Making Your Teammates Better
How do players 'make the players around them better'
Great players - the ones that really elevate their teams - are sometimes described as having the ability to make their teammates better. There are plenty of resources for Ultimate that describe how being a better teammate can improve your team but not much discussion of how the way you play can make your teammates better - or worse.
This may be a very fine distinction - maybe it’s entirely within my head - but I do think there’s a difference between the set of behaviours that make you generally a good teammate to have, and the ability to boost the performance of your teammates while you’re on the pitch through your play. It’s the latter I’m interested in. These are my thoughts, but I’d love to hear other perspectives also. Leave a comment below or hop into my discord.
When I am considering this I’m primarily thinking of the better players on a team - because they’re playing the biggest minutes, are given the largest roles and are ones the younger players look up to the most. However all these behaviours do apply for all players.
So how do I think players make their teammates better? Well, I came up with 5 key behaviours.
1. They read the whole game
….not just to see when they can get involved again.
Learning to read the game better is always (correctly) advocated as one of the essential skills to be trained to improve as a player.
But there’s a difference in how players apply this. Some players only read the game to facilitate their own play. The classic examples of this are:
the strong cutter who never really leaves the active space to their teammates, but is always finding an opportunity to be the primary cutter
the strong handler who starts walking into the active space early, forcing the player with the disc to engage them
the strong cutter who will only make moves guaranteed to get them the disc i.e. they won’t cut deep if they don’t think you have a strong huck, won’t cut breakside if the mark is strong, would rather run straight at you for a 2 yard pass than not get the disc
the strong handler whose only solution to being poached is to get excited and immediately demand the disc
Players that make their teammates better will continually be reading the game to see what avenues of attack will benefit the team the most. You’ll see them do things like this instead:
leave the active space and direct their teammates to attack and where
allow the player with the disc time and space to make decisions
make cuts with the sole intention of dragging away multiple defenders
when poached, look to move to a space that sets up the best sequence of throws
2. They Move the Disc Where It’s Needed
and not where YOU want to throw it
There’s definitely a time and place for stamping your will onto a game, but it’s a much rarer need than most players think it is.
If you’re one of the best players on the team you should be good enough to be the player that’s able to read the defence overcommitting and counter the momentum of the disc instead of pushing it further into trouble. Or realise that they defence is sagging off a particular player so they need to get the disc. Or the defence are conceding free unders so it’s not a situation for your beautiful flick bomb.
When you are challenged it’s a pretty common set of psychological safety mechanisms to (a) double down on the things that ‘make you great’ and (b) want to decide your destiny yourself rather than give it up to a teammate to decide.
But the really great players are able to overcome those fears, make the right play, and that’s what makes them great.
3. They Communicate
This one is covered pretty well through other sources so I won’t spend time here. Undoubtedly communication during play will help your teammates perform better. Just remember: you’re trying to pass on information, not have a conversation and not teach something!
4. Help on Defence
….but don’t force everyone to play your way
I mean help in two different ways here: there’s helping your teammates by reading the action and communicating to them where a threat might come from, and then there’s helping by covering gaps for them - recognising they’re beaten and coming to their rescue.
But it’s so easy to overhelp. Don’t be the person standing in space calling out to everyone what to do. It’s not team defence if you’re standing there while everyone else is running around working hard. I feel the pain of everyone who can read the game quickly on defence and wants everyone else to do the same but you need to recognise where you’re at. This is doubly true for anyone that is playing very high minutes and is relied upon a lot by their team, it’s one of the ways you can save energy while on the pitch. In certain scenarios that can be the appropriate thing to do, but if it’s every tournament you should really be asking to play fewer minutes instead.
5. Hold Everyone to High Standards
but especially yourself
You definitely don’t need to be one of the best players on a team to hold yourself and others to high standards, but it certainly creates a good tone when the best player takes it on themselves to drive the standards. Actions speak louder than words here. Anyone can have a little rant about energy and effort*, but it’s usually really obvious when someone is or isn’t putting their maximum effort in.
When you have your own game in order then you can hold your teammates to account. For example:
commit yourself to chase lost causes on offence and defence then
you can go up to someone when they don’t, and tell them that you think they could have got close to the receiver and put some pressure on, and they should go for it next time
make sure you’re reversing the disc to get to the poached player on the far side of the pitch consistently then
you can approach your teammates on offence after spending a point poached and make sure they understand the need to recognise that situation and make sure the disc gets to the poached player**
But you 100% need to walk the walk before you talk the talk. Otherwise your teammates will stop listening to you. Your advice can’t be that good if you’re not doing it yourself.
*the only form of this I really like from a player is when a player holds their hand up to say they’ve been falling short but are going to double down and, crucially, leaves it there and doesn’t ask the rest of the team to do the same until they’ve fixed their own level.
**how best you should have that conversation is outside the scope of this post!