Tournaments are the best way for your team to develop its style of play and character and to improve. Practice is of course useful, but playing at tournaments is the best way to help your team grow. During practices, especially weekday practices, time is short and players are not far enough removed from the rest of their lives to relax, enjoy, and concentrate on the game. Weekday practices should probably have less of instruction and drills and instead should be mostly playing and conditioning. Longer weekend practices can focus a little more on strategy and philosophy and situational offense and defense. For example, to practice zone defense, have the zone D pull ten times in a row, and the offense gets one chance to score.

Tournaments, however, are where you learn the game and get accustomed to your teammates. Even if you only have 8 or 9 players at a tournament, it's worth your while to go (most of the time). Many of Death or Glory's innovations have been a result of having small squads and trying to save our energy. The full field clam, last man back, "The Man", who knows what else all developed because we played with 8 or 10 guys instead of staying home and practicing.

First off, you'll play as many as 6 or 7 games at a tournament. That's a lot of practice time. Second, you learn to work with the same players game after game. In practice, teams are mixed up, and continuity is lost. Third, you can work on things, get immediate feedback, and adjust the next game (or at halftime). In practice, there's not enough time for that. There is no opportunity for strategizing (or resting, even), unless you have 20 people on your team. Fourth, you get a realistic appraisal of your team's ability, and you know what you have to do. When I played with North Coast (Cleveland), we would practice non-stop from May to October, but only played in one or two tournaments besides the fall series plus a couple one-day scrimmages, and that really hurt us when we had to play the big teams. We wouldn't get to see what other teams were doing and had to develop our style of play in isolation. Even if you get spanked at a tournament, you can see neat little things other teams do, as well as trying out your own things and seeing how teams react.

And last, but not least, tournaments are fun. You bond, you learn your teammates' idiosyncracies (for one of my teammates, for example, if he doesn't throw up or almost throw up, he isn't mentally ready for the game), you meet your opponents, and all that stuff.

I attribute much of DoG's success to our willingness to play and learn and adapt at tournaments. Decide one game that no matter what happens, you're going to play zone. In another game, have the first cut come from the back of the stack, or try a different type of stack. Look to huck more frequently one game. Treat the tournament as a learning experience in addition to its value as a competition. If you go to more tournaments, then each one isn't quite as crucial, so your whole roster will be able to play all the time, instead of "having to win this one". In the long run, it's a winning strategy.

Jim "We're only practicing once a week this spring" Parinella