Was reading a random post about the best tournaments in the world (the ultimate version of "50 places to go before you die..."), and it started me thinking about the tournaments I'd attended as a college player and on my own. There is an obvious difference between the two categories, but thinking about those differences put me on a different thought path.
Of the few tournaments I've attended outside of Clockwork, the focus has primarily centered on having fun as a team, enjoying the party, heckling/spirit/etc. Yet, tournaments with that emphasis exist in the college game (and I've attended a handful) along with developmental tournaments and the aforementioned serious tourneys. The question that became apparent was: how does a team approach these tournaments and should they attend them?
At least in the fall, I definitely think "fun" and "developing" tournaments are useful and somewhat necessary to build team chemistry and camaraderie, but I question there usefulness in the spring. Looking back at the season just-finished, we attended 3 serious and 1 "fun" tourney in the spring (outside of the Series). At least at the first two serious tournaments, I felt that we still needed significant work on fundamental skills and that the "fun" tournament, while enjoyable, taught the team very little.
If we want to do better next year, I feel that we need to be finished with "developing" by the time the Spring season arrives and we need to focus hard on serious tournaments. As much as I enjoy Georgia, I don't feel that it helps the on-field team any. Dartmouth and Cornell both took their spring break in Charleston, SC this year and practiced/scrimmaged (against one another, GTech, good teams...), which appears better for the team than High Tide was (even though it was a fantastic time otherwise). I would rather replace High Tide with practice and relaxation and playing a serious tournament on the other side of Spring Break.
I would also like to play other, less-geographically centered tournaments, but that will be discussed in a later post.
Yesterday's Workout:
Pike Leg Workout
Currently Reading:
The Mists of Avalon by MZ Bradley
On the iPod:
Santi by The Academy Is...
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1 comment:
If your ultimate (no pun intended) goal is to have the absolute best possible team come regionals, then no argument here. But the High-tide/tybee week is one of the best weeks of your entire life every year. Sometimes gaining every edge -- no matter how small it may be -- is a good personal exercise. But sometimes its not about the edge, its about enjoying the finer things in life: and there's nothing finer than freshmen challenges, forsyth park, beirut tournaments and lots and lots of balls.
Maybe I'm just not as competitive a person as I fancy myself to be. But the pain of failing at regionals will fade away from my memory long before the indescrible week-long euphoria of tybee island and high tide will. It would be an unimaginable mistake to pass that up in exchange for another hard tournament.
But of course I think both should be done. You should go to more hard tournies AND play an X-team in High Tide.
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