Every year multiple teams' seasons are over before they truly begin. That's because every year, multiple teams miss the UPA roster deadline.
Being unable to play in the tournament(s) a team has been preparing for all winter and spring is heartbreaking for those players, to say the least. Should those teams be given a second chance? Should there be additional safeguards in place so no team misses the deadline unwittingly? What if those additional steps significantly add to the heavy administrative load the UPA already has during the start of the Series? Lately, I've been giving a lot of thought to the college roster deadline and wanted to share with you all some of my perspectives on the all-important date.
Let me start by saying how fully I support the strides the UPA has made towards increased professionalism in administering the Series. In fact, I wish the current roster deadline had been in place when I first started playing college ultimate. My freshman year in college, the size bids to the College Championships were not officially awarded until AFTER Regionals had been played. Based on an unofficial team count my team thought we had qualifed for the College Championships, but it became apparent the week after Regionals that the UPA had not received a check from a team that played that weekend, making that team ineligible towards the official team count. As a result, our region didn't earn the size bid, and my team's initial excitement about qualifying for Nationals was replaced by anger and confusion the following week when that size bid was awarded to another region. The unfortunate situation my team was put in would be impossible today, and the UPA has definitely been headed in the right direction by making sure its deadlines allow enough lead time to accurately determine wildcard bids and arrange formats accordingly.
Enforcement of college eligibility requirements has also improved dramatically in the past decade. I believe keeping the College Series strictly for college-eligibile players is an important priority, and the roster deadline has definitely aided that goal. Involving school registrars in the rostering process is something that makes registering for the College Series much more onerous for players and captains than it is for the Club Series. It also increases the workload for UPA administrative staff considerably, so having a deadline early enough to allow for eligibility issues to be resolved before Sectionals is crucial.
As a former College Regional Coordinator, I can also attest to how necessary roster deadlines are for organizing quality Series events. Considering that the college division grows every year, the necessity of deadlines to coordinate teams is obvious. UPA headquarters had to deal with paperwork and rosters from around 700 college teams this year--no small feat. In order for UPA staff to effectively do its job, there has to be a structure in place to allow staff enough time to verify rosters and communicate with Sectional Coordinators about eligible teams and formats. The Championships Manager and Director (Matthew Bourland and Will Deaver, respectively) routinely work 12-15 hour days around the time of the college roster deadline, getting ready for the start of the Series. Any changes to the rostering process should not add to their already significant workload.
As an RC, I've also had experience working with Sectional Coordinators to help teams get their rosters in on-time, so I know how much work that can entail for the captains who are in charge. Different teams have a varying level of support from their school administration and team members, but it is invariably a time-consuming and complicated process to go through the online rostering system and get the school registrar to verify each player's eligibility. The vast majority of teams manage to navigate this process correctly and on-time, but there is a small percentage that doesn't.
In fact, I actually coached such a team a few years ago. A few motivated players at a local community college decided to start a team, and right before Sectionals they asked me to come on board as a coach. Unfortunately, being completely new to the process, the player responsible for rostering failed to have all the appropriate paperwork in to the UPA by the deadline. That was going to be the first and only shot at playing college ultimate for the team's captain, and the team was devastated. The team accepted its fate, but I was left wondering what would have happened if there had been something in place to help first-time teams better navigate the rostering process.
Every year, rec.sport.disc seems to tell the tragic story of at least one team that could not compete in the Series because of a missed deadline. This year on the Board, I have also been exposed to the plights of teams that don't post their situation online publicly. It has become apparent to me that usually the roster deadline is missed when the person in charge of rostering for a team drops the ball in some way at the last minute, often without the knowledge of his or her teammates.
I think it should be a priority for the UPA to help teams avoid falling through the cracks, and the UPA administration already has multiple ways to help teams meet the deadline. The UPA communicates with teams about the roster deadline through personal messages from Sectional Coordinators, posted dates and details in the online Series Guidelines, step-by-step instructions in a Rostering 101, reminder e-mail blasts to college contacts and players, and even an updated log listing rosters received at HQs. Is this enough? If not, what else can the UPA do to help all college teams make the deadline while not spreading its resources so thinly that the quality of the services it offers would suffer?
The UPA Board plans to examine this issue at our summer Board meeting this year, so if any member has ideas about this topic, please comment on this blog for the entire Board to read (even though it won't appear on the blog for the public to see) or e-mail me directly at gwen.ambler@upa.org.
Thanks,
Gwen
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
Executive Director Search
As I see it we’ve got two big jobs as UPA board members, one is to craft the sport into what the players want it to be through policy decisions, the other is to keep the sport on its rapid ascent by making the machine that is the UPA be the most efficient and powerful machine it can be. Our main influence on the latter is through hiring the right Executive Director. We don’t have direct influence over the rest of the staff; in fact we have to walk a fairly careful line to avoid stepping on their toes.
So my work on the Executive Director Search Committee is probably the most important thing I’ll do as board member. Mike Payne and I are the board members leading the effort with Peri contributing when she isn’t buried with all the rest of her board president duties. We’ve also recruited Richard Collett Jr., the President and CEO of Special Olympics Northern California. Rick has taken SONC from a staff of 3 to a staff of 50 and will help us understand the changing role of ED as the UPA grows. We’ve also hired a high-powered management consultant for a fraction of his regular rate, Joe Seidler, Ultimate advocate and producer of the Ultimate History Book. Joe is essentially the “staff” of this process. With Joe’s expertise and ability to get work done, we’ve avoided hiring a search firm and the cost associated with doing so. It means we’re doing a lot more work but this is our biggest responsibility and we owe you all for all those votes you gave us ;-)
The first task in the search was defining who we want to be the next ED of the UPA. When we were looking for a new ED in 1999 we needed someone who could take the chaos that was the UPA and turn it into order. Joey Gray was brilliant and we were lucky to recruit her. Three years later the organization was functional and orderly and we were looking for someone who was a professional sports administrator who could take every program we had up a notch into being highly professionally run. We got that with Sandie Hammerly, there is not a service provided by the UPA that isn’t run incredibly well. Sandie knew a lot about every single function in the organization and was able to improve them all.
The UPA staff has grown to 8 people. As we continue to grow, it’s no longer possible to have one person who knows everything; it’s not even desirable given that we’ve got the best people in the business in many positions in the organization. As the organization grows to 12 or 15 people over the next five years, the ED will need to be a people manager not an expert. He/she will need to manage the managers in the administration who will be caring for our members, and will also focus fairly heavily on all the other stakeholders in the sport including photographers, writers, general media, non-Ultimate sports organizations (NCAA?), non-UPA Ultimate organizations (other countries, leagues). While this person will be responsible for everything the UPA does because they are the director, they need to accomplish that through other people, not directly, so their skill has to be in the management of others, not administrating sports directly.
As far as personality type, there is some talk on rsd of the person being someone “who commands attention” (yes, I read rsd, many smart people IMO, can’t get into the food fights though ;-). But this rings the “legitimacy” bell to me. As in we could get to the Promised Land if we had a big shot take us there. We did 7,000+ surveys and conducted 21 focus groups across the country and yes, players felt our sport wasn’t given the legitimacy it deserves, and yes, they were angry about that, but when asked to prioritize, media was way down on the list, players mainly want to play, and they want it to keep spreading through youth initiatives. Fundamentally, keep growing, keep running Ultimate well, legitimacy will be our reward. So we don’t have charisma prioritized. The job description is heavy on management skills and heavy on experience running organizations, someone who can take the UPA from 8 people to 15. We’ll take David Stern (NBA Commissioner) and let the players command the attention. See the job description here. (note: there is a longer version that includes more detail including execution of the strategic plan that goes out to the quarterfinalists)
The job description was posted is a variety of places including both non-profit and for profit sites and we’ve already had some 50 responses. The process from there is:
- collect resumes for a month
- reject those that don’t meet the qualifications
- whittle the remainders down to 16 quarterfinalists
- create questionnaire to assess skills/personality type
- circulate questionnaire amongst quarterfinalists
- evaluate questionnaires and reduce to 4 semifinalists
- conduct phone interviews with semifinalists
- check references on semifinalists
- choose the finalists
- Face to face interviews with finalists
- Search Committee recommends candidate to Executive Committee
- Executive Committee recommends candidate to Full Board
- Full board vote on selected candidate.
There is one other key stakeholder that participates in this process and that is the senior staff at the UPA. It’s the board’s responsibility to do this job but the senior staff have more experience and knowledge of running Ultimate than anyone in the world and they participate at three points in the process. They evaluate the job description and provide feedback on the management concept presented by the board. They evaluate the questionnaire providing feedback on whether it provides all the insight necessary on the skills and abilities of the potential candidates. And finally, they evaluate the semifinalists and once again provide feedback on what they see and perhaps what might be missing from those finalists.
That’s what I’m working on, feel free to e-mail with any thoughts.
Henry Thorne
-----
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 henry.thorne@upa.org.
So my work on the Executive Director Search Committee is probably the most important thing I’ll do as board member. Mike Payne and I are the board members leading the effort with Peri contributing when she isn’t buried with all the rest of her board president duties. We’ve also recruited Richard Collett Jr., the President and CEO of Special Olympics Northern California. Rick has taken SONC from a staff of 3 to a staff of 50 and will help us understand the changing role of ED as the UPA grows. We’ve also hired a high-powered management consultant for a fraction of his regular rate, Joe Seidler, Ultimate advocate and producer of the Ultimate History Book. Joe is essentially the “staff” of this process. With Joe’s expertise and ability to get work done, we’ve avoided hiring a search firm and the cost associated with doing so. It means we’re doing a lot more work but this is our biggest responsibility and we owe you all for all those votes you gave us ;-)
The first task in the search was defining who we want to be the next ED of the UPA. When we were looking for a new ED in 1999 we needed someone who could take the chaos that was the UPA and turn it into order. Joey Gray was brilliant and we were lucky to recruit her. Three years later the organization was functional and orderly and we were looking for someone who was a professional sports administrator who could take every program we had up a notch into being highly professionally run. We got that with Sandie Hammerly, there is not a service provided by the UPA that isn’t run incredibly well. Sandie knew a lot about every single function in the organization and was able to improve them all.
The UPA staff has grown to 8 people. As we continue to grow, it’s no longer possible to have one person who knows everything; it’s not even desirable given that we’ve got the best people in the business in many positions in the organization. As the organization grows to 12 or 15 people over the next five years, the ED will need to be a people manager not an expert. He/she will need to manage the managers in the administration who will be caring for our members, and will also focus fairly heavily on all the other stakeholders in the sport including photographers, writers, general media, non-Ultimate sports organizations (NCAA?), non-UPA Ultimate organizations (other countries, leagues). While this person will be responsible for everything the UPA does because they are the director, they need to accomplish that through other people, not directly, so their skill has to be in the management of others, not administrating sports directly.
As far as personality type, there is some talk on rsd of the person being someone “who commands attention” (yes, I read rsd, many smart people IMO, can’t get into the food fights though ;-). But this rings the “legitimacy” bell to me. As in we could get to the Promised Land if we had a big shot take us there. We did 7,000+ surveys and conducted 21 focus groups across the country and yes, players felt our sport wasn’t given the legitimacy it deserves, and yes, they were angry about that, but when asked to prioritize, media was way down on the list, players mainly want to play, and they want it to keep spreading through youth initiatives. Fundamentally, keep growing, keep running Ultimate well, legitimacy will be our reward. So we don’t have charisma prioritized. The job description is heavy on management skills and heavy on experience running organizations, someone who can take the UPA from 8 people to 15. We’ll take David Stern (NBA Commissioner) and let the players command the attention. See the job description here. (note: there is a longer version that includes more detail including execution of the strategic plan that goes out to the quarterfinalists)
The job description was posted is a variety of places including both non-profit and for profit sites and we’ve already had some 50 responses. The process from there is:
- collect resumes for a month
- reject those that don’t meet the qualifications
- whittle the remainders down to 16 quarterfinalists
- create questionnaire to assess skills/personality type
- circulate questionnaire amongst quarterfinalists
- evaluate questionnaires and reduce to 4 semifinalists
- conduct phone interviews with semifinalists
- check references on semifinalists
- choose the finalists
- Face to face interviews with finalists
- Search Committee recommends candidate to Executive Committee
- Executive Committee recommends candidate to Full Board
- Full board vote on selected candidate.
There is one other key stakeholder that participates in this process and that is the senior staff at the UPA. It’s the board’s responsibility to do this job but the senior staff have more experience and knowledge of running Ultimate than anyone in the world and they participate at three points in the process. They evaluate the job description and provide feedback on the management concept presented by the board. They evaluate the questionnaire providing feedback on whether it provides all the insight necessary on the skills and abilities of the potential candidates. And finally, they evaluate the semifinalists and once again provide feedback on what they see and perhaps what might be missing from those finalists.
That’s what I’m working on, feel free to e-mail with any thoughts.
Henry Thorne
-----
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 henry.thorne@upa.org.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
