Ultimate Summit 2010: The Ramblin'

So tomorrow afternoon the glorious Maylin has invited all and sundry to a few drinks and a gasbag about Ultimate in Brisbane over the next few years.

If you're not going to make it, why not post a few comments?

To get things going, here's nine things I'd like to see happening by 2010 (if not before), and a bit of strategy about how to get there. I'm sure a lot of this isn't new or original - I'm just blurting it all out there in one place. This is all personal, and quite probably uninformed, and of course I'm not committed to any of it. They're just ideas. Do what you want, people, and don't worry about me!

The thing I tend to be really committed to in Ultimate Administration? If someone wants to do something, don't fuss too much about what that something is – just get out of their way and let them do it their way!

1. Open and Women's League on the same night.
This would increase the sociability interaction, and free up a night for another mixed League and/or training. To get there, someone just needs to make the decision to move. If you wanted to do it soon, then I'd go for moving Women's to Thursday at Annerley, just because there's scope for field space. But there's nothing to say both Leagues couldn't move to a new place, or to a new night all together.

2. Open League having two divisions.
I think BPL's success indicates that there's lots of guys who want to play hard Ultimate, and I think a default goal is to keep increasing the numbers. To cope, new teams get formed, and its fair to say, the standard may drop a bit. But in the longer term, the numbers can be converted into two tiers, with the current BPL continuing, but with a four team Super-League or A-Grade sitting above it. I'd like to see A and BPL (Reserve Grade?) teams linked through a Club system where possible (that is, each Club in A Grade should also have a Reserve Grade team) to foster development and so forth. The A Grade might even be limited down to four teams to keep it very high end, a lots of pressure on individual players to retain their spot in that Grade. While the two divisions would stay on the same night to allow easy player movement between the two, the times might be staggered a bit so that teams can support their fellow club members (for example, an earlier start for the second division, and a 30-60 minute later start for the first division).

How to get there? Keep recruiting and possibly tolerate weaker players coming in for the next season or two. Have teams talk to each other if they start to get too many numbers, so that new teams can be formed and so that teams don't stop recruiting their mates and so on.

3. Women's League following a BPL-style development path
Its always easiest to comment on what you know least about so forgive me, but from the outside, Women's League looks stalled, with just the same level of numbers and skill from season to season over the last few years. The critical mass doesn't seem to have come, and while there's new beginners each season, people are also leaving.

I think its time to move the focus from recruiting beginners (with lots of learn to play, training drills together, and hat-style teams) to forming fairly permanent teams and having a regular League. Keep recruiting beginners of course, but focus on providing a good experience for everyone, particularly to women who come across from Mixed Leagues - make them want to stay.

When BPL kicked off, as I understand it, it formed three teams and tolerated byes because that was the right number for the players they had and the level of play they wanted. Forming fairly permanent teams gets people recruiting for their teams, and encourages people to build commitment to turning up regularly and for each new season.

4. Two divisions of Mixed Social
The Monday night League's growth is heading this way, with 10 teams now. Once the numbers get to enough for twelve teams, I'd like to see two divisions here, with again an A-Grade and a B-Grade, with the latter being considered open to beginners and to entirely new teams. I've offered the suggestion in the past that if this League can get to 12 teams by the end of 2008, then the start of 2009 would be a good time to split into the two tiers of six, using the results of the final season of 2008. If the plan can be announced late in 2008, and if which teams are going into which tiers can be confirmed in December, then this gives until late January for people to work out what they want to do.

To me, the two divisions would feature promotion and relegation from season to season, with the winner of B-Grade going up, and the wooden spooner of A grade dropping down (this is different to a two division BPL,.where I'd see players moving up and down, not teams). Any time a new team is formed or entered, they would start in B grade, with A grade staying a consistent six teams (at least until we see see 16 teams running around on a Monday night.

As in the past, the eventual pressures on field space can be managed via development of two time-slots, or finding additional fields.

5. Gold Coast League
I think this is a given, and its great that Stef is about to kick off the first steps, and I've ranted about it before somewhere else on this blog.

6. No more "night's off" between seasons
Its kind of standard to have a few weeks off between seasons. Part of this is to give League Organisers a bit of a break, and fair enough to them. Part of it is because it’s a hangover from days when it was the only League in town, and there weren't enough people to sustain all the teams all the time. The numbers are now there on most teams that they can handle if people are away or take a week or two off during the season.

I think we need to change this mould and use these weeks – make sure the lights are on and the fields are available, and factor the cost into the preceding League's fees. Depending on the League, set these between-League-nights up as two weeks of Learn to Play (perhaps best suited for Women's and Mixed nights), encourage teams to come down and train (great for the week before the season starts, to build up the vibe), or just announce that pickup is on (which is an excellent way to let new people get a flavour for the league, and let people play with people they normally play against. I think BPLers and Monday night socialers would love the opportunity for some pickup play). Yes, there are people who will take this time off, but we may as well facilitate it if people want to keep up their regularly weekly night.

Of course, the December/January break should stay there because of the general social disruption, although it wouldn't hurt if each year someone looked at the calendar, picked out which night of the week isn't directly affected by the public holidays, and booked some fields and lights (for example, for the end of this year, a Summer Hat League could run be run very neatly on Mondays 15, 22, 29 December 2008 and 6, 13 and 20 January 2009). This break is nonetheless a great time to foster strategic/structural changes to Leagues (as noted under Monday night social above).

7. Fostering a Club-based scene
A few months back, some folks asked me to think up a few ideas for a Clubs policy for QUDA, and I recently dumped it on them (and its way longer than this). Now, I'm not a real fan of people being fairly permanently attached to the same Club of people – something I've liked about Ultimate relative to other sports is that we're all a community together. But as the community has grown, we're not a face-to-face group any more – nobody knows everyone, even within particular Leagues. So I'm coming around to thinking we need to get a new band in there, and Clubs fit the bill. And we're seeing it in reality anyway – the BPL Clubs, and most of the YUFL teams are getting very very solid. Look at UQ, with its own development league, two teams in BPL, another team in YUFL.

So lets foster more of that, and have Clubs going that next step from organising shirts and paying team-based fees, to having a bank account, doing some fundraising (by holding events like tournaments), linking up with other teams to support each other (for example, Open teams and Women's teams aligning, or teams aligning across divisions to recruit and promote players up and down).

Let's see UQ getting game enough to buy, store and sell 200 nice UQ shirts (and heck, why not shorts and socks too), selling them to players and using them across their BPL, YUFL and (one day) WUFL teams over a few years, and having a real identity of supporting each other, running tournaments to raise money to make their shirts cheaper for members, having Club Coaches, filling out a social calendar, and so forth.

And lets see other groups following that model (and those that don't have captive University development pool populations like UQ does, can be looking more closely at High Schools some would see the Buggers doing at the moment via Mike and Spinner).

8. More Coaching and Training
At the elite end, aside from developing and limiting numbers in A Leagues to foster development through week-in, week-out high level play, a great way to improve the quality of Ultimate is through Coaching.

Coaching also helps a lot at the learn-to-play end. If you've ever watched an "old hand" teach newbies, and then watch a qualified coach, you'll see a big difference.

So let's be doing what we can to get more people interested in and qualified to Coach Ultimate. There's a whole bunch of ideas here that I can't unpack right now, but its all doable.

Connected to Coaching. There's been steps the last few years, and I hope that by 2010 there is always some sort of training night, year round, going on. Whether it is fostered by particular Clubs, or is an 'everyone welcome' thing (a bit like Firestorm do now), its really valuable. Fostering Coaches will foster people wanting to have training and to benefit from it.

9. Sunday Pickup
It still pains me that in Brisbane we don't have a regular and large pick-up game in Brisbane – as a pathway/route into Ultimate; to have a break from disciplined play; and also as a way to maintain the old-school informality of Ultimate.

Having some well-known and reliable regular pick-up on allows potential new players to have look or get a taste of Ultimate, without any pressure to continue.

It also helps to free people from the 'shackles' of disciplined team play and stretch themselves – it’s a concern at the moment that we're too busy teaching people to stack and dump and think and conform, and they aren't getting the chance to run about and huck and have fun.

Regular pickup also provides a space for people to see old mates and make new friends across Leagues and nights and genders and so forth. Pickup gets random people who have the time to have a game together. Its also from pickup that I can see new organiser-types emerging – people who're interested in Ultimate and have time to talk about it.

So lets get some Sunday pickup happening soon (Sunday being relatively free and flexible). Maybe from the start of Spring this year. Maybe from 3pm. Maybe at Kalinga Park.


So that's that - an hour's typing from early this morning. What do you think? Or drop by Friday night to give us your two cents.