Women's Ultimate Soapboxing

It's finally winter break, so I have more time to write. Remember to check out the post beneath this one about team history and legacy written by a contributor.

I've spent my last few posts talking about the quality divide in college ultimate, and now I want to touch on some specific issues I see in women's college ultimate.

First, there are fewer women players and fewer women's teams. Therefore, I think the divide between strong teams and weak teams is more prominent in the women's division. I read once that only a third of the UPA members are women, and a look at the teams at tournaments, really any tournament except regionals and nationals, will show that there are always more men's teams than women's. In my section, for example, there are four women's teams...the same section on the men's side has something like twelve to fifteen teams each year. This means women's teams have fewer opponents to play against, particularly fewer regional opponents. High level teams already have to travel far to find teams at their level, but mid and low level women's teams also do not have as many opponents at their level as comparable men's teams do, meaning they have less opportunities to test themselves against competitive opponents.

Why are there fewer female ultimate players than male ultimate players? I think the main reason is that, despite huge leaps in the past twenty-some years, fewer girls still do sports in high school than boys, and are therefore less likely to try out sports in college, ultimate included. Also, it seems like girls are sometimes not brought up in a culture of athleticism, if you will-- that is, a boy who did not play sports in high school might be more inclined to try out for a new sport in college than the girl who did not do any sports in high school. The smaller size of most women's teams I know means that the first-time athletes who do try out for the team play a larger role, and, because their level of athleticism is generally less than high-school athletes (initially), the athleticism of the entire team is less than the same school's men's team. I think the culture of athleticism I talked about earlier also makes it easier for boys who come into ultimate without any official sports experience to integrate more quickly into a team sport and contribute meaningfully earlier than girls without sports experience. Maybe...I'm not an expert, and I don't have data to support most of these claims, so feel free to post disagreements.

My last point is more nebulous than the others...but I feel that women's ultimate does not have the heroes or the following that men's ultimate has, particularly among women players themselves. This may not be the best example, but why are so many posters on RSD men? Why is there only one prominent woman blogger in the ultimate world? Why, at least in my experience, is it the men who teach me how to throw better, who serve as role models and teachers for the skills needed to be a good ultimate player? Why am I one of the few players on my team who knows who won college nationals on the women's side for the past three years? And, most importantly, why are the sidelines of high-level women's games still significantly smaller than the sidelines of men's games?

I went to watch the college championship in 2007, and looking at the difference in sideline audiences between games in the men's division and games in the women's division that year was educational. Sometimes I was one of a handful of spectators watching very talented players from teams like Stanford, Carleton, Wisconsin, and UCSB battling it out in bracket play, compared to the sidelines crowded with spectators in the same bracket play on the open side. Let me quote from the UPA writeup of the women's semifinal games:

"The most tragic element of this year’s women’s semifinal games was that no one was there to see them. The crowds gathered around the open semifinal blowouts, ignoring the double game point action happening on BOTH fields one and two." (http://college2007.upa.org/results/womens)

A part of that is because fewer women watch ultimate than men because fewer women play, but still, I see this happen again and again at college and club tournaments-- the spectators, women included, go to the open games and largely ignore the women's games. I know "the NBA is more fun to watch than the WNBA" argument, and maybe that's the way it will always be with women's sports, but at the very least I think women players should be watching other women play. Next time you're at a tournament with high-level women's teams and you're a woman with time to spare on Sunday, take a look at some of those teams playing on the far fields. I think you can learn by watching good players, and if you're a woman, why not watch those whose play is directly applicable to yours-- other women?

Maybe I'm reading into the spectator issue a bit too much, but I think it's a symptom of how women seem not to be as invested in ultimate as the men are. Women's ultimate will grow only if more women begin caring about the sport and about the other women who play it. Yes, support your men's team, but watch your rival school's women's team play, too. Cheer on the women's talent in your region. Get to know the women's talent in your region. Attend a women's clinic. Start a women's clinic. Go to regionals to watch if you don't qualify to play. Read a blog or an ultimate book. Become a role model on your team, encourage other women to play, and become invested in the success of the sport.

Don't get me wrong-- there are definitely lots of standout women who play and women who work very hard to improve the game for everyone, and you can read the new trend of having separate college tournaments for women (Centex and Pres. Day) as a desire for women to take control of their own tournaments and success (maybe...that whole situation is interesting and I don't know enough about the motivations behind choosing to have separate tournaments to comment more). But still, despite the clear contributions a lot of women (and men!) have made to the development of women's ultimate, I still heard disparaging comments (beyond the normal heckling) about women players from audience members watching the finals in 2007. There is still undeniably a difference in the level of play between college men and women's teams (not all teams, certainly, but a lot) that goes beyond basic facts of biology. I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers or to present a perfect analysis of why that is, but I do think if more women become invested in the sport, it can only help more women to play and to improve the quality of that play.