This past weekend I attended the UPA’s biennial league organizer’s conference. League organizers from all over the country were in attendance. The event, which was hosted and paid for by the UPA, was a terrific opportunity for league organizers to get together, see what other leagues were doing successfully, trade ideas and tips, and get to know one another.
The sessions ranged from topics such as tips for securing fields and sponsorships, to strategies for recruiting women in leagues, to starting a youth league or teaching introductory skills, to methods for collaboration in decision-making and persuasive communication. I think I learned something at every session I attended (unfortunately there were so many sessions that they had to be split up and run in tandem with each other). The effort and enthusiasm that everyone brought to the conference – both presenters and attendees – was truly inspiring. Angela Lumpkin, a nationally renowned sports educator and basketball coach, gave the keynote speech. She spoke about the power of sportsmanship, and her take, as an outsider, on the uniqueness of Ultimate and of Spirit of the Game.
In addition to facilitating interaction between leagues, the conference was also an opportunity for the UPA to try to get a sense from the leagues of what types of programs and services they were most interested in obtaining from a potential affiliation relationship with the UPA. The UPA has committed to developing a league affiliation program, that is, a way in which leagues can have some sort of official relationship with the UPA that confers benefits to both parties.
Some of the seemingly most popular ideas that were thrown out in our brainstorming session at the conference were that the UPA should provide the following:
- a repository for league best practices and ideas/information (e.g., how to start a youth league, how to get fields, how to find sponsorship, etc)
- packaged (and customizable) software for league registration/organization
- comprehensive insurance (at “whole-sale” cost associated with packaging the demand)
- assistance (monetary or otherwise) with program development and discounted access to UPA resources
- getting UPA “branding” and legitimacy for communication with sponsors and government agencies
In addition, many of the league representatives indicated that they wanted to be able to avoid:
- having to charge league players full UPA membership fees
- having to deal with UPA-associated paperwork (registration/waivers)
The biggest potential advantage that such an affiliation program would have for the UPA would be:
- increased membership numbers for the UPA (and the associated benefits of being able to market the sport more effectively to potential sponsors, communicate with more players, etc)
Overall, it was a great first step. Now that we’ve got a pretty good idea of what types of benefits each side could obtain from such a partnership, we’ve got to put together some specific models of how this could work.
----------
You can post a message to the entire board by commenting here (comments will not be publicly viewable, but will be read by the board), or feel free to send me an email about this or anything else at peri.kurshan@upa.org.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
World Games try-outs
This past weekend was the first of two try-outs for the Team USA World Games team. I was attending the west coast version as a try-out, but I wanted to blog about it on the UPA Board Blog because the Board played a significant role in ensuring there would be try-outs for this team--which I think was a great decision. As a Board member, I wanted to share with the membership some of the rationale behind this year's increase in the UPA's promotion and support of the World Games team. As a participant, the try-out weekend was an amazing experience that I believe will have far reaching effects in the Ultimate community through strengthening inter-team relationships.As a bit of background, this is the third cycle of fielding a US team for the World Games. For the 2001 and 2005 teams, the squads were picked by a UPA selection committee and the UPA arranged for sponsorship of the players' uniforms, liaised with the organizations responsible for the event (WFDF and the IWGA), and helped facilitate team fundraising, among other things. This year, the UPA heeded feedback from many of those involved with the 2005 team and established try-out camps to aid the selection process. The Board also committed significant financial resources towards supporting the athletes on the team with their travel expenses, although the travel and direct costs of try-out weekends were paid for by the try-out participants themselves. (You can read more about the 2009 application and selection process on the UPA website.)
Investing in this national team is a smart move on the UPA's part for many reasons, including increasing the competitiveness of the team as compared to our international counterparts, creating a high profile team that can serve to promote excitement about the sport among players, and enhancing the image of Ultimate as it is showcased at the World Games event. By providing up to $1,000 for travel costs for practices and competition before the event to the 20 players on the team (including both alternates and starters), the UPA helped decrease the financial impact of participating on this team and thus increased the pool of qualified candidates willing to invest considerable time, energy, and resources into the team. The try-out camps will also help ensure that the team selected is composed of players of the highest caliber, as the try-outs allow the selection committee and coach to get a more complete picture of players than possible using applications alone. The level of play is increasing rapidly around the world, making the US team's success even more dependent on selecting the best team possible.
In exchange for more financial support, the Team USA athletes have to agree to participate in community outreach at each of the team's practices and tournaments leading up to the World Games. Four years ago, Team USA's interactions with youth players at both its Atlanta and Seattle practices were incredibly positive experiences for all those involved. This year, the ambassadorial expectations of the team are increased, expanding the reach the team will have among Ultimate players in the community. What better way to get young players extra excited about this sport than to provide them with access to some of the top players in the game? Helping to build great role models in the sport can only be a good thing.
Increasing the professionalism in the team building process goes a long way towards creating a positive image of the sport as it is showcased at the international venue of the World Games. This event is one of the biggest exposures Ultimate has among non-Ultimate players and administrators. Past IWGA organizers have been impressed with Ultimate, and it is important to continue to make sure that the team has the resources to seen as a legitimate national team representing a legitimate sport.
As a player, I was absolutely thrilled to have been honored with selection as one of the athletes to compete at the team try-outs. The fact that this was the first time any sort of national try-out had been held for a non-youth team added to the excitement I felt going into the weekend. The West Coast try-out had 32 top players, including college, mixed, womens and open competitors. The schedule that the coach, Greg Connelly, devised for us was grueling and there wasn't a single player who wasn't sore by the end of the weekend. However, the thrill of competing with and against such talented players made the timed runs and demanding drills easily worth it.
Many of the players there had only ever competed against each other on their normal club teams, yet there was instantly a sense of camaraderie among the players there. To me, that is a huge intangible benefit of the try-out weekends: enhancing the sense of community among Ultimate players from around the country. The existing sense of an Ultimate community is part of what makes Spirit of the Game tenable at even the highest levels of competition. Getting to know and respect your opponents by being their teammates for a weekend goes a long way towards establishing the rapport and enhancing the respect that are basic requirements for SOTG to be such an integral part of this sport.By having the UPA provide an avenue for players from around the country to compete together with a common goal of fielding the best Team USA possible, the UPA continued to pursue its mission through enhancing and promoting the three Cs: community, character, and competition. I'm sure the east coast try-out this coming weekend will be just as much a success for those 43 players and then the only really hard thing will be for the selection committee to make its decisions. Go USA!
Thanks to all who helped make the try-out a success,
Gwen
----------
All pictures from the west coast try-out by Meredith Tosta.
All pictures from the west coast try-out by Meredith Tosta.
You can post a message to the entire Board by commenting here (comments will not be publicly viewable, but will be read by the Board), or feel free to send me an email about this or anything else at gwen.ambler@upa.org.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Jan '09 Board Meeting Recap
As the new president of the UPA board of directors, I'd like to thank you for reading the inaugural post on the new board of directors blog! We're hoping this will be a great way for people like you to feel like you have a better sense for who your board members are, and what we spend our time doing/thinking about.
I'd like to use this first post to give a short recap on the recent board of directors annual meeting that took place over MLK weekend in January. To start off, we welcomed onto the board 3 new board members: Gwen Ambler, Seth Grossinger, and John Terry. It was great to see them jump right into the discussions!
Our first item of business at the meeting was a review of the strategic plan initiatives and 2008 goals. Amazingly, the staff (and volunteers) have accomplished over 90% of the goals that were set out for 2008 (as well as a few that had originally been slated for 2009), after first spending a chunk of time hiring new staff members to help out with the increased work load. You can see a list of the main 2008 strategic plan accomplishments here. Since a lot of the goals for the first year involved setting the groundwork for future initiatives, you can expect to see more visible changes in the next few years.
Speaking of more visible changes, after the SP update, we got an update on the college restructuring effort that's currently underway. For those of you who haven't kept up with it, we're in the process of a major restructuring of the college competitive series that will include, among other things, an increased number of divisions, a formalized regular season, and a new method for allocating bids to the College Championships. At this point, the college restructuring task force that met in December is busy preparing a couple of different proposals that will be publicized during the first quarter of 2009. Once they're publicized we'll be asking for your feedback so that we can choose which plan (or which components of each plan) are the most popular before we finalize them. These large-scale changes are slated for implementation in the 2010 college season (more minor changes to this year's college season have also recently been approved and include things like an increased number of teams at Nationals, change to the bid allocation, and potential for changes to what calls are made actively by Observers). You can read a lot more about the changes to the college series here.
On Saturday afternoon we held officer elections, and elected a new slate of officers (details on officer positions can be found here). I was particularly excited about the energy and interest board members had in holding officer positions, since these positions definitely take up a lot more time.
Most of the rest of the board meeting was taken up with proposals submitted to the board. Proposals are the mechanism by which anyone can suggest a change in UPA policy or procedures (click here for more information). We received a large number of proposals this year (larger than any I can recall), especially significant because of the large number of proposals received from non-UPA board/staff members. It was really awesome to see so many people getting involved! The proposals ranged from suggestions for how rules changes should be voted on, to changes to the college eligibility rules, to proposals for ways to increase board member communication with our constituents.
At the end of the day on Sunday we had our members meeting, which is a time where any UPA member can come in and ask questions of the board. Although the members meeting is often not attended by any members (although we do occasionally get some), this year Andy Lovseth from The Huddle came by and asked us a bunch of questions. We spent an hour answering his questions, and also got some great suggestions from him on ways to improve board member communication. You can read his write-up of the meeting here. One idea that we've decided to implement this year is to have more members meetings at our events in order to make it easier for members to attend (similar to the college forum we had at the Club Championships this past year). We're hoping to have a members meeting at each of our championship events (youth/college/club) as well as at some other non-championship events.
Monday, our last day, we spent the morning reviewing and approving the 2009 budget. After that, the last agenda item for the weekend was a board development session. We spent some time discussing ways in which we can increase board member productivity as well as ensure that we are governing effectively. We also discussed ways of improving board member communication with our constituents (I'll be writing more about that in my first President's article in the next issue of the UPA magazine).
Overall, it was an extremely productive board meeting. I think everyone left feeling excited about the upcoming year, and ready to work hard to improve the sport we love!
Until next time,
-Peri
You can post a message to the entire board by commenting here (comments will not be publicly viewable, but will be read by the board), or feel free to send me an email about this or anything else at peri.kurshan@upa.org.
I'd like to use this first post to give a short recap on the recent board of directors annual meeting that took place over MLK weekend in January. To start off, we welcomed onto the board 3 new board members: Gwen Ambler, Seth Grossinger, and John Terry. It was great to see them jump right into the discussions!
Our first item of business at the meeting was a review of the strategic plan initiatives and 2008 goals. Amazingly, the staff (and volunteers) have accomplished over 90% of the goals that were set out for 2008 (as well as a few that had originally been slated for 2009), after first spending a chunk of time hiring new staff members to help out with the increased work load. You can see a list of the main 2008 strategic plan accomplishments here. Since a lot of the goals for the first year involved setting the groundwork for future initiatives, you can expect to see more visible changes in the next few years.
Speaking of more visible changes, after the SP update, we got an update on the college restructuring effort that's currently underway. For those of you who haven't kept up with it, we're in the process of a major restructuring of the college competitive series that will include, among other things, an increased number of divisions, a formalized regular season, and a new method for allocating bids to the College Championships. At this point, the college restructuring task force that met in December is busy preparing a couple of different proposals that will be publicized during the first quarter of 2009. Once they're publicized we'll be asking for your feedback so that we can choose which plan (or which components of each plan) are the most popular before we finalize them. These large-scale changes are slated for implementation in the 2010 college season (more minor changes to this year's college season have also recently been approved and include things like an increased number of teams at Nationals, change to the bid allocation, and potential for changes to what calls are made actively by Observers). You can read a lot more about the changes to the college series here.
On Saturday afternoon we held officer elections, and elected a new slate of officers (details on officer positions can be found here). I was particularly excited about the energy and interest board members had in holding officer positions, since these positions definitely take up a lot more time.
Most of the rest of the board meeting was taken up with proposals submitted to the board. Proposals are the mechanism by which anyone can suggest a change in UPA policy or procedures (click here for more information). We received a large number of proposals this year (larger than any I can recall), especially significant because of the large number of proposals received from non-UPA board/staff members. It was really awesome to see so many people getting involved! The proposals ranged from suggestions for how rules changes should be voted on, to changes to the college eligibility rules, to proposals for ways to increase board member communication with our constituents.
At the end of the day on Sunday we had our members meeting, which is a time where any UPA member can come in and ask questions of the board. Although the members meeting is often not attended by any members (although we do occasionally get some), this year Andy Lovseth from The Huddle came by and asked us a bunch of questions. We spent an hour answering his questions, and also got some great suggestions from him on ways to improve board member communication. You can read his write-up of the meeting here. One idea that we've decided to implement this year is to have more members meetings at our events in order to make it easier for members to attend (similar to the college forum we had at the Club Championships this past year). We're hoping to have a members meeting at each of our championship events (youth/college/club) as well as at some other non-championship events.
Monday, our last day, we spent the morning reviewing and approving the 2009 budget. After that, the last agenda item for the weekend was a board development session. We spent some time discussing ways in which we can increase board member productivity as well as ensure that we are governing effectively. We also discussed ways of improving board member communication with our constituents (I'll be writing more about that in my first President's article in the next issue of the UPA magazine).
Overall, it was an extremely productive board meeting. I think everyone left feeling excited about the upcoming year, and ready to work hard to improve the sport we love!
Until next time,
-Peri
You can post a message to the entire board by commenting here (comments will not be publicly viewable, but will be read by the board), or feel free to send me an email about this or anything else at peri.kurshan@upa.org.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
