Tips for the Week–about 3 months away from Regionals

1. Throw 10 perfect throws everyday. Take the time to think about your throws, think about your catches, and then be sure to execute them perfectly. Perfect practice makes for perfect games.

2. Prepare for one day of practice each week like you would for a tournament:

• get enough sleep
• eat plenty of energy rich foods (such as potatoes, pasta, whole grains) 12 hours before
• drink 0.5L of water before you go to bed, when you wake up, and 30 min before practice starts

Houston Antifreeze 2011

Anti-Freeze!!

This weekend we hosted a tournament on Rice Campus! We had six teams from Texas as well as OU. Just three weeks into the school year our team was still feeling revitalized from break and excited to play together. Due to some mishaps in the fall we had not had all of the opportunities to play together that we wanted so the timing of the tourney was perfect!

Our first game Saturday was against Texas State. We came out well and went up early but we let Texas State score a bunch second half. Our second game was against Texas Mayhem. With an athletic team and their usual strong fundamentals it was a good second game. Rookie Buttercup continued on her quest to score 20 points in the tournament going deep time after time! Our stack spacing improved and everyone started taking cuts on and then in. Mingo began her string of awesome Ds! Next we played Sam Houston State. We were pumped to be able to host them at their first tournament! We started out well but lost our focus as the game progressed. Our next game was against Texas A&M. This was going to be the game of the tournament for us! We started the game off with two quick points. However, things started to slow down and our lack of a deep game resulted in us being down by half. Thanks to the endless enthusiasm both in play and words of Wheeler we started to turn things around. Ruthie played awesome shut down defense, but it wasn’t enough and we lost. Disheartened we got ready for our last game of the day. We played UTA and everyone’s mental and physical exhaustion was evident. We pulled out with a win and then enjoyed the skills clinic! Afterwards we enjoyed awesome tournament dinner thanks to the hard work of UH-Strata!

Sunday morning it was raining, but we where enthused by the cheering from the marathon. Our first game was against an aggressive and scrappy OU team. We were down at the half and we began to clean things up second half but not quickly enough. Missy faced the challenge of zone handling with poise and Kayla threw some awesome chilly dump passes. Next we faced University of Houston Strata composed of many new players as well as two former Rice captains. We did not play up to our potential but we saw glimpses of greatness: Fran and Remy worked really well together as handlers, Toni had some sweet hucks, and Angel made great dump cuts. Sarah and Rebecca both had exciting Ds! Joey kept our deep-game respectable, Alex had some crazy grabs, and Kayla had good in cuts and chilly dumps. Next was Mayhem again for third place. We pulled out the win with chilly throws and some awesome defense.

Next Mardi Gras, then Centex, and then Keystone classic!!!!!

Thank you Tofu for taking all the pictures! They are awesome!

Highlights:

Rice/UH Collaboration Tournament

Rice University and the UH womens' team are happy to announce Houston Antifreeze 2011. Come warm up your team for the spring semester in Houston, January 29-30th, 2011! This is a round robin of 8-10 teams at Rice University, the top team will win prizes!

What we have to offer:

- USAU sanctioning

- at least 7-8 games (2 days of play)

- tournament essentials (bread, peanut butter, bananas, etc.)

- a Saturday night dinner/mixer

- gear for sale

- Prizes for the winner!

- housing and on-campus showers if necessary

Tournament fee is $200. If you are interested in attending this tournament, please submit your bid (team, contact name and info, any questions/concerns) to houstonantifreeze@gmail.com by January 15th.

Harvest Moon 2010

First tournament of the year!

So the team theme was "To Infinity and Beyond" focusing mostly on Disney characters! We had an interesting collection of characters who ended up on the U of A fields in Fayetteville Saturday morning. There was a nice layer of snow covering the fields when we got there - which quickly melted by the time rounds started. A good lesson to learn, wake everyone up 45 minutes before you want them to leave....

Our first round was against Hendrix - who ironically enough were also Disney characters. Because we only had 8 players, we switched into our super fancy blue jerseys (who Lynn so kindly spent the week working on) and got ready to play. It was our first game of the year playing together with only 3 girls who had actually played together last year. Pretty incredible. Choosing to focus on really tight open side defense and stifling marks we managed to shut down their offense. Our offense looked pretty sharp, having never played in a tournament before. The cuts were smooth and effective, rookies really stepped up in this game and made great in cuts. Wheeler

and Ruthie began their downfield domination which would carry through the rest of the tournament. We saw some nice bids and some great hucks from our handlers (Kathleen, Fran, and Erica). This game ended pretty quickly with a score of 13-3, Miss Red.

Our second round was against the Fame Monsters (Arkansas home team). The Gaga beasts played very poachy defense and through a lot of zone against us. Having never actually played zone offense, we had a bit of trouble figuring out how to break their cup. They through the trap cup along the sideline and by the second half we had figured out a general idea of how to get the disc moving. The handlers had to stay away from the sideline and move amongst themselves. It was a pretty rough game for us, but the hucks were there. We had a few fights, a few quick slugs to the nose and stomach, but by the second half we had our head on straight and managed to put some marks on the scoreboard. Game ended 6-13, Fame Monsters.

The third round against Endzone Entruders (Mizzou) was our chance for revenge. We came out really strong, focusing on shutting down any open side options. The marks did a very good job shutting down the breakside. Their handlers were not given the opportunity to swing the disc and many of their hucks were unsuccessful. We saw some sweet defensive bids from Ruthie and Wheeler as well as some great denial D from our freshmen! It was a promising game and we took the game 8-3 at hard cap.

Fourth round on Saturday was an eye opener for our rookies. Our last game of the day we faced the SlUperheroes. This team is not nearly as good as they were two years ago - their primarily handlers having graduated I assumed. Nevertheless, with an almost savage tea

m we had trouble keeping up with their offensive deep cuts and getting a lot of their swilly hucks. To switch it up we put Kathleen on their primary handlers and forced straight up for a lot but when you're tired, you're tired and keeping up with deep cuts gets rough. On our offense, we started having Kathleen take the in cuts and looking for the dish which worked brilliantly. A lot of the offensive structure that we had earlier today started to crumble but Wheeler and Kathleen kept the disc moving. Marie and Ruthie did a nice job stepping up into the role of handler and we did manage to score a few more points against Slu by the end of the day.

Overview of Day 1: We accomplished our goal of forcing the right way on the mark, not getting broken, and playing excellent open side defense. On offense, we did a great job keeping the disc moving and timing our cuts. For the most part, we made good decisions about when to swing and when to huck. It was a fun day of ultimate and everyone really learned a lot!

Saturday night: Ruthie slept for 13 hours. And I'm pretty sure we ate more calories than we expended...something pretty hard to do when playing with 8 people.

Day 2 - The climb to the Chumpianship!

While normally, I would be very upset with being in the Chumpianship bracket, it is the first tournament of the year and the only upperclassman playing had been in South Africa for the past semester. I was actually really happy on Sunday!

Game 1: Tulane -So never listen to drunk tournament TDs because they actually have no idea when you are supposed to play. We showed up late for this game which put us behind for the rest of the day. This group of girls were not very experienced and had trouble completing passes. When the wind started picking up, our defensive job got easier. Fran (mostly), Kathleen, and Erica had plenty of opportunities for some downwind hucks. We saw Ruthie and Wheeler put up plenty of throws, some nice bids, and even a few handblocks. Marie had a sweet bid in the endzone and again Rebecca and Sarah seemed to be open in the endzone (a lot). The game ended at cap with a score of 9-3 or something.

Game 2: Mizzou again! Similar story but we learned to start poaching in the lane with the beginnings of a very effective front wall. Upwind, we started having Kathleen and Fran run a very quick dominator until they found someone open downfield. The score was capped again in our favor.

Game 3: THE CHUMPIANSHIP! JBU was again, a very different team. Their star cutter ended up handling for them and they had trouble completing passes. With a game cut short (because we started the day really late...) we saw a lot of great plays. Everyone was really stepping

up and the hucks kept flying. By the end of the day the endzone was looking a lot better and Fran and Kathleen dominated that inside out break all day.

Highlights of the weekend:

~ Wheeler catching the disc on her face (many times!).

~ Wheeler getting a sweet callahan before the sole of her cleat ripped off.

~ Ruthie getting a callahan.

~ Kathleen getting a callahan? I can never remember if she catches her Ds or not.

~ Marie's break (and bid).

~ Rebecca's defense.

~ Sarah scoring a lot.

~ Fran's handblocks then hucking it straight into a girls finger.

~ Erica's sweet deep defense and her lefty hucks to the endzone.

Let's carry this momentum as we get ready for San Marcos this weekend!

FIRST WEEK OF PRACTICE

Practice starts on Monday, the 23rd:

Monday: 4:30-6:30 pm

Thursday: 4:30-6:30 pm

Saturday: 9-12 pm

COME OUT AND PLAY!! NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY!

Ramblings on Recruiting

I have been thinking about recruiting for a bit and decided to give you guys a little bit of help. I'm sure you could use some assistance in figuring out how to try and outcompete me for recruits. I have a few rules:

1. Never accept defeat. Body language will tell you what someone really wants to do. If they are watching practice or throwing with a careful eye but when you ask them, they act shy or busy, you are halfway there to getting them to come out for Miss Red.

2. Give them what they want. Sell the sport and the team. Try to understand where your recruit is coming from and relate to them as best you can. You see they are very focused and studious so play on that aspect of the team - we are nerds but we play frisbee. If they were really strong athletes, explain to them how much athleticism is involved, their potential, and where the team is headed. The trick is to get them to come to practice, from there, it is their decision to stay (which if you got the right athlete, they probably will).

3. Don't sacrifice your own intensity and goals for the team and the recruit. Sometimes you might feel compelled to say a little too much to convince them to come out (Maybe lie a bit?). Well, you shouldn't do it (nods head yes). Just remember that in the end, you want a recruit who is going to be your teammate at Regionals who is going to catch that critical pass to win the game. So sure, say what you need to say but remember that in the end, you want to find the recruits who are gonna be attracted to the sport.

Random recruiting ideas:

1. Find the athletes (i.e. Club Soccer)

2. Fliers and personal attention

3. RECRUIT YOUR ROOMMATE!! :D (that's how Kim was recruited)

4. Late night Miss Red study breaks

5. Fish Discs :) - i guess thats mostly to teach freshmen how to throw...

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Winner of the recruiting competition gets a WFDF World Championship 2010 Jersey!!! Also available a WFDF 5 wristband.

End of the Season

"It's like breathing"

This is a long overdue post. There is little to say nearly 2 months post-Regionals. Sectionals we dropped seed and went into Regionals ranked 3rd from the Texas section. We were then ranked 7th going into Regionals. We held seed, tying with Missouri State for 7th place.

I can say that we played hard at Regionals. There is nothing to hold our heads about. While there are things that I would change, the way we played showed that we have a lot of heart and that we are ready for the challenge. Our 2 hour season recap of many sobs and tears showed that we have planted the seed for greatness. If there is anything I can take away from that tournament, is that we have touched the corner of a dream. It will take dedication, hardwork, teamwork, and friendship but the talent and the drive is there. The competition will be tough, when we face A&M again, they will also be a stronger team. But we will also be stronger - more talented and stronger fighters.

There is a lot to be said about college ultimate. It is very much a battle of skill but it is more of a battle of athleticism and drive. In the South Women's division, we don't see a lot of kids who played for 4 years in HS and went to the Eastern/Western championships. Instead, it is comprised of very young athletes who are relatively new the sport. Most of the players are just at the beginning of their learning curve and have so room for development. But these are the players that change the game for everyone else who is lucky enough to play with/coach them. They bring a new vitality and energy to the game - something novel and exciting. They are filled with potential and promise. You can see them catch the ultimate bug and realize that this is something that can change their life and also a world they can change. It provides them with a sense of community and freedom to be whoever they want on and off the field. It is also a relatively new sport that it is a place where they can excel and compete against some of the very best. This year, I have met a phenomenal class of freshmen ("A New Hope") to propel Miss Red forward under the leadership of our sophomores and juniors. It has been an honor to captain and play with these players - watching them fight hard for every disc, witnessing how much Miss Red has grown since my first tournaments with them as an obnoxious freshmen. I am so thankful and proud of everyone who has stayed with me with my ridiculous plans/grandiose images of glory.

While winning was the goal, my secret plan was to share a little bit of what ultimate means for me. It may appear like an inhuman obsession - who spends a ridiculous amount of money and time to fly to tournaments, suffers through a million track workouts in the Houston sun and says that its FUN? There is no way to describe this in words, ultimate is like Buddhism, a philosophical way to live life. It has taught me a lot about working with people, what hard work and dedication can bring, what it means to REALLY want something. There are very few things in life that I can say I truly want, that in the end of all adversary, I will still stand up and fight - I will fight for the chance to show my teammates what it's like to be a champion.

Don't lose sight of who you are and what you deserve. At the end of the day, you know your teammates will be there for you.