Thoughts.

Dusty puts me to shame, though.

The man puts voice to our collective feeling, though – there isn’t a word there I’d disagree with.

I find it especially frustrating to know that our sport’s history is continually being cast aside each year.  Whither all the coverage from years past?  Whither scores?  A list is nice, but does nothing to convey the flavor of the season.

The organization continues to take baby steps – new site, etc., and it continues to get lapped – see leaguevine.  See the blogosphere.  See RSD, still the primary source of ultimate’s pulse.  Progress is being made, and streaming is good, but we expect to see progress from year to year.  Stagnancy frustrates, and rebranding means little if the substance of the thing remains unchanged.

This sport keeps growing…it demands (and deserves) better.  You know it’s getting bad when you start agreeing with Toad and Gerics…

For those of you who are international or not on the UPA’s mailing list, there’s been a massive rebranding and website redesign; check out USA Ultimate (formerly the Ultimate Player’s Association)’s new site.

It’s a long-overdue change; clearly new CEO Tom Crawford and his recent hires are intending to really propel the program and sport forward in a big way.

The trend I’m most curious to follow: will their new forums supplant RSD? (They’re looking for moderators, if you’re eager to have a hand in it).  There remain kinks to be worked out (for one, the lack of e-mail address privacy/username use is a little upsetting), but it’s great to see the UPA-er, USAU–making efforts to create a more interactive and informative site for its members.

I’ve yet to play around with all the features, but I’m definitely eager to see USA Ultimate’s continued outreach.  How do you feel about the whole shebang?

In the wake of the recent appointment of a managing director of business and communication, along with Tom Crawford’s appointment as the new Executive Director, the description of either’s job experience inspires confidence and raises a question:

Is the UPA hoping to win ultimate inclusion in the Olympics?

Certainly this is something that would come well down the line, but Tom Crawford has a lot of experience working with the United States Olympic Committee (more here), and Chuck Menke has Olympic experience as well (more), primarily as a media coordinator for the US hockey programs.

Whether it’s feasible or not is not something I’m prepared to comment on at depth, but my guess is that any efforts to this end are still a ways off (with growing the sport, establishing a clear structure for officiation, etc as priorities over the next 5+ years).

That said, if ultimate is ever going to join the Olympic pantheon, it certainly would help to have people who have an insider’s perspective on how Olympic sports work, to say nothing of the utility of all the contacts both men no doubt have (I’m led to wonder if Chuck’s appointment isn’t a direct result of Tom’s influence, actually–surely the two men were acquainted, from their prior work).

It may just be a coincidence; after all, given our sport’s structure (largely amateur, relatively young and growing on a grassroots level), the biggest and best examples to follow would be Olympic sports. It’d be a great sign, however, if the UPA was forward-thinking enough to at least have future Olympic inclusion on the radar; here’s hoping.

While writing the last post about energy demands in ultimate¹, it struck me that there is a LOT of potential data to be mined just looking at scoring trends, play durations, etc, but the data isn’t there currently–nobody really tracks that sort of thing (at least, not publicly).

We need more descriptive score keeping than the simple “X-X” final total. In much the same way that baseball scores by innings, or tennis has set-by-set counts (or really any sport has at least some temporal division), ultimate needs something more robust to help keep the fan clued in. I’ve broken it down below into a few phases based on ease of incorporation:

Phase 1, (I hope) obviously, is reporting scores at halftime. You get this all the time in written-up recaps; why not on score reporter or tournament result sites?

I’m not saying it has to be done all the time–hell, at plenty of tournaments even final scores go unreported–but at bigger tournaments that have a fan following, it’s the bare minimum to be done to build something of a “box score” and give an at-a-glance view of how the game went. Did team X cruise out to a big halftime lead before blowing it at the end? Did team A stay neck and neck with the #1 seed through the first half and fall back to earth in the second? These are stories that are out there, but often go un(der)reported.

I’m thinking a parenthetical–i.e., Team A 15(8) – Team B 12(2)–would be pretty simple and easy to incorporate into the current SRT structure.

Phase 2 is generating a score report that can really capture the flow of scoring throughout a full game, and I have just the method in mind:

Enter The Hardball Times’ sparklines (I’m amending to scorelines for ultimate’s use).

So much of what makes games into exciting stories is the string of breaks, rises and falls in momentum, or the hard-fought back-and-forth matches, and this metric would capture it perfectly–long gaps in the scoreline denote a string of breaks, whereas the back-and-forth games would have a, dare I say it, beautiful symmetry to their scorelines. Could you imagine how ridiculous the scoreline would’ve looked for Fury’s massive comeback from 10-1 against Riot in the UPA finals last year?²

Even if the scoreline doesn’t make it into mainstream use anytime soon, I imagine it’d be very useful for teams that keep any kind of stats to track their scores (if it isn’t done already)–rather than wonder “did we start off with a 2-0 or 3-0 lead before their zone shut us down?” you can look at the evidence conclusively, and with a few short notes during the game, see concretely what impact your adjustments had on the flow of the game. You could write in the score at set intervals (every 5 ticks for instance) to make it a little easier to track at a glance while still keeping the flow-tracking intact.

The other component I’d like to see go along with this is game time.

Even without shifting to a stopped-time dynamic it’d be possible to track active game duration from pull to last goal caught (or hard cap horn), using a designated scorekeeper with a stopwatch. This would give some indication of, for instance, team A’s offensive dominance with 20-second points while team B struggles to the tune of a minute per score, a prelude to team A’s eventual string of breaks (or team B’s unlikely upset despite the lower efficiency). You might see a break at 10 seconds of play, which would suggest a callahan off the pull or a short turn and quick strike. Even a simple notation of, say, 5-minute play intervals on the scoreline would help to give some idea of how rapid or drawn-out the points were.

Phase 3 moves beyond scorekeeping itself and incorporates stats. This is my baseball bias coming in to play of course, but similar to how at bats are tracked along with hits/runs/RBIs/HRs etc, you could similarly chart points played along with goals caught/assists thrown/Ds (and maybe at a high level, things like hucks and completion % and touches as well). A hockey-like +/-, if refined to account for starting on O or D, would also be a cool stat to see.

Why it’s worth it
Each level takes a greater amount of work to pull off, but each brings with it a greater amount of clarity on “what-happened” syndrome that plagues ultimate today. Outside of following real-time updates, we’re left to get the story secondhand, reading sparse/biased RSD and blog coverage, and unless we know people involved, are generally left unsatisfied. Web coverage is awesome–video feeds, etc–but when you compare the logistics of setting all that up to simply putting a little more effort into score keeping, this is a pretty simple/easy way to boost the profile of tournaments and teams to the casual (and passionate) observer.

What do you think? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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¹I wrote this post the same time I finished the last one; I’m posting this earlier than scheduled due to a false-start posting that put this in some RSS readers on Sunday.

²I had to dig to find the UPA championship site and then the recap to get that information. Score reporter? Could’ve been a tight game that Fury pulled away at the end of, for all we know. Certainly doesn’t suggest the spectacular roller coaster. Even the halftime score of 8-1 would have said a LOT more than simply the final score.

I’m assuming I’m not the only one who avoids sensationalist topic titles on RSD geared against the UPA; as such, you might not be aware of the following:

• The UPA Board Blog has a few good posts you should read (and respond to, if you’re so inclined).

• Following that rabbit hole a little further yields a UPA page on Spring College Experiments and a blog discussing the same (namely, more active officiation).

This is an issue that has been, well, an issue, for as long as I’ve been involved in ultimate (admittedly just a short 5 years) and it’s great to see the UPA address it.

I’ve got a really good feeling for the future of the sport and the UPA as an organization, given the progress they’re making in leveraging the internet. Kudos to the UPA for reaching out more strongly and soliciting feedback.

My one gripe would be simply that this outreach is all coming in the form of scattered blogs rather than a single, consolidated, authoritative source (i.e., the UPA website), but I’m sure creating an easy and accessible feedback system is the sort of thing that the UPA will work in to its site overhaul. It’s BADLY in need of one, in this author’s opinion–the site as currently constructed is remarkably busy and compressed, and even information that should be front and center (scores, schedules, and hey–what of all these initiatives and experiments) doesn’t stand out particularly strongly in the context of the page. I only go to the page for the score reporter link; I’d love to see a more efficient and elegant presentation of information and tools on the site.

It’s a new technological age (is the site really dated from 2000? that’s light years ago on the ‘net), monitors are bigger, and the UPA can do a lot. Looking forward to what they do.

Spirit is an elusive concept.

Ask one player what it is, and the reply might be “knowing the rules and playing by them.”

Another might tell you it entails flair wearing, tournament parties, random hangouts with people you just met on the field earlier, and a general (and genuine) sense of hospitality and humor–in sum total, that which makes up the Ultimate Culture that draws so many and tranishes the sport in the eyes of school administrators and hippie-hating employers.

The notion of “Spirit” stirs up some controversy–RSD is filled with cries against so-called “Spirit Zealotry,” as though a desire for mutual respect and decency is the sole limiting factor to ultimate “making it big.” Perhaps they’re right.

What the hell should I care about my opponent for? If I play my ass off, and win, isn’t that enough? That douche might try and keep me down with hacks and calls, but if that’s what it comes to I’m not afraid to play that game too (or better yet, to empower a referee to control it for me). They’re just another stepping stone on my path to glory.

The simple truth, that ultimately (in my mind) outweighs that attitude? Nobody cares who wins.

Really. If I asked you who the UPA (pick your level/division) champions were 10 years ago would you remember? 5 years ago? Year before last? Maybe if it was YOUR team or your rival’s team, or maybe your truly exceptional performers, repeat champs and the like. But in the big picture, the result doesn’t count for all that much. There is no prize money or big contract. There are no physical incentives short of one line on the UPA site and a footnote in the ultimate history books–not even an ultimate media that will preserve the legends and remind us when we’ve forgotten. Glory goes quickly; fame is fleeting.

Where you end matters little. What’s truly of worth–what lasts, what you keep–is how you get there.

Ultimate is, at it’s best, one of the most athletically demanding in sport. Good ultimate players are some of THE best capital-A Athletes in sport. This game presents myriad challenges, both mental and physical, and is an optimal vehicle to test oneself. When your back is against the wall and all there is to push you is you–with your motivations and your insecurities, your strengths and weakness–what surfaces?

If you want to get to know a person, be their teammate. Even as your own resolve is tested, so is theirs, and the person that materializes through this is hard to hide. You’ll learn things about them they don’t even know about themselves.

If you want to learn to respect a person, be their opponent. How they–and you–deal with adversity on the field, two wills struggling against each other when the emotional stakes are high but the results are ultimately meaningless, reveals a lot about their character. If one gets worked up about a poor play or a single call, what of dealing with the challenges in life that really matter? If you can’t learn to work with an opponent to compromise, if you can’t bring yourself to back down or forgive, if you value a win in a meaningless game more than the people you’re playing against, what does that say about you?

Ultimate is, in many ways, a microcosm of our lives.

We can prepare for life’s challenges by dealing with smaller ones on the frisbee field. This is why you see a program like Ultimate Peace. This is the beauty and power of a team’s struggle, point after point, game after game, year after year. This is what creates the culture around our sport, what enables and sustains our community.

This is Spirit: to respect and be respected.

Through this shared experience, with this Spirit, we connect with one another; we learn and grow as people.

Meeting your emotions and mastering them when the stakes are high is a means (though there are others) to this end. The set of rules we play by–the fact that the onus is on us to respect and apply them–is a wonderful enabler of this process; it forces you to cooperate and work together, often with people you’ve never met before.

However, the rules, and self-officiation, are neither necessary nor sufficient for “Spirit.” And it’s not simply a switch that can be flipped, either; it’s not something that is decided by the presence (or lack) of an official.

It’s something you cultivate, and carry with you, on and off the field. Call me a spirit zealot if you will, but the reason people have such strong feelings about this “Spirit” thing is because it is what makes ultimate players great people.

Now, as seasons ratchet up and competition gets fierce…Struggle. Battle. Do your best–but recognize and respect the fact that your counterparts just 70 yards away are the same as you. Revel in the joy, the pain, the shared intensity of the moment, and thank your opponents for bringing out out the best in you.

Super-Regional | video overview
Conference | video overview
Both videos didn’t work for me, but perhaps they will for you.

First reaction: wow. Talk about big changes! Division II and III nationals/regionals will make for a ton of opportunities for teams to succeed.

I’ll try and summarize first (I know I’m not the only one who’s put off reading about the changes for worry of length), then add my thoughts:

Regular-Season Tiers

• In either plan, you’ll have a 20-team DI natties, and 16-team DII and DIII tourneys.
• There will be a “Tier 1″ distinction for the most competitive teams–in the SRP (Super-Regional Plan)teams who want to be T1 can opt-in, but in the CP (Conference Plan) the tier is made up of the top teams from last year + 12 who play in at the season’s start.
• Tier 2 is all the teams that don’t opt in Tier 1 (SRP) or teams that register to play competitively but didn’t do well enough to make T1 (CP). The CP additionally has a tier 3 for non-registrants.
• Teams in their respective tiers contribute to UPA rankings by playing in official UPA events. In the SRP only Tier 1 games count; in the CP, T1 and T2 games count, but T1 teams get automatic bids to regionals.
• Rankings are used for seeding and for determining regional/national bids.

Super-Regionals

• You have sectionals, but some teams get a bye to super-regionals (based off of reg. season rankings).
• Sectional winners advance to super-regionals; based on size, the next X teams go to regular regionals.
• There are 4 super-regions.
• Super-regionals is a 12-team tourney, top 4/each advance to nationals.

• Top 4 non-qualifiers also get bids, to make 20 teams at nationals.
• There are 8 regions.
• Regionals have more or less the same deal as this year’s format–16 teams, but a flat 2 bids/region, 16 teams at DII nationals.
• Small colleges and developing teams can opt-in to DIII nationals, which has its own sectional and regional tourney. Only in the open division to start.

Conferences

• You have teams in each of 6 regions sorted into conferences based on proximity/willingness to travel/success. There are no sectionals.
• Bids to regionals are based off of season performance, though all tier 1 teams will play at regionals.
• Regionals do not directly decide who goes to nationals–winning a bid simply adds said bid to your conference championship.
• Bids to DI, DII, and DIII nationals are at stake in each regional tournament, with a DII regionals also occuring with bids to DII and DIII nationals at stake.
• Following regionals, teams have their conference championships to determine who goes where.
• No DIII regionals–bids to DIII nationals are won through the other regionals.

My Thoughts
I LOVE the idea of conferences. Think of the rivalry! Think of the camaraderie as you and your conference mates battle through regionals for that DI nationals bid! I think it’s a huge step forward for the excitement level of the sport.

However, I dislike the idea of having to play for nationals twice. Why should a team that didn’t even make DI regionals have a shot at stealing a bid to DI nationals? If a team wins DI regionals should they really have to play again to secure their bid?

There has to be a better way to work the conference angle while not applying a double-dose of pressure to make nationals–basing bids to regionals off of conference championships, and making DI/DII regionals elimination again…or making the DI nationals bid elimination, with DII/DIII bids going back to conference championships.

I worry that the inherently unbalanced nature of the conferences will make for issues similar to what you see in New England and the Metro East–there are so many teams around the same level that, compared to areas where talent is more sparse, the road to nationals is much tougher. Perhaps that is simply the way it has to be though–in baseball, the Tampa Bay Rays stuck with it in the AL East hellhole with the Yanks and Sox and had a magical season last year despite it.

That said, leaving it as is would make for an interesting, unique quirk to ultimate, and there IS a lot of potential to excite there–and what’s more, a team that misses a bid to DI nationals would very likely wind up at DII nationals, so it’s not a win or go home proposition so much as a win or go elsewhere.

The super-regional plan is obviously a more conservative route–I like the intimate, intense nature of a 12-team tournament for 4 bids to nationals, and I think those events would showcase the sport just as much as nationals itself. I also think the increased focus on current-season results, rather than grandfathering last year’s teams in to regionals, would make for a more meaningful regular season (at the upper level at least).

If I had to choose now, I would definitely opt for the conference plan, though I would like to see the tournament structure reworked there to prevent potential complaints when teams that “win” the bid to DI nationals are usurped by another in their conference championship. Both plans have their advantages, and I’m eager to see how they are developed going forward.

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What are your thoughts? I’m looking at this from the lens of a former (on the bubble) elite team player and potential coach of the same (with a heavy New England bias), and as such am primarily concerned with the top-tier formats, but I’d love to hear the small-mid college perspective or from other regions.

Really, though, your thoughts should go here, where the UPA is looking for feedback. Get in by the 31st, before they close comments!

Maybe this is already old hat for current UPA members, but especially internationals might be interested to read up on some of the (proposed) changes in the works for this year’s college series.

A regular season, active observer calls, wow. Could be a whole new world this year. Perhaps C1 sank so the rest could float faster and higher.