NUTC

For the last two weeks I was in Massachusetts at National Ultimate Training Camp or NUTC and it was absolutely awesome. I learned loads and loads of things that I'm hoping to show all of you at summer practice soon, and I played a LOT of ultimate. You basically play ultimate all day and on the second to last day you have your tournament where all six or eight teams compete for first place. On the last morning before checkout you have the final game where the two top teams play for first place.

My first week there were eight teams and mine was called the Uncontrollables (our shirts were orange). It was a really spirited team and we had loads of fun and learned a lot even though we didn't do so well. Our name came from what we had been told at camp about not letting uncontrollables such as weather and the other team affect your mental game. I did a lot of handling on offense and then besides man defense I tried wing on zone D.

My second week our shirts were lime green and we were called Sublime. Our coach/counselor was Derek Gottlieb and he treated us like a winning team from the very beginning. And what do you know, we won the entire tournament and took first place with a final game score of 9 to 1 (game to 9). The winning team's players each get a NUTC disc with the disc design in gold color. This week I hadn't handled much at all but tried the role of a cutter and went deep a lot. In drills I threw deep and it was great (I know this awesome huck drill now). On defense we did some man but our team had really great 1-3-3 zone defense and this is what won us our tournament. I started off as wing but later I tried being middle in the wall (similar to center of the cup) and it turned out I was good at this position and I kept playing it.

One giant thing I noticed at camp were how few turnovers there were in games. This is all about decision making and I realized how important getting your O points was as well as how important really good defense was (although we know defense is important). The camp was really really great and I'd love to write about more of the things I learned here but it'd take forever, but I definitely recommend going for anyone who really loves ultimate and is willing to learn and work hard. Plus you meet loads of people from around the country including people from Paideia, YHB, Tennessee, Seattle, and the entire Northeast.