Thoughts on a summer devoted solely to ultimate.

I suppose it's about time I write something about the season (and Regionals), considering that it's been over for three months or so. I guess it takes me a long time to recover from emotional experiences and to digest my thoughts.

When we started this season, I was "nominated" to be a captain of the team. There weren't exactly a ton of volunteers. Despite that, I still believed it to be an honor to have been chosen - it reflects a trust that your teammates have that you'll steer the ship as true as you can. What I didn't know was how much anxiety would come along with the honor. I'm a perfectionist - pitfalls discussed here - and a control freak; these are qualities that probably help me be a better ultimate player but may not be especially supportive of my mental health. So as the summer wore on I found myself to be more emotionally exhausted than physically, which is really saying something when you realize that I am 37 years old and no spring chicken.

I found myself doing a lot of reading over the summer of various blogs and sites trying to get insight into how to be a better motivator, and how to cope when not everyone on your team shares the same sense of commitment that you do. But for all the mental strain that this put on me, it turned me into a much better player. Why? Because you can't expect your team to do workouts you won't do, to execute and understand offenses if you don't, or to attend tournaments that you won't. So I freakin' did everything. And doing everything made me better. This is no shock to people who accustomed to that level of commitment in ultimate, but I'VE never done it before. In 13 years of playing.

I'll write a review of regionals in the next couple of weeks. I just wanted to first set the context for the write-up because my perspective on it can't be taken out of context of the rest of Mucho Gusto's season.

And BTW, thanks to Peter Jamieson for the blog link on Cultimate Opinion... I suppose this means someone may actually be reading this once in awhile, so I better get writing!