Thoughts.

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?

1. Renew your UPA membership.  With electonic waivers, you can do it all now and forget about last-minute scrambles come series time, plus you’re a member in time to get all the copies of USA Ultimate.  Apologies to international readers who aren’t beholden to the UPA.
2. Get your fitness in gear.  The Huddle has a nice piece by Xi Xia talking about Crossfit; longtime readers will know that I’m a huge proponent of Crossfit, and I highly recommend that you look to get into it if you want a comprhensive general physical preparedness routine for your off-season training.If you’re in season (ie college), you can definitely benefit from incorporating some strength work to your practice and other training routine.  A while back I posted the routine we used at Dartmouth several years ago; it’s a solid place to start from if you’ve never lifted before, or are otherwise looking to ease into in-season training.
3. Play ultimate.  Hopefully this is the easy one!  I’ve got coaching at Vegas and dominating in Hawaii to help me get my fix this winter (and a bit of training motivation for #2).  Hope you’re finding satisfying pursuits, too!

It always bears repeating that good goal-setting practices, keeping the process in mind as well as the end result, will help you achieve the ends you desire, ultimate or otherwise.  Best of luck with keeping your resolutions!

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.

Check out some details on Dr. Thomas Crawford.

Sounds like he’s got some great experience growing an online presence and as a former US Olympic Committee member (Director of Coaching) he’s certainly got experience working with organizations for sports similar to ours.

Time will tell how he turns out, but at a glance he seems like a solid selection by the UPA!

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.

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.

Check out the candidate statements, audio interviews (after you log in–though I had technical difficulty accessing them. Perhaps because I’m in Japan right now?), and the Huddle’s coverage, too.

Who am I voting for? First, a few impressions:

• I have a huuuge bias for Gwen Ambler, from agreeing with her articles on the Huddle on a regular basis to seeing her efforts to give women’s college ultimate some press on icultimate. Finding out that her commitment to the sport extends in a very broad capacity to most all levels is only icing on the cake. I have to agree with the Huddle on this one. I particularly agree with her thoughts on re-structuring the series to make it more enticing for more teams to play. Really, this sort of adjustment is long overdo, and incorporating a “season” into the series is exactly the sort of thing the UPA can and should be working on.
• I really like what Catherine Hartley Gweenwald talks up in her interview with the Huddle. Tapping into the volunteer bases of the parents in particular is, I think, an as-yet unexplored component of youth ultimate in a lot of places that has huge potential. And getting the website in order is definitely a big plus–with her PR experience I think she has a lot to offer the board.
• Finally, Henry Thorne brings a voice of experience and apparently has a pretty broad-minded approach, which means he’ll be useful to the board in all facets.

In my voting, these three were the ones who really stood out. It’s really hard for me to choose against Henry, and similarly I feel like Gwen simply HAS to be on the board with her broad experience and what she wants to do with the sport. Additionaly, while I really like Catherine’s ideas, I also have a feeling that a lot of what she will do is either possible outside of board involvement or can still be submitted to the board whether or not she’s on it.

So, I’m going with the two people I think most likely to make a difference in what the board DOES, not simply bringing ideas to the mix–Gwen Ambler and Henry Thorne. How about you?

Sign in to your account and vote.

Honorable mentions (in my book) go to Todd Leber, who has some great, revolutionary ideas, but whose platform has little else of relevance to UPA members (nothing in his experience or his numerous RSD writings suggest he has an interest in anything short of semi-pro ultimate–making him better suited as, for instance, the president of Major League Ultimate rather than a board member of the Ultimate Player’s Association), and Jamie Nuwer, whose interests are very much after my own heart (Sports Medicine and ultimate and where the two meet), and who has done some great things with the Injury Timeout website (PLEASE look at this site! Be a resource for your teammates. The value of somebody with even a halfway informed idea of how to take care of an injured person is invaluable at practices and tournaments alike!)…hopefully she runs again in the next election.