The Size Issue

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).