Goaltimate Phase 2 Preview

"If this is global warming," I thought, "then why are we trying to stop it?"

When you think about sports in Boston in January, you first think about the Celtics and the Bruins. Or perhaps you think about skiing in the mountains of Vermont or Maine, only 3 hours away. But playing frisbee/goaltimate? Outside? Excuse me, but it's WINTER!

Or perhaps it's not. Here it was, Saturday, January 8, and we were gathered at Russell Park in Cambridge, playing Goaltimate for the 5th straight weekend. After an uncertain start, the weather decided to be nice, and indeed, many of the players were clad only in shorts and a T-shirt. For some of the 15 or so of us present, it was practice. For others, they were just there to play this funky new game.

Despite the overall informal nature of these outings, my Wellesley Founders would insist on playing together as a unit whenever possible. After all, we had a big money tournament coming up in a month, and global warming or no global warming, we didn't have many opportunities to practice. Even this relatively nice day would probably be considered less than perfect by our adversaries from San Diego. And although the air may have been agreeable, the ground was what you might expect in a place that typically has received 30 inches of snow by this point. Not too much grass, hard ground, a little bit of mud: hardly ideal conditions. But, in our hardened eyes, it was just fine.

We are struggling a little bit on this day. Because of the larger than expected turnout, we couldn't limit our team to just those who would be making the trip to Florida in February, since that would mean 10 players for 4 slots for the other team, so we added a couple of them to our squad. The players themselves weren't the problem, but we weren't able to adjust our heads properly. An unspoken debate regarding substitution policy began to rage, with the egalitarian "sub if you turn it over" platform seesawing with the Founders-centric "it's our practice, we should play" for control. On a strategic level, the team was struggling with its basic philosophy. We had heard that our patented zone defense was going to be banned at the next tournament, but we weren't sure what exactly was going to be prohibited or whether that was even true. We suspected (rightly, as it turned out) that we'd have to change our defense but wouldn't have to play straight man-to-man.

The zone was our bread and butter. We had ridden it to the finals of the Inaugural Goaltimate Tournament the previous June in San Diego. Most of the 18 teams present were the top players from the top ultimate teams on the continent, and they tried to adapt their ultimate games to the goaltimate field. The local teams (the victors Ground Zero and Border Patrol) played goaltimate almost exclusively, and knew the strategy. Although our team had three current and one former member of Death or Glory, the National champions in ultimate, our style of play more closely resembled that of the latter group than of the former, since we all loved to play hot box, which is a compressed version of goaltimate, which itself is a compressed version of ultimate. Ultimate has 60 yard bombs, full-speed layouts, and detailed choreographed plays. But it also has monster squads of specialists (typically 20 man roster for a 7 player team), constant breaks in the action, and a lot of time to wait for 2nd, 3rd, or 4th options. Hot box and goaltimate feature quick artistic throws and catches, constant action, and instant decision-making. Many ultimate teams build their offensive strategies around the principle that good athletes will get open given enough time and space. After all, who can stop Michael Jordan in the open court when he has a full shot clock?

We realized instinctively that the compact scoring area of goaltimate (~100 sq. yd vs 1000 sq. yd for ultimate) would reward tactical positioning near the goal, although it took us a lot of experimentation to work out the details. In essence, we had to treat each offensive opponent like Shaquille O'Neal: give him the outside shot, because if he gets it inside, it's a sure goal. Other teams decided that every opponent could score from anywhere, and so would play tight on every pass. While this technique would lead to some forced turnovers, it also created quick opportunities when the defensive bid failed. Our percentage game not only gave no easy goals, but surprisingly also created more than its share of easy blocks as throwers left with only one option were not able to get it past the defender who could anticipate the force.

We were frankly quite surprised upon our arrival to find that every other team played man to man. This tournament should have been a demonstration of the theory of evolution. Each team was given the building blocks, sequestered in its own unique environment, and allowed to develop to maturity. There were occasional cross-pollinations via phone call or pickup games at ultimate tournaments, but for the most part, each team had to figure out how to play the game, without any feedback from the outside world. So why were they all doing something we weren't? Even the host team which did nothing but play goaltimate had said, "We tried zone and it didn’t work." Where we missing something?

Well, as with everything in life, it turns out the answer was yes and no. Our zone frustrated the ultimate teams who were used to long leading passes. The better teams pointed out our weak areas by scoring against us, but that just helped us evolve. We quickly came to assume that it was going to come down to us against the hosts. We scouted them whenever possible, but couldn’t learn much because they sliced through their opponents’ man to man defense before we could even scream, "Why aren’t they playing zone?"

So, when the inevitable matchup finally came about in Sunday’s championship, we learned a little more about evolution. It turns out that we had never seen a predator quite like Ground Zero. The first game of the 5 game final series was over too quickly, as they exploited holes we had no idea even existed. The break enabled us to regroup, and our adjustments (which THEY hadn’t seen) prevented them from attacking the goal, and a shocked crowd which was expecting a romp saw San Diego lose their first game ever, 5-1. It was now their turn to evolve or die, and to their credit, they evolved. A few Darwinian twists later, they had eked out a victory, but not without leaving us the feeling that we could have been the winners, when going in everyone (including us) had more or less assumed that their victory was a given.

The post-mortem (which continues to this day) was of course painful. We knew that if we wanted to win it all, we were going to have to start attacking the disc away from the goal sometimes, instead of setting up camp and waiting. Our scoring percentage from in close had probably actually been better than theirs, but we always allowed them to get close before challenging them. But the bigger question still loomed: why were we the only ones playing zone?

Well, it turns out my evolutionary assumptions were off a little. It wasn’t the zone per se that was inherently better, but that we as individuals had already gone through evolution prior to becoming a team. The reason that other teams didn’t play the zone was because they were better and would always be better at playing man to man, even those teams that were good at zone ultimate. A zone defense in ultimate can be beat simply with patience and fundamentals. A zone in goaltimate (our zone in goaltimate) required an aggressive yet systematic offensive approach, like one would expect from a chess grandmaster. The Ground Zone Gambit was one such offense, and our challenge for Phase II was to come up with an alteration of our Founder Defense to stop them.

We heard rumors almost immediately that we were going to have to make big changes because of a "ban the zone" campaign. Although we thought that it was a great overreaction to one team’s partial success (and the more cynical out there suggested that certain teams feared for their place in the goaltimate world), we knew that the changes were coming, so we might as well get ready for them.

So, this led us to our struggle to redefine ourselves. In a way, the "one goalie only" rule (as the "no zone" clause is to be implemented) is a benefit to us, as it reduces our reliance on Stu Downs and Jeremy Seeger, our two big guys who had patrolled the goal mouth previously. We’re also arrogant enough to believe that anything that forces the teams to think is an advantage for us. But whether we can change things enough by Feb 12^th is another matter. Global warming or not, this is still a Northeast winter (as subsequent snowstorms and sub-freezing temperatures have proven), and not just Ground Zero but all the potential threats are from areas where snowmen appear only on Christmas TV specials.

Even with limited practice, though, we’re confident that we’ll be able to adjust our game, especially since the new format has less of a do-or-die aspect to Saturday’s play. But what about the others? What are they doing? Certainly they’re going to so things differently. There is more of a feeling that the game will stick around and that it’s worthwhile to invest some time into learning the game. All of these players have toiled in obscurity for years and years on the ultimate field, sacrificing for little recognition, and so when there is a chance to get on TV and make some money, I’d have to think that players would jump on it. Won’t they?

The rosters once again are a who’s who in the frisbee world. Seattle (in our pool on Saturday), San Francisco, Vancouver, and Santa Barbara (as well as our cross-town rivals and ultimate teammates from Boston) each have many skilled throwers and receivers who can put fear into any ultimate team. But as we’ve seen, this isn’t ultimate. So maybe a veteran team like Chicago or Denver? Don’t they play a lot of hot box in Colorado? Or maybe a Southern team like Miami or Atlanta that can practice without threat of frostbite? It’s so hard to know who is going to show up to play. The only sure thing is that all bets are off.