USA vs Europe

I've been in the states now for a couple of months now and the USAU series are about to begin. Playing here is definitely different from playing in Europe and I'll describe some things I've noticed below.  I'll go over the season, training and tournaments.

Season
The first difference is that there is a very defined season, with distinct phases. The season starts just before tryouts when people start getting in shape. This is when I arrived in Seattle. I wanted to have a few weeks to get adjusted before the Combine, which was a mini-tournament process Sockeye uses to make the first round of cuts. I wasn't as in shape as I wanted to be, but could still hang with the rest of players. During and just after the combine, rookies learn the team's system. It's great to learn a new system when the vast majority of the players know what they are doing. You can learn by copying others. After tryouts, there is an experimental phase to work out what combination of players and roles work well. Especially at ECC we really focused on trying different things. I played the first months as a deep cutter, but now I play as a handler. And finally it's go time during the fall series, which start this weekend.
Another difference is how few games there are for Sockeye. I am used to playing games almost every weekend, playing the Dutch league and various tournaments. With Sockeye we only play one tournament per month, and a lot of the games (especially early season) are easy wins. It's frustrating at times to feel like I'm in the best shape I've ever been in but playing much less than I'm used to.

Training
The preparation for game is also different. Obviously, Sockeye works a lot harder than the teams I played for in the Netherlands. I spend more time training without a Frisbee than I do with one: weight lifting twice a week, track once a week, a short practice during the week and a long one on the weekend. This work really pays off-- I can go all out at the five-hour weekend practices and not be very sore the next day.

Before coming to Seattle I was afraid my body would not be able to handle the training load. Even though I pulled my hamstring by over training, I think I can play at this level and stay healthy. It does require me to pay closer attention to my body and working to get stronger in the off season.


Tournaments
The tournaments here have a very different feel than they do in Europe. They are played on one massive field, there is no central tent or canteen to hang out, teams take care of their own lodging, there is no awards ceremony and there are no spirit circles. In the Netherlands there is a lot of down time at tournaments where you just hang out and watch games. This time is scarce at American tournaments. Because of all of this, there is less interaction with opponents and more focus on your own team.

Another thing that struck me is the lack of endzone lining. The outer bounds of all the fields are perfectly lined, but the endzone line is not there. This leads to confusion in every game. It seems easy enough to add these lines, so I don't really understand why this is not done.

One final difference is that a lot of teams don't play after they get knocked out of contention. Whereas we play for 3rd, 5th or 7th place in Europe, here teams usually don't bother to play these games. In the beginning I was really surprised by this: Games are rare so why would you pass up the chance to play an evenly matched team? However, these games are usually versus teams we have already played in the tournament, so it does make some sense.

It is awesome to play ultimate here. It's great to work hard with such a dedicated group of people. The scarcity of games makes me enjoy the times that I get to play even more. The USAU series start this weekend with sectionals in Burlington. Can't wait!