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

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

A Merry Christmas to all Ultimate players out there.

Women's Ultimate Soapboxing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

History and Legacy

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

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

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

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...