Plastic Spoon

I had a long post going about substitutions in Ultimate, but bugger it got lost so I'll rehash on another day.

But one quick bit - a simple technique for getting everyone to manage substitutions that I'm surprised I don't see often is just letting everyone on the team know the maths, so they can make decisions about staying on or getting off or getting on or staying off.

Take the number of players you can have on the field (seven if its Open/Women's, or 4/3 if Mixed). Divide by the number of players you have available. This gives you a rough idea of how many points you should have on and off.

So if you arrive at Women's League and have 10 girls and want to share the load fairly evenly, people should be looking to play about seven of every ten points or roughly two points on, one point off (or four on and two off, or something like that).

If you're at Monday Mixed and have eight guys and four girls and are playing a 4/3 split, then the guys should know that roughly for every point they play they should have a point off, while the girls know they should aim at three points on and one point off.

If you're got a key super fit player that the team wants on all the time, then you can modify the maths. So say aL is one of your eight guys in the Monday Mixed. Keep him on all the time and change to seven guys available for three spots on the field - play roughly three on and four off.