It appears that next year's provisional calendar does indeed only
have one weekend for each Uni fixture, as I discovered when I opened
the very next email in my inbox. Timing, eh? Great minds think alike
or something like that...
Anyway, we can still debate the point - why are uni events seen as so
important?
Benji
Crawling back into his little hole...
At 11:29 16/02/2007, IndoorsDOC wrote:
Due to laxness in some of the University regions, a clash has
developed between UKU Open Indoor Nationals and some regional
university outdoor qualifiers. This has meant 3 things:
1) Oscar has to work to chase up teams who aren't yet sure whether
they're free that weekend to attend nationals, despite the dates
being announced over a year ago.
2) Nationals again looks, despite my best efforts, like a nonsense
schmindoors pissabout event that no-one cares about.
3) Non-student members of the teams who've had to pull out of
Nationals are left without any ultimate to play at all that weekend.
They've probably already booked fridays off work and such. Pretty annoying.
The point of this email is to raise a serious discussion - is
student ultimate getting too big for its boots? Is it not ludicrous
that student tournaments should be seen as more important than Open
tournaments? I don't just mean this one, which could be explained as
outdoors being more important than indoors; I mean in general,
student ultimate is seen as the only competitive level outside the
tour. Certainly student indoors is more prestigious than club
indoors. This is stupid in terms of the future development of the
sport away from it's traditional Uni base towards school and local
club participation.
Look at the facts - the universities now have 12 events
(Open/Mixed/Womens, Indoor/Outdoor, Regionals/Nationals).
In the calendar, they demand two possible weekends for each of them,
in case venues aren't available. That's 24 weekends a year, very
nearly half the year. Take out things like Christmas and new year,
and it IS half the available year. And still, despite these dates
being agreed way in advance, a clash develops because 2 weekends
isn't enough to find a bid...
Anyway, forget that whinge, the point is that 24 weekends a year is
insane. There's been mention of the idea that the tour is driving
out other tournaments, and preventing the growth of ultimate. That's
nothing compared to the strangling effect of 24 weekends of Student
tournaments. If you plan to run a tournament, and look at the
calendar, you won't find a space.
This is not a dig at Ed and Felix, who've done a great job with
student ultimate. Possibly too good a job. Felix's pet Ladder League
project, for one, could certainly benefit from a few more available weekends.
One solution would be to only give one week for each student
tourney. At a stroke, 12 weekends open up in the calendar. What this
means is that Unis would have to book events early, and possibly
look a little harder for venues. But the current situation is
massively unfair on every non-student tournament organiser in the country.
Benji
PS
1) Yes I'm aware I've written a lot on BD lately, but dammit I've
got a big mouth...
2) Yes I'm aware that I need to liaise better with Kev Lowe about
Junior Indoors to avoid that clash. We'll work on it. Tell you what,
if we could clear out some of these student weekends, it wouldn't be
a problem... ;)
At 21:26 15/02/2007, Oscar wrote:
BD,
I am still yet to hear from Cardiff regarding their place at Open Indoor
Nationals.
The deadline I set was tomorrow so please can somebody from Cardiff get in
touch and let me know if you are going to take up your spot.
Also, there may be one or two spots not taken up. I'm not sure how these
spots will be allocated but one would certainly be available to Uriel should
they want it?
Could someone from Uriel (Pretty Boy?) please get in touch and let me know
if they would want to take a spot should it become available.
Any other teams that mey want to play. Watch this space, there may be an
offer comingout early next week.
Thanks to everyone else who has already responded. If you haven't
e.mailedGrant regarding your accomodation requirements etc. please do
so so that we
can begin to get organised and not leave things until the last minute. He
will be chasing you up next week if you don't get in touch with him first.
Cheers all,
Oscar
Open (sorry, Club) Indoor Nationals TD.
--
The e.mail of the species is more deadly than the mail.
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