Notice when you're open
It's simple but critical
A critical skill for an offensive player on the frisbee field is keeping track of the person who is guarding you, and knowing when they've left you open.
I've been writing about a cluster of similar ideas lately. One facet I've written about here — taking advantage of that split second when your defender takes their eyes off you. In Take the free yards, I wrote about another facet: gaining as many yards as possible on a reception when your defender's positioning allows for it. In Be ready for the pass at all times, I wrote about having a mindset of readiness. This is the fourth article, and (for now) the last: the basic concept of noticing that your defender isn't near you. It has some overlap with those previous articles, but with a different framing.
I went back and forth in deciding whether I wanted to write this article. On the one hand, it seems like such a simple tip. Like, of course it's important to notice that you're open. This issue comes up most often with true beginner players, who are too new and confused to notice that nobody is really guarding them, and their more experienced defender is just poaching in the lane.
But there are situations (as you'll see below) where even high-level players fail to notice that they're open.
And though it's a simple concept, one of my goals for blog is to put into words some important concepts that often get missed when people teach frisbee. Some of those concepts are difficult to teach because they are just plain difficult to put into words. But other concepts are hard to teach because they're so simple that we forget to stress them. For example, the lesson of a previous article was "run really fast". We tell people "make a V-cut", but we don't tell them "notice that you're wide open". This is another essay that fits in that vein.
Karate Kid Theory
I have this idea that I call Karate Kid Theory: people who are incredibly talented at their craft are just unimaginably good at doing some of the very basic skills of their craft.
Blogger and economist Tyler Cowen likes to use the example of a concert pianist practicing scales.
In basketball, the best players are just insanely good at making layups. Steph Curry is known for his flashy three pointers, but he is also way, way, way better than you are at putting the basketball in the hoop from two feet away.
In The Karate Kid (um, spoiler alert), the main character Daniel's karate skills are developed through becoming very, very good at a few simple motions ("wax on, wax off"). Although it's obviously exaggerated for movie magic, I'm a big believer that the basic concept is true. Being a master is not just about being able to do hard things that no one else can do—it's also critical to be better than everyone else at doing the easy things that anyone could do.
In frisbee, a few examples come to mind:
Manu Cardenas is better than just about anyone at throwing 0-5 yard passes. If you give two beginners a disc, they'll immediately start practicing throws that are longer than that. I hardly ever see even experienced players practicing their shortest throws.
Top players are really, really good at clap catching. It's a skill so basic that we hardly ask people to practice it once they're past the beginner level. This is something Understanding Ultimate has written about before:
If you watch high level games and keep count, you’ll see that as many as 80-90% of catches are clapped. You wouldn’t think that, if you only watched highlight reels, but you might be surprised if you watch a whole game and keep count properly.
I just did exactly this for the first 5 points of the most recent World Games final – not an especially windy day, with extremely high level players – and counted 53 clap, 1 thumbs up, and 6 thumbs down... I think only one disc at chest height was caught in any other way…
A final skill, of course, is the lesson of this article: noticing when you're open. Easy to describe, but harder to truly master. And you can't be a truly elite player without having all these skills at a high level.
Looking at an example
I always feel conflicted about showing examples of things you shouldn't be doing. But everyone makes mistakes, myself certainly included, and if we're open and honest about that we can use one mistake as a lesson to help many others out there. So here goes:
Here's an example from the Arizona Sidewinders 2022 regular season game against San Diego Super Bloom. The reset handler catches an upfield dump cut, while at the same time a cutter from the back of the stack was making an open under cut. The reset handler catches the disc, and the cutter turns and clears out up the field:
But the cutter's defender was never anywhere near them! At one point, they're about ten yards downfield of the handler who now has the disc, and their defender is nearly ten yards further downfield from them. They're wide open in an open throwing lane. They could simply turn around and catch the disc.
As I wrote in my last article, this ability to take what the defense gives you is so important in all sports. Moving the disc down the field is hard. We only have so many opportunities, and we need to take easy progress whenever we can.
What happens in this play reminds me of the example of Levke Walczak in The "fake clear" cut. Levke saw a similar opportunity—but with much less separation from her defender—and took advantage of it. Perhaps that's another way to frame the advice in this article: anytime you're starting to clear out of the lane, scan the field and ask yourself: could I turn around really quickly right now and catch a wide-open pass?
Following rules instead of thinking
This has been discussed to death, but it'll remain relevant for years to come. We need to teach our players to play with their brain. Good frisbee is not about always cutting from the back of the stack, and then always clearing out when you don't get the disc. It's about using your eyes and brain to see what your teammates and the defense is doing and using that information to decide what to do next. I like the way it's phrased in this Hive Ultimate article:
...the hard thing about completing a sequence of passes that leads to a goal is not the physical actions involved, but is rather the need for each player to recognize (quickly and in the face of a flood of chaotic distractions) which of the many potential next passes is best to attempt, how to move subsequently in relation to one’s also-moving teammates to leave the team in the best position to complete another pass, and another one after that, and so on...
it was hardly surprising [based on what they were being taught] that, in scrimmages and games, players tended to just take turns performing pre-scripted actions at pre-determined times. For example, as long as the stall count was below 6, cutters would take turns making the inevitable fake-away-and-then-back-under cut, to the strong side, from the back of the vertical stack.
That is more or less exactly what happens here. The cutter cuts, and when they don't get the disc, they take the "predetermined" next step of clearing out of the lane. Even though they're still wide open!
Selfishness
I worry that part of what's going on here is a too-simple conception of selfishness. We clear out of the open lane so other teammates can cut. In this stereotyped way of looking at it, there's an element of selfishness to staying in the lane after you've already cut.
But it's too simple to say that to be unselfish you need to clear out after cutting. A healthy, winning team should have a devotion to getting the disc to the open player. It should never be seen as selfish to recognize when we're wide open and try to get the disc. Our teammates (other cutters) also have a responsibility to recognize who the open player is and encourage them to get the disc. A player with a healthy team-oriented mindset has the assertiveness to be comfortable asking for the disc when they recognize that they're wide open (alongside the unselfishness to clear out when they're not).
Update (2022-10-21)
One day after I posted this, Dena Elimelech provided a positive example of what you should do in this situation. This play is from Flipside's 2022 quarterfinal game against Fury.
She starts to clear upfield, and notices that her defender is staying well downfield of her (the defender is trying to be sure to take away the huck). Instead of continuing to clear out, she stops where she is, turns around and calls for the disc. When she doesn't get the disc immediately, she re-adjusts slightly into a lane where the thrower can more easily make a pass around the mark, and eventually catches an open pass.
Watch it here:
Update (2023-12-05): Here’s another example from a Hive Ultimate video, where a wide open player jogs back towards their defender instead of taking advantage. As mentioned in the introduction, all these examples are overlapping concepts—noticing when you’re open, being ready for the pass at all times, and noticing when your defender isn’t noticing you.
And here’s another example from a different Hive video: