A great deal has been made over the years with regards to the word fun and who is or isn't fun to play with, etc.  Fun is obviously a subjective word but I believe that the over usage of the phrase "let's just have fun" has just been an excuse for maintaining the status quo and preventing growth in the game almost as much as Spirit of the Game has harmed the game's evolution.  A lot of things were really fun even before they evolved into something even better.

• Skateboarding was very fun even before Tony Alva began carving up emptied out swimming pools in the late seventies.
• Basketball was very fun for fifty years even before the advent of the jump shot in the forties.
• Sliding down a mountain of snow was very fun for a hundred years even before someone strapped a skateboard without wheels to their feet and invented snow boarding.
• Football was very fun for 40 years even before people began implementing the forward pass.
• Bicycling was extremely fun for 100 years even before people began putting extra knobby tires, dual suspension and reinforced frames to create mountain bikes.
• Sex was very fun even before getting another person involved....
• Ultimate is very fun, but it could be a lot more fun....

I understand that you just want to have fun with Ultimate at no matter what level you are playing at, from a lunch time pick up game to the national championship but I am certain that no matter at what level, ultimate can be significantly more fun that what I've witnessed.  From sweeping rules changes to incorporating traditional sports philosophies, it is possible to evolve the game into something far more fun than it is today.  The graph at the end of this page is my attempt to illustrate to the best of my ability how to objectively measure individual's strength and weaknesses so that you can make adjustments to your own game or team for everyone to have more fun!!

Probably the most consistent argument that I've endured over the years from players is that there needs to be balance between the fundamentals that I emphasize and other skills.  In other words, when people are resistant in terms of changing their game to be more team oriented, they push back with the claim that there is a happy medium between playing fundamentally sound, super organism, symbiotic, selfless ultimate and being an egotistical maniac.  Of course when that is defined in such loose and ambiguous terms, there's no room for argument or debate, or course there needs to be balance between the two.  I would sound like an idiot if I tried to dispute this fact.  But let's at least attempt to measure and define these things in terms that can analyzed, categorized and easily referenced.

When we define categories, lets also at least place a complimentary value in the equation to work out to a neutral position (or at least an agreed upon ratio such as 70 % up field looks vs. 30% down field looks; it doesn't matter to me what value you pick but choose a number that is reasonable and sensible). It also makes sense to agree upon categories to measure to get an across the board look at balanced a person's game truly is.  The following description of measurable categories and ensuing statistical analysis will provide insight into your own game, who on your team is selfless vs. who is egotistical, who is a team player or not, and where people need to make adjustments to their own game in order to balance out their attack in order to be more effective (not to mention more fun to play with).

Ultimate is a simple game, ostensibly the same as either basketball or soccer except there isn't even a net at the end of the field to put the ball through making it even easier.  By playing with a grossly unbalanced game, people make this game so much harder than it needs to be.  Playing with  players who possess severely unbalanced attacks is like playing a basketball game with players who only shoot from beyond mid-court.  It's not really very fun.

1) Initial Pivot     Into Coverage vs. Away from Coverage

In this diagram, I have attempted to define the 120 degree area on the opposite side of the thrower from the marker as Away From Coverage while leaving the remaining 240 degrees as Into Coverage.  The acronym for the percentage of Initial Pivots Into Coverage is IPIC (or I pee, I see; hmmm  or is that I Pick?).  As any intelligent player will tell you, the sideline acts as the eighth defender (or in some people's eyes, the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th) and so given that definition, pivoting towards the sidelines is also another instance of pivoting into coverage.

There are 360 degrees in a circle and yet 99% of all ultimate players pivot 99% of the time directly into that one degree where there is a defender who has the sole purpose of thwarting their throwing effort.  Ideally, the IPIC should be less than 25% but you pick a number that you are comfortable with that you believe will balance your attack.  Call me crazy, but it just seems to me that the first look when you get the disc should be square to where the defense  isn't (including the sideline), not to where the defense is.  Even if you could convince me that it's a viable move to pivot blindly up the sideline, there's no way you can convince me that you should always pivot this way every time you catch the disc.  This would be like a boxer who only had an upper cut or a basketball player who only could shoot fall away jumpers.  You need to have a variety of different angles of attack, not just the same one over and over and over and over and.......

You tell me, why is it that almost every ultimate player on the planet consistently pivots into the teeth of the defense instead of away from it?

 

2) Throw Distribution     Towards Mark vs. Away From Mark

 

Similarly, a thrower's distribution can be quantified by measuring the percentage of throws attempted into coverage (i.e. towards the marker) vs. away from coverage (away from the marker).  Once again, 99% of all ultimate players will have a disproportionately high number of throwing attempts INTO coverage than away from coverage.  The acronym for measuring the percentage of throws towards or away from the marker is  Throw Percentage Towards Mark TPTM.  Of course there is some grey area around the sides where the disc is neither towards or away from the marker but I've tried to delineate it with the same 120 degree arc as IPIC.

Again, pick a number that you feel is sensible for providing a balanced attack but 65/35 sounds reasonable to me with 65% of throws going in the direction of the marker.  Unfortunately, this number is typically over 95% for most ultimate players which of course is not a balanced attack at all.  Usually this number will also correspond with the negative/positive ratio of throws so a person with a high TPTM is the kind of individual who rarely throws negative throws.

3) Dribbling    Percentage of Dribbles vs. All Other Throwing Attempts

Over the past year, I went through a lot of effort to describe how the Triple Threat concept in Basketball can be applied to ultimate.  Unfortunately, I made one big mistake in doing so by defining the three threats to be 1) throwing for a score 2) throwing a pass or 3) penetrating.  Instead of penetration, I should have used the word dribbling, of which penetration qualifies as a particular type of.

Allow me to define a successful dribble in ultimate is defined to be:

• a short sequence of two passes between two players with no hesitation between the time the first pass is caught and the second pass thrown.
• eye contact maintained between the two and both players typically facing each other chest to chest for the duration.
• no defenders in between the two offensive players
• the end result is that the initial thrower is immediately poised to dribble again (i.e. balanced, square, disk right side up with both hands in backhand throwing grip position; the player that he bounced the disc off of hopefully is set in a square support position, available and ready for another bounce)

People commonly misconstrue this as a 'give and go' and I have done my best to eliminate that phrase from this literature.  Besides the fact that a give and go has somehow had a negative stigma attached to it, it is widely misunderstood and commonly poorly executed and confused with any combination of events where a thrower gets the disc back.

 

There are two different roles in dribbling as there is the dribbler and the partner who is playing the role of 'the hardwood floor' and so in order to measure for balance, both positions need to be measured separately.  You can usually tell that someone is a mediocre 'hardwood' if they have a high IPIC so we can just concentrate on developing a measurement for the dribblers.

Since dribbling represents 1/3 of the triple threat, it makes sense that an ideal number for measuring a player's ability to dribble should fall somewhere in the 20-40% bracket.  In other words, there should be a way to objectively conclude that these players are dribbling at least 20% of the time.  For the time being, we'll just measure the total number of successful dribbles and divide that into the total number of throwing attempts.  We'll use the acronym PTD, Pass To Dribble  ratio to indicate the percentage of the time spent dribbling.  A PTD of 100% is indicative of a player who never dribbles or simply doesn't know how.

4) Initial Cut After Throw    Into Coverage vs. Away From Coverage

Just as important as finding balance in where the thrower initially pivots and where he/she eventually throws is balancing the options of where that person goes afterwards.  Not only is this statistic, Initial Cut Into Coverage (ICIC), usually disproportionately high (> 95%), it is high in the direction that doesn't make any sense.  Rather than running away from the defenders into the open space, players typically 'clear', which entails running into coverage before emerging on the far end of the field and attempting to reintegrate back into the offense some how.  It seems to me that a good balance between cutting into coverage and away from coverage is 50% but choose a number you are comfortable with.

 

5) Defensive Liabilities

There are a couple of useful measurements for gaining incite into an individual's propensity to have an offensive play end up with you playing defense.  High Scoring/Huck Attempt Turnover Ratio SATR (including having traveling violations appear as turnovers) & Scoring Attempt Percentage (SAP). Players with high SATR percentages are those who throw a disproportionate number of throws towards the end zone that end up in turnovers (or committed a traveling violation, which should be a turnover).  People with high SAP ratios have a disproportionate number of their throws as either deep hucks or scoring attempts.  People who have both high SAP and SATR ratios are totally not fun to play with and get ready to play defense if you get one of these ego-maniacs on your team, you'll be on D early and often (Gee, can I play defense now?).  20% seems to be a reasonable number for both of these figures although one could argue that the SAP should be closer to 10% or even less.

    5.1) Jack Off Factor

JOF or Jack Off Factor is equal to SAP + SATR.  Anyone who has a Jack-Off Factor of over 100 means they are usually just our there masturbating in front of everyone. 

6) Assist to Turnover Ratio

In an attempt to balance out the distortion in the graph where completion percentage is artificially high for people who throw a lot of short, conservative throws, I've added a statistic for the ratio of assists to turnovers.  An assist is like a hockey assist.  In other words, if you throw to a person and they throw a score, then you get an assist.  Turnovers in this equation are only going to refer to incomplete passes and count for every pass that was incomplete, no matter how perfect the throw was.  This will take out the subjective factor of whether or not the receiver 'should have' caught the disc.

In order for the statistic to be measure in percentile form, anything over a 1:1 ratio will be over 50 percentile and under 1:1 will be under.

7) Balance in duration of disc possession

Someone who has a high average possession time is someone who is a ball hog, someone who never supports his team mate's efforts to dribble by playing the hardwood, probably someone who isn't pivoting much, looking around him or balanced at all in distribution.  The Average Time of Position is an indicator about how well a person is balanced in that it indicates how quickly he is able to 'check off' from one receiver to the next if that receiver is covered.  If you are either dribbling a lot or playing 'the hardwood', you are going to have a lot of possession times nearing 100 milliseconds so it's not difficult to drive your ATP down to under 2 seconds.  If you playing with someone who is averaging 5 seconds or more, forget about trying to establish any kind of rhythm or motion with these lunk heads, they are far to egocentric to be distributing the disc just for the sake of it.  It's impossible to dribble with someone like this, so don't even try it.  ATP is measured here again on a percentile basis where 2000 milliseconds makes up 50%, under 1000 ms is in the bottom 10% and over 4500 ms in the top 90%.

8) Total Incompletion Percentage

The Total Incompletion Percentage (TIP) is useful in measuring not only an individual's completion/attempt ratio but it also takes into account ATO (Assisted Turn Overs).  An ATO is a statistic that takes into account what a receiver does with the disc after you've thrown it to them. In other words, if you throw to someone and they subsequently throw a turnover, that counts as an incomplete in your total incompletion percentage.  This stat will reveal not only who is hurting their team by throwing a large percentage of turnovers but are also hurting their team by not making the players around themselves better.  If you are trying to reduce this stat, you're not doing yourself any favors by throwing to a rookie, on the sidelines, and then 'clearing'.

9) Co-operation Factor

The "hardwood co-efficient" HC factor is a direct indicator of a person's inclination to cooperate in the motion offense.  Someone who has a low HC is a person who can reliably and immediately get you the disc back when thrown to, who moves immediately into support position afterwards, who gives the disc back to you right side up and in the torso where you can catch it with both right and left backhand throwing grips.

10) +/- Takeaway/Giveaway factor

This is nothing new and I'm not sure that it belongs in this graph but it is a measurement of how well a person is making up for their turnovers by winning the disc back on the defensive side of things.  A giveaway is only considered to be an incomplete pass so there is no counting dropped passes for the receiver's statistics in the giveaway factor.  Sorry to all of you who'd prefer to measure differently but this makes it as objective as possible.  A dropped pass is an incomplete for the thrower, no matter how perfect the throw is.  The anomalies will ultimately be factored out and what we are looking for when we graph out statistics is trends and patterns.  An occasional drop of a perfect pass will be factored out in the long run.  Dropped passes will show up in the IRI percentage (below).  A more accurate and complete picture of +/- might be taken if you add IRI onto the giveaway factor but in that instance, you'll have one turnover appearing in two separate individual's giveaway column.

A ratio of 1:1 take away to give away will result in a 50 percentile result, whereas if you have more give aways than take aways, you'll be higher than 50.

11) Intended Receiver and an Incompletion

This is an interesting and poignant stat which should turn up interesting results.  This takes a slight bit of subjectivity into account in that you need to assume who the intended receiver was but usually it's pretty obvious and you can also ask the thrower if you are  unsure and hope they tell the truth.  This is very simple, if you are the intended receiver and the disc ends up as an incomplete due to: errant throw, drop, defense, incomplete cut, etc. it counts against you.  While this may seem a bit harsh as it is measuring some things thought to be out of your control, it will reveal a pattern of who makes better cuts, understands how to read defenses better, has better hands, draws better throws, etc. and so it actually is a very telling stat.  Of course, if you have someone on your team with a very high IRI percentage, what do you do with them?  You might be very surprised to find out that one of your 'better' players is an offensive liability.

Again, since this statistic can hardly be portrayed effectively enough with any kind of percentage, we'll use a percentile type system to rate players.  People who have a high relative percentage of incompletions in passes where they were the intended receiver are going to have an IRI above 50%.  In other words, if all players on your team average 100 throws thrown to them, and the average is that 95 of those throws were caught except for one receiver who only caught 90, he would be in 90 percentile bracket whereas someone who caught 92 would end up somewhere around 70%.