Location and the Quality Divide in College Ultimate

Sorry it's been so long between posts. The end of the semester is coming, and with it comes seminar papers and sleepless nights. But here it goes...

Winter is rapidly approaching in the Midwest. Daylight is shrinking, and afternoon sunlight has been drastically cut back with daylight saving time. The leaves are coming down in droves, and every night gets a little colder than the last. Soon the first snow will come, and where I go to school, that snow will stay on the ground until at least March. The shift in the weather always makes me long for warmer country, and started me thinking about location and the role it plays in helping to explain the divide in quality I see between college ultimate teams, an issue I've been exploring in a series of posts.

Weather is the first clear byproduct of location. Schools on the west coast and in the south have an advantage in being able to practice outside year-round, but the success of programs in locations that don't offer those opportunities suggests it's not as large as an advantage as it first seems. Schools in cold climes need the facilities to hold indoor practice and conditioning, however, or else location does become a big factor in the success or failure of teams. Large universities have an advantage over smaller schools, mainly because they often have field houses or sometimes even indoor soccer fields to practice on, and nice indoor tracks to condition on. I'm sure indoor practice is not much fun wherever you are, but having seen nice field houses at large public universities and compared them to the World's Worst Indoor Track that my team practices on in the cold months, there is definitely a quality gradient to indoor facilities. Any indoor practice makes throwing artificially easy, however, so teams in colder areas do have some disadvantage after months of playing inside and then moving to the windy outside world, but schools that have large and nice facilities can certainly make up for that disadvantage through hard work...witness the success of Wisconsin ultimate, and Madison is not the most hospitable of places in the winter.

Location plays a larger role, I think, in its relation to a previous post on player and coach experience. There are definitely areas of the United States with a high concentration of ultimate players and established ultimate communities. In the Midwest, I'd say the strongest ultimate hotspots are the Twin Cities, Madison, and Chicago. You could also make arguments for Ann Arbor, Columbus, and St. Louis. Maybe Cincinnati and Iowa City, too. All these places have established ultimate leagues and at least one club team, some cities boasting top club teams in all three divisions (open, women, and mixed). College players can play for those teams and in those leagues and bring the skills they learn there to their college teams. Also, there's the potential for coaches to help out college teams in these areas that already have a lot of experienced ultimate players and an ultimate community. I think you can also make an argument for the benefit of high school ultimate programs in these areas and the probability that a student who graduates from, say, Madison West or Hopkins (Twin Cities area) will be more likely to attend a local university and play ultimate for them.

Maybe the perfect example of the potential advantage of location for college teams is that of the University of Washington's Element, a women's college team based in arguably the best ultimate city in the U.S., Seattle. The team picks up excellent players from local high schools like Nathan Hale, has coaches like Miranda Roth and Jenn Willson who play for Riot, an elite women's club team based in Seattle, and some of the strongest players on Element improve their game by playing with Riot. It's a nice symbiotic relationship, grounded in Seattle and the strong ultimate community that city has developed.

Location can also determine what tournaments a team attends, and the competition a team faces in general. Teams in remote locations or locations removed from other schools who play ultimate are at a disadvantage because traveling to tournaments that offer good competition becomes difficult, especially for young teams that may not have a core of players willing to shell out lots of money to travel. This is one more potential stumbling block in the way of teams trying to develop better programs.

One last point about location that I hadn't considered until a comment brought it up on a previous post is how some locations can serve as a distraction of sorts. I've never encountered this because fun outdoor activities directly linked to location where I go to school are limited, to, well, de-tasseling corn and, uh...biking? Some schools are lucky enough to be in an awesome location, and teams in these locations can lose potential ultimate players to the allure of rock climbing, backpacking, or (this is mind-blowing to my Midwest self) surfing. I'm not sure this is a huge factor, and I certainly can't speak from any personal experience, but I thought I'd mention it.

In relation to previous posts, I'd say location isn't as big as a factor in explaining the quality differences you see in college ultimate teams, but combined with other factors, it helps to explain some of that divide. This is particularly relevant when combined with the experience factor. Schools in or near cities with well-developed ultimate communities have a big advantage over schools who aren't in such a location. Travel distance is probably the second-most important location factor, and weather, despite being obnoxious, the least-important factor, assuming schools have some way to practice and condition while the snow falls. Though the Russians don't even bother with indoor ultimate...