Practice #1

The BUDA Open YCC team held it's first practice since the announcement of the team this past Friday in Amherst. 3 players were missing and one was sidelined with an injury, but it was good to see the squad together nearly in full.

The day started out with a warm-up followed by a long cutting and conditioning drill. Then the team spent some time talking about defensive positioning and running a few drills to focus on what the coaches had just demonstrated. The morning session was ended with a scrimmage that was close throughout and had no one team or player dominating the action.

After a break for lunch (most of the players headed to one of the Amherst guys' house to raid the pantry), the coaches went over zone defense and some quick defensive play calls. The guys then scrimmaged for a second time with the opposite team winning than had during the morning session, and it was time for the main event of the day: a scrimmage with a team of local ringers who included 4 former junior worlds players and a number of NUTC counselors in town for the week. The ringers jumped out to a quick lead, but the YCC team answered back and was able to pull out a 7-5 win.

The team finished off with some group core strength exercises and sprints and headed to the swimming hole next to the fields to finish the day.

This upcoming Friday the team will be back in Amherst for another practice and scrimmage with more locals, but unfortunately will not be heading to any tournaments before going to Blaine as they were not offered a bid to the Nucci's cup in New Jersey.

BUDA Open YCC - Roster Selected

Even though a number of players were out of town on family vacations, the second day of tryouts for BUDA's Open YCC team went very well with 17 players in attendance at the Mitre fields in Burlington, MA.

After arriving early and throwing around (it was nice as a coach to get to the fields 15 minutes early and be the last one to arrive out of the whole group), the team got together to talk over how the horizontal stack will work. Almost none of the players have any experience with the H-stack offense and it was certainly a challenge at first. After a few scrimmages and a couple of marking/throwing drills to get a final look at individual player's skills, the final tryout was over and the coaches had a bunch of tough decisions to make in getting the roster finalized.

In the end, the following 19 players were offered a spot on the 2007 YCC Open roster:

David Baecher (Amherst)
Andrew Hollingworth (Tufts University)
Corey Mindlin (Needham)
Andrew Lunetta (Needham)
Branden Steinberg (Needham)
Tom Bassett (Needham)
Ryan Rzepka (Longmeadow)
Alex Kapinos (Longmeadow)
Matt Guild (Amherst)
Julian Summa (Amherst)
Jonah Herscu (Amherst)
Tommy Li (Longmeadow)
Misha Herscu (Amherst)
Patrick Roberts (Amherst)
Kellen Corkill (Amherst)
Russel Wallack (Amherst)
Andrew Kiefer (Amherst)
Ben Nelson (Andover)
Max Gillett (Lexington)

The schedule will be tight as the team will only come together for 3, maybe 4 practices before leaving for Blaine in August.