Every year, your UPA Competition Committee convenes in January on the
weekend of the UPA Board Meeting. This committee consists of Will
Deaver(UPA Champ Series Director), Matthew Bourland(Champ Series
Manage), and the five National Directors- DeAnna Ball(Women's), Adam Goff(Open), Jeff Kula (College), Dave Raflo(Masters), and Yours Truly(Mixed).
One of our primary goals every year is to review and update the Series
Guidelines. The Series Guidelines is an important document that
all players should be familiar with as it defines the Administrative
and Competition Rules for the upcoming UPA Fall Series. Most
questions (from seeding to wildcards to contact information to bids to
Regionals) about the way the UPA Championship Series works can be
answered by reading this document.
This post will quickly discuss two changes for 2007:
1) Uniform requirements now include numbers on shorts. Not much to say here. Pretty straight forward.
The Competition Committee has been steadily tightening up the Uniform
Requirements for the last 4-5 years. The addition of numbers on
shorts will lead to more cohesive and professional uniforms.
2) One deadline for roster submission. This is a pretty big change,
but one, again, that the Competition has been moving toward over the
last several years.
In previous years, there have been two deadlines: A) an "early"
deadline, and B) a "late" deadline. There were additional rules with
these deadlines: on-line registration only, a "valid" roster contains
a minimum of (7) players, teams could only add (2) players to their
rosters after the "early" deadline, and team that add more than (2)
players after the "early" deadline had to pay a $50 late fee.
For 07, you can basically throw away the above paragraph. Teams that
wish to compete in the 2007 UPA Club Championships will need to submit
their roster via the on-line rostering system by one Team Registration
Deadline. This deadline is two weeks before the first Sectional
weekend(2 weeks before Regionals for Masters). A valid roster must
have a minimum of (7) players(a minimum of 3 of each gender for Mixed)
at the time of the Registration Deadline. Teams can add up to 7
players between the Registration Deadline and the Tues before their
Sectional Tournament(Roster Deadline). Teams that submit a valid roster by the
Registration Deadline will count toward their section's bids to
regionals as well as Nationals size and growth wildcards.
Just to reiterate the key points:
1) Team must turn in a valid roster (a minimum of seven players) by
the Team Registration Deadline.
2) Teams can add up to seven players to their roster after the Team
Registration Deadline. The seven adds must be complete by the Roster Deadline (Tues
before their Sectional).
The Series Guidelines were published Friday, Feb 16. I think it behooves all players to check them out.
Monday, February 26, 2007
2007 UPA Series Guidelines: Important Changes
Monday, February 12, 2007
Ulitmate Season...rant.....comments
I will be traveling with my family next week, so I will not be posting. Expect some info about UPA Series stuff come March 1.
Also, Mark M's rules blog has moved and become the UPA Rules Blog. I highly suggest that folks check it out. Reading the 11th is required for my Wellesley girls. We did a lot of work last week on ground checking the disc while putting a live disc into play.
Onto the topic of the week:
There was a call by Neva on RSD that results need to be posted on the SRT in order for ranking systems to work. Hear..hear! We seem to treat our tournaments as if they are in a vacuum. That they don't intersect with the concerns of others. That the data produced couldn't be of use somewhere down the line. While there seems to be a collective sense that a formal Ultimate season would be positive and exciting for the sport, we seem content in passively bleating about what we would like to happen and determined to resist the most primitive baby steps that could start us in this direction.
In my more extreme moments, I just find the fact that two of the lead posts on RSD this morning are players pleading for the most basic information about President's Day and Mardi Gras galling. This type of lack of information plus the derth of info from College Vegas is, to me, unacceptable. If we view things from this context, even asking why Ultimate is a not a big time sport is a joke.
If we want to take advantage of the small opportunities that are available to us in kick starting the development of a season for Ultimate, we need to be much more clear about what we expect from our tournaments as players, spectators, coordinators, and remote viewers. The concern of this post is not "which tournaments should be considered the "regular season" as that, in my opinion, puts the cart before the horse. Our "regular season"(events prior to the UPA Series) now is a mish-mash of "fun" tournaments, "serious" tournaments, lack of data, rumor on RSD, lack of communication, little documentation, and no standards in terms of formatting or accountability. The result is a "product" that has, in general, no continuity, few stories that draw us in, and little reliable data. Despite our best efforts to handicap ourselves, great rivalries and stories do manage to crawl out of the muck and, like some oasis in the desert, provide compelling drama and excitement.
Here is a summary of some things I would love to see.
For tournaments that want to be part of the Ultimate season:
1) The results and final standings should be clearly posted on the SRT within a day of the completion of the tournament.
2) The seedings and format should be locked down and published on the SRT by the Tues before the tournament.
3) Tournaments should have a bid/registration system with clear deadlines and defined policies toward teams dropping out. These policies should encourage teams to feel that they are making a serious commitment to attend when they submit their registration fee.
4) The format should be close to the standards defined by the UPA Formats Manual. If we are going to use the results of tournaments for such things as seeding, then the results need to be determined fairly. The format shouldn't change during the weekend.
5) Seeding should be done, as best as possible, in an order of relative strength. Pools shouldn't be built based upon "playing new teams", for example.
6) Teams need to understand that results will be used as data. No complaining after the fact that "we were at half strength"...or hungover...or whatever.
7) Results, if at all possible, should be updated on the SRT during the tournament.
8) The TD should be prepared with a variety of formats (very easy to do on the SRT) in the event that teams drop. The TD should publish the intended format ASAP, but also indicate that the format is not confirmed if they have teams that might drop. In this case, the TD should pro-actively communicate, on the SRT, how teams might be affected if the format were to change.
For tournaments that are not concerned with being part of the Ultimate season:
Ignore the above. Run whatever BS format you want...oops, I meant BCS format. Just keep it off the SRT. Leave your teams in the dark about seeding and the format. Or better yet...just make it up as you go along and seed things to favor your own team. We need to remember that teams are just there for the party.
Then we can let the market decide. Teams that want to be treated respectfully at an event with a modicum of "professional" standards will know where to go. They will know that their results will be derived fairly and that they will become part of a story larger than themselves...the Ultimate season. Perhaps we might even to get to the point where basic communication is an expected part of what teams are paying for.
This will also hold tournament TD's accountable to certain standards as well, and, possibly, mitigate the possibility of TD's influencing such things as Sectional and Regional seeding by creating seedings and formats at their own tournaments that are unfair and biased.
There will be many factors that will come together one day to give us an Ultimate season. Luckily, we have some things we can influence and control today that can start us in that direction. This post does not claim to offer an opinion or an outline of what an Ultimate season would look like. I just think there are some small things we can do today to raise the bar a bit higher.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Start of the Season
I find the start of the spring season to be an exciting time. The Whiptails started up again this past Tuesday, and spring practices always begin with a higher sense of purpose. If we have done our jobs, the focused work on fundamentals from the fall has laid a proper foundation for the spring's focus on refinement and a shift toward placing players in the best position to be successful.
There is a major difference to the start of this season, though, and that is the imminent split of our squad into two teams. This is the only the second time Wellesley will have fielded two squads for the spring season (the other being my first year of coaching, the spring of 2003). We have been blessed with a dedicated group of 33-37 players all year, so this is an obviously an necessary and obvious move, but still difficult nonetheless. Our culture is not one of split squads. It is one where we all work together as a unit. This has caused some consternation on the teams, but I think my captains, Emily and Langdon, have handled the situation expertly. They seem very sensitive and have done a good job balancing the desires of our players as individuals with the demands of the "good of the team".
Our practices from this last week were done with the full thirty five of us all together. After active warm-ups (no more static stretching!!...Bryan Doo got his message through), we split in half. Half of us do track workouts and the other half works on skills in the basketball gym. This seems to be a good way to both manage our numbers and achieve our goal of working on conditioning during the winter.
The team really...really wants learn, and my girls are impossibly polite. I can go on about how something we are doing as a team is "unacceptable", then go over and talk to someone individually and the response is almost always "Thank You". One of my Senior players has made some kind of personal leap and is approaching things by checking off and making very calm decisions with the disc. I have been vocal about how this is very positive and she came up and thanked me on Thursday. While I am pretty sure I am not a hard-ass, I sometimes wonder if I am complementary enough.
We actually get a lot done in our small basketball court, and we have defined things enough such that I can say "Dump Swing" or "Never Ending Game" and we can pretty much jump right into it.
As I mentioned last fall, I am very lucky to have Pete Zuraw(a Wellesley employee) helping me out at most practices. Like many things these days, it seems that if I open things up to additional input that our natural strengths come out. Pete, for example, is tremendously patient and skilled at taking players and working with them on improving their throwing. Not only does this very clearly expand our one-on-one time, but it allows Pete and me to focus on what we are good at. I think the four of us (me, Emily, Langdon, and Pete) have a natural division of labor that is comfortable. For instance, Emily and Langdon have been working the team out on the track this year. In the past, I have had to push the team and actually run the track sessions. Not that I mind doing the track work (Emily threatens the team that I will come down and run the sessions if they don't work hard enough), I just think we benefit overall from me having the time to work on team disc concepts.
We will be defining our Process and Outcome Goals in the next few practices. That should enhance our focus and what we are trying to do at practice.
Monday, January 29, 2007
UCPC Content available for download
I meant to include this in my UCPC Recap post and Shiv's comment reminded me that I need to say that I will be uploading content (handouts, powerpoint, and audio) to the UCPC website all week.
Go here to download.
UCPC Recap
Whew. What a week. One of the busiest 4 weeks of my life is capped by a day long conference 2 years in the planning. The cherry on top is that I had to pack up the gear from the conference and then race over to Arlington to play with my band. I felt like I had fallen over a cliff this morning. I don't "do" busy very well, so I'm looking forward to getting back to my normal pace.
Jim posted about his experience at the UCPC. I think the event went over very well. It was pretty amazing to see high school kids from Minnesota and Pennsylvania, coaches from Texas, Ohio, Montreal, and Presenters from Massachusetts, Seattle, Oregon, and North Carolina, etc walk in the door at Newton South High School
I can't thank BUDA enough for their support in making the conference happen. Tiina and I are also indebted to the Presenters and Volunteers who gave of their time. Many folks, including Shiellah Quintos, Josh Mullen, Emily Baecher, and Andrew Hollingworth (just a few names among many) took the initiative to solve problems and make the conference a better event. I would also like to thank Kyle Weisbrod for coming in from Atlanta and running the panel discussion as a data gathering event for the UPA's Strategic Planning Initiative.
I actually had a pretty calm day on Friday. I realized that the conference was a train with wheels in motion. What was done was done. Even still...I really didn't sleep on Friday night as there were many details that needed to be resolved. Small things like Wiggins getting rerouted and not arriving until 10am, which meant that Gwen and Miranda needed to know, at 1am, if they were going to rent their own car or not(they ended up getting the hotel, after driving around on Boston streets on the coldest day in two years, at 2:30am). The good thing is...no one freaked.
The event began with a keynote speech by Dr. Alan Goldberg (www.competitivedge.com). Really great stuff. Lots of talk about acting without thinking and being in the moment. At one point, he brought uncontrollables and my Wellesley girls (all working hard as volunteers) started laughing at me because they had just realized the limits to my original thoughts. Dr. Goldberg's presence really added to the legitimacy of the event and I am grateful that he could spend time with us.
I spent a bunch of time wandering around checking out the presentations. I thought they were excellent. Ben Wiggins' marking discussion revealed a depth of analysis and focus that was remarkable. Made me realize that I don't spend enough time on marking with my girls.
I spent a large portion of time in the auditorium as I was making sure all the av stuff was going smoothly (I work as an audio technician for corporate meetings, so we were able to get dvd's going and provide a feed for Jeff Irvine/Ultivillage. Hopefully, we will be able to get some of the conference footage up. After Wiggins, Dan Cogan-Drew and Bryan Doo discussed Fitness for Ultimate. Again, eye-opening. I hired Bryan as my trainer a few years back, but I hadn't really touched base with him in a while. His basic focus was hamstrings and core. He really does not think static stretching is good at all. One of the things he discussed was the difference between warm-ups at the start of the day vs between games. He mentioned that Ultimate was very difficult to train and prepare for as the demands of the tournament format are pretty unique. In that context, I felt that their presentation was a small opening into the future. There will come a time when there will be a base of knowledge, developed by professionals like Bryan, that will help us to prepare ina serious manner for the rigors of our sport.
I walked by Tiina's presentation. It was packed. Goldberg, Parinella, Ted Munter, and Tully were all in there. Then I wandered over to Bryan Dobyns' session. I got a chance to introduce myself to Chris Phillips and we reminisced about the 1982 UMASS vs Hostages game to go that we had both participated in.
After the second round of presentations, everyone gathered, had lunch, and wandered around the Ultimate Expo. I think the middle school and high school kids loved wandering around and getting all the free stuff from the colleges (Miranda mentioned to me that if Ultimate was an NCAA sport that we would have all been fined for recruiting violations). My wife and daughter volunteered for the whole day, so they ran the ARHS/NUTC/UCPC/Dan Cogan-Drew video/Alan Goldberg cd/book table with Dory Ziperstein and Emily Baecher. This does not come without perks as my wife got to chat up Goldberg for an hour about the specifics of mental toughness and swimming. I thought the Ultimate Expo went well. I would have loved to see more vendors and club teams participate. Lincoln-Sudbury High School Ultimate parents did all the catering as a fundraiser for their Ultimate team. I thought they did a great job and they worked very hard.
After lunch, I got Cogan and Doo going and then I wandered over to see Wicks present on coaching college Ultimate after stopping in to see Miranda and Wiggins talk about MOHO. I think the "5 Rules of MOHO" are good rules to remember...at any level. Wicks had written me a couple of times expressing a bit of concern about whether folks would be interested in 45 minutes of what he had to say. I decided to go see how it was. I will just say that there are 2-3 ideas that he presented that I am absolutely going to blatantly steal. I thought his presentation (organized based on the calendar year) was informative and focused. Most of the presenters, including Nathan, encouraged questions as they were talking. Not only did this promote interactivity, but I thought it helped to diffuse any formal pretensions (compared to the meetings and conferences I work at regularly, this was quite refreshing).
Kitt Hodsden flew in from the Bay Area to discuss "Ultimate for the Non-Gifted Athlete". As we didn't require pre-registration for the presentations, I was interested as to what her draw would be as she was up against some big names (Parinella, Dobyns, Wiggins). In the end, she had very solid attendance at both her presentations. I think this speaks to the fact that the attendees were very interested in content...especially that which pertained directly to them. We tried to encourage attendees that were there with several teammates to spread out...don't go see a single presentation all together. I think, overall, that most groups followed this advice.
Gwen Ambler chose to speak on fundraising for Ultimate, and her examples of what she did at Stanford are remarkable and inventive. Just another example of why that program is on a different planet. I got a few moments to touch base with Gwen during the conference. The first time, really, since NUTC 05. Gwen, even in the face of her tremendous success as a player and coach, is always interested in what others have to say and I always benefit from her insight.
I had an hour to set up the panel discussion in the auditorium, so I did not see any of the 4th round of presentations. Folks started to filter in at around 5pm, and we premiered the NUTC promo video as they came in.
Kyle served as moderator for the panel. Our panelists were Emily Baecher, Miranda Roth, and Steve Mooney. We asked Jeff Graham as well, but he had to leave the conference early at the last minute. Kyle opened the discussion with a brief description of the UPA's initiatives and how this event would fit into the overall scheme of the Strategic Planning Initiative. The format was basically focused on two questions/issues (paraphrased): 1) Should we grow Ultimate via grass roots or high profile events, and 2) Discussing the tension between SOTG and highly competitive play. Kyle did a great job keeping things moving. The response to 1) was overwhelmingly in favor of grass roots growth, both by the panel and the audience. I do think the different view points of the panel were constructive. Mooney as elder statesman seemed to reveal that while he has as great a historical perspective as anyone out there, he was not as concerned with in vogue issues of the day. Miranda, of course, offered the perspective of a coach/player at the top of the game, and Emily offered the perspective of a growing player with a solid foundation in Youth Ultimate. Mooney refereed to a conversation that he had with Bill Rodriguez about what Ultimate would look like in 100 years. From that perspective, Mooney felt like we were "fine" and he did advocate for the importance of protecting and nurturing our culture.
Question 2 was a bit more polarized, which is to be expected. Some folks felt that refs are necessary at the highest levels. Others were adamant that refs are a bad idea. Miranda brought up what I think is the important distinction between SOTG and refs (I brought this up in my "self-officiating" post. It was during this discussion that Steve interjected a very interesting comment. He basically said that in the context of SOTG, our culture, and promoting the sport, that the Mixed Div could offer the best opportunity for marketing ourselves as the sport of the future (paraphrased). I swear to you that I did not pay him to say this. I actually had a conversation with Steve about this at the inaugural Mixed/Masters Easterns in 2003. I was playing with Steve, Jim, Al, Cork, etc on Big Ego Ultimate. The masters div was about 6 teams. We were on the line, and Steve looked at the other 35 Mixed Div teams playing and said to me, "That's the division to be playing in". In any case, it was quite a comment.
Kyle finished the discussion by having all the attendees place stick-on dots on big sheets of paper so that we could "vote" for our preferred direction that the UPA should take in terms of the the 2 questions. This data will be gathered and combined with the data gathered at other SPI events. The result will hopefully be a picture of what Ultimate players want. Again, I am glad that the UCPC could function in the context of larger purposes.
With that...the conference came to a close...9 hours of talking about Ultimate....how bad can that be?
This morning, Kitt, Gwen, and Miranda came over for brunch. It was a rare opportunity to talk with other College Women coaches. Very fun as we exchanged funny stories about coaching, teaching, and trying to make our programs as good as they can be. Gwen and Miranda left for the airport, and Kitt is staying over until Tues as this her first time in Boston.
---all I can say is thanks.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
I or D Part 5- Gender Equity
This will be the last post in the series. I am sure that many folks will be glad to see me get off my high horse. This post will address what is to me a critical area in which our sport has an opportunity to set itself apart from most other sports (and virtually all field sports). By putting men's and women's divs side by side at its showcase events, the sport has not only differentiated itself, it has indicated its priorities and values.
Now, there are no rose colored glasses here. While we have been successful, in a general sense, of physically putting men and women equally on a tournament pitch, there is, in terms of "backroom" sentiment, clear disrespect toward the women's division. One needs only look as far as The Count's post on Day 4 of Nats to get a pretty clear view of this sentiment. Other spectacles such as the Sockeye heckling debacle two years ago further this point. Finally, one needs only to talk to the women involved in the formation of the division in the early 80's to get the sense that the creation of a women's division was met with great reluctance back in the day. Luckily for us, good sense prevailed. This is not to say that we should all enjoy watching women's Ultimate, or that we shouldn't be critical of its quality of play. The point is: a policy of gender equality is good for the sport because, due to differentiation, it places us in line with some of the small social steps we have made in the last 30 or so years and, unlike most other sports, gives us an advantage as both genders have access to participation under one umbrella.
Ultimate might be perfectly aligned to be the field sport of the post Title 9 era. There are examples like the WNBA in which the "men's" division has promoted its development , but, for most field sports, if they even acknowledge the "better half", it comes in the form of griping about losing its funding due to Title 9. Of course, there is usual line of rationalization about why it 'ok" to ignore women athletes based on "objective" data (men can run faster and are stronger), but then we have the NFL rolling out with great pride the fact that women make up 43% of its fan base (up from 35% a few years ago). While the NFL is basically Neandrathal in terms of promoting any kind female involvement in the sport (other than eye candy), they have all of sudden seemed to wake up to the fact that they have, until recently, basically ignored 50% of their fan base (read: potential income). With this kind of example, why make things hard for ourselves?
Ultimate is obviously behind most other sports. Most of the other field sports have roughly 80 more years of organzational experience than we do. Very few, however, have a structure in which women and men are treated equally. This is a clear opportunity to not only offer assets like positive role models to both genders, but we have a relatively equal playing field of experience to draw upon, in terms of leveraging this as an asset.
I think it could be argued that gender equality could be THE most important thing that our sport has to offer. More than the flight of the disc, "purity" of the sport, SOTG, etc, etc. As we move into the future, we will probably need to clearly state our values and priorities. I think there are not a small number of us that feel that a policy of gender equality could, in the future (if not already), come at the expense of our ability to promote ourselves. Hopefully, a clear statement of values will help us negotiate potential difficult decisions.
I do think it is important that we view the divisions with a clear and informed mind. I personally found this year's Riot v Fury final the most compelling of the final games. Why? The story was interesting. It is naive to assume that faster and stronger athlets are ALWAYS more interesting. From a broad point of view(meaning over the last 2-3 years), the Fury win has to be considered an "upset". It is been stated several times in the Ultimate blog world that a good story like an "upset" makes sports exciting. As such, I found it very interesting to see Fury systematically take Riot apart...great stuff. Kicked the men's ass.....in my opinion.....
So, to review, the context for this series of posts was to churn the waters for the panel discussion on "The Future of Ultimate" at the upcoming Ultimate Coaches and Players Conference. It now looks like the UPA is going to participating in this panel discussion as they are, obviously, working on a Strategic Planning initiative. It is my hope that subjects like media, technology, self-officiating, and gender equity can be part of the discussion as I think they will be important parts of our next steps into the future.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
I or D Part 4-Self-Officiating
Wow. Very busy time right now. I was in Boulder for the past weekend for the Board meeting, planning for the UCPC is really ramping up, plus there is that thing called life that has its normal demands....ok.....moving on.
Kevin and Glenn had comments about self-officiating in my "Game Pace" post that lead me neatly back to the Imitate or Differentiate thread. Clearly, this is a controversial subject and this post is not meant to evaluate self-officiating or to wade in on the "ref" debate. It will simply discuss that, for good or for bad, self-officiating is probably the clearest and most obvious example of an opportunity to differentiate ourselves.
I will first start off by saying that this post makes the distinction between SOTG and self-officiating. In the broad scope of things, SOTG is essentially good sportsmanship, which can be found, to a greater or lesser degree, in the basic teachings of most sports. While SOTG makes the assumption that knowingly breaking the rules is in violation of SOTG, I don't think that SOTG mandates that Ultimate can ONLY be self-officiated....we wouldn't be able to have observers if this were the case.
As I said above, self-officiating is perhaps the most obvious means by which Ultimate can set itself apart from other sports. Maybe it is naive, but I think self-officiating can be looked upon as "social experiment". A project in which assumptions about the way we behave in competition are challenged. Maybe it is laughably optimistic, but maybe the way folks treat each other in the context of "positive" self-officiating could be a major component of what the sport has to offer. Maybe Ultimate without some self-officiating component is not Ultimate anymore.
Clearly, there are some challenges. Other sports, in a pick-up context, practice self-officiating. There is an image problem if the one of the things that differentiates us is generally known as a "school yard" means of arbitration. It doesn't take a lot of insight to see how people outside of the sport can't take it seriously.
A big question I have is can self-officiating be viable if money is involved? If not, does self-officiating therefore limit our potential?
I think a helpful perspective comes down to an answer that is familiar: Let's concern ourselves more with making the game great to play...and less with "external" standards of success.
