History

We’re currently working on compiling as much of the Sockeye history as we can. Hopefully, we’ll have something valuable here for you, with the help of many Sockeye veterans (especially Brook Martin’s contributions!)

In the meantime, here is a questionnaire that Ben filled out for the upcoming World Championships in Prague, CZ, if you want to get a sense of what we are about, at least in our recent history…

INTRODUCTION: Can you please introduce yourself shortly?  Are you one of the founders of Sockeye? What is your position in the team and how did it develop, what do you do when not playing ultimate…

Thanks Stepan! My name is Ben Wiggins, and I’m one of four captains of the 2010 Sockeye team that is hopefully coming to Prague for the World Championships in July. We are extremely excited, and we’re glad for the chance to tell you a little about ourselves.

Sockeye was founded in the early 1990’s and has been a mainstay in Seattle ever since. Seattle is as close to an Ultimate paradise as you’ll find…the weather is nice enough to play year round outside (if you have rain gear) and over 8,000 players are involved in DiscNW leagues and tournaments. You can play a tournament every month without ever leaving the Seattle system! The second-largest tournament in Seattle is Potlatch, a co-ed tournament held every July that is spectacular. The largest is a youth tournament, where 100+ teams of middle-school and high-school ages from around the region come to play at Spring Reign every April. Seattle has large youth leagues, the ground-breaking Moho youth program, city leagues every season, and lots of Goaltimate, Disc Golf and Mini to be played in between. We’ll try to represent our city as well as our country as well as we can.

This will be my seventh year on the team. I’m an instructor of molecular biology at the University of Washington when I am not playing Ultimate. The friends that make up Sockeye are enough of a part of my life that I (and others) have tattoo’d the Fish on my body.

Do you feel being among the best teams of the world brings some responsibility to the rest of the community? You are the founder of The Huddle which is a site where many international players collect the most valuable advices about ultimate. Are there other activities like clinics etc. you and other Sockeye players take part in?

Yes, absolutely. Not all players on Sockeye can give back as much as we want (we have families, different jobs, etc) but we all think it is important to share what we have learned. Many players on the team are active coaches for youth or college men’s and women’s teams, and we hold free camps for young players in the city. Typically, Sockeye players are very active in DiscNW and the UPA, and many of Sockeye have helped Andy Lovseth and I with our site at www.The-Huddle.org. Between us, we’ve taught the game on every continent except Africa and Antarctica, and we are hoping to visit Africa soon! We play because we love the game…and we like to volunteer to give that opportunity to others when we can.

HISTORY: It is not hard to look up the history of Sockeye after the year 1995 when you appeared in the finals of the nationals for the first time. Mostly because it is an integral part of the history of US ultimate itself. What is, however, more important for our article are the first five years of the team – assuming the team was found in 1990. What are the key aspects of a new team to become one of the best teams of North America (and of the world I should say)?

That first group of players that went to three straight National Championship games was incredibly talented, and they brought some new strategies to the game that had never been used. Many of those players are still active in Masters and they are happy to tell us how they were better than the new generation;)

Around 2000, there were some tough years for Sockeye, but a dedicated group of players kept the team going and were smart to recruit talented young players to join the team. This decade, we’ve been fortunate to form teams that were very talented, very motivated, and that really loved to play for each other. We have to keep reminding ourselves that the trophy at the end of the year didn’t make us happy in ’04, ’06 or ’07…it was the feeling of TEAM that was worth all of the work and all of the sacrifice.

Two keys to our success in this decade have been a commitment to defense and a conscious decision not to use the same strategy just because it worked in the past. We try new, sometimes crazy things that sometimes are very silly…but we also find new ideas for offense and defense that really work. Innovate or die, especially against the quality of teams we play against!

SUSTAINABILITY: One thing is to build a super-strong team but even more important it is to sustain a long-term success. Some questions on this matter:

Your system of tryouts seems quite professional. Does it pay back? Do you consider it an important aspect of your sustainable success? Did you sometimes regret getting somebody to the team? If this happens, do you just say Sorry, there is no more place for you in the team..?

Running these tryouts is an incredible amount of work. We feel that this is something that we can give to our community, and it helps bring players into the fold of the team (we hope). We have found a couple of players that, without an open tryout, probably would not have been on our radar.

Playing Ultimate at this level requires sacrifices. It isn’t worth it for everyone, and we can’t be the best we can be unless we are made of players that are willing to play hard and train hard and give up some other things. Our tryouts help make sure that we are on the same page, and going through that stressful crucible together makes us stronger, we hope.

Do you run regular B- and C-teams?

We try to help Voodoo and Downpour, but they are independent teams that do very well on their own. We are proud to say that we will put our 2nd and 3rd teams up against there counterparts from any city in the world! Many of our team now are former Voodoo players.

Do you have one or more university feeders?

We have several players from University of Washington, Western Washington University and University of Oregon, which are all within a 5-hour drive of Seattle.

How many players do you think you change through the year?

We only hold tryouts once per year, so if everything goes according to plan we do not change players after that time. On average, we have about 4 new players every year, although some of those are players that had to miss a year coming back to play again. Our biggest reason for losing players lately has been that people need to move to another state for family, job or school reasons. Imagine a team made up of Chase, Lou, CK, Sam O, Will, Giora, Phil, Stoney, the Monohans,, Pat, Brook, Barney, Jaeger, Dufort, Karlinsky etc…they would be amazing! And that is just some of the players gone in the last 5 years.

TRAININGS: How often do Sockeye practice as a team? What is expected from the players as an individual work-out? How does the preparation change during the season and off-season?

In season, our typical week is a track workout on Tuesday, a skills practice on Thursday, and 1-2 weekend practices of about 3 hours each. Many players train and practice outside of this, but this depends largely on the amount of free time they have with jobs and families.

During the off-season, we play Basketball, Soccer, and other cross-training activities like skiing, dodgeball, and Magic the Gathering. Some of the hardest working athletes I have ever been around are on Sockeye.

PRESENT TEAM: Seattle is a part of arguably the hardest (best) region in UPA. Is it an advantage or does the regional round take too much energy off the players before nationals?

This is hard to say. Our Regional rivals like Revolver, Jam, Rhino and especially Furious over the years have given us incredible battles that prepare us well for Nationals. Sometimes I daydream about playing in a region where qualification is virtually assured…but how fun would that be? I’d rather play hard games all of the time. I think I can speak for the team when I say that we don’t like huge victories nearly as much as tight games with great teams.

I assume most of the top teams in the UPA competition know each other very well. Do you try to change the look of your game every season to prepare some surprise for your traditional rivals? And do they surprise you? How do you, on the contrary, approach the teams you do not know – this is mostly in the consequence of the upcoming Worlds in Prague where you are going to meet strong teams from beyond North America – Aussies, Colombians, Swedes, Brits…

We know many of the players in the US, and sometimes people on our team train while thinking about particular match-ups. But there is always something new, some new offensive strategy or new player or new throw that we have to defend. There is always some new technology that another team has designed to beat us or slow down our best players. It is never boring.

Before international games, if possible, we’ll try to get film or advice from people we know about new teams. We new every single player on the Buzz Bullets and the Aussies in ’08, and we new as best we could what each one of them wanted to do (they still did it well, though!).. When we can’t find good information, or even if we can, we try to focus on our own play and our own effort. That is a good recipe for any game.

One of the fascinating things about ultimate is that there are so many tight games in the elite competition and yet the top teams almost always win them. What is the difference between the team that keeps winning the close games and the one that loses them? What is the Sockeye recipe?

Those top-level games are often so close because the skills are so good that you won’t see easy drops or horrible defense. We try to play every point as well as we can, use the skills of the entire team, and hope that when a disc is in the air we have trained enough, are quick enough, and are lucky enough to make the play! Honestly, the competition is so good that 1 or 2 plays can be the difference in the game…that intensity makes it fun.

Prague 2010: Important question I should have started with: Are you coming to Prague? How do you value this event – the “World champion” title sounds tempting but is it more than UPA nationals?

We are trying our best to come to Prague. Being American, it is hard to convince anyone that we are poor…and in truth, we are lucky in that regard and we all know it. Compared to other American teams, though, we have many people that are either students or teachers, and those are not jobs that pay particularly well. Getting time away from work is difficult here for most people. We are hoping that we can make everything work to bring a strong team, and we hope to know for sure soon.

If you are coming are you coming to win? How does it affect your planning  of the season?

Always!;) If we do it right, we’ll give everything we have in every game. If we truly do that, and at the end of the week someone gives me a ribbon for ‘23rd’ place, I will be proud and honored to wear that ribbon as a symbol of all of our work and fun together.

Do Sockeye have chance to play outside the USA sometimes? Anything else than the Dream cup?

We’ve been lucky enough to play and teach in Japan in ’08 and we also spent part of November ’09 in Medellin, Colombia. We ran camps, played in a tournament and met the local Ultimate players who we have started to develop a kind of sister-city relationship with. They have amazing Ultimate in Colombia!

The Worlds will be played under the WFDF rules. Are you studying the differences between WFDF and UPA rules? What do you see as the biggest issues that can generate misunderstandings or arguments between UPA and non-UPA players?

We talk about Spirit of the Game as a team often. It’s very important to us, and we try to help each other make the correct calls. Cheers and jokes are fun…but respecting your opponent and respecting the rules is the most important thing. Sometimes that takes a little longer, or even a special conversation during the game between players, to find the right level. I love the UPA version of the rules, but playing WFDF rules doesn’t bother me a bit.

There will be no observes in Prague either. Is that something you are going to consider or you don’t really care?

Observers are really excellent, and they make Spirit better. Playing without Observers means that there might be a call that is a do-over because no player had a good view. At UPAs, we don’t have to worry about that. But, really, we play ULTIMATE. That means that you might lose an important game because the other team made bad calls and you refused to go down to that level. If that happens, so be it. I’d rather lose with class than win by cheating, and I know my teammates agree.

According to you – are this year’s Worlds going to be stronger than the ones in Perth due to better attandance of the US teams?

In a word, yes. Having the top four US teams will make it a stronger tournament. I was in Perth, and I thought that Buzz Bullets team was as good as anyone, so this is not to take anything away from their well-deserved victory. But the depth of this tournament will be better, making it a harder week overall.

Can you provide your estimate on what teams do you expect to make it to the quarterfinals in Prague?

Ha! No way! There are two many good teams to predict. I think the US teams will be strong, the Aussies, Canadians and Japanese are very strong, and the European teams we played against in Vancouver were tough to beat…and they’ll be on their home turf, which is a major advantage! Clapham came to our super-hard tournament with just 17 players and played very well, they’ll be in top form in Prague.

Here is my prediction: Some team will make the quarterfinals or semifinals that you would never have suspected before the tournament. Ultimate is like that, teams get on hot streaks and they play better than it seems like is possible. Make your predictions, and then expect to throw them in the garbage. It’s going to be a wild week.