I was afraid I would never have fun playing competitive frisbee again until this season of Machine. All the competitive Ultimate that I played between graduation and this season was disappointing in terms of enjoyment to say the least.
This includes Madison Club, and Black Market club teams as well as two seasons of Wildfire in the AUDL.
Machine was finally a team that had everything I had been missing since leaving NUT.
Buy in, organization, competitive goals, teammates to push me (accountability), coaching/leadership to inspire, and friends to play with.
Nationals was a ton of fun but also very disappointing. We played poorly as a team.
Alex said something that really resonated with me. Great teams don't get super pumped up when someone makes a great play because that is par for the course and they expect it based on the work they know they put in and the type of players they are.
Don't get me wrong, it's still important to cheer for your teammates, but he's right. It doesn't make sense to make such a big deal out of something if you knew it was bound to happen because your team is filled with great players who make plays.
I need to work harder. My personal goal this year was to work my way onto D1. I played some D1 points here and there, but those were mostly because of injuries to guys ahead of me. I need to be better. I will be better.
I did meet my Nationals specific goals which was great, though I still felt unfulfilled with my play so I need to work on my goal-setting. But I also realize that I hold myself to a very high standard so I'm trying to stay positive.
I asked Walden to cut this year and I am mostly happy with this decision. I think I might want to transition back to handling in the future, but I think it was a fantastic way to push myself harder to learn a new role. At the beginning of the season, Walden was very hesitant and said he didn't think it was a good idea, but leadership ended up having me do it anyway. Midway through the season, Walden said it was working out better than he expected but that wasn't saying much based on his initial expectations. I need to ask him about it now at the end of the season and see what he thinks. I think it was pretty successful. I definitely felt out of place for a while at the beginning of the season on offense, but I felt very comfortable by the end of the season cutting and felt like I was often making threatening cuts and generating good space on the field.
The work never ends.
ARC
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