S1-02 ∙ Following Photocopies

I started playing ultimate at John P. Stevens High School in New Jersey. Ultimate was not respected at JPS, especially among the varsity athletes, but we still took it pretty seriously. We had loosely organized practices, and even vague notions of forces and zone. Our rival was Columbia High School, the place where ultimate was first invented. We played them a few times in the NJHSU State Finals, but we rarely won. The JP team would graduate and go its separate ways, and some of the CHS players would go on to play at great programs like Brown or Colorado, but most would end up at the NJ state university, Rutgers.

My freshman year, the first time NYU played Rutgers, we beat them 13-0. It was shocking for me, because I never really beat these guys at all in high school. I also immediately lost all credibility with NYU’s upperclassmen, as I had hyped the Rutgers team quite a bit. I mention this game not to brag but to illustrate the transformation the Rutgers men underwent. In 2003, Rutgers Machine did not even play in a game to go to Regionals. One year later, they were one game away from the game to go to Nationals.

It was because of their new coach. A former UCSC alum and Pike player, Geoff Buhl had instilled an organized offense, defense, and conditioning program that made a world of difference to a struggling Metro East team. Current Machine players jokingly call the pre-Buhl era "the dark days." One could expand that and argue that the entire Metro East was still in the dark ages if Ultimate Frisbee was a civilization, but more on that later.

A good friend of mine, Andy Ni, played ultimate with me at JPS and also went to Rutgers. He was fortunate enough to experience the Buhl transformation of the Rutgers team. I asked him if he could summarize it in one sentence, and he contributed two: "Never had I seen so many slackers learn to work so hard overnight" and "I didn’t know that Bill Keifer could be shut up." Andy proved to be a valuable resource because he had first hand knowledge of what it took to make such a drastic, team-wide improvement over a short span of time, and he also had the Rutgers playbook, created by Buhl with some of Pike’s strategy, modified to fit the college game.

Buhl’s playbook established some of the vital strategic foundations for the Femmes, especially defensively. Zac and I would heavily modify and add to it, tailoring it to women’s ultimate. However, the most significant impact of the Rutgers playbook was that it provided us with the confidence of having something that was a proven success.

Andy’s Rutgers experience also taught me about the intangible aspect of team motivation. His teammates had bought completely into their coach’s system. They understood that they were not the most physically talented team, but they also believed that if they played perfectly, they could contend with anyone. The blind trust in their system and confidence in their teammates produced hard work, commitment, and success, which in turn snowballed into more hard work, commitment, and success.

Ironically, Buhl, like many men’s coaches in his mold, did not really care for women's ultimate. I remember Mike G’s face when Zac and I told him that we were now coaching a women’s team. My junior year we had gone to his three-day camp with NYU and we immediately won Beasterns the following week, even beating his old team, UNCW. Mike G had liked us, and perhaps that was why he bit his lip and held in whatever harsh comments he wanted to say. Truthfully, Zac and I did not respect women’s ultimate either. We had only watched the Metro East, a region still in its competitive infancy, and aside from the very top teams, it was ugly. I cannot speak for other regions, but compared to true sports competition, the Metro East women’s division was embarrassing. It was progressing, albeit at a somewhat glacial pace, but the difference between the Metro East and the Western or Central regions was huge. It was like night and day.

One of the first resolutions Zac and I made was that we were going to coach the Femmes like a men’s team, or more accurately, a west coast women’s team. There would be an emphasis on defensive physicality, healthy competitiveness among teammates, active and direct criticism from coaches, and merit-based PT distribution. There would be active scouting of opponents, practical exploitation of their weaknesses, and emphasis on the long term. For the top ultimate teams, the real season did not start until Sectionals, and we were going to look at everything as practice until then. We only needed the players to feel the same way.

In the fall before our first year of coaching, Zac and I had lunch near Grand Central Station where I excitedly presented the photocopied playbook to him. We were both dressed in our work clothes and I passed it across the table like a secret agent would pass stolen data. We joked about Buhl or former Rutgers players watching us run their system, and we spoke about what we needed to do for the NYU women to undergo a similar transformation. For us, that lunch was a reaffirmation of our commitment to the next two years and to the monumental task of earning the trust and confidence of the NYU players.

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