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.