Before The Tournament
When I first heard we were going to the Mekong Cup, I was pumped and excited. I tried to get myself in a good shape as much as I could not only to prevent from injury, but also to be able to compete in the game confidently. Most of my workouts that I’ve been doing from Monday to Friday designed specifically for quick feet, agility, and speed rather than just focusing on the upper body alone. There’s sometimes that I put too much pressure that my legs couldn’t handle, for example, shin splint, however, for some reasons, the pain didn’t appear during the tournament, I bet, it must had be the one week off during Pchum Ben, which most of the exercises were solely focused on upper body.
Reflection
To be honest, I don’t know where I should begin to write about this. It had been almost a month already since the Mekong Cup, and the memories started to fade away; there was not much excitement to talk about or look back on. Instead, it left me with a shallow reminder of the pressures, mistakes, and doubts that were all coming together at once during the games.
And those experiences, feelings, and mistakes I made during each point I dropped stay until now no matter how much I try to remove them, too clear that I could even recall it.
For example, the game we played against Super Nova, we were on offence, the disc was pulled and dropped on the sideline (if you are a handle or a frisbee player, you know it right away that the best option to play on the sideline is to swing), so I run to pick up the disc, at the thing I did was looking for the upline, my teammates tried to cut to get the disc, but there’s a lot of double cut plus a tight space in the openside, the stall was rising to 5, and my mark started to put more pressure on me, I tried to swing to not sure if it’s Skyma (another handler), and bang, the disc was dropped. We lost the disc, and let Super Nova broke for another one point because of my swing, and what even worst was that I could call a foul during that D because of the guy of was marking me slap my right arm while I was releasing the disc which cause the disc dropped; I didn’t know about that until Jimmy told me that I could have called a foul. It all happened to fast, so fast that I didn’t even know what to do and how to do.
After all, I think it’s a good lesson to learn from and continue to carry it on. I started asking myself repeatedly why I wasn’t aware of that foul call (1). Why couldn’t I swing a disc? (2) and guess what?! The answers I found are definitely not surprising to me.
(1) Most of the time I’ve spent playing frisbee is at the pick-up game with my teammates, not real competition nor with others local players. Therefore, the intensity of the game wasn’t quite competitive as we played during the tournament; we (I mean at least me) didn’t D as 100% as the competitor D us, and if the D wasn’t competitive enough, therefore wasn’t a lot of fouls as well or sometimes we made it by not aware of it.
(1) It all comes down to experience; I’m not trying to find any excuses for myself, but really, I believe I just have done it enough; not similar to this kind of case often, but if I continue to play and compete in more tournament I think I will get used to it, and the muscle memory will automatically know what to do.
(2) Lacking of practice, that one reason I am so sure about because I spent of most of my time on throwing flick and forehand huck rather than backhand. I believe that in most of the games, the D will force you to throw forehand, which they did most of the game. And I am not regret at all of not focusing on the backhand, I’ve seen a dramatic improve on my flick and huck, just added more adjustments for sure. And I think it’s normal when you just start to play, you can’t be good at everything all at once; you have to learn to give up something to get something, and it just takes sometimes as long as you stay consistent.
What Went Wrong, What Went Well, Skill Development, Physical, and Formation
What Went Wrong
- Lack of clarity on positioning: I wasn’t sure when or where to run, which affected my movement and timing.
- Backhand throws were inconsistent: I kept dropping the disc by making the same mistake of swinging the disc to the dump when stall was high.
- Struggled with hucks: The disc tended to stay too airborne and would curve back instead of the smooth, flat trajectory I was aiming for.
- Unfamiliar with the holding stack: I didn’t know how to play the hold stack properly when it came to the defend-setting zone cup.
- Endurance issues: I got tired quickly, which affected my performance.
- Slow release: I took too much time to release the disc, allowing defenders to close in.
- Crowded spaces: There was a lot of double-cutting, leading to congestion, and I got hesitated to throw the dics.
What Went Well
- Help to cheer, shout, and tell who was poaching from the sideline.
- Good forehand throw for a short/long pass
- No injury, that’s a good thing to recall, especially when you had non-accomplishment to recall xd. But I was still fatigued and drained after the tournament, like, seriously, passed out.
- Clean catches without any dropped
Skills Development
- Learn the basics of Backhand throw, swing, and hucks
- Learn how to fake
- 100% commit throw
- 30%, reverse, and throw
- Using the hip or shoulder to fake
Physical
- Endurance: 10 cut agility,
- Deceleration
- Running 100% and then jump
Formation
- Learn how to play hold stack
- Learn How to break the cup
The Only Thing That I Know Is Upline Cut
If there’s one thing that I’m pretty confident offense as a handler, that would be that upline running skill that I’ve been doing during the practices. I could do the quick-release forehand or backhand, and then do the upline cut to receive the discs, and there’s one more player cut to get the discs from me or I would do the forehand huck. That’s what I did successfully most of the time during the practice.
But somehow, for some reason, that scenario didn’t work when playing against Curry Dics. I dropped (technically, not really dropped because the discs didn’t even reach me yet; blocked is probably the right word) two blocked by Curry Dics when I was a handler with Jimmy on offense because of my upline cut.
Feedback about the upline cut
I got many different perspectives from different experienced players toward my upline cut.
- Rod: The D read my play, he knew where I would run to, which was the upline, therefore, all he had to do was just to D the space, and with his long arms, that’s it.
- Jimmy: The defender that was marking was like a 6-foot tall, his hands were long, his speed was quick, and he just knew how to D the space.
- Jon and Jason: I didn’t cut sharpe enough. I cut too flat
And I didn’t even that he knew where I would run, if I did, I would have fake upline running to look like I committed 100% on the upline cut, and then I decelerate as fast as I can, to turn back to get the discs on the break side.
However, the upline cut was effective so far throughout the tournament, I couldn’t do the upline cut with the Curry Dics team only, but for other games, it worked just as the way I practiced it in the games.
Improvement
- Try to read D, how do they react
- Try to do different cuts like maybe
- Just walking and walking waiting for the teammates to cut first instead of just rushing in the upline
- Do the swing drills, running into the disc and comeback
- Fake upline by 100% commitment cut to upline and then try to decelerate as fast as possible.
Jimmy was amazed by me.
Jimmy’s Throughout this tournament, Jimmy stood out the most, both on and off the field. As a first-time captain, he did an incredible job leading a new team that had only been together for about 5 or 6 months. He carried the team by playing both offense and defense, always striving to make us a competitive underdog. Being a captain for the first time wasn’t easy; he had to meet with other team captains for coin flips before games, manage discussions during fouls, especially when many of our younger players didn’t know the rules or couldn’t speak English, and help the coach with plays and drills for training. All of these tasks didn’t just happen overnight—Jimmy earned them by dedicating countless hours to research and preparation. He truly stepped up and was ready for the challenge.
Jon led by example.
Jon stole the show in his own right, playing with a broken arm. He led by example, scoring an impressive 8 goals throughout the tournament despite his injury. His speed, quickness, and five-plus years of experience on the field made a big difference. Jon always knew where to be and when, consistently finding open space and adding to our score.
I’m not sure if I lived up to the expectation
As for me, I was surprised by how many points I ended up playing. I hadn’t expected to get so many opportunities. The trust that Rod placed in me was humbling, and I’m not sure if I fully lived up to it, to be honest.
Underrated guy
And a huge thanks goes to Rod for making this all happen. He’s often underrated, and many people don’t realize just how much he’s done for the team. Even I don’t fully know the extent of his contributions. He invested his own time and money to make sure our young players had the chance to experience what a real tournament feels like, and hopeful they’re gonna bring some lessons back home which I’m sure they will.
I made some friends along the way; thanks to Vaya and Skyma for giving me some tips on how to do a fake throw.
