So some of you may have followed the nation-wide debate about a proposal (originating with thoughtful Matt B.) to move Nationals from April to October.
After plenty of consultation coordinated by the immeasurable Simon T (certainly a model for the future … the consultation I mean, although Simon has a certain je ne cest quoi, its true)), the outcome is no change.
My personal view is that this is the right decision. But before anyone thinks "so why did they bother considering it" (aside from "it’s a good thing to consider people's ideas, particularly when they challenge the status quo"), for me the discussion helped crystalise a few things in my mind about recruitment (the idea for the change was about improving recruitment early in the year).
I was reminded that many Ultimate players, as ex-University students, tend to view recruitment in "O-Week" terms – you put in a pile of effort once a year and recruit a whole bunch of people as a result. And you do this at the start of the year of course.
This type of thing is central to a lot of sports – you see lots of banners for "sign on days" in February and March for various football clubs and so forth. Its a common form of sports recruitment.
But realising this threw up a few insights, for me at least, that coalesced into a different view of how we "should" do recruitment for Ultimate.
Universities and Schools aside, the Ultimate "season" is a) spread throughout the year, as our sport is played all year round (particularly in Queensland). This is why its sensible to do a short 'learn to play' thing at the start of each and any season you run (do a 'have a go' thing if you have a more advanced league like BPL).
And b) if anything, the proper start of the Ultimate season is in Spring – August/September/October – when people shake off the Winter cold and want to get outside and run around a field or a beach, not at the start of the year when they're doing 'new year resolutions' stuff.
If your volunteer resources are mostly about doing a single big (non-school, non-Uni) recruiting thing a year (which it shouldn't be, but then I don't expect you to agree with everything!), then do it in Spring and get them playing through Spring and Summer and Autumn.
Ultimate is a great product. It markets itself. We forget that. To those of us at the 'centre' of Ultimate administration, we have a harder time seeing that – because we've already approached every friend, workmate, casual acquaintance and neighbour to get them to give Ultimate a go. As individuals, we've run out of people to recruit, so we think recruitment is hard.
But in reality, people who are new to the sport are always talking to their friends, workmates, casual acquaintances and so on.
So to me the biggest issue for recruitment is whether or not there is an easy way for new people to get in (and further in) and to bring their newer mates in to – what seems to be called 'pathways'. We need to think more about pathways.
The most common issue for this is basically "space". Partly this is field space – can you handle more people? And this is straight forward to resolve (not necessarily easy of course, but a basic problem). But also this is space within a team.
If your team is mostly full, and you get a couple of newbies on board. That's great. But what do you do if the newbies want to bring their friends?
So wherever we can we need to keep teams turning over their players and individuals leaving teams to go off and start new teams.
Not only does this build the pathways and make it easy for new people to come in, and for them to bring more people in, but in my humble opinion this also reinforces the great product that's the Ultimate culture – when a team is made up of people of a range of skill, from old hands to rank beginners. Beginners need a bit of the basics to get on the field, so a couple of weeks of 'Learn to Play' is great. But after that, they have the best experience within teams of a range of skill, where there's plenty to learn and experienced players want to invest in improving their team-mates.
And of course, when we're talking about pathways, we're also talking about pathways between leagues (as people seek new experiences) and to tournaments. But that's a post for another day.
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