Mephisto Meeting Notes... Before the Fact

Mephisto is having it’s annual pre-season meeting tonight. The point of the meeting is to inform prospective new players and returning players what is the plan for the upcoming season. Most people just want to know what the schedule for the season is going to be. Others want to know everything about the upcoming season. I guess you could say I will be leaking some of this info before it’s truly out in the open but since I don’t think this involves any issues of National Security I won’t feel too guilty.

This year looks like it might be a bit different from previous seasons. We will start later in the season; tryouts will only start in May and be completed by CUT which is usually (in it’s two year history) the first weekend in June. On the flip side we will be done at Nationals, which this year is a bit earlier than normal, Aug 9-12. That means we will have a very small window in which to come together as a team. I’m still not sure if such a short season will be good or bad for our team. On the one hand we won’t have as much time as usual to practice as a team. This could be a bad thing seeing as how we don’t have tons of guys who are phenomenally talented ultimate players so we will take some time to emerge as a solid unit. On the other hand the shorter season will allow guys to maintain their focus through the short summer season. Guys won’t burn out and the intensity should be higher throughout the season. That will be a big plus and should outweigh the disadvantages of a short season… assuming of course that every one remains fully committed to the team for the short period that we ask of them.

To help with the point I mentioned in the previous paragraph about not having the most phenomenally gifted players, we are going to put more of a focus on individual improvement through coaching. It’s difficult to do when your coaches are playing as well but it is something that needs to be done if you don’t want your players to stagnate at a certain level. Guys will get more “green lights” this season to work on things that aren’t necessarily within their comfort zones.

What will be the best part of this season is that it will be cheap… or at least cheaper than last year. We don’t have to fly anywhere and we won’t need to drive too far for all that many tournaments. That will be a nice change from spending a fortune last year on ultimate. I’m still wiping the scars from last season from my bank account. Don’t get me wrong, I have no regrets about last season at all, it was awesome but it was very expensive and there are only so many times that you can go through a season like that on my salary.

Perhaps the biggest change that we will need to deal with this season is with personnel. We are losing a bunch of players from last year. The biggest loss will be Sam Kennedy (not so much losing him but losing him to our “arch-nemesis” Goat sucks). But there will be a bunch of new faces that will make up for that. Every year we lose a bunch of players and somehow we always make it through those losses. I don’t think this year should be any different. We have a few prospective players returning ex-team mates that will potentially add a lot of depth to this team. Of course we’ll never know until the season gets underway but it looks good right now.

We’ll see if my guarded optimism remains after tonight’s meeting…

DF