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.