Building New Skills: The Importance of Fundamentals

Back when I first tried out for/made the WashU team, the team's learning process was quite different.  It wasn't bad, and the captains weren't bad teachers - they were all great.  But, the way things had been done for so long was just to cram tons of new concepts in the fall and hoping that (1) the vets would be able to lead and do things right and (2) the rookies could mostly stay out of the way and start to figure out how things work.  It wasn't until my first year captaining (my junior year) and working with our coach, Ross Welch, that we really started to change the way we did things, especially in the fall (I think that was actually the first year that Ross joined us for the entirety of the fall).

First, we started transitioning away from the "ho-stack only" offense that Contra was mostly known for back in that time. One of the main ideas behind this transition is that, although horizontal stack generally allows people to "feel" where they should cut/clear next, and is therefore more intuitive for certain players, it is more difficult to teach the core concepts for new players who might not have that intuition and field sense built up yet.  Vertical stack, on the other hand, is pretty simple: create two cutting lanes, and cut into those spaces when you are at the back of the stack.  You can build up a lot of good cutting habits, and learn field sense and timing much more easily in a vertical stack. My sophomore year, we "learned" vertical stack during tryouts and ran it for a couple weeks, but pretty soon people were frustrated with it, and we reverted back to horizontal stack.  Additionally, we used to learn a variety of defenses, plays, etc, all within the span of just a few weeks.

When Ross started taking on a bigger role, he started advocating (in our captain + coach meetings) that we just spend more and more time learning the fundamentals.  In my first year captaining (2013), we spent the entire first week as a team doing nothing but catching.  Then, we spent a week learning how to throw, starting at a very fundamental level.  In fact, that year we went from running only ho stack to not even learning horizontal offense in the fall - we played only vert.  The idea was pretty simple: spend as long as needed on basic concepts so that we have a strong foundation of fundamentals that we can always fall back on.

I have to admit, I was pretty hesitant at first - I wanted to teach and learn all of the things so that we have them at tournaments in the fall.  Plus, for me (and most of the other veterans), there was a feeling of "we know how to do this, so spending two weeks learning it is overkill".  However, it became pretty clear to me during the year that I was wrong.  After all, how can you expect to run an effective zone when you haven't even taught people how to mark effectively?  How can you expect to run an offense when half of your team can't set up their cuts to get open?  These are pretty simple questions but they never really occurred to me until after we overhauled our teaching process.

The results, I think, were pretty striking.  There are always people who come in and quickly become obsessed with college ultimate, spend all their time thinking about it and throwing and trying to learn and get better.  Those players are very self-motivated and pick up on things quickly, on will probably figure out important concepts mostly on their own.  However, if your team wants to be successful, you have to be able to help everybody else learn quickly and become effective players; this is where learning the fundamentals becomes increasingly important.  In the last couple years, I think we saw a huge improvement in the rate at which young guys learn how to play and be productive on both offense and defense.  Additionally, I think our team as a whole became much more adaptable and mentally tough; when we would run into something new, we were better able to change our game plan.  Additionally, when we struggled, we were able to fall back to our fundamentals that we had spent so much time on. I believe all of these factors were huge in our success at Regionals, as we were able to play much deeper than in previous years, and were able to make adjustments well as we faced different teams.

I guess the point of this post is this: first of all, if your team doesn't have a coach, get one.  Ross's influence on Contra was/is immense and we would not have been nearly as successful without him. Second of all, when you are teaching or learning new skills... remember to walk before you run.