Frank Derangement Syndrome
Dogs and Baskets
Dogs and Baskets
Frank Derangement Syndrome (FDS)
noun
1. Psychiatry. "a mental condition in which a person has been driven effectively insane due to their intense dislike of Frank Huguenard, to the point at which they will abandon all logic and reason."
The impetus for this lengthy tome is that the myself and the Indianapolis AlleyCats of the Ultimate Frisbee League entered into an agreement in December of 2023 to have me teach their team my revolutionary system of offense that I call Shredding.
They’ve since reneged on virtually all aspects of this written proposal, in spite of the owner’s deep and sincere desire to have me teach his team my offense.
They’re going to instead run a metastasized mutant strain of my offense this summer, but a variant that will be missing most of the key components of what Shredding actually is.
It’ll give you just a glimpse of the potential of my offense, so they should do better than expected but it is extremely disheartening that they failed to honor their agreement while that have simultaneously and illicitly purloined my intellectual property that I’ve spent several decades accumulating through hard work, innovation, ingenuity and invention.
To make matters worse, it’s this same intellectual property that has been a the root cause of so much condemnation towards me in the first place.
For over thirty five years, the Ultimate community has hated me because of my offense. The AlleyCats took it to the next level. They refused to honor their agreement to bring me on to coach my offense and yet they’re going to run my offense anyway.
Most of these players and coaches weren’t even alive when I was first hated for coming up with this offense to begin with.
Brutal.
This series of articles has been 50 years in the making so please take a minute to enjoy it and if you like it, please forward this along to a few of your Ultimate Frisbee friends or groups. I’ve condensed it the best I could, while taking care not to leave out the most salient details.
At it’s core, this FDS series of articles is all about ideologies and how Ultimate Frisbee’s Spirit of The Game ideology that the community has clung on to for so long is the very thing has held the game back from reaching its potential.
One thing is for certain, and that’s is that virtually every Ultimate player has experienced the same humiliating Dogs and Baskets phenomena where we are asked “Ultimate, is that the thing with the dogs” or “Ultimate, is that the thing I see the kids playing down in the park with baskets” when we tell a stranger about our favorite game.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve looked at the world differently than others, my thinking has been different and I’ve perceived intricate patterns in existence where people haven’t even noticed the dots. Let’s put it this way; I’ve always been more than a few standard deviations from normal (whatever the hell normal is).
Thirty five years ago, I began to notice a subtle pattern in Ultimate Frisbee that led me to develop an alternative way of thinking about and playing that literally breaks the game.
When I try to share my ideas with the community, I’m ostracized, I’m a leper.
I’ve made a lot of extraordinary claims about Ultimate Frisbee over the past 20 years that seem impossible to most players.
Here is just a small sample of these kinds of claims:
It’s best to decelerate into catches
It’s possible to run a high-octane, up tempo, world-class and unstoppable offense and never need any more than three steps to either throw the disc or plant a pivot foot.
It’s possible to not compromise your throwing mechanics and never be blocked
It’s preferrable to pivot back in the direction where the disc came from
It’s possible to be 64 years old and be unstoppable against the best players
It’s superior to catch the disc on the rims instead of a pancake catch
etc
No one believes me, so people think I’m crazy.
Maybe I am.
Maybe I’m not.
Who cares?
Don’t just take on someone’s else’s opinion as your own, make up your mind for yourself.
FDS Part I
The Galileo of Ultimate
For well over the past 30 years, I’ve known something about ultimate that seemingly no one else has ever known. And when I say know, I mean to the core of my being I know it to be objectively true, for anyone willing to exit the cave and find out for themselves.
Suspend disbelief for a moment and imagine what these past three decades have been like for me. Virtually every cut, every Evan Lepler play by play comment, every article, every throw, every accolade, every tournament ‘winner’, every roster decision, every photograph, ever rule, every drill, every website, every ‘coach’, every video, every book, every offense and every defense are all wrong. Everything about Ultimate is completely ass backwards.
Either I’m full of shit, or I’m 100% correct. There is no middle ground and I’ve made it that way intentionally. Frankly, I like my odds.
Drew Shepherd has an extremely severe case of FDS, so this entire series is dedicated to him.
Shredding, and how it breaks Ultimate Frisbee®
Ever since 2002, I’ve relentless tried to explain to the community how Shredding revolutionizes the game, but it’s been a tough audience. It’s not like I set out to revolutionize Ultimate, it just happened organically but when you know, you know. Ya know?
Frank Derangement Syndrome Part II highlights some of the challenges I faced in trying to share my discovery with the community but I think that this is probably my best explanation to date about what Shredding is, and what Shredding isn’t.
More importantly, I think my logical breakdown of the framework for the game is my best attempt so far in terms of explaining the fundamental flaw in Ultimate’s framework that Shredding exposes.
FDS Part III
Those Mother F#$?%kers
This chapter focuses primarily on the pattern within my interactions with Ultimate player for how the community members have consistently given me their word, only to unilaterally break their agreements without cause.
FDS Part IV
The Final Insult; The Indianapolis AlleyCats
The owner of the Indianapolis AlleyCats, in writing, made me an offer to teach his team Shredding. I accepted.
He reneged on virtually every part of this agreement.
The AlleyCats will be running an offense this year that is a derivitive of my teachings, but it ain’t shredding.
At least it will give you a glimpse of the potential for what my offense is actually like.
“While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do”
Steve Jobs
NEXT
The Galileo of Ultimate
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