Building momentum towards CUUC, a post-CUC analysis

Well, Canadian Nationals wrapped up this weekend with a strong showing from the UofT crowd. Several Torontula players competed on men's, women's and co-ed touring teams- bringing home 2 golds and a bronze. There is already a strong buzz about UofT's men's team for this year after seeing the boys on ROY, GT and Goat in action. There's no sense ignoring the hype: People are already pegging us as the early favorites. I think it's important to talk about this so people know how to deal with this information. This is something that Garry Watanabe, an excellent sport psychologist, talked to us about this past weekend. To paraphrase:
1. It's important/healthy for the team to take the stance that we will dominate this year. Our training/intensity should reflect our team's confidence. This discussion should be focused towards team-mates, not competition.
2. Once the banter gets around that UofT will dominate (which it already has), other teams will (if they are smart) use this to fire themselves up and focus their training towards beating us.
3. Point 2 may seem to counteract point 1 -- but it doesn't. The hidden variable here is fear. Teams are afraid of us and they have already begun to accept losing as a possibility. When you play in a situation like this, you need to come out hard, strong, aggressive and set a tone of dominance. In this case, the underdog team will fold. In fact, they will be happy to lose to you. It may sound strange to say, but it's true.
In my mind, we will win Nationals this year. Everything between now and then is training to become surgical in our execution. What does this mean for us training-wise? It means hitting the track 2x week starting now. We need to be able to grind teams into the ground with our fitness. Can you do this? Imagine an instance where you are an o-line cutter. Imagine making 5 hard 20yard cuts without pause. Imagine your defender and the sound of his breathing compared to yours. What is the difference? This is something to think about when you are at the track. It feels great to hear their asthmatic-like panting while you are still feeling energized and fast. Imagine an instance where you have a cutter wide-open on the break force side but your mark is all over you. Getting that throw to the break-force cutter would rip the field wide open and almost guarantee the score --- can you shake the defender and make the throw? This is what you should be thinking about when you are playing 3-man with your buddies. It means you need to be out throwing 5x/week. It means you need to commit to a full line-up of practices. Lets start preparing ourselves mentally and physically to dominate this year. -Kirker

PICTURES- taken from Steve's Pictures
(TOP) Scotty Nichols dialing it up on defense against Mephisto in the CUC championship game. (MIDDLE) Me going up for a disc. (BOTTOM) Goat 06' champs. Expect to see some pictures coming of Inian, who had played a wicked tournament and made a bunch of gnarly grabs. I just hope they were caught on camera. Chua dislocated his shoulder on the first point of the first game so didn't see much action on the weekend. He should be well rested for the University season. Pictures of UofT dudes that played with GT and ROY are also forthcoming. GT came up big and took 3rd overall.