith on the back of his jersey.) During the coaches meeting a coach reflected about how he had a hard time sending one of his wards a girl who usually didn’t enjoy any activity, off to bed after the jersey painting activity.
Some of the boys and girls might have discovered their love for art here, including the coaches. Coaches put the campers to bed and stayed up till past 2/3am in the morning painting our shirts, with involuntary dance breaks to keep us awake.
Finally Matt Hill who flew down to be with us, just for this, has been tremendously helpful. He always has time to High Five/talk to every kid/coach that walks up to him. He also sits through late night daily meetings and other activities that he doesn’t necessarily have to attend. Thanks Matt, for all your help throughout the camp. I’m sure the kids won’t forget the Crab Stance on disc mark.
Things I learnt today –
- Spirit and great plays doesn’t have to be inversely correlated. Most of the coaches had concerns about the kind of spirit that would be exhibited during this game and the following tournament, due to the high number of beginners and the excitement of the kids. The spirit and the skills showcased during the friendly matches reassured the coaches that they did manage to convey the ideology that drives the camp. There were great plays, there were layouts and unbelievable verticals in every field. One camper even attempted a greatest. Their calls were always resolved by those who were involved and they rarely involved the coaches or the sideline, this is something the adults in India Ultimate need to learn from. Coaches if you are reading this, GREAT WORK! It reflects our priorities with regard to ultimate.
- It feels awesome to see the team you coached support each other and implement the drills in their scrimmage/game. It’s as satisfactory as cold water after a hard training session. If one of them slipped up with the force the others helped them recover.
P.S Sorry about the lag. I fell asleep half way through a post and then the last couple of days of the Camp got super crazy busy for all of us. One last post and I’m done with this series.
Cheers!