Another great women’s ultimate video was posted on the facebook page of UltiVillage. I saw people talking about it on RSD, and it is soooooo good. These past couple days with the Fugue video and now this video (which is highlights of the best women’s club ultimate, so basically lots of laying out!!!!) have MADE MY WEEK.

I am still trying to figure out if I can just embed the video, but for now here’s a link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/UltiVillage/365534982512

woot!  to add to the collection of videos of women’s ultimate!

This past weekend the East Metro East had conferences in Hempstead NY. It was really amazing to start the series, but the weather was super crappy! If anyone has tips about how to get out of the defeatest mentality when the weather is bad, please tell me!  So far my only ideas are practice more in the rain so that it doesn’t effect you anymore.

Even though Saturday was yucky weather, Sunday was BEAUTIFUL!  That coupled with the fact that more Mona players came out on Sunday made playing (or rather watching since my ankle is still healing) much more fun. We replayed a bunch of teams that we had played on Saturday and did so much better against them because we had our confidence, the sun, and wonderful flow going on. Throughout the weekend, but especially on Sunday, I was really impressed with how newer players stepped up.

It’s funny being a senior and competing in my last college sectionals/conferences. It’s also really sad — especially since I’ve been working back from injury and still am not up to my full potential, I sometimes get disheartened with my playing and how I can give back to my team. However, it’s still impressive to remember how much all the seniors have improved. I watched our class of 2011ers playing this weekend and just remembered how timid we were this time four years ago and can’t help smile. Also, since our team this year is so full of rookies, I am SO excited to come back and see them playing when they’re seniors and see how much they’re going to improve too.

From NPR, a clip with Ruben Rumbaut, a sociologist at UC Irvine, about the census and measuring race over time.  It’s very interesting, focuses on the intergenerationality of the “Hispanic” and “white” identities.

My favorite quote is that “race is a pigment of our imagination.”

My friend Maggie just sent me this link.  I think it’s totally awesome, mostly because my last photo project for school started out being me taking photographs of all these old photos from the Japanese side of my family, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it interesting.

I found this to be cool food for thought!

Well, first let me say, when it’s like this during the winter time

it makes playing ultimate in the NE very very difficult. From my limited observations and experiences playing Ultimate in the NE and no where else, I think that the three major differences between playing college ultimate in the NE compared to anywhere else is that 1. there is limited time to play outside because of weather, 2. there is limited playing space because it’s densely populated, and 3. compared to other regions, Northeast colleges are smaller and have less of a name in frisbee, so there’s isn’t a large, central pool to grab new ultimate players from nor are people who know about ultimate and good at ultimate hearing about the frisbee programs of those small Northeastern schools. These things are not necessarily bad.  They just make NE women’s college ultimate very unique.

So let’s tackle each one of those differences:

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Let’s start with joys because I think there have been more joys than challenges :) I love captaining!

• Seeing people improve: this was a joy even when I wasn’t a captain, but for some reason, now that it’s happening while I’m a captain, it seems so much more wonderful. I think it also feel a bit bittersweet because I am a senior and I see all these people, rookies and returners, improving drastically and I know that this is my last year playing with them.
• Letting my creative juices flow: my co-captains and I are really into arts and crafts and now we have an excuse to do even more! We made personalized “membership cards” for the Mona Fitness Club for the indoor winter workouts we do that are supplementary to practice. They’re laminated and everything (picture forthcoming).  We also devised an incentive system for playing 3v3 indoor frisbee during exam week that was a raffle and people won cool Mona gear. It was really sweet.

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mdng10 asked: Here's some stuff I'd love to hear your perspective on:
1. What are the greatest challenges and joys of being a first year captain?
2. What is it like to play on a team in the Northeast? What are the biggest challenges and what can people who care do to support women's ultimate up there?
3. What are your personal and/or team goals for the season? What are you doing on a daily basis to achieve them?

Hope this gives you a good start. I'm happy to blog about any topics you're interested in as well, so let me know! Thank you for writing!

i will address these all in posts to come!  thanks for the questions, Michelle.

One major challenge I’ve come up against as a captain is how to find awesome youtube videos of women playing ultimate at elite club levels — highlight reel style — to my teammates pumped up and to show new players the beauty, ferocity, and athleticism of the game. 

Let’s be real: I am a youtube fiend! I have assiduously trying to find awesome youtube videos of elite women’s ultimate since last year and it’s been hard!

The only two elite women’s club teams that I’ve found videos for are Seattle Riot and Brute Squad. These two videos are awesome (great music selection, relatively short, sick sick plays, etc.) and get me really pumped up, but I wish there were more. If you know of more videos, please send them to me and I’ll share them with my team and post them on the blog.

Because of this difficulty in my first year as captain, I have been curious to figure out why there aren’t more videos of elite women’s ultimate out there on youtube, a major video server to the common (wo)man.

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