For an elite team texas is an awful example. Doublewide the open sectional winners each season suffer at nationals and sometimes at regionals due to low levels of local competitions.
They along with the women's teams have to travel to chicago, emerald classic, colorado cup to get good games. They have even started their own elite tournament texas shootout - that they had to offer prize money to attract the bigger teams- because the travelling is so expensive. SO if you are using Texas Ultimate as evidence for scrapping the tour I think you're seriously barking up the wrong tree. If you spoke to any of the players on teams from the southern region competing at nationals they would tell you (as they have told me) that they are seriously envious at the UK Tour. Infact it was the idea of the tour that sparked off the Houston CSS (competitve summer series) idea. Bex > > > Is the tour creaking at its joints? > > Yep, it is time to give it up. We can afford to move to warm up > tournaments, go along to European tournaments, and have our own > sectionals, regionals, nationals/EUCF regionals and the European > finals. Why not? Give me a good reason why not? > > Here is why it works: > > I spent time playing ultimate in Texas, where distances to travel are > huge but I still went to many tournaments local and far away, and I > went to Sectionals and lost every game. But the ultimate was more fun > and there was no pressure to 'have' to go to tournaments. Sectionals > are competitive events for the smaller teams and a necessary step for > the big Texas teams like Doublewide. Then regionals is a tough > tourney for say Doublewide as there are only a very few qualifying > spots. And nationals is well just tough. > > From my experience in America playing with a bunch of students out > of College Station, playing at the bottom end of a sectionals, > regionals, etc structure is fine because of the quantity of other > tournaments that fill the other weekends. > > So in the UK we could have a sectionals, which may be an necessary > step for a big team like Leeds, but not so competitive. Student teams > could go as a warm up for the student season, fun teams could go to > play for fun (cos thats what it is all about). Then regionals would > be the next step, probably the end of a tough season for my club in > Southampton (there could be only 4 regions, or just 2). Then a > nationals to select the top teams to go towards EUCF, or nationals > would be the new EUCF west region and our regionals would feed into > the EUCF region, whatever, is it so hard to imagine. > > There are plenty of open tournaments through the year, and mixed ones > too. I could go to Paganello, Dive Hard, Windmill Windup, Brugges, > Copa Cobana, Brighton Beyond and I think I would be quite happy > (might have miss spelt one of those, but you get my point). If I then > also went to a mixed and open sectionals plus qualified through to > regionals that would be 10 tournaments, or almost one a month. Is > that not a good ultimate calendar or have you all got nothing else to > do with your weekends? > > It is time to move on. > > Scot > > > > > -- > ********************************************************** > John Armitage > PhD Student > Geology and Geophysics, NOC > http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/gg/people/armitage/ > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > > > > > __________________________________________________ > BritDisc mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc > Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed > -- Rebecca Forth Colt Foundation Research Fellow Portex Anaesthesia, Intensive Therapy & Respiratory Unit Institute of Child Health 30 Guilford Street London WC1N 1EH Human Performance Laboratory London Institute for Sport & Exercise The Archway Campus 2-10 Highgate Hill London N19 5LN __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed
