Signs, customs, and practices of good teams

I've had a pretty unique ultimate career: if you include fun tournaments and one-offs, I've played on 56 different teams at every level imaginable: from international teams where the majority of players had less than a few months experience, to US teams where the majority of players were national/world champions.

Recently, I was reflecting on how different it feels to play on a low-level team versus a high-level team - not in terms of quality of play/skills/athleticism, but simply how the team acts on and off the field.

So I made a list of consistent tropes I've seen from the best teams I've played on:

General

  • Team has a stated goal / ethos / values that players (not just leadership) were involved in creating
  • Everyone tries out - non-leadership returners are not guaranteed roster spots
  • Team does not think of breaking seed as an accomplishment (thank you, Dusty Rhodes&src=typed_query))
  • Jerseys are not given an undue amount of attention (e.g. no ridiculously complicated and expensive sublimated designs)
  • General lack of complaining about uncontrollables (tournament format, having to move fields, having to change jersey colors)

Positivity / Mental Game

  • Players avoid complaining about the other team's calls or spirit when losing
  • "Winning spirit" not given undue amount of attention, i.e. having a reasonable spirit score is viewed as a result of simply being a fair team rather than an outcome-oriented goal
  • Negative/toxic players are quickly reigned in by team leadership
  • Players generally don't care who's on the other team, e.g. no one stares in awe at other team warming up and says "they have <star player>"
  • Players avoid negative sideline talk, like "don't get beat around!" or "two hands!" (after mistake has already happened)
  • After a lost point, players focus on making adjustments rather than debating whose fault it is that an error happened
  • Team does not need to perform exaggerated/loud cheers or mantras to "pump themselves up", but rather is able to get motivated intrinsically

Practice

  • Each practice has an overarching theme and clear goals
  • Each drill has a stated purpose and clear goals
  • Scrimmaging is kept to a minimum, and when needed, is done efficiently (e.g. 10-pull or focused scrimmaging with rule changes)

Tournaments and Gameplay

  • Captains choose offense after winning the flip (as opposed to picking defense because "it gets us in that defensive mentality")
  • Team shows up to the fields a reasonable amount of time before the first game (e.g. not more than an hour early, but not at the last minute either)
  • Warmups take a reasonable amount of time and pregame drills are run at less than 100% so as not to tire out players before games start
  • Team (or at least each line) has a reasonable, non-excessive amount of set plays (somewhere between 0 and 6), making it so each player can generally remember and execute each play under fatigue and pressure
  • Clear, simple codewords/calls for in-game situations e.g. crumbling out of a zone, or forcing forehand/backhand, these are set at the start of the season and not changed, with realization that these don't need to be needlessly obfuscated to "fool the other team"

Huddle

  • Only 1-2 voices in each huddle, generally captains/coach(es)
  • Each huddle is limited to one or two concepts, each with a specific adjustment, no non-specific comments without adjustments, e.g. "guys, they're sagging off the handlers in the lane... we need to recognize this!"
  • No platitudes like "guys, we just have to run harder!"

Hopefully this is helpful for those teams out there that are looking to up their game and create a more positive, uplifting, and competitive experience... though also note that many of these also are not present on even the best teams. Looking down the list, I've never played on a team that was perfect in terms of this list, though Slag Dump in 2015 comes close - shoutout to my Steel City brothers.

If anyone has other contributions, I'd love to hear them, and if you've played on a team that you think exemplified values like these well, I'd love to hear which year it was and why you enjoyed it.