Quicksand

The majority of Canadian sports fans no doubt watched the unfortunate third period collapse of team Canada in the World Jrs finals. A team that had been playing dominant hockey from the semis up until half way through the second period of the finals just seemed to hit a snag. The idea of quicksand. No i'll admit i stole this term from the movie The Replacements with Keanu Reaves. But it basically goes like so...

One thing goes wrong, then another. Next thing you know you're in trouble. But the more you struggle and fight the further you sink until you cant breath (metaphorically).

This is my theory as to what happened to Team Canada. It is very common for younger players to fall to this. Generally the best way to overcome this mentality is to simplify your game into very basic stuff. Slow things down a bit and take them as they come.

This past friday I was at the Torontula/GOAT University Indoor tournament. There were multiple times i saw teams get struck by quicksand. Leading to drops and multiple throwaways. Which in speedpoint ultimate can burn you really fast. My team faced this problem in our last game, going down 8 points very early. At half-time we talked about just running hard and playing hard defence and slowly chipping away the other teams lead. We weren't going to overcome the 8 points in one minute it was going to be a process. But by simplifying our thoughts to running hard and defence we were able to bring it back to a tie game and only ended up losing by two.

I cant explain how many times teams build a lead and lose it from getting away from their game. And then they panic and next thing they know their lead is gone. Or a team comes out with nerves and give up an early lead and things get out of hand because they are forced to change their game plan. People will try to do too much in hopes that one big play will get them back. But this usually causes more harm than good as these plays dont always connect and your team is then in a bigger rut. I find simplifying and slowing down is generally what leads to maintaing ur shrinking lead, or getting back into a game you are behind in.