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moving to uganda i expected to take some time off from ultimate - both as a player and as a coach. as it turns out i’ve done neither, and happily so.

coaching in uganda and coaching in the states are the two extremes. there i coached one of the best college women’s teams in the country. each year we have a small incoming class of rookies (4-5) who learn the game fast because they’re surrounded by returners (15), who are a core group of really smart, really experienced players. in nothing flat, we have a team of 20+ women who play the game like savvy veterans. here, the number of returners is 3-4 and the number of rookies is 30+. with such a skewed ratio of returners:rookies, there isn’t anything flat about the learning curve here. add into the mix that each week we have at least 2-3 players who have never seen the game or thrown a frisbee, and you start to see the challenges of coaching ultimate in uganda.

i have to admit though, it’s really fun. there’s something about teaching people a game you love, especially when they’re eager to learn. i love to teach, i love ultimate…i guess it’s a natural fit to really enjoy coaching here. a new twist to the coaching scene that i’m not used to from home is being called “coach.” it’s my name on the field, off the field. the best part about it is they call phil coach, too. so when they ask me about how phil’s doing and how his season is going (they’re all rooting for sub zero at nationals this coming weekend), they say “hey coach, how’s coach doing?” ha! always makes me laugh. my favorite coach story is emma yelling “i respect you coach!” over and over an entire night’s worth of a party. i call this my i-respect-you-coach picture; it’s of me and emma at said party.

the team’s come a long way in the last 1-2 months. i’m really proud of them. just to name a few accomplishments over the last few weeks:

- we now play on a regulation size field. no more skinny fields with 10 yard endzones.

- people actually stand on the line or behind it for the pull. big difference from the 15 yards into the field standard that everyone used to be perfectly comfortable with. plus, the need for yelling cross field has been virtually eliminated now that most players accept the concept of raising an arm to indicate readiness to pull/receive the pull.

- players are learning a stack offense and the corresponding defensive strategies including a force and downfield defensive positioning. okay, we’re still working on this one, but at least the concept is starting to catch on. in sunday’s scrimmage, there were multiple people yelling “get into the stack!” whenever there was someone clogging a cutting lane. wow. that’s a pretty big accomplishment for a team whose idea of cutting was to hang out in space, stationary, yelling for the disc.

- i’ve introduced weekly hour-long rules tutorials that everyone is really gung-ho about. i thought they’d be bored but au contraire. i suggested a week off to let the rules sink in, but nope. no break for them, they wanted to keep learning! the first week we discussed the field, pull, traveling, and stalling; the second week was fouls and picks (considering 50% of the players are current/former rugby players the fouls discussion was in high-demand by the non-ruggers). the rules tutorials come right on the heals of the upa’s release of the proposed 11th edition rules, but i’m teaching the 10th edition here. first, it was easier to get 10th edition rulebooks for everyone. second, only a draft of the 11th edition is out so far so who knows what’ll make it thru membership scrutiny and what won’t. third, the final 11th edition rules aren’t slated to come out for a while yet and we really needed to cover the rules here asap; for example, even though most of these guys have been playing ultimate for 5+ years not a one of them could answer the question: what’s the pull?
(two weeks ago we talked about strips. a “strip” is no longer a call in the draft 11th edition rules - strips are now treated like fouls. i guess no harm done though since they all got a kick out of yelling at someone to strip.)
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- we are now meeting 1/2 - 1 hour earlier than when i first arrived so everyone can get in quality throwing (30 min) before we drill (45-60 min), which still leaves us a full hour to play a real scrimmage. everyone’s really getting into the drills…so far we’ve done santa cruz, box drill (aka cornell), 3-person marking drill, a stack throwing/cutting drill (with/without d), flygirl (syzygys, you know what i’m talking about), straight-on drill, straight-on drill with angled modification. a lot of drills in a short amount of time, but they want more…yesterday a group of us went to a beach on lake victoria for the eid holiday. throwing, running around, flutterguts, then it wasn’t long before emma asked, “coach, can we do a drill?”