Take the free yards
I've been watching the Arizona Sidewinders games recently and one play from their 2022 matchup against the LA Astra has been stuck in my mind.
Marilyn Reich catches a long under and looks upfield. Kody Lippincott is on the 15-yard line of the football field, and jogs backwards to catch the disc at about the 21-yard line. Watch it here:
I really don't like what happened here. Maybe that sounds crazy to you after watching that play, but I'm trying to teach you to be a great frisbee player and not just a pretty good frisbee player.
On offense, we only have one ultimate goal: to catch the disc in the endzone before we turn it over. To get there, we must eventually gain positive yards. There are obvious exceptions to that—dump throws happen all the time—but to be a great offensive player you need to have a fanatical devotion to gain yards when the yards are there for the gaining. If we can gain those yards on easy passes with no defensive pressure, that's way better for our offense than to be forced to gain those yards on harder passes with defensive pressure.
On the field, I think of my brain as a computer, running a number of different programs at the same time. On offense, for example, there might be the "what's the stall count?" program, the "what is my defender doing?" program, and the "what direction is the mark forcing?" program.
But one of the most important programs, you might be able to guess, is the "how can I gain more yards?" program. There's always this nagging in the back of my mind, asking myself what I can do to catch the next pass closer to the endzone. Now look at that play again:
Kody starts the play out with the right idea—seeing another cutter going upline, she breaks off her original cut so they won't both be cutting into the same spot. But then she's wide open in the middle of the field on the 15 yard line, and instead of pressing that advantage she jogs backwards and loses unnecessary yards in order to catch the disc.
Here's what I would be thinking and doing as this play develops if I were in Kody's position:
It starts out the same way: I see the cut happening in front of me, and see that my defender has moved off of me in order to stop the other cutter from having an easy goal.
A bell chimes in my head: I'm open! My defender is off doing something else and I'm open, standing exactly where I am. The next thing I need to do is get the disc, while gaining as many yards as possible.
Next I'm going to check the thrower and the person marking them. Depending on where the mark is, I might not be able to gain the maximum amount of yards because I do need to give the thrower a good angle to get the disc to me. But in this case, that's no problem: I'm on the backhand side, and mark is taking away the forehand upline pass.
(In effect, the defense is triple-teaming the upline cutter! The mark is taking away the upline throw, the cutter's defender is trailing behind, and Kody's defender is sagging off to help over the top.)
When I recognize that (a) my defender has sagged off me and (b) the mark isn't stopping the thrower from getting the disc to me where I am, I am going to stay exactly where I am instead of jogging in the direction of losing yards.
I'll signal to my thrower to get us on the same page. Kody puts her hands up calling for the disc in front of her torso: calling for the disc to be thrown in the yard-losing direction. Do the opposite: while keeping your torso facing the thrower, point with your left hand towards the space closer to the end zone, signaling to your thrower that you know that space is open and you want them to lead you into that space.
As always with this blog, one of the most important skills in this situation is to use your eyes to look around and notice things. After she initially notices her defender moving towards the upline cutter, she never again looks back at her defender to get an updated idea of where they are. It only takes a moment to flit your eyes to the left and get a quick idea of where your defender is.
After seeing the upline cut, she looks to the thrower and sees that they're still looking towards the forehand side and aren't about to release a pass to her. Instead of keeping her eyes locked on the thrower, she should use this moment as an opportunity to take the quick peek back towards her defender to get a better idea of how open she is.
Flip it around — why lose yards?
Perhaps another way to conceptualize the same idea is to look at it from the opposite direction. Train yourself so that any time you are running away from the endzone that you're trying to score in, ask yourself: do I really need to be doing this?
As I wrote above, there obviously will be some situations where the answer is yes, I do need to be doing this. The most obvious examples are:
Your defender is close enough to you that you need to lose yards to get open for the dump.
The thrower's mark is blocking the throwers angles to get the disc to you, so you need to lose some yards to create an angle that they can throw around the mark.
You are near the sideline, and losing yards would allow you to catch the disc further inbounds.
I am not at all saying that it's never good to lose yards. But given that the goal of frisbee is to move the disc in one direction, the only reason to move the disc in the other direction is if doing so is part of a strategic plan to eventually score. In the play I highlighted above, losing yards wasn't helping the Sidewinders — the cutter was open AND the thrower had the angle to throw to them without needing to lose those yards.
Take what they give you
In other sports, there's a common saying, "take what the defense gives you" (link for example). The play above is a clear example of not taking what the defense was giving you. The cutter was open, the thrower had an angle, but then they missed out on 6+ yards that were very clearly there for the taking.
Six yards isn't that much, but truly adopting the mindset of taking what the defense gives you will add those six yards up again and again across many opportunities.
In a previous post, I wrote about the way Medellin Revo Pro does a perfect job of taking what the defense gives them when they are receiving the pull:
...Overall, I think it's pretty obvious that Medellin is aggressive with getting to the pulled disc and getting as many free yards as they can. Watch this pull, where you can see the Medellin offense literally sprinting forward to pick up a short pull...
For another example, here's a pull where DC uses a centering pass, but then there's no one nearby looking to catch another pass, even though the defense isn't set. It seems that, philosophically, the DC offense is thinking "after the centering pass, we set up our offense". But the Medellin offense is thinking, "let's keep getting free yards until they stop us, then we'll set up an offense".
I'm a big believer that one factor (among many!) that sets apart the Medellin women is that they've really internalized this lesson of taking everything the defense gives them. Yes, they have world-class athleticism and world-class throws. But I also consistently see them being the best in the world at getting every free yard they can when they're wide open. It sounds so simple, yes, but other semi-pro teams don't consistently play to the same standard.
Update (2022-10-21)
Here's a play from AMP's 2022 Nationals pool play game against shame. where Sean Mott finds himself in a similar situation to Kody Lippincott. I rate it a slightly trickier situation because the defender fakes as if to guard him while they're running by. But Sean still ends up catching the disc with no one within ten-plus yards of him. He also caught the disc much closer to the sideline than he needed to:
With one last quick peek over his shoulder, Mott could've caught the disc 5+ yards further downfield and 5+ yards further infield. Watch the play here: