Bagel Fodder Ultimate

D-III: An Alum's Perspective (Cross-Post from Without Limits)

2011-05-16T12:53:00.005-05:00

Michelle Ng asked me to provide some commentary on DIII ultimate for a new blog she started to provide women's ultimate coverage as DIII and DI nationals are right around the corner. I'm cross-posting what I wrote here, but you should check out her blog now and in the coming weeks. Also, if you haven't heard about Without Limits Ultimate before, read up on it! They're doing amazing work for college women's ultimate.

Turns out, all I need is a little prompt to start writing again...

I graduated from college almost exactly a year ago on a Monday morning in Grinnell, Iowa.Just a day before, I was in Appleton, Wisconsin playing in the semifinals of the first-ever USA Ultimate-run Division III Nationals. That tournament was the highlight of my college ultimate career, and I still think it was a more fitting end to my time at Grinnell than walking across the stage to get my diploma. I’ve successfully gone through the stages of college ultimate withdrawal since then, and through it all, I’ve tried to keep up with the continued development of the division III college series.

I must admit, though, as an alumna living far away from Iowa and college ultimate in general, the changes were sometimes confusing. When I heard about how things would run in the north central region this year, these were my thoughts, “Wait…no more sectionals? A single tournament to determine who goes to nationals? Awesome!” I didn’t fully realize how much these changes had affected Grinnell until I went back for a visit after they had qualified for DIII nationals again.

A lot of things were still the same— the practice field, the jerseys, the cheers, and many of the good friends I’d left behind a year ago, but when I cleated up and began running though the drills with my former teammates, I began to notice some changes. There were fewer turnovers than I remembered. Everyone had better throws. And when people did misthrow or dropped a disc, they ran sprints. During scrimmages, people would call out “OPP!” for one-possession point, and often they would accomplish that. I had to step up my game, and I was more self-conscious of the mistakes I made. Everyone was more serious and more focused. I saw the team lifting in the gym alongside the varsity football and track teams. They convinced me in the week I visited that they were definitely the best Grinnell team I had ever seen and played with.

I don’t want to give full credit for the improvements I saw to the new college structure, because that somehow takes away from the determination, planning, and sheer amount of hard work that goes into making a whole team better. I do think the new division III series does give additional motivation to teams like Grinnell, though, and that helps to explain their improvements. From what I heard and witnessed, playing in tournaments all spring and knowing certain opponents would be at conference gave tremendous incentive to train harder. Having one do-or-die conference weekend focused training efforts for the entire winter and spring. The whole season took on more structure than it had last year, when the ranking system and bids to division III nationals were handed out after a series aimed mostly at division I teams. The ranking algorithm alone, as useful as it was then and still is now for calculating bids in both DI and DIII, just doesn’t give the same sense of urgency or excitement that a finals or backdoor game-to-go does.

From my perspective, after the changes I’ve seen at Grinnell in only one year, this sense of urgency and excitement is just what division III teams need. It’s been fun (and, as any recent graduate will tell you, a little bittersweet) to get phone calls from old teammates describing the emotions of their first conference weekend, their first tournament where the bids to nationals are in reach for them, and winning one more game means extending their season by another couple of weeks. In the years to come, as the kinks with the new system get worked out, I can only imagine the divisional structure will mean more exciting weekends for lots of division III teams, and motivation and improvements that will last far beyond those two days.

Grinnell's Story

2011-02-17T15:32:00.012-06:00

My second post about D-III Nationals turned into this…a post I’ve been trying to write in different variations, literally, for years. It explains my motivations for starting this blog, and shows, I hope, how a lot of what I covered in other posts applies to my experiences in college ultimate.

Two years ago or so, maybe longer, my team had a crazy idea: if we worked hard, harder than ever before, we could do great things and maybe surprise ourselves with how far we could get. Sounds simple, right? I started this blog after playing a bunch of good schools in the fall of 2008 and trying to think about what advantages they had over us and how they got to where they did—in some cases, nationals. I thought a lot about size and location and coaches and the growth of ultimate and women’s ultimate, but at a certain level, you can’t beat grit and determination and a desire to want to do better. I learned just how hard that is to implement on a team, but I was also a part of my best ultimate season to date.

Grinnell College is a small, liberal arts school in rural Iowa with about 1,500 students. Unlike many other small schools, we have had an ultimate team for a long time, going back into the 90s, and a women’s team consistently since the early 2000s. We always had a core group of players, and for the four years I was on the team, that core expanded to include more people and more dedication to the sport. This was an important first step in getting us to Appleton last May: dedication to ultimate as a sport, not just a way to get in some fun games and fun times. The two captains my freshman year began the push that culminated in us making Division III Nationals three years later. They said: look, we’re going to be more serious and we’re going to play to win in the spring. They held a few tentative sprint practices once the snow cleared, and a history professor (who has since left Grinnell) helped us with some practices and our zone defense. Despite their efforts and leadership, we didn’t make it past Sectionals that year. The next year, we built even more. We got a big class of first years (who are currently leading the team as seniors) and made regionals.

The next year, my junior year and first as a captain, I started doing a lot of thinking about ultimate beyond the confines of our team and our school, and started talking with my teammates about pushing us to the next level. At that point, we weren’t really sure what that meant—D-III Nationals were still unofficial and didn’t include a women’s side, and though we sometimes thought, “if all of us train harder than anyone has ever trained, we can make D-I Nationals,” we all knew the reality was different in a region that included Carleton and Wisconsin. But we started asking ourselves more realistic questions like, “if our team had mandatory track practices, would you come?” or, “if playing time at tournaments didn’t solely depend on practice attendance, would you come to the tournament? Would you want to be a part of a Grinnell ultimate team like that?” For some people reading this, those questions may seem odd and a given for any team hoping to be at least a little competitive, but for us, given the culture and years of tradition on our team, they were new concepts. Because, despite efforts in recent years, Grinnell was still a team based on the principle of giving everyone who came to practice, regardless of talent, equal playing time, and a team that demanded far less in terms of time from people than varsity sports. The mentality of the team was at times wholly different from the stereotypical, ultra-competitive, win-at-all-costs mentality of other sports. We were, foremost, about having fun and spirit and inclusion than going into tournaments with the goal of winning as many games as possible. We began seriously questioning in the fall of 2008 whether we could keep that Grinnell ultimate spirit, but win more games and push ourselves harder than ever before.

Around this time I also started talking to other teams about how they made the push to the next level. I had contact with a player on Maryland, fresh off of their first nationals appearance, with local players on Luther, another small-school team in our section that was improving by leaps and bounds, and then with one of those captains from my first year who went to grad school at Michigan and to nationals with Flywheel in 2008.

All of these “sources,” despite coming from different types of teams in different stages of development, had three things in common when I asked about their success:

1. A and B teams, or at least the ability to pick from a large group of players to form an elite core.

2. A coach or an outside authority to at least come to some practices and to help with tournaments.

3. Conditioning, conditioning, conditioning.

For us, one and two weren’t feasible at the time. I do think that Grinnell and other small schools can be more aggressive and creative with recruiting talent to their teams. If Luther can have an A and a B team some years, and Carleton an A, B, C and countless intramurals, then Grinnell can as well, but it will take planning and effort. Number two is still a challenge for Grinnell and for other rural schools. The ultimate community in Iowa is already spread out, and finding someone to make the hour+ drive from Iowa City or Des Moines or Ames to help us out remains a challenge, particularly because many of the club players in the state are alums of other schools, and would likely dedicate their talents to their own teams. Even teams who traditionally haven’t had coaches do have dedicated alumni to help them out…but, again, not many alums stick around the 9,000-strong town of Grinnell after graduation and there is no grad school at our tiny institution.

The final point, though, was something we worked on. It was driven due to an increased love for ultimate as a sport—a dedication and a study of it, and, in some quarters, even an obsession with it—that had not happened in a team-wide sense before. I can’t fully describe this change. Certainly part of it was an influx of younger players who had played in high school, and who brought an intensity and varsity-athlete mindset to our team, not to mention a few fall varsity athletes themselves who joined the team in the winter after their seasons were over. Some of it was the men’s team obsessing about good open club and college teams and spreading along that obsession, through Ultivillage DVDs and endless chatter about the current season. Part of it was playing against amazing teams in our own region and being inspired by the athletes and superstars on them. And part of it was discovering the ultimate blogosphere, RSD, and then all the videos and pictures and history and stories you can find on the web about ultimate. I feel like the online ultimate world is getting more consolidated and organized now, but just two and a half years ago, it felt sort of like a treasure hunt, trying to find the best highlight reels, discussions of strategy, and tournament write-ups among a loose confederation of blogs and websites.

However it happened, Grinnell became more and more interested in ultimate, and in a lot of ways, took the game more seriously than ever before. I would go so far as to say there was a real shift in team identity. Grinnell attended Midwest Throwdown last spring and had Cara Crouch as our guest coach for the weekend as a part of the Roundup Division. I wrote a piece for the Huddle about that experience, if you are interested, but the closing paragraph of that piece reads:

"In fact, one of the best moments of the weekend came when Cara called a rookie line. Our seven newest players took to the field and scored. They used the new skills they had learned, but also displayed the confidence Cara gave our whole team. Having her cheering from the sidelines, making in-game adjustments, and telling us about her own experiences helping to build the Texas team into the powerhouse it is today all helped us realize the potential we have on our team. That was maybe the most important lesson I took from the weekend. We have enormous potential for growth and now, more so than ever before, we have the tools and knowledge to improve, along with the excitement and desire to work hard that comes from spending a weekend with a world champion Ultimate player."

That tournament opened our eyes in so many ways. It was part of the continued growth and awareness on our team that we could be better, and had the tools to do so. We got the younger players hooked on the sport itself, as well as on Grinnell ultimate in particular, with its traditions and tournaments and team culture. I think this is intimately tied in to realizing a potential for growth. The team identity at Grinnell turned more into the identity of a sports team, with a responsibility to train and with goals to win. This is why, especially in the spring season, we could make big team changes—holding more conditioning practices than ever and also subbing competitively at every spring tournament we attended.

These changes may not seem like much, but they represented a big transformation in the way things had been done before. True, some people had always hit the gym and the track independently of the team, and we had always subbed competitively in the college series. But to make those changes team-wide and season-wide was a big step in a more competitive direction for Grinnell.

This was certainly not without challenges. We still struggled to get people to work out consistently over our five-week winter break. We did not condition as aggressively when we moved outside in March. And I didn’t find a good way to get people to lift, especially to do the most beneficial lifts for an explosive sport like ultimate: squats, deadlifts, and cleans. I, myself, had just started to learn the basics of effective training for ultimate last winter, and I didn’t know how to get women who had never lifted before to get under the bar when I was still unsure of my own technique. Our relationship with the athletic department is shaky at best, and I didn’t look to any strength trainers there to help our unrecognized, decidedly club-status team. Thankfully, a lot has changed in the past year in terms of resources available to teams ready to take the plunge into more effective training—there is more ultimate-specific knowledge than ever on the internet. I think we made a good effort, though, running sprints on our 200 m track and indoor basketball court, inventing conditioning workouts to do in small winter practice spaces, running agility ladder drills, allowing people to teach the team whatever their favorite method of working out was, from yoga to karate, and trying to develop some basic lifting habits.

As for subbing, it caused some problems on the team that were indicative of divides in opinion over the way we were headed. Some older players thought we were getting too competitive and maybe eroding the spirit of what had made Grinnell ultimate special—acceptance of all players interested in the sport, regardless of athletic ability. This was a big sticking point on many levels. We did not have enough players to pick the best and make an A team, so we had to balance having people on the team on one end of the spectrum, with no ultimate and no athletic experience, with people on the other end: high-school ultimate players who had been playing since orientation week their first year or ex-varsity athletes expecting a certain level of competition. For some of the “old guard,” who had come to Grinnell ultimate in my class of freshmen eager to escape the competitiveness of varsity athletics, our changing team culture was tough to swallow. But on the other side, there were players who thought we weren’t competitive enough, and that our subbing at some tournaments should have been more selective. There were communication problems between the captains and the team about expectations for games. By nationals I think we worked most of the snags out, but, as always, not everyone was totally satisfied, and there is always room for improvement. The strategy behind subbing is an important aspect that captains of any team, especially for small, mixed-level teams without coaches, need to work out. Do you put your best lines out at the beginning and play them a lot, hopefully getting a lead over your team and then relax a bit, or do you mix your star players into more open lines, saving legs over the course of a long day? Or, do you try to play entire tournaments with a tight rotation, as some teams at nationals seem to do?

Despite these problems, Grinnell had its best season ever in the spring of 2010. We planned our practices better than ever, and there was more fire in us at those practices, not to mention more women attending than ever before. We played in some of our first-ever pressured game situations and got a feel for how it was to play when the emotions and stakes were high. We followed our rankings closely throughout the year and kept tabs on other teams in our region. We went to the finals of Frostbite in Columbia, Missouri, got to the semis of High Tide in Savannah, Georgia, and really peaked at D-III Nationals, surprising even ourselves by making it to the semis, where we lost against Swarthmore. We came from behind in two of our pool play games on Saturday, won on universe in one, and played the best we have ever played in the quarterfinals game on Sunday. I think not a single person was unaffected by the excitement and determination we felt build throughout the season, bolstered by athletic recruits and a phenomenal, undefeated weekend in St. Louis with Cara Crouch at Midwest Throwdown in March. The excitement over ultimate even continued after the season when a big bunch of us went to Madison to watch D-I Nationals. Everyone on the team that spring became at least a little bit of a student of the game, and at least a little bit more of an athlete, and it showed.

It wasn’t perfect. There are things I would have done differently. But we set a goal in the fall of 2009, once a division III championship had been announced, and we worked to make that goal a reality. In a lot of ways, the team that showed up in Appleton in May was still a little scrappy, short in numbers from seniors missing the competition to attend their college graduation. But we have always been a scrappy team—on the line we don’t look particularly tall or threatening, with a whole host of people with different athletic backgrounds standing shoulder to shoulder, so there was no reason D-III Nationals should have been any different. As ultimate and the prestige of Division III Nationals and the separate conference structure grows, our scrappy team may find itself edged out by small schools that do manage to do everything I have described here more effectively. I do think it is possible, though, for future captains and members of Grinnell women’s ultimate to take what we started building and run with it, while still maintaining a certain team culture that no amount of sprint practices or team strategy sessions or tight sub rotations can beat out of us, because it comes from attending and playing for an oddball little school in the cornfields of Iowa. And looking back on my time wearing the baby blue jersey of that scrappy team in all its iterations, I wouldn’t give up those years for any other team.

Now What?

2010-08-13T23:23:00.006-05:00

Looks like I can't keep my promise, again, about updating this blog on time. Life is too crazy now to write a decent entry, though I have started the promised second take on D-III nationals. I'll get it up here eventually.

I wanted to take this moment, on the eve of my departure from my parent's home in Ohio, to reflect on what happens now. I started playing real ultimate in 2006, and my last year of college eligibility is going to be spent in California working through a program called Lutheran Volunteer Corps at a nonprofit in Berkeley and living on a small stipend with other volunteers in Oakland.

I don't know what I'm going to do with this blog, save get that last D-III post up. I like the idea and the name, and I'm not going to stop writing now, just you probably won't hear so much from me about college ultimate. Maybe other people will fill in with that (you interested? email bfultimate at gmail.com and let's talk). I'll figure out what to do and will post stuff here sometimes-- I like how some ultimate blogs write about tournaments and very individual-viewpoints/experiences type of stuff...stories, pictures, etc., so maybe I'll do some of that on here.

Thing is, I don't really know how big of a role ultimate will play in my life out there. The Bay Area has arguably the best ultimate in the world (see: Worlds 2010), but I am missing the summer club season, for starters, and I don't know if I will have the money or the ultimate talent to play on a club team next season, or if I will even be around for another club season (the program ends in August 2011, and who knows where I'll end up after that). I am planning to join a winter league and see what happens then. The prospect of not being on a team is tough--it's been tough already. I've been a member of a tight-knit, wonderful little college team for the past four years. Ultimate was my life. I missed maybe two practices over four years, and I never missed a tournament. My only friends, basically, were on the team or had played at one point. I went to eight solid tournaments in a row one fall, both college and club, and have had other similar, some would say grueling, tournament schedules in a season. I lived with teammates for two years at school. When captaining, it seemed like sometimes the only thing I could think about was frisbee and the team. Leaving all of that has been hard. Anyone who graduates from college feels this about lots of things, I think, and for me it's frisbee. There's no going back to that ever, either. I will never again live within a four-block radius of all my teammates, I'll never have the ease of standing in the middle of campus with a disc and waiting until someone I know walks by and tosses with me, I'll never drive 22 hours to get to a tournament after midsems week, I'll never eat every dinner after every practice with my team again, and I'll probably never sleep 10 to a hotel room at a tournament to save money. It's still strange to think that this fall I won't be playing frisbee regularly, and it will be doubly strange to check my team's score reporter sometime and not know anything about the games I see there. I have learned, though, in the past four years, that the ultimate community is welcoming and surprising in what it can do for you sometimes, and I think I will continue to find that wherever I go and wherever I play.

There's more to say about transitioning from college ultimate to...ultimate in life, with jobs and moving and money concerns, and also transitioning from college to club, or from open/women's in college to coed club, which I find a lot of people I know doing. I'll try to write more about some or all of those things when I can.

Division-III Nationals...and the quality divide in college ultimate, two years later

2010-07-09T23:00:00.001-05:00

It's been a while, again, my apologies. I finished my career as a college ultimate player this May in Appleton, Wisconsin, playing in the first ever Division-III National Championship. I'm going to frame my thoughts for this post and the next one around D-III Nationals. This post is going to focus on D-IIIs in the context of issues raised with small college teams previously in this blog and talk about my thoughts and ideas relating to that, and the next post will talk more specifically about my team's experiences this season culminating in D-III Nationals.

First, for the sake of examples, I'm going to say what team I play for. I'll write more about this in my next post, but for now I'll let you know I play(ed...that's weird to write) for Grinnell College. Discerning readers probably already figured this out, but, yeah, I tried to keep that hidden on this blog until now to write more objectively about stuff, but I'm done with college now and feel like it's important to talk about my experiences a little more personally in the next two posts.

Anyways. I wrote in 2008 about what I called the "quality divide in college ultimate," and I explained some reasons why I thought it existed. I'm going to go through those reasons and discuss them in the context of the current state of ultimate in 2010, because with D-IIIs and my own experiences in the past two years, some things have changed, or maybe my perspective has become more informed.

1. Size-- we're never going to be able to change that; Grinnell will always be a school of 1,500 students. The creation of D-III Nationals addresses this divide nicely, though, and gives small schools a more level playing field. I was really impressed with D-IIIs this year-- playing observed games and having official merchandise and the director of the UPA (it was the last UPA tournament, by the way) there were all nice gestures/signs that this was a legitimate national championship. I do see room for improvement in two areas regarding D-IIIs. First, not all the teams who were invited to nationals accepted their invitation. We were the only women's team from the Central, for example. We were behind Carleton and Luther in terms of bid allocation, but Carleton went to D-Is and Luther declined their bid. This happened in other regions, too. It was commencement weekend for a lot of smaller schools (it was our commencement weekend, too, and therefore I was the only senior to attend...), but I think some teams who were invited from distant regions and who would have had to pay for airfare to compete were not prepared to do so. As the tournament becomes more established, though, and teams start making D-IIIs their goal, I think more and more teams will accept, and the general quality of teams will get better. Elite teams are well-practiced, I would imagine, in the costs of travleing to distant tournaments, and D-III teams will also have to begin to think about how to fundraise and save for travel to the big show. Again, I think this is a matter of time and establishing D-IIIs as a legitimate national championship that teams can and should work for.

The second, and more important issue, I think, is the ranking system used to determine who gets bids. The regular season is the only thing that determines bids. There is no regional tournament with a championship game and a game-to-go for D-IIIs. I don't think a D-III series or anything like that will happen anytime soon because there aren't enough D-III teams in some places to warrant it, and it also isn't fair to really good D-III teams like Carleton and teams on the cusp like Middlebury to have to decide early on whether to compete in a D-III series or not...the current system lets Carleton and Middlebury play for D-I qualification but still allows them to go to D-IIIs if they don't make it (and both of them made it this year, congrats). So, the ranking system is likely to remain in place, and it is not perfect. There were definitely some teams in the Central that should have/could have gone to D-IIIs but didn't because they did not make the 10 sanctioned games requirement. Again, this is something that will take time...teams are going to realize that they need these games and will get them in if they are serious about D-IIIs. Tournaments also have to keep their end of the bargain (Vegas this year...) and teams need to get their accurate, completed rosters in (we had to attend an extra tournament this season because some games we though were sanctioned ended up not being so because our opponents messed their rosters up).

Also, one thing I have come to realize, through Michelle Ng's incredible work this past season, is that as ultimate players we have the power to create positive change in our own regions. We were beat by two D-III teams at Regionals that did not go to D-III nationals, and given those results, it could be argued that they deserved to go there in our stead (Neither of them had the ten sanctioned games, and results from Regionals didn't count towards the qualification rankings, either). This was sort of a monkey on my back as we went into D-IIIs. I'd like to think tying for third sent the message that we deserved to be there, but this discrepancy in results and in rankings could be avoided earlier in the season if D-III teams have the opportunity to play each other before a late tournament like Regionals (this was the first time we'd played these particular teams all season). The ranking system will only become more accurate if D-III teams get more chances to play other D-III teams, and this also means more chances for sanctioned games. And as D-III players, we can make that happen by hosting D-III tournaments. A tournament doesn't have to be 40 teams on polo fields-- you can easily host an 8-team tournament on four or even three fields on campus or at the local park. Eight teams would be a good portion of the D-III women's teams in the Central region, so a huge number of teams for a D-III tournament, in most regions, isn't necessary. Make it cheap, make it sanctioned, give people water and bagels, report scores, communicate with captains, and maybe host a mixer on Saturday night. Opportunities to play regional competition will help improve the D-III rankings, and will also build bonds between D-III teams in the region. Having run a tournament before, it's not thaaat hard to do if you keep the number of teams manageable and ask for help, plus you end up making money for your team in the process.

2. Experience-- I wrote about player experience through club and high school/middle school ultimate and coaching experience in my previous post. I think this is the most important aspect that sets some teams apart from others. You can have the tallest, fastest athletes on the field, but I still think, generally, they will lose against a team with an experienced coach and some players who have been on the club circuit for a season or more. The major difference I saw between women's teams at D-III nationals and D-I nationals, besides roster size (generally a product of point number one), was the absence of coaches at the former and their large presence at the latter. I highly recommend reading Lou Burruss' blog for an inside look at what the Oregon women did at D-I nationals this year, and look at how many decisions he carefully considers and makes in his coaching, from everything to in-game strategy to how to avoid getting heat exhaustion during and after games. Over the course of a four day tournament, it seems almost impossible to do well without a coach. And being a player and a captain/coach at the same time is really, really hard, as anyone who has tried to fill that role well will know. I've never played for an ultimate team with a coach (except for one happy weekend in March), but I watched a lot of good coaching at D-I nationals, and it really made me realize what a big difference a good coach can be.

And then there's player experience. By and large, the best players in the women's game play women's club, or elite mixed club. My thoughts on this really haven't changed since 2008...the more you play at higher levels, the better you will be on your college team and, presumably, the better that will make your teammates. D-III schools don't have a disadvantage with this, it seems, except maybe that all the really good ultimate kids who want a small-school college experience will try to get into Carleton and not Grinnell. My experience has been limited to Iowa, which doesn't have a really developed club scene (at least for those of us not good enough to play for CLX), but I'm assuming students at smaller colleges have generally the same opportunities to be on club teams, assuming those club teams exist...which has more to do with...

...3. Location My thoughts on this haven't changed too much since my post on it in 2008. The Northwest and Southwest continue to dominate women's ultimate (Santa Barbara every year, Oregon this year, Washington last year, Colorado this year, Stanford almost every year, etc.). A Northwest team won D-III nationals on the women's side this year, too (Pacific Lutheran)...and last year at the unofficial version of D-III nationals (Whitman). Better weather, better local competition, better high school ultimate, better (and more) women's club teams? All play a factor, I think. Still, Wisconsin proves every year that going to school in the snowbound north, away from elite women's club (though Georgia still played with Fury), doesn't stop a team from being elite. It remains to be seen what happens with D-III teams. My only thought is D-III teams (at least liberal arts schools) tend to enroll students from all across the country, so maybe that will level the playing field in some ways when it comes to getting experienced high school players. Still, if you go to school in rural Iowa, you have to drive longer to play teams and look harder to find club teams. Insert your state/location of choice-- there are lots of other examples (Texas comes to mind).

Anyways, to wrap up, I was really pleased with D-IIIs this year, and despite some first-year kinks, I think the system will work out well for small schools in years to come. And, addressing concerns I voiced earlier on this blog, the system doesn't stop a small team from competing with bigger schools, if they want that type of competition. My thoughts on experience and location haven't changed so much since 2008. Much of what I observed then continues to be true...get your players club experience, try to get a good coach, and move your school to California or Washington state.

I'm off to New Hampshire to hike for a week, but I'll try to get my second D-III post up sometime this month.

Exciting Developments: Restructuring and Midwest Throwdown

2010-02-28T19:29:00.003-06:00

I have been thinking a lot about what to write here. Studying abroad stopped regular and meaningful posting, and the semester since coming back to the United States has been, for one reason or another, one of the busiest I've ever had. I have been playing and captaining, though, and I want to get back into the habit of regular posting at least until my final season of college ultimate is over this spring.

Since I've been neglecting this blog, the ultimate world has kept on going. The most significant change in my mind has been the UPA's college restructuring plan. As a player on a D-III school team, I welcome the addition of a D-III Nationals (especially a women's division!), though the location remains to be seen and D-III rankings of any kind also remain to be released. I like the whole sanctioned games change, too-- it makes tournament directors more responsible (though this hasn't forced TDs to make things like brackets in the women's division a standard on score reporter yet...come on, Mardi Gras!) and really makes teams realize the entire spring season is serious and meaningful. I have noticed a change in my team's mentality based on these sanctioned games, and people seem to understand the reasoning for competitive subbing a lot more with games being sanctioned this spring.

Within my team, players who were abroad and separated for over a year have finally been reunited. We have gained some fall varsity athletes who are trying out ultimate this semester and loving it, and practice attendance is, finally and amazingly, regularly reaching 18-2o people! All the talk about this season is coming to some sort of fruition. We are doing more conditioning and sprint work at our indoor practices, I see my teammates in the gym every time I go to lift, and, in general, the work ethic in and out of practice and general excitement about ultimate is at an all-time high.

This sea change of sorts has multiple explanations. First, I have found it only takes a few players to be passionately involved and excited about ultimate to inspire that passion in other people, especially with younger players. The influx of the junior class, freshly returned from abroad, has bolstered practice attendance and their influence has made it apparent to players slacking in attendance before that they can no longer count on low numbers at tournaments to get playing time.

My co-captain's and my efforts have also made some changes. We are doing competitive subbing at tournaments, and because of this we are winning more games, and winning more games generally tends to build excitement on the team. It also creates some spirit of competitiveness within the team that hopefully makes people who would like to get more playing time work harder at practice. We are being strict about doing conditioning in practice and have tried to get people to condition outside of practice (through a google doc, fitness blog, and extra conditioning and practice sessions led by various team members, with varying success).

Finally, certain tournaments and the efforts of dedicated women in the college ultimate world have also been fostering a general excitement about ultimate on our team (and other teams, I'm sure). Anyone following college women's ultimate at all probably knows about the efforts of Michelle Ng and company in running college women's tournaments and creating exciting opportunities for developing college teams at those tournaments. I mentioned this trend briefly in a blog post over a year ago, and Michelle actually commented on that post and her goals in running those tournaments. Since she commented, she has put on a handful of very successful women's tournaments, from Centex to Midwest Warmup to Midwest Throwdown, with new tournaments like the Philly Classic in the works. I attended Midwest Warmup last fall, and we had a great time playing lots of regional talent and enjoyed the feeling of being kept up to date with what was happening and other amenities like score reporting (and for a team not used to attending many high quality tournaments, score reporting certainly is a luxury).

But Michelle and company (by company I mean Anna Nazarov, Holly Greunke, and members of the Washington University ultimate team) have really come through for us with this season's Midwest Throwdown tournament. There are three divisions: div. 1, div. 2, and the Roundup Division. Teams who wanted to play in the latter division had to fill out a detailed application describing their status as a developing college team, team goals, team strategies, descriptions of practice, and challenges to growth and ultimate development in general. After reviewing the applications, eight teams were chosen to be a part of the division. Eight premier women's coaches, with experience coaching and playing elite college and club ultimate, not to mention national team experience and a lot of Callahan winners among them, were matched with the eight chosen college teams, and are going to have the chance to work together all weekend at Throwdown, developing skills and teaching concepts in and out of games against other Roundup Division teams. On top of this, the eight coaches plus other experienced club ultimate players are teaching skills clinics on Saturday evening, open to the entire tournament. Registration for those clinics filled up a few days after being posted.

If you can't tell already, my team is one of the teams in the Roundup Division, and we are beyond excited. We've been in contact with our coach and have devised a game plan for the weekend, and our entire team registered for the clinics. Excitement is high, and I think the weekend will be one of the most useful of the entire season and beyond. We have tried for the past three years to become a more competitive team, with some progress, but I think this one weekend and the relationship we are building with our guest coach will help out more than many of our previous efforts. At the very least it is getting a group of 20 people pumped about the sport and making them realize how good we can be with hard work and focus. I always say ultimate is a limitless sport and very accessible because the great teams today were in our position, to varying degrees, at one point or another, and the relatively small community means you get to see firsthand how teams change from one year to the next. As a friend of mine put it, "ultimate gives you as much back as you put into it," and any reason, like this tournament, to get your team to put even more into ultimate is one to celebrate.

That's all on the intangible level, too. On a practical, tangible level, we'll be getting new drills, team skills, and individual skills to bring back to practice and a weekend of help from one of the best players in women's ultimate. The things we learn will stay on our team for years, and the relationship with our guest coach will also hopefully last beyond this season--she'll hopefully be there to answer questions over email after the tournament ends. Our men's team is extremely jealous of the opportunity, with good reason.

So, the future looks bright, and I think this tournament model is the future of ultimate in developing regions. Getting so much coaching talent at every tournament is unfeasible, but developing a system of guest coaches and having skills clinics for all teams at some tournaments with local club teams helping out is certainly reasonable, I think. Getting this information out to more teams will eventually do a lot to increase overall talent in developing reasons, I think. I have written a lot on this blog about why some teams are so behind others in terms of talent and skill, and have tried to share some of my own experiences with this quality divide. I still intend to write about that divide and my personal experiences with it this season, but it will definitely include positive news and new, exciting developments, like our experience with Throwdown and other exciting changes to the women's division I am so happy and grateful to be a part of.

Low Numbers at Practice

2009-10-10T00:34:00.003-05:00

What do you do when you don’t have numbers at practice? A nasty fever-coughing virus has taken out key players on our team for a week or more, and with a large, consistent, athletic class studying abroad this semester, rare is the day when we can field 14 girls at practice, let alone 12 or even 10. Despite going to a small school, practice attendance has never been an issue in the past, or when it was, it was after the series had ended for us, and so we were content to play hot box or 5-on-5 for an hour before calling it quits. But what do you do when eight people show up to practice healthy enough to play one week before your first major away tournament? Even when we have enough to play 6s, it does not allow us to practice zone offense and defense accurately, and even with 14 girls at practice, we are automatically playing without any subs, and so the pace of the game is much slower than game pace…and the old adage is true…you play how you practice.

It’s not only the illness that is taking players out. Injuries, lingering injuries, are taking their toll on old and new players alike. This speaks to athletic abilities in general on our team, but also to an institutional lack of support for club sport injuries through the athletic department. And then, you have the freshman issue. The freshman who is not quite sold on ultimate yet, who decided to sign up for a hundred other activities and committees and finds homework loads their first year different from high school and sometimes comes to practice but not always…but would I come to practice as a freshman, too, if week after week we were scrimmaging without full numbers? If older teammates shirk practice for unknown reasons, would I, as a freshman, feel it was acceptable to skip practice because I had “too much work” or “a meeting”? You see, this freshman issue is related to another issue, that of older players not coming to practice for no apparent, good reason. And then can I, as a captain, send out a strong email to my players, telling them how important practice attendance is, knowing full well that the people who will be the first ones back after such an email will be the ones who may not have waited long enough to heal their injuries or nurse themselves back to full health? I stood on the sidelines today in a feverish haze, barely able to shout out instructions to the eight girls who were doggedly playing hot box at our “practice” today, and thought “is this supposed to be my senior year of ultimate, is this the buildup to the spring semester that everyone on the team has agreed will be one of our best seasons to date?”

Certainly practicing at all is better than not practicing, and you can still run drills and help people with their throws without full numbers. There is benefit in playing smaller games of 5-on-5 because it does give newer players more touches on the disc. But sometimes, especially when I am sick on the sidelines, too, I feel like our little team is falling apart, and after having dedicated so much time to making our team better, it is frustrating to be reduced to lackluster scrimmages at this crucial point in the season. You simply cannot effectively teach and practice team skills when you don’t have a full team.

I am sure this problem is not limited to my school. In fact, I’m sure other bagel fodder schools deal with this problem far more than we do, and what I’m experiencing now, for a few weeks in one semester, is what other schools have to deal with week in, week out at practice. I don’t know what to do about it, though. “Recruit!” said one of my teammates today, after that frustrating 8-person practice. We have never actively recruited, save manning a table at the freshman organization fair the week before classes start. At a school as small as ours, and considering that we practice right in the heart of campus, I think visibility is hardly an issue for us. What is an issue is emphasizing to freshman, but, almost more importantly, older players, that practice attendance is vital to being a member of the team, a point that I had thought was clear, but may need to be reviewed-- again, and again-- until we can stop playing hot box and start playing ultimate.

A Few Comments and Predictions

2009-05-14T14:44:00.004-05:00

Keeping up with ultimate while studying abroad is harder than I thought…sorry for the huge break in posts. No promises of anything regular until I am back in the U.S. in August.

A few comments and predictions, though:

-Congrats to the Iowa State women on getting the third bid to Nationals from the Central Region. I’ve played against them a lot, and they’re a solid team that deserves to be there.

-Are there more DIII teams than usual on the men's side at Nationals this year? Carleton, obviously, but also Luther, Williams, and Tufts.

-The 2009 women’s Callahan award should go to Georgia Bosscher. I don’t even care that I’m unqualified to make such judgments because I play for a tiny team that’s been beaten by Bella Donna to the tune of 1-13 more than once…listen…Georgia Bosscher is, without a doubt, one of the best (if not the best?) women’s college ultimate players in the country-- a standout player on an already very good team-- and, from what I can see as an outsider, a great leader. My freshman year of college, we were at some tournament, and a teammate pointed her out to me and said, “See the girl with the dreads? Her name is Georgia, she is a phenomenal player, and she is only a sophomore.” Since then, I've seen her play at a decent number of tournaments, including Nationals in 2007 and Central Regionals (club and college) in 2008, and also captain Wisconsin's tryout team last fall. I’ve seen her pull a disc out the back of the opposing team's endzone. I’ve watched her notice a disc out of the corner of her eye, layout to the side, and get the D at chest height. I’ve seen her destroy cups with beautiful high-release backhands. She has huge throws, huge ups, and huge bids. This girl can play, she can lead, and she deserves to win.

-I’m also calling it: the 2009 women’s national title will go to Bella Donna. They have the 2008 Callahan winner still playing for them (Courtney Kiesow), at least one of the best handlers in the women’s college game (Emilie McKain), and a deep roster with too many other names to list. They are stacked, and I think they want it badly this year. They lost to the two teams seeded above them (UCSB and Washington) once each for a combined point differential of 3. Look, I don’t even care that I’m not in the country and haven't seen them play all spring…Bella Donna for national champs in 2009. Midwest represent.

-For the men, I think it’s CUT’s year, but I’m even more unqualified to make that statement than I am to make any of the above.

I won’t be in Columbus to watch any of these predictions unfold or crash and burn, even though my parents live half an hour away. No, I’ll be in Munich for the weekend, which isn’t too shabby, but if you’ll be in Ohio, have fun for me. Having watched nationals before, I can say for certain it’s amazing to see so much good ultimate in one weekend. Plus CUDA is awesome. Yeah Columbus.

My First Experience with Ultimate in Germany and Force Middle

2009-03-12T18:00:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of updates. I am in Germany now, and I am a lot busier than I thought I would be, and in the down time, I have not been thinking about ultimate as much as I normally do. I have played with the team here twice, and don't have much to say except about that, other than they play a lot of force middle, which I dislike, and are still mainly indoors, which I also dislike. I am also sick, again, which has halted any extensive plans to begin to get in shape or to play as much as I would like. As I continue to settle into life here and develop a schedule, I hope to attend practices more regularly. Oh, the vocab differences are kind of fun; a disc is a Scheibe, they force links and rechts when not doing "FM" (for "force middle," not mitte as you might expect), and handlers are Aufbauers. The stall count is still in English, though.

On the topic of force middle, does this work well for anyone? I find it really hard to play defense in a man situation when the force changes from one side of the field to the other. I am probably not a good enough player, either, but still, I think the team needs to be really good about determining when, exactly, they're going to change the force from a backhand to forehand, and potentially call switches on defense. Needless to say, joining up with a group of Germans and playing pickup ultimate in the park with them for the first time means that this communication on defense was not there.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I play man defense by lining up on the correct side of my woman depending on the force. If the disc starts off being force forehand, I line up on the correct side to stop the cuts to the open side. The disc gets thrown to the other side of the field, now it's a backhand force. Suddenly, I am on the wrong side of my woman, and she has an easier open side cut. I can see force middle upsetting teams' usual open-side offense, and if I were a better defender I'm sure I would have an easier time with it. I was just always taught that the force, at a basic level, was supposed to make the other defenders' jobs easier upfield, and force middle, as I understand it, does not make it easier on the defense. I guess it makes it harder on the offense, but is it worth it?

I did a Google search on "force middle" and found a blog post from four years ago on it. The poster himself said under the "how to attack it" section: "Additionally, don’t forget that the downfield defenders are having to constantly switch which side of their man to cover. The closer the cutter is to the frisbee, the less time a defender has to make up the distance." His post talks about setting a force middle with poachers, which is more than what the team I played with was doing with their force, so I could see it working better with poachers, and, like I said, intelligent switches. But still, I don't know why force middle would be your go-to defense without poachers and a tight, communicative defense. I guess it is giving me some practice on being way more aggressive on defense. And maybe as the season goes along, I'll develop a better on-field connection with the team and defenses like this will become easier. Who knows.

See, this is why I don't write about strategy. But it's all I've got right now to talk about right now. I'm pretty much just asking for input about force middle, benefits and downsides, things I'm missing. Comment away; in the meantime, I'll try to finish some posts that have been lingering on my computer for far too long.

Two Women's Ultimate Blogs Worth Reading

2009-02-21T11:33:00.007-06:00

I enjoy reading about women's ultimate, but not many blogs concern themselves specifically with covering the women's game. This week I've found two blogs that do. One is written by USC's coach and the other by a player on Illinois Menace. You'll also find I've added them to the links on the right.

Obviously I don't go to big, nationals-caliber tournaments like Trouble in Vegas, Pres. Day, Centex, Stanford Invite, etc., so it's good to have some solid blogs covering these tournaments as well as regional tournaments and also offering other posts that bring attention to the women's side. All I can really do is make half-educated predictions about the Central region, and maybe you'll see that on this blog later on in the year, but I thought I'd share the two blogs above who are better positioned to cover the women's college game than I am.

I feel like there might be other blogs out there that I haven't found yet-- anyone know any other good women's ultimate blogs (other than ICultimate)?

Study Abroad and College Ultimate: Some Follow-Up

2009-02-19T10:13:00.007-06:00

My last post was on study abroad and ultimate and some of my teammates read and responded. They are going to Mardi Gras this weekend almost savage, and so I feel even more guilty now than I did before, but anyways, I wanted to share some of their thoughts because I think they are worthwhile.

I said in my last post about friends who had studied abroad: "They came back with cool jerseys and discs and awesome stories and maybe a better understanding of how ultimate is growing in other parts of the world." I wanted to expand on that a little bit. First, if you study abroad and play on an established team, you're bound to learn something new. Any team you play for will have different styles of play but also leadership, practice structure, drills, and team culture. A discerning player can evaluate these differences and see if it's worthwhile to bring some new skills and drills back to their home teams. The other possibility is studying abroad in a place without an established ultimate scene, and, well, one of my teammates said it better than I could:

"The alternate possibility is study abroad in a developing country with little to no frisbee presence, and I think this can be even more educational. I learned more about the game trying to to teach people in Ecuador who had never seen a frisbee than I have in any team I've played with or practiced with. Plus the excitement of introducing a game that occupies such a huge place in your life to people who have grown up playing soccer with roundish pieces of fruit is such a nice reminder of how powerful (religious?) throwing a frisbee can be."

That about sums it up. I had not thought about the benefits of not just playing ultimate abroad but teaching it to people abroad, something that is very possible if you study in a place where ultimate is not well-known.

Study Abroad and College Ultimate: Benefits and Downsides

2009-02-11T09:20:00.009-06:00

I was supposed to leave for Germany last week to visit some relatives before beginning my study abroad program, but I was diagnosed with mono the day before my plane was set to leave, so I'm hanging out in the U.S. for two more weeks and recovering some strength before leaving to begin a semester of study in Freiburg, Germany. Being ill for the past three weeks has stopped any writing I had planned, but I feel better these days, and so I thought I'd write a little bit about studying abroad and how it relates to ultimate.

I will be leaving behind my small, beloved college ultimate team in the capable hands of two captains, and I trust they will have an exciting season, maybe the last season in the UPA without divisional play. Once I am allowed to run again without fear of my spleen exploding, I am hopefully going to be playing with an apparently well-established mixed team based out of Freiburg. I know nothing about ultimate in Germany, and I hope I’ll meet some cool people, learn some new things, and be able to go to some tournaments with them. If not, hopefully I can meet people who will be willing to toss a disc with me sometimes. If my ultimate plans fall through, maybe I can return to a sport I played way back in middle school that I hear is kind of popular in Europe…I think they call it Fußball.

If nothing else, I hope to use this chunk of time away from the academic rigors of my home school and away from college ultimate as a time to get in good shape. Before I got sick I was weightlifting regularly here at home, snowbound, but once I return to grass and hopefully have some type of track facility available, I intend to develop some type of sprint routine. Mono might put a dent in these plans, but hopefully not too much, we'll see how that goes. So there might be some future posts about working out, and I’d welcome any advice or links you have about fitness. This is assuming I can withstand the temptation of three things the Germans know how to make that I love: chocolate, bread, and beer.

Anyways, I will be abroad until the middle of August. This means for the first time in three years I will not be playing in a summer league, which makes me sad, because summer league was how I was first introduced to real ultimate and it has always been a great way to make friends within whatever local ultimate community I spent my summer.

And, of course, part of me feels bad for leaving during the spring, the time of the college series. The four other juniors on my team are also going abroad, taking away much of the experience on our team. The current sophomores are returning the favor in the fall of this year—all ten (or more?! more keep joining the team) of them, I believe, are leaving for areas as diverse as Morocco, India, and Israel. I wouldn’t have it any other way, of course—I think study abroad is a worthwhile experience, and I wouldn’t want anyone not to leave because of ultimate. Is this the attitude you can’t have if you want to go to nationals? Maybe. Is study abroad more popular at smaller schools? I’m not sure. My gut reaction would be yes. Half of the juniors at my school study abroad, and in literature I got from others like mine (small, liberal arts schools), they all advertised their high rates of study abroad. Does this disrupt the ultimate season? Undoubtedly. Is the disruption bigger at smaller schools, where a higher percentage of students study abroad? Possibly. Even studying abroad in the fall, which sometimes isn't an option because of how classes work out at home and how the semester works abroad (this is the case for me), disrupts a lot of team-building and training, especially in places that can't go back to outdoor practice right away in the winter and early spring.

There was never any pressure on my team to not study abroad, and I would feel very uncomfortable putting pressure on anyone to sacrifice a chance to study abroad for the ultimate season. If I were on the A-team roster of a top college ultimate team I'm sure I would reconsider my decision to leave in the spring, and I imagine there would be pressure not go to. I have no idea how top teams handle that, except I imagine most players would choose to stay and compete and sacrifice a chance to study abroad, because, after all, they already sacrifice a lot of time and money to be at the top. I don't want to presume too much about how that works on top teams, however, so I'll stick to what I know...

...Because I'm not on an A-team roster on a top college team, so I don't have to feel too guilty, and I think if you choose to study abroad, you can continue your ultimate education overseas. Almost everyone I know on the team who has studied abroad (and on my team, that would be most woman I've known) found some type of ultimate wherever they were, whether it was less established programs, like in Chile, and or very established programs, like in Australia. Some of my friends got to go to prestigious tournaments like Paganello and some got to play in big tournaments in the Australian series, for example. They came back with cool jerseys and discs and awesome stories and maybe a better understanding of how ultimate is growing in other parts of the world.

Also, maybe having a lot of experience on the team leave for a semester isn't all bad for the team. Certainly having the entire junior class go abroad in one semester isn't ideal, and in most years it is more balanced in terms of who leaves when, but my hope for the team this spring is that underclassmen get to step up into roles left by juniors and become better players themselves. The seniors are still there to steer the ship, to to speak, but sophomores and first years get more playing time and experience and grow into better players, though it may be a difficult and at times frustrating road. This frustration may not pay off in this season, either, but in the future.

So, there are benefits and disadvantages of studying abroad, with most of the benefits going to individual players, but as I outlined above, I think the case can be made that sometimes having players study abroad can be better for the team as a whole, at least thinking in the long term.

Well, there's a "small" post for you on Bagel Fodder for once, ha ha. I wanted to give thanks for the recent press on Banana Cut and the link from Mackey's blog for my long piece about the fall season. Look for another post or two before I leave, hopefully.

Tales from the Chumpionship Bracket, Part I: The Fall Tournament

2009-01-11T23:25:00.001-06:00

I started writing this about halfway through our fall season, finished it up tonight, and I hope it’s a nice change from the more “academic” posts I have been offering on this blog. I would like to tell a story of sorts, a story for a cold winter’s night, going back to when the Midwest was still relatively warm and snow free, a story I hope is true for others, the story of an ultimate team at a college tournament in the fall, and not a top team, either, but the Everyman team, the Bagel Fodder team…

The cell phone alarm goes off sometime between 6:30 and 7:00 AM. I clamber out of bed, avoiding the five people sleeping on the floor, wrapped up in sleeping bags, fitfully trying to savor a few last moments of shuteye. Slowly, with bleary eyes and doleful looks, people get up, get dressed, and make their way down to the continental breakfast, if we're lucky enough to have a hotel with such amenities. I eat half a waffle, fill up the water bottles, and carry my bags down to the car. Barring any major map-reading mishaps, my co-captain and I make it to the fields in time to sit through the captain’s meeting. Together we decipher the field map as the dew soaks through our shoes and herd our teammates to the correct field as they come in to the parking lot after us.

Everyone is there with 25 minutes until game time. I encourage people to put on their cleats and take a warm up lap. Five people join me as I circle the field. I always wonder why it takes so long for people to get their cleats on in the morning. The other team is probably in the same shape as we are, but if not, if they’ve been throwing and drilling since we first staggered on to the field, it will make the first game that much harder. "Let’s do an endzone drill," I suggest, grab a disc, and make my way to our endzone. “That should be a forehand!” and “Sprint on your cuts, guys!” are familiar phrases. After five minutes or so the other captains come over. We toss, win, and decide to pull. I always feel starting on defense is a good way to get people's heads in the game, especially if our warm up is going poorly. Everything seems slow in the early morning, and the horn inevitably sounds before I feel anyone is warmed up enough.

“Bring it in!” Most people come running. I try to keep track of who was warming up the earliest and who was running the hardest in the drill and call them on in the first line. A brief pep talk, a quick cheer, and we’re on the line. I usually pull the first disc if I am on the field. Pulling is one of my favorite parts of ultimate, stepping back from the line, looking down the field at the opposing team, and shouting, “three, two, one, ultimate!” in the clear morning air as a long, crisp backhand sails out of my hands. That first throw and that first sprint will never get old, and I still get nervous before each game.

This season, our first games have always been the most heartbreaking. Often they are against higher seeds in our pool, but usually not so high that they seem unbeatable. We have come so close many times to beating those teams— sometimes all the way to universe, almost always to the last time cap, and usually they never win by more than two or three points. I can’t decide why we can’t pull it off, exactly. We are usually ahead by one around point eight or nine, and then a few breaks by the other team, the horn blows, and it’s over. A little more intensity on defense, a few better dump passes, a bit more luck in catching, a few better throwing decisions, and the game could have gone the other way. Sometimes that first game is the difference between playing for 13th place or playing for 1st place on Sunday.

With the first game over, we shake hands with the opposing team and make up a cheer. We cheer at the end of every game. Cheering was one of the first things I remembered and loved about ultimate, and I hope that as the sport grows, the cheers and zany games remain. In the post-game huddle, my co-captain and I try to sum up the game, focus on what went wrong, what went right, and try to keep people excited and motivated for the next two or three games.

Often victories are hard-fought, coming down to the last few points, each team grinding it out until the end. My favorite memories are from these difficult games— trying to catch my breath and calm down my breathing to give a steady stall count on the mark, seeing a teammate streaking deep and winding up for the long huck, standing on the line before the pull on a crucial, tense break point, a layout catch to save a misplaced dump pass, fighting to shut down a cutter, wrenching your ankles and feet with the sharp turns, the feeling of relief after a brutal, long point in the wind comes to an end.

Oh, the wind, inevitable in the Midwest in autumn, and often causing lot of turnovers on both teams, since throwing and catching are more difficult. Low scoring games are common, as is zone. I usually play hatchet in zone defense, giving the cup encouragement and advice, trying for the layout Ds, keeping one eye on the poppers and the other on the handlers. There’s a special type of tiredness and endurance that comes with zone defense, and it toys with your emotions. Shutting down a team with zone is one of the best feelings in the game, redemption for the exhaustion, but the feeling of a zone defense slipping out of position as the opposing team breaks your cup is one of the worst. Then there’s zone offense. There’s a slow patience in zone offense I enjoy—when everyone else has the patience—gaining a few yards with a quick pass to a popper, losing a few with a dump, the slow, steady motion of handlers swinging the disc, the tense fun that comes from breaking a cup, and, if the patience holds and our hands are good, the man call and hopefully the sense of accomplishment that comes from breaking a zone defense.

Like I said, victories have not been easy recently. I think schools everywhere are getting better, and teams we used to beat with ease a year or two ago now offer consistent challenges. Still, even if we have to work harder for victories, the feeling of beating a larger school never gets old, and we manage to do that at least once at every tournament.

After play ends on Saturday, we crowds back into the cars and drive to the hotel. If we’re lucky, the men are still playing, so we get first dibs on showers. Sometimes all of us decide to descend on some poor restaurant without showering first. After eating a hotel breakfast and maybe an energy bar or bagel and running around outside for six hours, everyone is hungry enough so that our bill hopefully offsets any offense given by all twenty of us traipsing into the place at once, dirty and sweaty and generally loud and rambunctious.

In the evening, back at the hotel, some people drink, some watch TV, some try and fail to do homework, and others pass out early. I am amazed that we have not yet been kicked out of a hotel for crowding ten people to a room and, at some tournaments, like Halloween, staying up late playing drinking games. Halloween tournaments aside, generally everyone is in bed by midnight, which is good because Sunday dawns bright and early again— another cell phone alarm, hurriedly packing the cars, and driving through sleepy Midwestern towns back to the fields.

I am always amazed at how sore I am on Sundays. No other sport or activity matches the full-body soreness that comes after a long day of good ultimate. There is some sort of strange joy in working out the pain during the first warm up on Sunday. The first cheer of the day invigorates everyone, and soreness and fogginess are gone after the first few points; the edge comes back as the dew on the grass dries when the full morning sun hits the field. Sundays have run the gamut in emotions and experiences this fall. We’ve gone from losing all our Sunday games to winning them all, from placing near the bottom of the chumpionship bracket to going to the finals of one small tournament. Whichever way it goes, win or lose, Sundays are always exhausting, the kind of exhaustion that creeps up on you when you take a break on the sidelines. Despite the exhaustion and potential frustration, I have fun at every tournament we go to because of my teammates, new and old. The fall in particular is a time for getting to know new players, and they quickly become part of the fold with the laughing, joking, and camaraderie that comes from spending an entire weekend in close quarters with people. After one away tournament, they become part of the special type of community college teams foster. Combine that with the camaraderie and respect between teams that the ultimate community as a whole builds, and I don't think there is any other sport I would rather play.

Every tournament ends with taking our cleats off for the last time. Untying your cleats, peeling off your socks, and reflecting on the weekend sitting in the grass among teammates, sometimes in the bitter cold, sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the glorious pale sunlight that the Midwest offers up in the fall, but sitting down after running around for an entire weekend, after diving to the ground, after wrenching your shoulder from throwing and your legs from cutting, sitting down after all that, win or lose, is immensely satisfying. Then comes the slow walk back to the car, organizing everyone back with their stuff, and the long, warm drive back, sometimes six hours cramped in the car— a fast food dinner, attempts at homework that always end in naps, every stop and every time you get out of the car your body reminding you through cramps and aches that you need to eat more salt and cool down after those games. Then you come back to campus and it's dark, back to usually an entire night’s worth of homework and people who don’t understand why we do it, weekend after weekend, year after year. But we know why we do it, you know why you do it, right?

We do it because we love our teammates, we love ultimate, and even if the victories are few and far between and some tournaments are frustrating, when things didn’t seem to go right the whole weekend long, we will be back two weekends from now, in the outskirts of some town at some soccer complex or polo field, ready to put our cleats on and do it all again. We go to these fall tournaments for the small victories— the rookie player having the confidence to look upfield and get a good continue throw. A burgeoning handler breaking her mark. A perfect dump, swing, swing, score sequence. An awesome D, a sweet layout grab. Ultimate on bagel fodder teams sometimes doesn’t look pretty, but at every level, ours included, people play with heart, and we all love this game fiercely.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T17:03:00.001-06:00

A Merry Christmas to all Ultimate players out there.

Women's Ultimate Soapboxing

2008-12-22T20:57:00.002-06:00

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.

History and Legacy

2008-12-21T01:58:00.004-06:00

Team legacy and history seems to be one of these things that benefits larger teams. Teams like Carleton, Wisconsin, or Georgia have such a strong history of good play that good players from those areas are going to want to stay there. These schools also have very strong youth ultimate play underneath them in the area, and have an excellent pitch for those that are looking at colleges; namely continuing the legacy. Who doesn't want to be a part of a program that knows how to get it done, that has won in the past. It may not equate to national championships, but always contending for top spots in your region for limited bids to nationals is a great place to be. Long, winning histories tend to help out with things other than just recruitment though.

Established teams are often given first choice of practice times and fields. After all, these teams will actually be using the fields regularly and are not unreliable in that the school often knows them pretty well. Many of these teams build strong relationships with their pertinent administrators if just to get what they need to practice. Alumni can greatly help a team throughout a team's development. Teams can get alumni who are playing on local club teams to come out and coach them, whether that is full time or part time. Even if it is just to add some numbers to practice, this can greatly help younger players as they can solidly see what was needed to succeed on earlier teams, and what is needed now in the club scene. I have also heard that some alumni have donated or even created funds for their alma mater teams. Whether it is a scholarship or a temporary donation to help out that season, this can be a great help to otherwise cash-strapped teams.

Having a team legacy and history is not something that is given to you, but it must be created itself. My team has only been around for 10 years, but it has been difficult to create a lasting legacy or history. The team's identity changes quickly with each year's captain, but I am attempting to change that. The first thing that I noticed that was difficult with our history was that incoming captains often had no experience or help leading the team. Most of the teams had seniors leading everything the team did including drills and games. This leaves almost no room for underclassmen to develop their own leadership skills. One way to get them involved is to allow underclassmen to run certain drills when you have separation. We like to play 10-pull and I often appoint a junior to take on as captain of the offense. I think he is going to be a great future leader and want him to see what it is like leading a team even if it is just during practice.

In a break from tradition, I am also constructing a sort of "captain's handbook" to help out later captains. When I was thinking of drills to do, I at first just had to remember what we did last year and try to emulate that. Since the year has begun though I have been tweaking these drills to better suit our needs and writing these notes down. I plan to compile all of these thoughts into drill sheets with variations all in one notebook. I also plan on putting in guides to finding tournaments to go to, qualities that I looked for in selecting players for roles, and other things such as reports on what went well and wrong at tournaments concerning strategy. I have also been using a program called Evernote that makes it very easy to clip things from the internet, including pictures. Over the course of the year I have been clipping good Huddle articles, blog entries, and diagrams on plans to put this into the handbook. As much as I want this document to include my thoughts, future captains should see where I pulled those ideas from in case they want to make their own thoughts on the subject. I am hoping that this handbook will be passed from captain to captain now. This will start a history of help from captain to captain.

People other than captains can help out too. We have recently figured a way to help out with getting the field times and space that we need. Since our school has a board that governs all club sports, we have been trying to get people onto the committee. This requires a modicum of extra work every week; about 1 or 2 hours worth some weeks, sometimes less. This year we have two ultimate people on the board and can help directly influence any policies that may affect us as a team. This year, I am sure that I have one of the sophomores ready to take my spot on the board. While you do need to be voted onto the board, most people run unopposed every year due to general apathy towards the positions. While I can understand this, it looks great on a resume (as leadership position) and does not require that much work at all.

It is also in a small team's best interest to start building relationships with people that are useful such as fundraising or sponsorships. Recently we have been taking advantage of a connection that allows us to sell beer at the local NFL and NBA games. These are great fundraisers for us and bring in money both for the team and the members that participate. We are also building a relationship so that the team can continue to be considered for this opportunity in the future. Neither the NFL or NBA franchise looks like it is going anywhere anytime soon. Sponsorships have been a little more difficult to do in this tough economy, but we are still looking around for those.

Here's to hopes that this can help other new captains or team leaders that are having a difficult time with forging a new team our of nothing. A team history is built up over the time and it does require some hard work to get it going. You don't want this to just be a phase that people go through while in college, but rather a complete experience that they will remember. Hopefully this will mean they are willing to come around and help you out later.

P.S. I think I will be digitizing this "handbook" that I will be making. Keeping in mind that it is mostly my thoughts and opinions, I would be willing to help out other small teams with a copy of it. Let me know in the comments if this is something that teams are interested in.

A Small Introduction

2008-11-19T01:59:00.002-06:00

Hey all, so I am the new contributor to this blog. I am currently a senior and captain at Tulane in NOLA, in the South Region. This will be my third year playing ultimate having joined the team my sophomore year. Other than the team, I have played summer league and pick-up in NJ and Denver. I also have limited club experience, picking up with traveling teams.

While my experience level is not at the same level as many of the bloggers that are out there, I think I do have something to share, that being the experience of a small college in an area nearly devoid of ultimate. I will have a post to make soon, but right now there is prep work to be done for Celebracion in Austin, TX this weekend.

MV

Contributors

2008-11-16T21:45:00.010-06:00

I received an email a week or so ago from someone wanting to contribute to this blog, and I've added him as an author. I'll leave it up to him to introduce himself when he sees fit.

I am going to be studying abroad during the college series next spring, and because of that, the frequency of my posts will probably decrease and the relevance of them lessened by virtue of being away from college ultimate in the U.S. for a time, so it seems prudent that there are others who can add content to this bog. I'm also not going to act as a moderator in what he posts (though I might express disagreements in a post of my own). I'm only one voice in the ultimate world, and I don't necessarily want this blog to espouse only one opinion. What I do want this blog to be is a place where people who come from "bagel-fodder" teams or have something to say about smaller, developing programs can write about what they think. I don't think there's necessarily a need for consensus in those opinions, if only because it makes for interesting reading, and at best because it stirs up dialogue about complicated issues. Additionally, because I'm a woman player from the Central region, my posts are biased towards that region and division, so a contributer from the men's side is also nice for variety.

So, from now on look to see who that author of the post is (I'll continue to post under Bagel Fodder Ultimate), and if anyone else would like to contribute, and by contribute I mean be willing to submit some well-thought out and hopefully well-written posts to this blog, send me an email at bfultimate@gmail.com.

Location and the Quality Divide in College Ultimate

2008-11-03T17:23:00.012-06:00

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...

Conference 1: Some Concerns and the Inevitable Rise of Divisions

2008-10-20T09:29:00.019-05:00

I said my next post would talk about location and the role it plays in college ultimate, but the news of Conference 1 seems important enough to warrant a post. I don't play for an open team, and if I did, my school's team would not be included in any type of C1 plan, but still, the implications of C1 will be felt, eventually, in the women's division, and will affect all teams, even bagel fodder teams, in some way.

I realize that details and UPA input are forthcoming on this whole issue, so some of these concerns might be moot in about a month, but I'm going to press ahead regardless. My main concern with C1 as it's proposed now is that by sectioning off a large block of talented teams for an entire season, developing programs won't be able to reap the benefits of playing against these regional and national powerhouses. A recent example: in the semis of the central open regionals this year, Iowa managed to come back eight straight points against the Hodags, losing on universe in a truly epic game. To deny this team the chance to play against Wisconsin in next year's season seems unfair, and there are other teams not in the 25 current C1 teams that many have said deserve to be there; Arizona is another notable example among many.

A better explanation of why these specific 25 teams were included would be beneficial, but the C1 system is still too inflexible for me. Teams change every year, and one of the best ways to develop a strong, consistent program is to play against strong, consistent programs every year, something that will be impossible or difficult for growing teams, as far as I can tell, under C1 as it's currently proposed.

Also, if your team has not been selected to play in C1, what are you playing for? A UPA finals that would inevitably be viewed as second-class? Teams mentally base their training on goals, big goals...going to nationals one year, getting into the top four the next year, winning it all the next. By making nationals hard for young programs to get to (I think the current one-game play in system needs to be...well, first, better explained and then, possibly expanded), I think it will stunt growth at schools that aren't included in the conference.

I have faith that these and other issues will be resolved, however, or at least better explained. On a larger scale, I think C1 heralds a quicker end to the current college series setup as we know it. Divisions are coming-- whether they come via C1 next year or through a joint UPA/Cultimate division system over the next few years, the days when teams like the one I play for can play against the top teams in the region are numbered. Though I realize that the more people start playing and the more people clamor for mainstream acceptance this is the way it has to be, a part of me will miss the current system, warts and all.

More than any other sport I've ever played, it feels like the possibilities are endless in ultimate, and I think this is because the small community of players and teams brush up against each other often in the current system, and this system offers unique experiences for players on weaker teams. This is the one sport I know of where I can not only watch my heroes, but also play against them. The rare times when my team gets to play against, I don't know, the Georgia Bosschers and Robyn Fennigs of the world, are when I'm at my most self-evaluative of my performance and trying my hardest to play as well as I can. What better way to test your talents than against the best college players in the game? Ultimate now lets anyone, regardless of their team's talent, test their personal talent against the best. And though my team could play 100 games against Wisconsin and not win a single one, it's still so damn fun to play a game like that once in a while-- games that let you see, firsthand, in a real sweat, dirt, and exhaustion kind of way, what it means to play high-level ultimate. You do that and think, "Wow, if I work hard enough, someday I could be there." You tell your entire team, "If you work your asses off, we could begin to be at that level." That experience, that firsthand sense that the possibilities in this sport are endless, would, I believe, be diminished within a divisional system. Consider the above my lament for the inevitable end of the current one-division system.

I hope that college ultimate can find a happy medium between the current C1 proposal and my naive dreams of every tiny liberal arts school having the opportunity to play against the Bella Donnas of the world. Whatever system is in place needs to provide healthy competition for teams that are at the top but also for the teams that are trying to get there. I don't think the current C1 system, as explained now, provides that.

Experience: Players and Coaches

2008-10-13T15:31:00.004-05:00

Sorry about the posting delay. Regionals this weekend and midsems this week have made things a little hectic around here, but without further ado...

Last time I wrote about the size of a school being a main factor in the sharp divide in quality of play between college ultimate teams. Comments on that post and some consideration of my own have led me to this post, addressing the experience question. For this post, experience can be divided in two parts: player experience and coach experience.

First, player experience. Clearly, the more experienced players you have on your team, the greater advantage your team will have. I mentioned Carleton College last time and the fact that they attract ultimate players who have played in high school and earlier because of the quality of their program. This gives them a huge advantage in that (I imagine) they don't have to spend nearly as much time on teaching the basics to their players. Size also plays a role here, as I mentioned last week: having enough players to field an A and a B team or, early on in the season, an X and Y team, gives rookies experience they will need to succeed in the competitive spring season. Legacy gives advantages to schools with strong programs because players who are extremely committed to ultimate are, I would guess, more likely to attend schools with good programs. Witness the number of junior world and national competitors on Carleton and Wisconsin's rosters in the past few years (I'm biased towards the Central region and thinking of the women's side, but it's probably true for the men's side and other regions, too).

Having a good club team in the area also helps with player experience. Club teams can, as a commentator on my last post said, take a college team "under their wing" and give promising players exposure to high-level ultimate. These players can come back after the club season with this experience and help out their college teams.

Player experience like this tends to create a feedback loop of sorts. The best high school players tend to play for the best college teams, who build a legacy of greatness and keep attracting the best young players. The best club teams tend to develop talent from the best college teams or invite players from the best college teams if they don't have open tryouts. This creates a bias towards teams that are already strong. Enter my second point: coach experience, or the experience coaches can bring and develop in younger teams.

As a college captain myself, I can attest to the difficulties of serving the dual role as a team captain and coach. Just because you're a good player doesn't mean you'll make a good coach, and though I have more experience than most players on my team, I still have much to learn about the game and sometimes feel overwhelmed with the task of teaching and leading a young team. Having a knowledgeable coach is, in my opinion, one of the main ways for teams to push themselves to a higher competitive level and even out the playing field in college ultimate, in particular, college women's ultimate.

Gwen Ambler has already beat me to this point with an excellent article she wrote for MSSUI. She writes, first, that coaches will usually have more experience than even a veteran college player, and this experience can help the team decide what to focus on to improve most effectively. I've found developing and finding drills for my team to focus on specific improvements difficult, and I imagine a coach would help with this immensely. Second, a coach can see things in games that players simply can't see because they are never entirely off the field in an observer position. Yup...I play probably 75 - 90 percent of the points in any given game just because I am one of the most experienced players on my team, and this means that I miss out on the "big picture" of the game, the view that can only come from watching everything from the sideline. Third, a coach can help with all the logistics of leading a team that make it difficult for college captains who are both trying to play and lead on the field and who also have to deal with calling lines, playing time, and watching what works and doesn't work against opponents. Ambler has this to say in her article:

"Many coached players probably do not realize what an advantage they have over the un-coached squads that are forced to have captains do everything from teaching new players to calling lines to adjusting defenses mid-game to planning practices to leading the team on the field."

And I agree with every word.

I also think a coach adds legitimacy to a college ultimate program. I'm going to devote a later post to this, but I feel like a coach can help focus a team and motivate them to go beyond their usual limits. Especially with new programs, having a coach set a regular training and conditioning schedule can, from the very start, establish the tone of a team. Ambler mentions UCLA as the perfect example of a young program that established itself very quickly as a national contender because of strong coaching.

As usual, there is always an exception, and the notable exception this time is Wisconsin, who has not needed a coach to establish both the men and women's teams as a top or the top college ultimate program in the country. I don't want to pretend to know how they do it, but it speaks volumes of the intensity, dedication, talent, and focus of the captains who organize everything. Like the size issue I addressed last week, having a coach isn't a necessity for success, but because Wisconsin is the one notable exception I can think of, I think it does give a big advantage to teams who have coaches.

So, in conclusion, I strongly encourage players who want to develop more experience for themselves and for their college teams to try out for a local club team. Even non-elite club teams have experienced players from which to learn, and at tournaments you will get to play against some very good players, which is in itself a learning process. My one year of club ultimate has helped me recognize what I need to focus on as a player and has exposed me to new tactics and drills that I use with the college team I captain. Also, if you live by a college that has an ultimate program, contact them to see if they'd like help with coaching. I think anyone with some club ultimate experience and a desire to spread ultimate knowledge and love of the game can be useful as a coach to a college team, serving as a separate set of eyes on the field, giving the team a sense of legitimacy, and helping ease the burden on college captains who have to try to fill the role of captain, coach, and, oftentimes, an essential player on the field.

Some teams, unfortunately, are located in areas that don't have a large pool of available coaching talent or much of an ultimate scene outside of college players. That's a little preview of my next post, focusing on location, coming soon to this blog, assuming I get through midsems week.

The Size Issue

2008-10-02T16:51:00.008-05:00

I think there are a few main reasons for the sharp difference in quality of play between different college ultimate teams. In the next few posts, I'd like to outline my thoughts on the causes of these differences. I'm going to start with the most obvious and most important reason: the size of the school.

The obvious point is that the bigger the school, theoretically, the more people will likely turn out for the ultimate team. But simply having a lot of people come out for the team does not necessarily guarantee quality of players. Rather, I think it has to do more with the options available to college athletes at small schools compared to large schools.

Say I'm a decent high school soccer player-- good enough to play for the varsity team, in shape, committed, accustomed to the rigors and expectations of playing on a sports team, but not good enough to play on a travel team and not good enough to take the high school team to the state finals. I go to Big Public University X with a D-I soccer program, and there's no chance that I'd be able to play soccer there. So, after going to the student organizations fair, some nice people give me a flier about this sport named ultimate for which you don't need prior experience, as much of a time commitment (this is debatable considering some of the top college ultimate teams in the US...but in general, less time), but I still have the opportunity to compete in a sport against other schools, potentially at a national level. Big Public University X gains not just a player for their team, but an athlete who has played a team sport before and knows the expectations associated with playing a team sport.

I'm the same decent high school soccer player, and I decide to go to Liberal Arts College Y. There, the coaches have been courting me to play soccer for their D-III team, and I go to school knowing that I'll have a spot on the team for four years. I never give the ultimate team another thought. So, smaller schools and their less-rigorous athletics take potential athletes away from ultimate teams and ultimate teams at larger schools, in general, will get more athletic players coming from a high school varsity sports background.

The second issue with size is the ability for large schools to have tryouts and field A and B teams. Because they have, say, 10,000 or even 40,000 people at school, this means that when 20 or 30 new people sign up for ultimate, they can hold tryouts and take the best players in the group. At a smaller school, odds are only 5 or 10 new players will try out for the ultimate team, and captains there do not always have the luxury of cutting people or forming two teams.

There is, of course, one notable exception to this: Carleton College. This small liberal arts school in Minnesota has consistently fielded two national-caliber college teams and has enough players "left over" to form other teams. I don't know the entire history behind the Carleton ultimate program, but I do know that they a) attract athletes from other sports to play for them and I'd assume that b) because of their reputation, high school ultimate players come to Carleton to play ultimate. The question is how Carleton initially started its excellent program.

I also don't want to make a blanket statement that all large schools have good or even decent ultimate teams. I've beaten schools that have literally thousands more students than the school I attend (and boy, does that feel good). In general, though, I think that large schools have a big advantage over small schools because the pool of available talent is greater, and because it is greater, large schools have the luxury of cutting weaker players from their A-team rosters.

I'm also, of course, just basing this off of my own experience with college ultimate and what I've read about other teams. I'd love feedback or corrections (that goes for any post).

Bagel Fodder Ultimate: The Introduction

2008-09-30T10:53:00.004-05:00

The name for this blog was inspired by a comment on Hector Valdivia's blog, on his post entitled Splinter Cell. The post talked about the diverging standards of play in ultimate today, and the need for the UPA to adapt to these changing standards. The part that interested me was the difference between college "programs" (schools that consistently make it to Nationals) and colleges that can field a team for sectionals, maybe regionals, but consistently serve as "bagel fodder" for larger, more established programs. (Being "bageled" means not being able to score a point against the opposing team, utter defeat, the hole in the middle of a bagel, the zero score). The comment came from someone named David talking about the need for weaker teams to fill out sections in less-populated regions, and I've reproduced it below:

"One thing about these smaller school teams - in some regions there really isn't a lot of small college teams (or big teams for that matter) - so you might find a college div 2 with only handful of teams in say the southwest region - and even then the 'div 1' needs these teams to fill out sectionals... even if they are bagel fodder."

His point is interesting, and Hector's post is also interesting, but the term "bagel fodder" got me thinking about my own experiences with ultimate, because, the truth is, I play for just such a college bagel fodder team. A women's bagel fodder team at that, and though we qualify for regionals sometimes and win roughly half the games we play, I still play for a team that has been bageled (or almost bageled) by nationally recognized programs. I also read a fair number of ultimate blogs, and none of them have ever focused on the experiences of a small college team, let alone a small women's college team. So, here it is, the bagel fodder blog, tales from the chumpionship bracket.

A little about myself: I'm a junior at a small (solidly D3) Midwestern school and this is the beginning of my third year playing ultimate at the college level and my first year serving as a college captain. I played pickup ultimate in high school and my first experience with real ultimate was at summer league the summer before my first year of college. I also play for a decent (not-quite bagel fodder, middle-of-the-pack at regionals) mixed club team. Ultimate is something I enjoy immensely, it's the first sport I've ever had any talent in, and I do what I can with the time and resources I have here (more on that later, I'm sure). I hope to address issues that many small college teams face playing ultimate today, particularly the women's side of the story.

I have set up an email address for questions: bfultimate@gmail.com

Stay tuned for more substantive posts later.