Lou Burruss Returns To Writing

Lou Burruss has resurrected his personal blog after leaving Skyd Magazine late last year.

His latest entry is about the College Championships, Oregon’s title, playing against Stanford, and building a team. Fantastic stuff. Here’s an excerpt:

Building a team is climbing a mountain. The mountain isn’t winning a championship, but developing a team to it’s fullest potential. Because every team’s potential is different, every team’s mountain is different. So you can take a team that doesn’t win a title or a team that doesn’t even make Nationals and feel absolutely wonderful because they climbed to the top of their mountain. The 2012 team that got pasted in the finals by Washington was a like this. I suspect the Ego boys feel pretty much the same way about their season and their loss to UNC. When a team does everything it possibly can, when a team climbs as high up the mountain as it possibly can, you are a fool to feel anything but joyous about what you did.

So how far did Stanford climb up their mountain? Pretty damn far. Much farther than I thought they were capable of and relatively further than I thought we climbed up our mountain. (But our mountain was different – our season was about something different than what their season was about.) Much kudos to the coaching staff for building a great team and putting together a great game plan. Much kudos to Michaela for saving her best ultimate for the most important tournament and most important game. In the finals, she took a step forward as a player, finally stepping into the promise that has accompanied her career. Finally, the most respect to Slim. She’ll go on and be great elsewhere, but her greatest strength – her boundless energy – won’t matter as much in the club game. She literally dragged Stanford to where they are – arms up in that silly positive body-language woo-woo business yelling “Warhorse” or “Our house” or whatever it is she yells every damn point. Every point. This is a team that collapsed at Nationals last year and she never relented and collapsed at Northwest Challenge and she never relented and just kept going and going. Slim is why.

  1. Charlie Eisenhood
    Charlie Eisenhood

    Charlie Eisenhood is the editor-in-chief of Ultiworld.You can reach him by email ([email protected]) or on Twitter (@ceisenhood).

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