I think one of the aspects of Uni Ultimate which makes it all the more competitive & important to those involved are the challenges each team faces throughout the season. First off, the recruitment drive, and the challenge of teaching a hundred people skills and tactics which they have probably never tried, seen, or heard of before. Pretty much every team has new players on their squad every year, so they have to be trained up as quickly and thoroughly as possible if they're not going to be liabilities at Regionals. These new players face the huge challenge of bettering themselves over the course of a few weeks if they are to stand a chance of making it onto the 1st team, or the 2nd team for indoors / larger clubs.
Those who are experienced face their own challenges - of improving themselves whilst playing with (and teaching) players of less ability, of finding their new position in the team each year, and of adopting new responsibilities on the pitch. Add into the mix 15 other teams in the region concentrating on the same stuff, and you can see why every team that even qualifies for Nationals works really hard for weeks in order to do so. Missing a key player to club commitments (indoors, GB training, WL) for Regionals can cost you qualification, and has a huge psychological effect on all the other players, for whom playing for / developing the uni team and getting to Nationals are the most important challenges of their whole year. In the US, College Ultimate is huge. The repeatedly top performing colleges are referred to as having "a good program" - i.e, when players are recruited (I imagine a fair few have played before) they are run through an intense training program to bring their level up to national standard, and the team no doubt is trained so that in minimal time they can work together with maximum efficiency to achieve the best results. These teams have professional coaches, sometimes sent from nearby Club teams who in turn benefit by having a very strong feeder college team. I'm not saying these elements aren't present to an extent in Club teams, but there is a level of crucial and intense teaching, learning, & instant competition that goes on in Uni Ultimate which is hard to parallel. Do they have things like coed regionals in the US College system? Does anyone have the time to find out & let us know? Instead of all the uni indoor dates, we could perhaps hold more club indoor tournaments they could compete in, or even combine uni & club women's indoor events for example. This would expose new players to much more talent, but conversely limit their ability & therefore drive to win, so probably isn't a good idea. All the current regional events at Uni level are well attended and highly competitive. If more individuals get involved in TD'ing, or if Si Hill keeps up his impressive work in this area, there should be minimal problems with clashes in the calendar. What can we do to encourage more TDs I wonder? Felix ps. re: Open & Womens - at the moment the prevailing thought is that some of the best women would chose Open over Womens if they were on the same weekend, so it would be damaging to the progression of women's ultimate. Discussion about this & whether they are ready to be joined up yet is open & encouraged. __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/informed.asp
