Flow versus Consecutivity

Flow and consecutivity are similar yet very different in my mind. When judging presentation I look for flow, when judging difficulty I look for consecutivity.

Flow has to do with keeping the crowds' interest by maintaining a certain level of play - maybe not hitting everything or staying consecutive the entire time, but whatever bobbles, the's or even minor drops don't distract from the overall flow the team had built over a period of time...while one quick drop might not break the flow one long drop or two quick drops may. Other factors can effect a judge's interpretation when judging the degree of flow. For example, keeping the disc moving between team members often makes the routine flow more than having each player just do long center delay combinations. When you watch some vintage footage of the Coloradicals you notice not only how well they flowed but how the excitement would build as they kept the disc moving and as they kept hitting moves. But don't forget, they weren't just doing easy moves the whole time...they had to be doing risky enough moves for their to be excitement in the first place.

Consecutivity. Consecutivity is very straight forward. Is a player going from move to move without hesitation or does he have to reset the disc or do a the before going into the next move. Now you may wonder, "What's the big deal? It's not that hard to go from one move to the next." This is true for some moves but far from the truth for others.

For example when doing an under the leg center delay it's easy enough to regain control of the disc on your finger after you've passed the disc under a leg. Now try the same move but add a spin after you pass the disc under your leg and before you regain control on your finger. The mastery of the move can be shown in competition by how much control you have of that move.

If you do an under the leg pass and then pull the disc under another leg directly off the first set - you've shown three things. One, that you've mastered the first move to the point where you can set it into a relatively small pull out window. Two, you've mastered the second move to the point where you can pull the disc from a relatively good set with little room for error. Third you've shown you've mastered the transition from the first move - which involves balance and footwork.

So, difficulty as it relates to consecutivity is maximized when players do moves into other moves when the margin of error for the moves themsleves and for the transistion between those moves is minimized. Diff is also maximized by the technical substance of the moves which correlates to how technically difficult the move is. How hard is it to do that move under the current conditions, what's the degree of restriction, the amount of time to master the move, how risky is it, etc.

As you can see just judging difficulty is difficult.

Now, try to take into consideration all that I've mentioned and try to judge multiple players doing different moves with muliptle discs all at the same time....then in the middle of their combos the 15 second tape guy says "mark". Doh!