Preparing for Tournament Catastrophe

One of the things that doesn’t get talked about often amongst Ultimate organiser types are the things that can go drastically wrong.

This is a pity, as the most useful tool you can have in such situations is having thought about it (or heard some anecdote) beforehand. If you’re heard a story or laid a little bit of groundwork, you’re more likely to act quickly and firmly to get things back on track.

Rain

The most obvious one is rain and the potential last minute loss of fields. We’ve discussed this in detail before and we think its very worth reading if we do say so ourselves. http://brisbaneultimatedisc.blogspot.com/2010/02/rainproofing-your-tournament.html The short version is you can usually see rain coming before a tournament so you’ve got time to run a few scenarios through your head, and you need to talk to your field hirer in advance, and let them know how many people are flying in for the tournament – then work towards a compromise where for example you redo the draw and use some fields and not others. And get some garbage bags.

Scorching Hot Weather / Lightning

As with rain, if you’re paying attention you should see this coming, either in the lead up week or during the day. The AFDA Safe Play policies are your friends here, as are anecdotes about when people weren’t proactive – eg two people that we know of have ended up in Intensive Care in recent years after playing Ultimate all day on a day that was too hot.

It’s easy to let this stuff slide (particularly the hot weather one – when it just keeps climbing through the morning but you’re busy running the tournament) The real key is agility with regards the draw and communicating to the Captains and people. The other way to be ready is to have a smart-phone handy so you can get impartial information from the Bureau. And include salty peanuts in the lunch boxes.

Volunteers Go Missing

Committee meetings help build redundancy if someone important can’t make it – they get sick, have a major personal problem, etc etc. They also give a TD a sense of the generally reliability of people, and of course people will try harder or understand the implications of their failure if they’re part of a team.

Major Injury

Everything else becomes irrelevant when there’s a major injury. Many people can’t help but feel impatient if their game is halted, or annoyed if you have to leave your game to go help. You know what? Fuck the selfish pricks. Nah, I don’t mean that – they can’t help themselves.

If your tournament is big enough that you’ve got St John’s Ambulance folks there, well done. If not, you can alleviate this problem a bit by providing every Captain with info for the local hospital or the info they need to get an ambulance to the fields. A good tip these days is to provide it to them by SMS the morning of the tournament – that way its in their phone and ready to go and Captains will feel empowered to act.

The other thing you need to ensure you have from your field provider is the ability to get a vehicle onto the field. Field providers who have ‘fenced’ fields generally don’t want to give you a key to the gate because they fear you will drive all over their fields. Remind them that occasionally ambulances do need to get to people who play sport and they’re usually come to the party and assure them that that’s the only time you’ll open said gate.

As far as what happens to the game – if the Captains haven’t already done it, take them aside, have your draw and timetable with you and facilitate a decision. The AFDA policies about stoppages due to bad weather can be useful here too. Follow up with the injured player’s Captain later in the day. Major injuries should be part of every tournament report.

General Financial Misadventure

One of the more common ways that tournaments go wrong for organisers is financial. Either you’ve committed to spending too much (typically because something important has been forgotten), or you’re not bringing in enough income (most commonly because people say they’re coming but don’t turn up).

Many State Associations have a written or unwritten policy that they’ll help out if tournaments make an unexpected loss and the TD’s need help. If you’ve sent them a copy of your budget beforehand, they will be more likely to help because they’ll see you did the right things so it wasn’t your fault - and may well spot a potential problem for you. After they’ve seen a few tournament budgets, it becomes pretty straight forward. Associations also provide this ‘rainy day’ support so that people don’t have to raise fees to manage risk and end up with a surplus they didn’t want.

Bar Tabs

Not a catastrophe, but a useful way of dealing with one. Now, generally and sadly that your bloggers are oldies, they’re less keen than he used to be about big bar tabs. Adding a bar tab to your tournament party is often believed to be about getting some people drunk and the party rocking. On the other hand, a big bar tab gouges those who can’t make the party or don’t drink to support pissheads who will probably buy their drinks anyway assuming you’ve arranged reasonable prices.

Anyway I think the claim that ‘a bar tab makes the party rock’ is a crock – Frisbee players will party well enough without a fat bar tab. But that’s an aside.

But leaving that point aside, bar tabs *do have* two very useful aspects for a TD that are relevant to today’s discussion.

One is that they influence people to get to the party at around the same time. All that a Frisbee party really needs to get rocking is for everyone to be there – the mass of people creates the atmosphere, not the booze consumed. So time the bar tab to do this (offering dinner over a limited time also does the same thing – gets everyone in the one place at the same time).

The other advantage of budgeting in a bar tab is that the TD has a last minute financial lever to pull if the tournament money situation is in trouble. If for example on Saturday morning you come up short with rego fees and you’ve done your maths through the day, then you’re within your rights to reduce or pull the planned bar tab for that night. You can tell people you budgeted for a bar tab, but can’t afford it now that Team X didn’t show up or whatever, and they will handle that.

So to summarise – in the context of things going wrong financial – a bar tab is a handy safety net saviour if you realise early enough.

This can go the other way too – if your aim is a tournament that breaks even but you find you’ve got extra regos and therefore spare money, you can make the decision on Saturday afternoon if you’ve got all your money sorted to add to a bar tab (or put on some extra freebies on Sunday like iceblocks or extra food).

Litter

Be observant and call Captains out. If you spot litter near a particular area, the draw will give you an idea of who’s responsible … if you notice early enough.

The most common littler problem though is sadly what’s left after a Final, and suddenly everyone’s gone home and you have to pick it all up. Not necessarily a catastrophe, but a) you just want to go home yourself and b) few things prevent you being invited back to a field more than a field provider having to pick up litter the day after.

The Final litter is some sort of bizarre phenomenon related to people sitting around and thereby feeling that they can just rest their litter on the ground and then later on get up and leave it.

Ultimate players leaving litter behind after watching the tournament Final is bizarre and disappointing, and comparable playing spirited the whole game but then pulling some sort of shit during the last point when you've already lost.

The Demon Drink

This is a tricky area that some folks feel strongly about and of course it’s fundamental to the law of the land. We’ll try to be frank below without condoning or denying.

So some people like to have a drink at their Frisbee tournaments. But the licensing laws in Australia place limitations on this kind of thing. Field providers also generally frown on drinking at their fields (sometimes solely from fear of broken glass on the fields). Now, often this is because other sports misbehave more than responsible Ultimate players.

Most folks with authority are concerned about the misbehaviour that comes with drinking, so think about what you can do about that. If you’re having a night game and you think people will BYO, make sure there’s food available.

Have a clear distinction between the games and the party, between the fields and the drinking area.

A neat little trick if you see some people seriously getting into it (eg slamming spirits on the sideline) is to be a great TD and donate them some sports drinks and chips from the shop.

If you’ve got a largeish event, ring up your local liquor licensing authority. Most of them have information hotlines and get calls about this kind of thing all the time. Get the information first hand so you can weigh it up. It also gets you on the front foot if you decide to go ahead with getting a licence, or if something goes wrong later in the piece.

For smaller events, “discrete BYO” aka ‘put a sock on it’ is a code used within the Ultimate community. Getting people to bring their own (ie take responsibility rather than putting it on the TD) and put a sock on their stubby or pouring into a cup or container not only lessens the appearance of drinking and the chances of breakage, being discrete also demonstrates to someone with authority that you’re about behaving rather than misbehaving – and it reduces the exposure of the TD.

Underage drinking can be sadly seriously bad news – get senior players from the relevant team to take responsibility for that asap.

And that's it for today. Good luck with your tournament!