casual ultimate » What would you say….ya do here?

Maybe my biggest gift as an Ultimate player is not what I do between the lines. Hector wrote a blog post called “Invisible Fence” a few weeks ago criticizing teammates that don’t move up and down the sideline to follow the team and help their teammates from the sideline during a point. I think that’s a fantastic point that is often overlooked. Last year on Revolver, that got emphasized plenty by Jit, the human megaphone, an awesome sideline voice and an enforcer for the rest of us to be sideline voices too. (Side Question: How loud is pillow talk with Jit? Any current or former girlfriends care to comment?)

I was thinking about what I do well in Ultimate this week and over the past many months really. I think I have some skill with the disc, good hands, good size, and some quickness downfield that makes me tough to handle. I think I also see offensive space in a unique way and know how to attack it in a non-traditional way at times. Anyway, I started to really get a handle on where I add the most value last year while playing with Revolver. I had arthroscopic surgery and never really hit my stride at any point of the season, so it was sort of natural to look closely at sideline presence, etc. I’m not particularly loud, but I can be very positive. I can celebrate with my team, bring a smile to a teammate’s face, and point out the value that is at stake in a given moment for our team and its players. For example, when things are going badly, I can remind a teammate that these are the most important times to practice “contrary action” by celebrating a good effort and consoling someone on a missed opportunity or blunder.

That’s all really interesting, and one thing I said at Nationals in a team meeting that I really believe is that on a team of 20+ players, the greatest chance that most of us have to impact the result of the game is by being a good teammate. It’s not usually by being a good player. When I’m a good player, I affect the game only when I’m on the field and maybe only during certain points that I’m on the field. When I am being a good teammate, I can literally bring up anywhere from 1 to all 25 other guys with me. I can make everyone else slightly better, and if the entire roster gets a little better by something I’m doing, then my impact could be 5-6 points through the course of a game, whereas realistically if I have the game of my life at Nationals, I can probably only change the score by 2-3 points when it’s all said and done (and that’s harder to measure anyway since guys like T Mac, Kobe, and A.I. can score 40 in a loss just about every night).

What else do I contribute to a team?

I’m just stepping into maybe my biggest and most important contribution to a team. It’s really not about the game. It’s really more spiritual and mental. I have some ability to reach my teammates on a deep and personal level, speak to the values that we all hold in common, and inspire them to live that value and do it for the whole team and not just themselves. I can contribute to the vision that makes a team like Revolver truly special and great. We literally don’t want individual accolades. We literally don’t care what people think of us. Robbie Cahill literally does have a square head. (Ok, sorry that just sort of slipped in there.)

I pulled my name off the roster for Revolver this week. It’s disappointing. It’s the right decision. I know this, but it’s disappointing. It’s exciting though in the sense that I get to define my contribution to Revolver this season (or another team), and it could be as much or as little as I want it to be. I can go coach a coed team, I can be a spiritual advisor to several teams, I can do workshops and visualization stuff for teams, I can continue on as “Social Chaplain” of Revolver ’09, or I can do nothing at all and just be a fan.

Whatever it is, I proved to myself last year that I can play Open, and that I can reach all kinds of people on a deep level, even if they went to Stanford. That’s what makes it really special….Stanford.