Youth Ultimate Perspective: Knowing the Rules

This weekend marked the 5th Annual Paideia Cup, one of the first major East coast youth tournaments of the season. With the high school season now in full swing, I wanted to discuss something that has been a priority in my mind ever since I began coaching youth ultimate, but has been increasingly pressing of late: rule knowledge.
Over the past few weeks I have been unfortunately reminded how grim the state of rule knowledge is among youth players, and even more disappointing, its state among youth coaches.
In the last decade, youth ultimate has grown tremendously. I remember competing in the 2004 Massachusetts High School State Championships in a field of 12 teams. Last year, 51 teams competed in four divisions. This statistic is extremely exciting for the growth of the sport and shows that something is definitely working toward player growth, but what about coaches?
What this growth in youth players leaves us with is the need to respond as a community with providing the next generation of Ultimate players with good coaching. The number of coaches is a whole separate issue that I would like to write about separately.
When it comes to knowing the rules, coaches are essential. Coaches are vital for the growth of our sport in several ways, some more obvious in others. What I wanted to focus on is that in order for our sport to rightfully and respectfully get to the next level, coaches must know the rules, make teaching them to their players a top priority, and stay updated with any changes or updates made.

Coaches must know the rules.

First and foremost, I want to put this into perspective. For the most part, coaching ultimate is a volunteer position or one with single-season stipend. Those who are high school coaches must want to coach.
That being said, it is astounding to me how many coaches of high school teams simply do not know the rules. This is most prevalent in the middle level of competition.
At the top of the game, coaches are under a lot of pressure to succeed and are often experienced players who have succeeded by being competitive; knowing the rules, and knowing the role that rule-knowledge plays in a team’s success. The newer teams generally have players who are learning the fundamentals of game’s structure and their coaches or leaders teach the rules as they grow and develop. The middle-level is plagued with the assumption that players know the rules. This is where coaches can make an invaluable difference.
It is my understanding that the large majority of high school coaches are making some sort of sacrifice in order to coach, and in turn, bolster the growth of youth ultimate by providing means for learning and competition.
Over the past few weeks I’ve run into teams who have coaches who simply do not know the rules. This is indefensible. More often than not, the players who make bad calls, or follow incorrect protocols during and in between play are “faulted” for their lack of knowledge. Should we blame players for not knowing the rules if their coaches who are teaching, guiding, and challenging them at practice every day also do not? Yes, but not entirely, especially at the high school level.

Coaches must make teaching rules a top priority at practice.

One thing that happens far too often is that a coach will assume that their players come to them already knowing the rules. Other sports such as basketball and soccer have the luxury of a social permanence and exposure. It is one thing for a high school basketball coach to assume their roster knows what does and does not constitute a foul, but another for an ultimate coach to assume the same thing.
Another thing I have come across is a coach who prints and hands out the rulebook for the players and simply charges them with the responsibility for learning the rules.
Both assuming your players know the rules and/or not taking responsibility for their rule knowledge is harmful to the sport and it’s future.
I want to urge coaches to make time at practice for rules and questions. I want to urge players to ask their coaches for clarification. This will not only encourage your players to learn the rules, it will reinforce the priority and importance of rule knowledge, and it will definitely keep you on top of your rule knowledge as well.

Coaches must stay updated with any changes or updates made.

With the 11th Edition of the Rules of Ultimate released in 2007, there have been a lot of arguments on and off the field based upon ignorance and ambiguity. Being clear on the changes made is a responsibility too often overlooked by players and coaches alike.
The current edition of the rules, documents outlining the changes made from the previous edition, diagrams and visuals to aide understanding of the changes made, and a rules discussion forum are all great resources provided by the UPA to help the transition to the 11th Edition, as well as the overall growth of rule-knowledge as an association. (http://www.upa.org/ultimate/rules/11th_links)
With Ultimate being a new sport in comparison, it is that much more important to be aware of and maintain understanding of the rules in place. Anticipating change and being proactive when it comes to changes made will prove to be tremendously instrumental to the streamlining of these processes.


I want to draw an analogy with schools and citation practice. However boring and seemingly irrelevant citation is to the actual creative process and production of writing, teachers are responsible for enforcing and implementing proper citation formats to prevent plagiarism (cheating). Teachers often have to explain and reiterate the proper rules in order for students to perform with academic honesty. Being in the education field, in my experience, teachers need to go over this almost every year to ensure that students understand a) how to cite properly, b) explain why we use citations, and c) to reinforce its importance to the field of education and literature. Teachers know it is their responsibility and often have time for students to ask questions and for clarification.
A teacher who does not know or understand the proper form of citation and who does not make it a classroom priority is much like a coach who shows the same neglect and ignorance for the rules of the sport they coach. Without teachers, students can cheat on papers with or without knowing that they are.

Knowing the rules and abiding by them is a fundamental responsibility of competition. I encourage coaches and players to take it upon themselves to learn the rules, and to actively support and spread that knowledge to teams and teammates. Whether it be by sitting down and reading the rule book, asking your coach or your peers for clarification, it will be time very well spent.

To the coaches who have rule education integrated into their programs, and to the players who have taken it upon themselves to learn the rules completely, your efforts are tremendously important to the development of youth competition and the future of the sport.
I believe that we have must standardize the game in order for us to continue to grow positively, and proactive players and coaches are what we need most.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions or comments. I encourage discussion with me, and particularly within your own practices, teams, and communities.

Thanks,

Jason

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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 jason.chow@upa.org.

Enforcing College Eligibility in the Regular Season

With UPA College Sectionals starting this weekend, I thought it appropriate to discuss the issue of college eligibility. Adhering to the college eligibility rules is the cornerstone of having a legitimate College Series. Many of the implementation details of the UPA College Regular Season this year were designed to keep eligibility at the core of the college division.

In instituting a college regular season this year, one of the priorities of the restructuring task force was ensuring that all games with impacts on bid allocations would only be played between teams of college-eligible players. Before this season, the UPA Series were the only tournaments at which a team could be sure its opponents were all college eligible. The UPA guaranteed this by getting school registrars to sign off on each team's roster during spring term before Sectionals. It seemed unreasonable to require that teams follow such a detailed registration process before the regular season began in January, especially as the process would have to be repeated before the Series in March for schools on the quarter system or who recruited new players during the winter. Promoting growth in the college division is a priority of the UPA, so not erecting overly burdensome hurdles is a must--particularly not in the first year that a new system is put in place.

A balance was struck this year by requiring that all UPA college regular season games be played at UPA sanctioned events where rosters were submitted ahead of time. These online rosters could then (a) be distributed to the tournament participants so teams could verify opposing teams were only playing with players listed on their roster and (b) be compared by the UPA against the official registrar-approved roster submitted before Sectionals. If a team's roster from a regular season tournament couldn't be verified in both of these ways, the UPA could not guarantee that was a completely college-eligible team playing and so any of that team's results from that tournament would not count in the official ranking. A team would thus not be able to play at regular season events with ineligible ringers in an attempt to unfairly boost their rankings and help their section or region get an extra strength wildcard.

This year, some teams had the results from certain games not count because of these requirements for double-checking early roster submissions, sometimes due to missing administrative deadlines rather than because of ineligible participation. As I mentioned in a board blog post last year, the need for administrative deadlines is clear. Additionally, having a few games thrown out that were probably legitimate is worth the ability to guarantee that all games that remained in the rankings were played by eligible teams.

Speaking of deadlines, the team registration deadline (which only requires a minimum of 7 registrar-verified players on the roster) was March 26th. For teams playing Sectionals this coming weekend, the finalized roster deadline was last Friday. Since those dates, the UPA headquarters has had to compare over 12,000 players on over 700 registrar-certified rosters with the numerous online rosters submitted during the course of the regular season. Teams with discrepancies between their online rosters and registrar-certified rosters were contacted in the hopes they could be fixed. All of this had to be done before the final regular season rankings could be released to determine strength wildcards to Regionals and the College Championships. After the first release of the rankings, an error was found in the open division and the algorithm was rerun to ensure the final bid allocations would be accurate.

Because of the UPA's rigorous standards and roster checking, each of a region's 4 strength bids to Regionals and the nation's 4 strength bids to the College Championships were awarded based on play between fully college-eligible teams. That is a huge accomplishment and a great step forward for the sport. It is also a huge undertaking for the UPA staff and has meant that certain details about Sectionals (such as the exact format at number of bids) could only be announced during the week leading up to the events.

Now that the numbers are in, it also looks like college teams were able to successful navigate the new regular season requirements. 122 out of 186 women's teams (over 65%) who played in any UPA sanctioned event this season played at least 10 games and were included in the official regular season rankings. Over 55% of open teams did the same. There were still hundreds of teams who signed up for the UPA Series without participating in the regular season at all, but allowing for that was how the season structure was designed and seems appropriate for a growing college sport played under club status.

The issue of what should make a player eligible to play in the college division (and the youth division for that matter) has been discussed at length at the UPA board meetings I've attended. I'll save that topic for another post for next week, but in the meantime please feel free to let me know if you have any particular questions or comments.

Thanks,

Gwen

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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.

Observations from the UPA Board Secretary

For a little over two years, I have been lucky enough to serve on the UPA's Board of Directors. Since January of '09 I have worked as the Board's secretary. Here's are some of the things that I have learned so far:

1) Putting together the minutes from the January meeting is a daunting task. During the meeting I have the thrilling responsibility of not only recording and summarizing all discussion and votes, but also participating in the fray as well. It's certainly a busy experience and one that I love to undertake. At the end of last January's meeting, I had recorded 50+ pages of written notes along with 100+ pages of proposals, amendments, and miscellaneous Board documents. Over the past 7+ weeks I have filtered my way through the material and pressed it all into one 24-page document. The most challenging part to creating the document, in addition to abiding to my intense internal drive to format everything cleanly, is finding the right way to channel everything of note that was said during the meeting. I am happy with how the document turned out. I hope you are as well.

2) Recording UPA events is a wonderfully rewarding experience. When I traveled with Team USA to Taiwan last summer, as one of the team's two managers, I had the totally surreal job of live blogging the event. As much as I am totally in love with my day job of teaching high school kids math, I might consider giving it up to live blog World Ultimate events 24/7. The event was completely surreal because of how well it was put together on all levels. The players were truly world-class athletes and people, the coaching was stellar (You're amazing, Greg!), and the organizational support was flawless. Even though I was lucky enough to contribute a great deal to the success of the team by heading the UPA Board Committee that created the process for choosing and running the team, I wouldn't have been able to do anything without the people that really made the team possible, the UPA HQ Staff. I am in awe of what they accomplish every day. I hope to be able to record many, many more of their events.

3) Running a local, city, state-level, or regional Ultimate team or league is one thing. Coordinating a National Governing Body is another thing entirely. I am gloriously lucky to be in a position where I spend my spring coaching in and running a HS Ultimate program, run regional youth club Ultimate teams, and host hundreds of games of Ultimate in my local community. I also spend a large amount of time working with regional organizations and building core knowledge of Ultimate at the community level by running UPA Coaching clinics. In each of these endeavors I have a very direct role in day-to-day operations. In most instances I can make a decision and make a change to an existing system very, very quickly. With regards to my high school program, I can think of a new policy and put it into place in days. If I want to run another 30+ team event, all I need to do is find fields and voila, the event is in motion. While my experience in all of these realms has proven to be invaluable to my service on the UPA's Board of Directors, it does not directly parallel my role as a Board member. I cannot institute a policy change on my own. I cannot think of a new tournament and make it happen immediately. Instead, I am part of a 12-person collective that thinks through decisions together and provides direction to the HQ Staff. It does take more time to make decisions, but ultimately the decisions are stronger and more thoughtful than if I made them on my own.

4) I would like to hear directly from UPA members more often. I feel as though I best serve the at-large community when I interact with as many UPA members as I can. I initiate a great deal of interaction on my own, but I would like to connect with even more members. So, if there is something that you would like to ask me about, comment on, or make me aware of, send me an email at josh.seamon@upa.org. I would love to hear from as many people as possible.

- Josh Seamon

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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 josh.seamon@upa.org.

The First Official Regular Season

The team registration deadline for the UPA College Series is this Friday.

There is one more weekend left to play in the first ever UPA Regular Season.

The UPA has released some information about the college restructuring plans for 2011 and beyond.

Seems to me like a good time to check in about the whole process of college restructuring...

The college restructuring process has been building ever since the UPA's strategic plan came out in early 2008 and the survey data, task force, and board proposals have all had big effects on the college division in the past two years. One of the biggest changes felt in 2010 has been the implementation of an official college regular season.

Based on membership survey data and the discussions of a representative task force, one of the priorities of the college restructure was to provide teams with a "meaningful" regular season. There are a number of ways that could have been accomplished, but in light of many of the other priorities also identified, we felt that offering the chance to earn strength wildcards for your section or region based on this season's play was a good solution.

The way the UPA regular season now works is that college teams that play in a minimum of 10 games at UPA sanctioned events before March 29th will have their records and standings count towards strength bids for Regionals and the College Championships. Importantly, teams that did not meet that 10 game requirement would still be able to play in the UPA Series, just like they could before.

This type of regular season incentive and structure builds upon the system already in place for years of teams choosing their own schedule at independent tournaments leading up to the College Series. Requiring that regular season games only count towards the official rankings when they are played at UPA sanctioned events ensures that eligibility can be checked (even if it is after the fact)--maintaining a crucial element to the college division. Over time it will also help standardize what participants, tournament directors, and field site owners can come to expect from ultimate tournaments.

Requiring a minimum number of games before a team's standings would count was necessary to ensure that the ranking system would be robust enough to create accurate rankings. Deciding what number to use as the minimum was debated at length among the members of the task force. 5 games was the absolute minimum for the algorithm to work with, but even that seemed a bit unreliable. We have all seen teams end up in the top of the rankings after 1 early tournament win, but by the end of the season (and with more data) the rankings are much more accurate. 10 games was chosen as a number that would be easily achievable in two weekend tournaments and also provide the algorithm with enough data to be reliable.

I had been particularly apprehensive of the 10 game minimum for regular season standings to count, mainly because many women's teams historically would not have met that threshold. In fact, less than half of all women's teams in the Score Reporter from the year before had played 10 games before Sectionals. However, the way the UPA regular season is devised, all of those teams that did not meet the threshold would still be eligible to play in the UPA Series--the status quo before the restructuring process began. The ability to have your sanctioned games count towards earning your section or region bids is a way to make sectional/regional bids more accurately reflect which teams are strong in the current season; teams that don't fulfill the 10 game threshold are then simply working within the system that was in place previously and are still able to advance through the Series.

Additionally, when restricting analysis to just the teams that would be affecting a section or region's chances to earn a strength bid, the vast majority of teams had met the 10 game minimum. The top 8 open teams and top 5 women's teams (determined by their algorithm power ratings) in each section will be compared to allocate 2 of the 4 strength bids to Regionals. The remaining two strength bids to Regionals are awarded to sections with the "next" highest ranked team beyond the bids that each section has already been allocated. The 4 strength bids from Regionals to the College Championships work the same way, except that both the open and women's divisions use the top 8 teams in each region for the 2 region strength bids. The decision was made to set the bar high enough to encourage participation in pre-Series events but not so high that teams would be incapable of meeting it. So far, teams have shown that this was a reasonable compromise. Only 4 of the top 50 ranked women's teams in the country will not have reached the 10 game threshold by the end of next weekend.

There was also much debate about how a meaningful regular season would affect teams in colder climates, even though teams and players from across the country had asked for a regular season. Again, we poured over the Score Reporter and other UPA databases to determine what teams' travel patterns were for tournaments. Teams from northern areas had already established traditions of traveling south for tournaments, especially over spring break. The algorithm program has a decay feature built in to more heavily weight later games in the spring. Additionally, the schools in colder regions like the Metro East and New England tend to be densely populated, allowing for the possibility of arranging match-play during practice time for teams needing to add an extra game or two to their schedules. We found that the teams that were most likely to be affected by strength wildcards were also the teams more likely to travel to warmer locations for tournaments.

Instituting a major change like the UPA did this year is often the cause for stress and uncertainty. I thought the UPA communicated with its members in a wide variety of ways about these coming changes, laying things out clearly in online documents. Teams have stepped up accordingly to the challenges of scheduling their games to include UPA sanctioned events. That said, there will definitely be lessons learned from this season as the UPA moves forward with its restructuring plans.

As mentioned in the UPA board minutes from January (page 8), the college restructuring plan for 2011 and beyond will build upon the regular season implemented this year. As the details for the further changes are announced, the task force will be carefully considering how the system worked this year. If you have questions or comments about this, please don't hesitate to let us know.

Thanks,

Gwen

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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.

Innovations for Teaching Ultimate

I thought I would break the spell of inactivity on the board blog to talk to members about a couple of exciting things happening in the community for teaching ultimate and helping spread the sport.

A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of attending Midwest Throwdown in St. Louis, MO. This tournament was quite inspiring for what a grassroots model of growth can accomplish. Other groups around the country are also taking up the call for spreading ultimate; the efforts of Emerald City Ultimate offer another good example.

Michelle Ng was the driving force behind the Midwest Throwdown, although she had a lot of support and help from other great organizers, including Keely Dinse (Michigan), Anna Nazarov (Zeitgeist), and the Washington University Women's Ultimate (WUWU) program. What they came up with was a model for how to run a "teaching tournament." There were two main components that went into making this tournament all about growth in women's ultimate: the Round-up Division and the skills clinic.

The Round-up division of the tournament paired 8 un-coached and developing women's teams with a well-known women's player who would coach them throughout the weekend. The 8 coaches have all played for top college programs and club teams and were able to bring their expertise to the developing college team through a series of drills and game rounds.

A great idea on paper, but an even more amazing idea to be a part of. The camaraderie between the coaches was wonderful--sharing ideas, supporting each other during the weekend, and strengthening connections between club teams across the country. But truly, the way the college women responded to the experience was tremendous. Two sentences in an evaluation from one team say it all: "We are a completely different team after participating in this tournament...It made our team want to become more competitive and help the world of women's ultimate continue to grow." Each of the 8 teams can go back to their communities armed with new drills, new concepts, and new confidence.

The skills clinic was another great touch to the weekend. The tournament format was designed to leave an hour and a half at the end of Saturday open for a skills clinic for which anyone was welcome to register. Clinic attendees could attend 3 different sessions covering a wide range of topics. Again, top coaches were recruited for the 12 different topics and they designed each session to offer concrete pointers and drills for players to take back to their teams. Players got the chance to meet opponents from other teams as they went through the different stations, enhancing the community feel of the tournament overall. Hand-in-hand with the skills clinic and teaching focus of the tournament was a hardcopy Resource Manual that was distributed to each team. Video footage was taken of each of the clinic sessions as well, so my hope is that information can also be widely disseminated.

The tournament organizers raised funds for this project in two main ways (1) they hosted a fund raising tournament in the fall and (2) they received a UPA innovation grant. This seems like the perfect use of UPA grant funds: piloting a program that has a broad reach and also has plans for how to become self-funded in the future. Hosting a tournament to fundraise for outreach efforts helps ensure the sustainability of the program and also offers the ultimate community another opportunity to play.

I was particularly interested in seeing this "teaching tournament" reach so many women because encouraging the growth of women's ultimate is an important part of the UPA's strategic plan. In fact, I am a part of a task force convened to develop a women's leadership program and hope to draw on many of the concepts already being tested by individuals like Michelle Ng (also recruited for the task force). If you have specific goals or ideas for women's leadership programs, please let me know.

In the Pacific Northwest, visionary thinkers have also been dedicating countless hours to help spread the sport. Emerald City Ultimate (ECU) is the brainchild of Danny Karlinsky and Chris Kosednar and has created a model for a "teaching team" by bringing together competitive club players and underserved youth populations.

ECU is partnered with Ultimate Peace, an organization that has used ultimate as a way to build bridges between Palestinian and Israeli children in the Middle East, through a new US-based program called Ultimate Change. The concept that ECU will be piloting this year is having a team of high level open players host 15 clinics for middle and high school aged children in areas that have not had much exposure or access to ultimate. 10 of these clinics will be in Seattle, where the team is based, and 5 of the clinics will be held in areas where the team will travel to play in tournaments. For instance, the team will hold a clinic in Oakland, CA, the day before the Labor Day tournament in Santa Cruz.

At each of the clinics, both in the Seattle area and elsewhere, ECU will be teaming up with other club teams and players. By including local women's club teams as co-coaches, these partnerships allow the team to target girls as well as boys at the clinics. ECU is hoping to affect communities across the nation through its traveling clinics and, more importantly, by creating a blueprint for other teams to follow in their own communities. To offer the clinics free-of-charge to the youth participants, ECU will also be testing out various fundraising strategies that will hopefully be replicated elsewhere as other teams get involved.

ECU's "teaching team" model also aligns itself with multiple tactics in the UPA's strategic plan. As the UPA continues to move forward with implementing all the different parts of its ambitious strategic plan, partnering with groups with similar visions for the growth of ultimate will be critical to the UPA's success.

Gwen

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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.