Bagel Fodder Ultimate

Low Numbers at Practice

2009-10-10T00:34:00.003-05:00

What do you do when you don’t have numbers at practice? A nasty fever-coughing virus has taken out key players on our team for a week or more, and with a large, consistent, athletic class studying abroad this semester, rare is the day when we can field 14 girls at practice, let alone 12 or even 10. Despite going to a small school, practice attendance has never been an issue in the past, or when it was, it was after the series had ended for us, and so we were content to play hot box or 5-on-5 for an hour before calling it quits. But what do you do when eight people show up to practice healthy enough to play one week before your first major away tournament? Even when we have enough to play 6s, it does not allow us to practice zone offense and defense accurately, and even with 14 girls at practice, we are automatically playing without any subs, and so the pace of the game is much slower than game pace…and the old adage is true…you play how you practice.

It’s not only the illness that is taking players out. Injuries, lingering injuries, are taking their toll on old and new players alike. This speaks to athletic abilities in general on our team, but also to an institutional lack of support for club sport injuries through the athletic department. And then, you have the freshman issue. The freshman who is not quite sold on ultimate yet, who decided to sign up for a hundred other activities and committees and finds homework loads their first year different from high school and sometimes comes to practice but not always…but would I come to practice as a freshman, too, if week after week we were scrimmaging without full numbers? If older teammates shirk practice for unknown reasons, would I, as a freshman, feel it was acceptable to skip practice because I had “too much work” or “a meeting”? You see, this freshman issue is related to another issue, that of older players not coming to practice for no apparent, good reason. And then can I, as a captain, send out a strong email to my players, telling them how important practice attendance is, knowing full well that the people who will be the first ones back after such an email will be the ones who may not have waited long enough to heal their injuries or nurse themselves back to full health? I stood on the sidelines today in a feverish haze, barely able to shout out instructions to the eight girls who were doggedly playing hot box at our “practice” today, and thought “is this supposed to be my senior year of ultimate, is this the buildup to the spring semester that everyone on the team has agreed will be one of our best seasons to date?”

Certainly practicing at all is better than not practicing, and you can still run drills and help people with their throws without full numbers. There is benefit in playing smaller games of 5-on-5 because it does give newer players more touches on the disc. But sometimes, especially when I am sick on the sidelines, too, I feel like our little team is falling apart, and after having dedicated so much time to making our team better, it is frustrating to be reduced to lackluster scrimmages at this crucial point in the season. You simply cannot effectively teach and practice team skills when you don’t have a full team.

I am sure this problem is not limited to my school. In fact, I’m sure other bagel fodder schools deal with this problem far more than we do, and what I’m experiencing now, for a few weeks in one semester, is what other schools have to deal with week in, week out at practice. I don’t know what to do about it, though. “Recruit!” said one of my teammates today, after that frustrating 8-person practice. We have never actively recruited, save manning a table at the freshman organization fair the week before classes start. At a school as small as ours, and considering that we practice right in the heart of campus, I think visibility is hardly an issue for us. What is an issue is emphasizing to freshman, but, almost more importantly, older players, that practice attendance is vital to being a member of the team, a point that I had thought was clear, but may need to be reviewed-- again, and again-- until we can stop playing hot box and start playing ultimate.

A Few Comments and Predictions

2009-05-14T14:44:00.004-05:00

Keeping up with ultimate while studying abroad is harder than I thought…sorry for the huge break in posts. No promises of anything regular until I am back in the U.S. in August.

A few comments and predictions, though:

-Congrats to the Iowa State women on getting the third bid to Nationals from the Central Region. I’ve played against them a lot, and they’re a solid team that deserves to be there.

-Are there more DIII teams than usual on the men's side at Nationals this year? Carleton, obviously, but also Luther, Williams, and Tufts.

-The 2009 women’s Callahan award should go to Georgia Bosscher. I don’t even care that I’m unqualified to make such judgments because I play for a tiny team that’s been beaten by Bella Donna to the tune of 1-13 more than once…listen…Georgia Bosscher is, without a doubt, one of the best (if not the best?) women’s college ultimate players in the country-- a standout player on an already very good team-- and, from what I can see as an outsider, a great leader. My freshman year of college, we were at some tournament, and a teammate pointed her out to me and said, “See the girl with the dreads? Her name is Georgia, she is a phenomenal player, and she is only a sophomore.” Since then, I've seen her play at a decent number of tournaments, including Nationals in 2007 and Central Regionals (club and college) in 2008, and also captain Wisconsin's tryout team last fall. I’ve seen her pull a disc out the back of the opposing team's endzone. I’ve watched her notice a disc out of the corner of her eye, layout to the side, and get the D at chest height. I’ve seen her destroy cups with beautiful high-release backhands. She has huge throws, huge ups, and huge bids. This girl can play, she can lead, and she deserves to win.

-I’m also calling it: the 2009 women’s national title will go to Bella Donna. They have the 2008 Callahan winner still playing for them (Courtney Kiesow), at least one of the best handlers in the women’s college game (Emilie McKain), and a deep roster with too many other names to list. They are stacked, and I think they want it badly this year. They lost to the two teams seeded above them (UCSB and Washington) once each for a combined point differential of 3. Look, I don’t even care that I’m not in the country and haven't seen them play all spring…Bella Donna for national champs in 2009. Midwest represent.

-For the men, I think it’s CUT’s year, but I’m even more unqualified to make that statement than I am to make any of the above.

I won’t be in Columbus to watch any of these predictions unfold or crash and burn, even though my parents live half an hour away. No, I’ll be in Munich for the weekend, which isn’t too shabby, but if you’ll be in Ohio, have fun for me. Having watched nationals before, I can say for certain it’s amazing to see so much good ultimate in one weekend. Plus CUDA is awesome. Yeah Columbus.

My First Experience with Ultimate in Germany and Force Middle

2009-03-12T18:00:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of updates. I am in Germany now, and I am a lot busier than I thought I would be, and in the down time, I have not been thinking about ultimate as much as I normally do. I have played with the team here twice, and don't have much to say except about that, other than they play a lot of force middle, which I dislike, and are still mainly indoors, which I also dislike. I am also sick, again, which has halted any extensive plans to begin to get in shape or to play as much as I would like. As I continue to settle into life here and develop a schedule, I hope to attend practices more regularly. Oh, the vocab differences are kind of fun; a disc is a Scheibe, they force links and rechts when not doing "FM" (for "force middle," not mitte as you might expect), and handlers are Aufbauers. The stall count is still in English, though.

On the topic of force middle, does this work well for anyone? I find it really hard to play defense in a man situation when the force changes from one side of the field to the other. I am probably not a good enough player, either, but still, I think the team needs to be really good about determining when, exactly, they're going to change the force from a backhand to forehand, and potentially call switches on defense. Needless to say, joining up with a group of Germans and playing pickup ultimate in the park with them for the first time means that this communication on defense was not there.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I play man defense by lining up on the correct side of my woman depending on the force. If the disc starts off being force forehand, I line up on the correct side to stop the cuts to the open side. The disc gets thrown to the other side of the field, now it's a backhand force. Suddenly, I am on the wrong side of my woman, and she has an easier open side cut. I can see force middle upsetting teams' usual open-side offense, and if I were a better defender I'm sure I would have an easier time with it. I was just always taught that the force, at a basic level, was supposed to make the other defenders' jobs easier upfield, and force middle, as I understand it, does not make it easier on the defense. I guess it makes it harder on the offense, but is it worth it?

I did a Google search on "force middle" and found a blog post from four years ago on it. The poster himself said under the "how to attack it" section: "Additionally, don’t forget that the downfield defenders are having to constantly switch which side of their man to cover. The closer the cutter is to the frisbee, the less time a defender has to make up the distance." His post talks about setting a force middle with poachers, which is more than what the team I played with was doing with their force, so I could see it working better with poachers, and, like I said, intelligent switches. But still, I don't know why force middle would be your go-to defense without poachers and a tight, communicative defense. I guess it is giving me some practice on being way more aggressive on defense. And maybe as the season goes along, I'll develop a better on-field connection with the team and defenses like this will become easier. Who knows.

See, this is why I don't write about strategy. But it's all I've got right now to talk about right now. I'm pretty much just asking for input about force middle, benefits and downsides, things I'm missing. Comment away; in the meantime, I'll try to finish some posts that have been lingering on my computer for far too long.

Two Women's Ultimate Blogs Worth Reading

2009-02-21T11:33:00.007-06:00

I enjoy reading about women's ultimate, but not many blogs concern themselves specifically with covering the women's game. This week I've found two blogs that do. One is written by USC's coach and the other by a player on Illinois Menace. You'll also find I've added them to the links on the right.

Obviously I don't go to big, nationals-caliber tournaments like Trouble in Vegas, Pres. Day, Centex, Stanford Invite, etc., so it's good to have some solid blogs covering these tournaments as well as regional tournaments and also offering other posts that bring attention to the women's side. All I can really do is make half-educated predictions about the Central region, and maybe you'll see that on this blog later on in the year, but I thought I'd share the two blogs above who are better positioned to cover the women's college game than I am.

I feel like there might be other blogs out there that I haven't found yet-- anyone know any other good women's ultimate blogs (other than ICultimate)?

Study Abroad and College Ultimate: Some Follow-Up

2009-02-19T10:13:00.007-06:00

My last post was on study abroad and ultimate and some of my teammates read and responded. They are going to Mardi Gras this weekend almost savage, and so I feel even more guilty now than I did before, but anyways, I wanted to share some of their thoughts because I think they are worthwhile.

I said in my last post about friends who had studied abroad: "They came back with cool jerseys and discs and awesome stories and maybe a better understanding of how ultimate is growing in other parts of the world." I wanted to expand on that a little bit. First, if you study abroad and play on an established team, you're bound to learn something new. Any team you play for will have different styles of play but also leadership, practice structure, drills, and team culture. A discerning player can evaluate these differences and see if it's worthwhile to bring some new skills and drills back to their home teams. The other possibility is studying abroad in a place without an established ultimate scene, and, well, one of my teammates said it better than I could:

"The alternate possibility is study abroad in a developing country with little to no frisbee presence, and I think this can be even more educational. I learned more about the game trying to to teach people in Ecuador who had never seen a frisbee than I have in any team I've played with or practiced with. Plus the excitement of introducing a game that occupies such a huge place in your life to people who have grown up playing soccer with roundish pieces of fruit is such a nice reminder of how powerful (religious?) throwing a frisbee can be."

That about sums it up. I had not thought about the benefits of not just playing ultimate abroad but teaching it to people abroad, something that is very possible if you study in a place where ultimate is not well-known.

Study Abroad and College Ultimate: Benefits and Downsides

2009-02-11T09:20:00.009-06:00

I was supposed to leave for Germany last week to visit some relatives before beginning my study abroad program, but I was diagnosed with mono the day before my plane was set to leave, so I'm hanging out in the U.S. for two more weeks and recovering some strength before leaving to begin a semester of study in Freiburg, Germany. Being ill for the past three weeks has stopped any writing I had planned, but I feel better these days, and so I thought I'd write a little bit about studying abroad and how it relates to ultimate.

I will be leaving behind my small, beloved college ultimate team in the capable hands of two captains, and I trust they will have an exciting season, maybe the last season in the UPA without divisional play. Once I am allowed to run again without fear of my spleen exploding, I am hopefully going to be playing with an apparently well-established mixed team based out of Freiburg. I know nothing about ultimate in Germany, and I hope I’ll meet some cool people, learn some new things, and be able to go to some tournaments with them. If not, hopefully I can meet people who will be willing to toss a disc with me sometimes. If my ultimate plans fall through, maybe I can return to a sport I played way back in middle school that I hear is kind of popular in Europe…I think they call it Fußball.

If nothing else, I hope to use this chunk of time away from the academic rigors of my home school and away from college ultimate as a time to get in good shape. Before I got sick I was weightlifting regularly here at home, snowbound, but once I return to grass and hopefully have some type of track facility available, I intend to develop some type of sprint routine. Mono might put a dent in these plans, but hopefully not too much, we'll see how that goes. So there might be some future posts about working out, and I’d welcome any advice or links you have about fitness. This is assuming I can withstand the temptation of three things the Germans know how to make that I love: chocolate, bread, and beer.

Anyways, I will be abroad until the middle of August. This means for the first time in three years I will not be playing in a summer league, which makes me sad, because summer league was how I was first introduced to real ultimate and it has always been a great way to make friends within whatever local ultimate community I spent my summer.

And, of course, part of me feels bad for leaving during the spring, the time of the college series. The four other juniors on my team are also going abroad, taking away much of the experience on our team. The current sophomores are returning the favor in the fall of this year—all ten (or more?! more keep joining the team) of them, I believe, are leaving for areas as diverse as Morocco, India, and Israel. I wouldn’t have it any other way, of course—I think study abroad is a worthwhile experience, and I wouldn’t want anyone not to leave because of ultimate. Is this the attitude you can’t have if you want to go to nationals? Maybe. Is study abroad more popular at smaller schools? I’m not sure. My gut reaction would be yes. Half of the juniors at my school study abroad, and in literature I got from others like mine (small, liberal arts schools), they all advertised their high rates of study abroad. Does this disrupt the ultimate season? Undoubtedly. Is the disruption bigger at smaller schools, where a higher percentage of students study abroad? Possibly. Even studying abroad in the fall, which sometimes isn't an option because of how classes work out at home and how the semester works abroad (this is the case for me), disrupts a lot of team-building and training, especially in places that can't go back to outdoor practice right away in the winter and early spring.

There was never any pressure on my team to not study abroad, and I would feel very uncomfortable putting pressure on anyone to sacrifice a chance to study abroad for the ultimate season. If I were on the A-team roster of a top college ultimate team I'm sure I would reconsider my decision to leave in the spring, and I imagine there would be pressure not go to. I have no idea how top teams handle that, except I imagine most players would choose to stay and compete and sacrifice a chance to study abroad, because, after all, they already sacrifice a lot of time and money to be at the top. I don't want to presume too much about how that works on top teams, however, so I'll stick to what I know...

...Because I'm not on an A-team roster on a top college team, so I don't have to feel too guilty, and I think if you choose to study abroad, you can continue your ultimate education overseas. Almost everyone I know on the team who has studied abroad (and on my team, that would be most woman I've known) found some type of ultimate wherever they were, whether it was less established programs, like in Chile, and or very established programs, like in Australia. Some of my friends got to go to prestigious tournaments like Paganello and some got to play in big tournaments in the Australian series, for example. They came back with cool jerseys and discs and awesome stories and maybe a better understanding of how ultimate is growing in other parts of the world.

Also, maybe having a lot of experience on the team leave for a semester isn't all bad for the team. Certainly having the entire junior class go abroad in one semester isn't ideal, and in most years it is more balanced in terms of who leaves when, but my hope for the team this spring is that underclassmen get to step up into roles left by juniors and become better players themselves. The seniors are still there to steer the ship, to to speak, but sophomores and first years get more playing time and experience and grow into better players, though it may be a difficult and at times frustrating road. This frustration may not pay off in this season, either, but in the future.

So, there are benefits and disadvantages of studying abroad, with most of the benefits going to individual players, but as I outlined above, I think the case can be made that sometimes having players study abroad can be better for the team as a whole, at least thinking in the long term.

Well, there's a "small" post for you on Bagel Fodder for once, ha ha. I wanted to give thanks for the recent press on Banana Cut and the link from Mackey's blog for my long piece about the fall season. Look for another post or two before I leave, hopefully.

Tales from the Chumpionship Bracket, Part I: The Fall Tournament

2009-01-11T23:25:00.001-06:00

I started writing this about halfway through our fall season, finished it up tonight, and I hope it’s a nice change from the more “academic” posts I have been offering on this blog. I would like to tell a story of sorts, a story for a cold winter’s night, going back to when the Midwest was still relatively warm and snow free, a story I hope is true for others, the story of an ultimate team at a college tournament in the fall, and not a top team, either, but the Everyman team, the Bagel Fodder team…

The cell phone alarm goes off sometime between 6:30 and 7:00 AM. I clamber out of bed, avoiding the five people sleeping on the floor, wrapped up in sleeping bags, fitfully trying to savor a few last moments of shuteye. Slowly, with bleary eyes and doleful looks, people get up, get dressed, and make their way down to the continental breakfast, if we're lucky enough to have a hotel with such amenities. I eat half a waffle, fill up the water bottles, and carry my bags down to the car. Barring any major map-reading mishaps, my co-captain and I make it to the fields in time to sit through the captain’s meeting. Together we decipher the field map as the dew soaks through our shoes and herd our teammates to the correct field as they come in to the parking lot after us.

Everyone is there with 25 minutes until game time. I encourage people to put on their cleats and take a warm up lap. Five people join me as I circle the field. I always wonder why it takes so long for people to get their cleats on in the morning. The other team is probably in the same shape as we are, but if not, if they’ve been throwing and drilling since we first staggered on to the field, it will make the first game that much harder. "Let’s do an endzone drill," I suggest, grab a disc, and make my way to our endzone. “That should be a forehand!” and “Sprint on your cuts, guys!” are familiar phrases. After five minutes or so the other captains come over. We toss, win, and decide to pull. I always feel starting on defense is a good way to get people's heads in the game, especially if our warm up is going poorly. Everything seems slow in the early morning, and the horn inevitably sounds before I feel anyone is warmed up enough.

“Bring it in!” Most people come running. I try to keep track of who was warming up the earliest and who was running the hardest in the drill and call them on in the first line. A brief pep talk, a quick cheer, and we’re on the line. I usually pull the first disc if I am on the field. Pulling is one of my favorite parts of ultimate, stepping back from the line, looking down the field at the opposing team, and shouting, “three, two, one, ultimate!” in the clear morning air as a long, crisp backhand sails out of my hands. That first throw and that first sprint will never get old, and I still get nervous before each game.

This season, our first games have always been the most heartbreaking. Often they are against higher seeds in our pool, but usually not so high that they seem unbeatable. We have come so close many times to beating those teams— sometimes all the way to universe, almost always to the last time cap, and usually they never win by more than two or three points. I can’t decide why we can’t pull it off, exactly. We are usually ahead by one around point eight or nine, and then a few breaks by the other team, the horn blows, and it’s over. A little more intensity on defense, a few better dump passes, a bit more luck in catching, a few better throwing decisions, and the game could have gone the other way. Sometimes that first game is the difference between playing for 13th place or playing for 1st place on Sunday.

With the first game over, we shake hands with the opposing team and make up a cheer. We cheer at the end of every game. Cheering was one of the first things I remembered and loved about ultimate, and I hope that as the sport grows, the cheers and zany games remain. In the post-game huddle, my co-captain and I try to sum up the game, focus on what went wrong, what went right, and try to keep people excited and motivated for the next two or three games.

Often victories are hard-fought, coming down to the last few points, each team grinding it out until the end. My favorite memories are from these difficult games— trying to catch my breath and calm down my breathing to give a steady stall count on the mark, seeing a teammate streaking deep and winding up for the long huck, standing on the line before the pull on a crucial, tense break point, a layout catch to save a misplaced dump pass, fighting to shut down a cutter, wrenching your ankles and feet with the sharp turns, the feeling of relief after a brutal, long point in the wind comes to an end.

Oh, the wind, inevitable in the Midwest in autumn, and often causing lot of turnovers on both teams, since throwing and catching are more difficult. Low scoring games are common, as is zone. I usually play hatchet in zone defense, giving the cup encouragement and advice, trying for the layout Ds, keeping one eye on the poppers and the other on the handlers. There’s a special type of tiredness and endurance that comes with zone defense, and it toys with your emotions. Shutting down a team with zone is one of the best feelings in the game, redemption for the exhaustion, but the feeling of a zone defense slipping out of position as the opposing team breaks your cup is one of the worst. Then there’s zone offense. There’s a slow patience in zone offense I enjoy—when everyone else has the patience—gaining a few yards with a quick pass to a popper, losing a few with a dump, the slow, steady motion of handlers swinging the disc, the tense fun that comes from breaking a cup, and, if the patience holds and our hands are good, the man call and hopefully the sense of accomplishment that comes from breaking a zone defense.

Like I said, victories have not been easy recently. I think schools everywhere are getting better, and teams we used to beat with ease a year or two ago now offer consistent challenges. Still, even if we have to work harder for victories, the feeling of beating a larger school never gets old, and we manage to do that at least once at every tournament.

After play ends on Saturday, we crowds back into the cars and drive to the hotel. If we’re lucky, the men are still playing, so we get first dibs on showers. Sometimes all of us decide to descend on some poor restaurant without showering first. After eating a hotel breakfast and maybe an energy bar or bagel and running around outside for six hours, everyone is hungry enough so that our bill hopefully offsets any offense given by all twenty of us traipsing into the place at once, dirty and sweaty and generally loud and rambunctious.

In the evening, back at the hotel, some people drink, some watch TV, some try and fail to do homework, and others pass out early. I am amazed that we have not yet been kicked out of a hotel for crowding ten people to a room and, at some tournaments, like Halloween, staying up late playing drinking games. Halloween tournaments aside, generally everyone is in bed by midnight, which is good because Sunday dawns bright and early again— another cell phone alarm, hurriedly packing the cars, and driving through sleepy Midwestern towns back to the fields.

I am always amazed at how sore I am on Sundays. No other sport or activity matches the full-body soreness that comes after a long day of good ultimate. There is some sort of strange joy in working out the pain during the first warm up on Sunday. The first cheer of the day invigorates everyone, and soreness and fogginess are gone after the first few points; the edge comes back as the dew on the grass dries when the full morning sun hits the field. Sundays have run the gamut in emotions and experiences this fall. We’ve gone from losing all our Sunday games to winning them all, from placing near the bottom of the chumpionship bracket to going to the finals of one small tournament. Whichever way it goes, win or lose, Sundays are always exhausting, the kind of exhaustion that creeps up on you when you take a break on the sidelines. Despite the exhaustion and potential frustration, I have fun at every tournament we go to because of my teammates, new and old. The fall in particular is a time for getting to know new players, and they quickly become part of the fold with the laughing, joking, and camaraderie that comes from spending an entire weekend in close quarters with people. After one away tournament, they become part of the special type of community college teams foster. Combine that with the camaraderie and respect between teams that the ultimate community as a whole builds, and I don't think there is any other sport I would rather play.

Every tournament ends with taking our cleats off for the last time. Untying your cleats, peeling off your socks, and reflecting on the weekend sitting in the grass among teammates, sometimes in the bitter cold, sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the glorious pale sunlight that the Midwest offers up in the fall, but sitting down after running around for an entire weekend, after diving to the ground, after wrenching your shoulder from throwing and your legs from cutting, sitting down after all that, win or lose, is immensely satisfying. Then comes the slow walk back to the car, organizing everyone back with their stuff, and the long, warm drive back, sometimes six hours cramped in the car— a fast food dinner, attempts at homework that always end in naps, every stop and every time you get out of the car your body reminding you through cramps and aches that you need to eat more salt and cool down after those games. Then you come back to campus and it's dark, back to usually an entire night’s worth of homework and people who don’t understand why we do it, weekend after weekend, year after year. But we know why we do it, you know why you do it, right?

We do it because we love our teammates, we love ultimate, and even if the victories are few and far between and some tournaments are frustrating, when things didn’t seem to go right the whole weekend long, we will be back two weekends from now, in the outskirts of some town at some soccer complex or polo field, ready to put our cleats on and do it all again. We go to these fall tournaments for the small victories— the rookie player having the confidence to look upfield and get a good continue throw. A burgeoning handler breaking her mark. A perfect dump, swing, swing, score sequence. An awesome D, a sweet layout grab. Ultimate on bagel fodder teams sometimes doesn’t look pretty, but at every level, ours included, people play with heart, and we all love this game fiercely.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T17:03:00.001-06:00

A Merry Christmas to all Ultimate players out there.

Women's Ultimate Soapboxing

2008-12-22T20:57:00.002-06:00

It's finally winter break, so I have more time to write. Remember to check out the post beneath this one about team history and legacy written by a contributor.

I've spent my last few posts talking about the quality divide in college ultimate, and now I want to touch on some specific issues I see in women's college ultimate.

First, there are fewer women players and fewer women's teams. Therefore, I think the divide between strong teams and weak teams is more prominent in the women's division. I read once that only a third of the UPA members are women, and a look at the teams at tournaments, really any tournament except regionals and nationals, will show that there are always more men's teams than women's. In my section, for example, there are four women's teams...the same section on the men's side has something like twelve to fifteen teams each year. This means women's teams have fewer opponents to play against, particularly fewer regional opponents. High level teams already have to travel far to find teams at their level, but mid and low level women's teams also do not have as many opponents at their level as comparable men's teams do, meaning they have less opportunities to test themselves against competitive opponents.

Why are there fewer female ultimate players than male ultimate players? I think the main reason is that, despite huge leaps in the past twenty-some years, fewer girls still do sports in high school than boys, and are therefore less likely to try out sports in college, ultimate included. Also, it seems like girls are sometimes not brought up in a culture of athleticism, if you will-- that is, a boy who did not play sports in high school might be more inclined to try out for a new sport in college than the girl who did not do any sports in high school. The smaller size of most women's teams I know means that the first-time athletes who do try out for the team play a larger role, and, because their level of athleticism is generally less than high-school athletes (initially), the athleticism of the entire team is less than the same school's men's team. I think the culture of athleticism I talked about earlier also makes it easier for boys who come into ultimate without any official sports experience to integrate more quickly into a team sport and contribute meaningfully earlier than girls without sports experience. Maybe...I'm not an expert, and I don't have data to support most of these claims, so feel free to post disagreements.

My last point is more nebulous than the others...but I feel that women's ultimate does not have the heroes or the following that men's ultimate has, particularly among women players themselves. This may not be the best example, but why are so many posters on RSD men? Why is there only one prominent woman blogger in the ultimate world? Why, at least in my experience, is it the men who teach me how to throw better, who serve as role models and teachers for the skills needed to be a good ultimate player? Why am I one of the few players on my team who knows who won college nationals on the women's side for the past three years? And, most importantly, why are the sidelines of high-level women's games still significantly smaller than the sidelines of men's games?

I went to watch the college championship in 2007, and looking at the difference in sideline audiences between games in the men's division and games in the women's division that year was educational. Sometimes I was one of a handful of spectators watching very talented players from teams like Stanford, Carleton, Wisconsin, and UCSB battling it out in bracket play, compared to the sidelines crowded with spectators in the same bracket play on the open side. Let me quote from the UPA writeup of the women's semifinal games:

"The most tragic element of this year’s women’s semifinal games was that no one was there to see them. The crowds gathered around the open semifinal blowouts, ignoring the double game point action happening on BOTH fields one and two." (http://college2007.upa.org/results/womens)

A part of that is because fewer women watch ultimate than men because fewer women play, but still, I see this happen again and again at college and club tournaments-- the spectators, women included, go to the open games and largely ignore the women's games. I know "the NBA is more fun to watch than the WNBA" argument, and maybe that's the way it will always be with women's sports, but at the very least I think women players should be watching other women play. Next time you're at a tournament with high-level women's teams and you're a woman with time to spare on Sunday, take a look at some of those teams playing on the far fields. I think you can learn by watching good players, and if you're a woman, why not watch those whose play is directly applicable to yours-- other women?

Maybe I'm reading into the spectator issue a bit too much, but I think it's a symptom of how women seem not to be as invested in ultimate as the men are. Women's ultimate will grow only if more women begin caring about the sport and about the other women who play it. Yes, support your men's team, but watch your rival school's women's team play, too. Cheer on the women's talent in your region. Get to know the women's talent in your region. Attend a women's clinic. Start a women's clinic. Go to regionals to watch if you don't qualify to play. Read a blog or an ultimate book. Become a role model on your team, encourage other women to play, and become invested in the success of the sport.

Don't get me wrong-- there are definitely lots of standout women who play and women who work very hard to improve the game for everyone, and you can read the new trend of having separate college tournaments for women (Centex and Pres. Day) as a desire for women to take control of their own tournaments and success (maybe...that whole situation is interesting and I don't know enough about the motivations behind choosing to have separate tournaments to comment more). But still, despite the clear contributions a lot of women (and men!) have made to the development of women's ultimate, I still heard disparaging comments (beyond the normal heckling) about women players from audience members watching the finals in 2007. There is still undeniably a difference in the level of play between college men and women's teams (not all teams, certainly, but a lot) that goes beyond basic facts of biology. I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers or to present a perfect analysis of why that is, but I do think if more women become invested in the sport, it can only help more women to play and to improve the quality of that play.

History and Legacy

2008-12-21T01:58:00.004-06:00

Team legacy and history seems to be one of these things that benefits larger teams. Teams like Carleton, Wisconsin, or Georgia have such a strong history of good play that good players from those areas are going to want to stay there. These schools also have very strong youth ultimate play underneath them in the area, and have an excellent pitch for those that are looking at colleges; namely continuing the legacy. Who doesn't want to be a part of a program that knows how to get it done, that has won in the past. It may not equate to national championships, but always contending for top spots in your region for limited bids to nationals is a great place to be. Long, winning histories tend to help out with things other than just recruitment though.

Established teams are often given first choice of practice times and fields. After all, these teams will actually be using the fields regularly and are not unreliable in that the school often knows them pretty well. Many of these teams build strong relationships with their pertinent administrators if just to get what they need to practice. Alumni can greatly help a team throughout a team's development. Teams can get alumni who are playing on local club teams to come out and coach them, whether that is full time or part time. Even if it is just to add some numbers to practice, this can greatly help younger players as they can solidly see what was needed to succeed on earlier teams, and what is needed now in the club scene. I have also heard that some alumni have donated or even created funds for their alma mater teams. Whether it is a scholarship or a temporary donation to help out that season, this can be a great help to otherwise cash-strapped teams.

Having a team legacy and history is not something that is given to you, but it must be created itself. My team has only been around for 10 years, but it has been difficult to create a lasting legacy or history. The team's identity changes quickly with each year's captain, but I am attempting to change that. The first thing that I noticed that was difficult with our history was that incoming captains often had no experience or help leading the team. Most of the teams had seniors leading everything the team did including drills and games. This leaves almost no room for underclassmen to develop their own leadership skills. One way to get them involved is to allow underclassmen to run certain drills when you have separation. We like to play 10-pull and I often appoint a junior to take on as captain of the offense. I think he is going to be a great future leader and want him to see what it is like leading a team even if it is just during practice.

In a break from tradition, I am also constructing a sort of "captain's handbook" to help out later captains. When I was thinking of drills to do, I at first just had to remember what we did last year and try to emulate that. Since the year has begun though I have been tweaking these drills to better suit our needs and writing these notes down. I plan to compile all of these thoughts into drill sheets with variations all in one notebook. I also plan on putting in guides to finding tournaments to go to, qualities that I looked for in selecting players for roles, and other things such as reports on what went well and wrong at tournaments concerning strategy. I have also been using a program called Evernote that makes it very easy to clip things from the internet, including pictures. Over the course of the year I have been clipping good Huddle articles, blog entries, and diagrams on plans to put this into the handbook. As much as I want this document to include my thoughts, future captains should see where I pulled those ideas from in case they want to make their own thoughts on the subject. I am hoping that this handbook will be passed from captain to captain now. This will start a history of help from captain to captain.

People other than captains can help out too. We have recently figured a way to help out with getting the field times and space that we need. Since our school has a board that governs all club sports, we have been trying to get people onto the committee. This requires a modicum of extra work every week; about 1 or 2 hours worth some weeks, sometimes less. This year we have two ultimate people on the board and can help directly influence any policies that may affect us as a team. This year, I am sure that I have one of the sophomores ready to take my spot on the board. While you do need to be voted onto the board, most people run unopposed every year due to general apathy towards the positions. While I can understand this, it looks great on a resume (as leadership position) and does not require that much work at all.

It is also in a small team's best interest to start building relationships with people that are useful such as fundraising or sponsorships. Recently we have been taking advantage of a connection that allows us to sell beer at the local NFL and NBA games. These are great fundraisers for us and bring in money both for the team and the members that participate. We are also building a relationship so that the team can continue to be considered for this opportunity in the future. Neither the NFL or NBA franchise looks like it is going anywhere anytime soon. Sponsorships have been a little more difficult to do in this tough economy, but we are still looking around for those.

Here's to hopes that this can help other new captains or team leaders that are having a difficult time with forging a new team our of nothing. A team history is built up over the time and it does require some hard work to get it going. You don't want this to just be a phase that people go through while in college, but rather a complete experience that they will remember. Hopefully this will mean they are willing to come around and help you out later.

P.S. I think I will be digitizing this "handbook" that I will be making. Keeping in mind that it is mostly my thoughts and opinions, I would be willing to help out other small teams with a copy of it. Let me know in the comments if this is something that teams are interested in.

A Small Introduction

2008-11-19T01:59:00.002-06:00

Hey all, so I am the new contributor to this blog. I am currently a senior and captain at Tulane in NOLA, in the South Region. This will be my third year playing ultimate having joined the team my sophomore year. Other than the team, I have played summer league and pick-up in NJ and Denver. I also have limited club experience, picking up with traveling teams.

While my experience level is not at the same level as many of the bloggers that are out there, I think I do have something to share, that being the experience of a small college in an area nearly devoid of ultimate. I will have a post to make soon, but right now there is prep work to be done for Celebracion in Austin, TX this weekend.

MV

Contributors

2008-11-16T21:45:00.010-06:00

I received an email a week or so ago from someone wanting to contribute to this blog, and I've added him as an author. I'll leave it up to him to introduce himself when he sees fit.

I am going to be studying abroad during the college series next spring, and because of that, the frequency of my posts will probably decrease and the relevance of them lessened by virtue of being away from college ultimate in the U.S. for a time, so it seems prudent that there are others who can add content to this bog. I'm also not going to act as a moderator in what he posts (though I might express disagreements in a post of my own). I'm only one voice in the ultimate world, and I don't necessarily want this blog to espouse only one opinion. What I do want this blog to be is a place where people who come from "bagel-fodder" teams or have something to say about smaller, developing programs can write about what they think. I don't think there's necessarily a need for consensus in those opinions, if only because it makes for interesting reading, and at best because it stirs up dialogue about complicated issues. Additionally, because I'm a woman player from the Central region, my posts are biased towards that region and division, so a contributer from the men's side is also nice for variety.

So, from now on look to see who that author of the post is (I'll continue to post under Bagel Fodder Ultimate), and if anyone else would like to contribute, and by contribute I mean be willing to submit some well-thought out and hopefully well-written posts to this blog, send me an email at bfultimate@gmail.com.

Location and the Quality Divide in College Ultimate

2008-11-03T17:23:00.012-06:00

Sorry it's been so long between posts. The end of the semester is coming, and with it comes seminar papers and sleepless nights. But here it goes...

Winter is rapidly approaching in the Midwest. Daylight is shrinking, and afternoon sunlight has been drastically cut back with daylight saving time. The leaves are coming down in droves, and every night gets a little colder than the last. Soon the first snow will come, and where I go to school, that snow will stay on the ground until at least March. The shift in the weather always makes me long for warmer country, and started me thinking about location and the role it plays in helping to explain the divide in quality I see between college ultimate teams, an issue I've been exploring in a series of posts.

Weather is the first clear byproduct of location. Schools on the west coast and in the south have an advantage in being able to practice outside year-round, but the success of programs in locations that don't offer those opportunities suggests it's not as large as an advantage as it first seems. Schools in cold climes need the facilities to hold indoor practice and conditioning, however, or else location does become a big factor in the success or failure of teams. Large universities have an advantage over smaller schools, mainly because they often have field houses or sometimes even indoor soccer fields to practice on, and nice indoor tracks to condition on. I'm sure indoor practice is not much fun wherever you are, but having seen nice field houses at large public universities and compared them to the World's Worst Indoor Track that my team practices on in the cold months, there is definitely a quality gradient to indoor facilities. Any indoor practice makes throwing artificially easy, however, so teams in colder areas do have some disadvantage after months of playing inside and then moving to the windy outside world, but schools that have large and nice facilities can certainly make up for that disadvantage through hard work...witness the success of Wisconsin ultimate, and Madison is not the most hospitable of places in the winter.

Location plays a larger role, I think, in its relation to a previous post on player and coach experience. There are definitely areas of the United States with a high concentration of ultimate players and established ultimate communities. In the Midwest, I'd say the strongest ultimate hotspots are the Twin Cities, Madison, and Chicago. You could also make arguments for Ann Arbor, Columbus, and St. Louis. Maybe Cincinnati and Iowa City, too. All these places have established ultimate leagues and at least one club team, some cities boasting top club teams in all three divisions (open, women, and mixed). College players can play for those teams and in those leagues and bring the skills they learn there to their college teams. Also, there's the potential for coaches to help out college teams in these areas that already have a lot of experienced ultimate players and an ultimate community. I think you can also make an argument for the benefit of high school ultimate programs in these areas and the probability that a student who graduates from, say, Madison West or Hopkins (Twin Cities area) will be more likely to attend a local university and play ultimate for them.

Maybe the perfect example of the potential advantage of location for college teams is that of the University of Washington's Element, a women's college team based in arguably the best ultimate city in the U.S., Seattle. The team picks up excellent players from local high schools like Nathan Hale, has coaches like Miranda Roth and Jenn Willson who play for Riot, an elite women's club team based in Seattle, and some of the strongest players on Element improve their game by playing with Riot. It's a nice symbiotic relationship, grounded in Seattle and the strong ultimate community that city has developed.

Location can also determine what tournaments a team attends, and the competition a team faces in general. Teams in remote locations or locations removed from other schools who play ultimate are at a disadvantage because traveling to tournaments that offer good competition becomes difficult, especially for young teams that may not have a core of players willing to shell out lots of money to travel. This is one more potential stumbling block in the way of teams trying to develop better programs.

One last point about location that I hadn't considered until a comment brought it up on a previous post is how some locations can serve as a distraction of sorts. I've never encountered this because fun outdoor activities directly linked to location where I go to school are limited, to, well, de-tasseling corn and, uh...biking? Some schools are lucky enough to be in an awesome location, and teams in these locations can lose potential ultimate players to the allure of rock climbing, backpacking, or (this is mind-blowing to my Midwest self) surfing. I'm not sure this is a huge factor, and I certainly can't speak from any personal experience, but I thought I'd mention it.

In relation to previous posts, I'd say location isn't as big as a factor in explaining the quality differences you see in college ultimate teams, but combined with other factors, it helps to explain some of that divide. This is particularly relevant when combined with the experience factor. Schools in or near cities with well-developed ultimate communities have a big advantage over schools who aren't in such a location. Travel distance is probably the second-most important location factor, and weather, despite being obnoxious, the least-important factor, assuming schools have some way to practice and condition while the snow falls. Though the Russians don't even bother with indoor ultimate...

Conference 1: Some Concerns and the Inevitable Rise of Divisions

2008-10-20T09:29:00.019-05:00

I said my next post would talk about location and the role it plays in college ultimate, but the news of Conference 1 seems important enough to warrant a post. I don't play for an open team, and if I did, my school's team would not be included in any type of C1 plan, but still, the implications of C1 will be felt, eventually, in the women's division, and will affect all teams, even bagel fodder teams, in some way.

I realize that details and UPA input are forthcoming on this whole issue, so some of these concerns might be moot in about a month, but I'm going to press ahead regardless. My main concern with C1 as it's proposed now is that by sectioning off a large block of talented teams for an entire season, developing programs won't be able to reap the benefits of playing against these regional and national powerhouses. A recent example: in the semis of the central open regionals this year, Iowa managed to come back eight straight points against the Hodags, losing on universe in a truly epic game. To deny this team the chance to play against Wisconsin in next year's season seems unfair, and there are other teams not in the 25 current C1 teams that many have said deserve to be there; Arizona is another notable example among many.

A better explanation of why these specific 25 teams were included would be beneficial, but the C1 system is still too inflexible for me. Teams change every year, and one of the best ways to develop a strong, consistent program is to play against strong, consistent programs every year, something that will be impossible or difficult for growing teams, as far as I can tell, under C1 as it's currently proposed.

Also, if your team has not been selected to play in C1, what are you playing for? A UPA finals that would inevitably be viewed as second-class? Teams mentally base their training on goals, big goals...going to nationals one year, getting into the top four the next year, winning it all the next. By making nationals hard for young programs to get to (I think the current one-game play in system needs to be...well, first, better explained and then, possibly expanded), I think it will stunt growth at schools that aren't included in the conference.

I have faith that these and other issues will be resolved, however, or at least better explained. On a larger scale, I think C1 heralds a quicker end to the current college series setup as we know it. Divisions are coming-- whether they come via C1 next year or through a joint UPA/Cultimate division system over the next few years, the days when teams like the one I play for can play against the top teams in the region are numbered. Though I realize that the more people start playing and the more people clamor for mainstream acceptance this is the way it has to be, a part of me will miss the current system, warts and all.

More than any other sport I've ever played, it feels like the possibilities are endless in ultimate, and I think this is because the small community of players and teams brush up against each other often in the current system, and this system offers unique experiences for players on weaker teams. This is the one sport I know of where I can not only watch my heroes, but also play against them. The rare times when my team gets to play against, I don't know, the Georgia Bosschers and Robyn Fennigs of the world, are when I'm at my most self-evaluative of my performance and trying my hardest to play as well as I can. What better way to test your talents than against the best college players in the game? Ultimate now lets anyone, regardless of their team's talent, test their personal talent against the best. And though my team could play 100 games against Wisconsin and not win a single one, it's still so damn fun to play a game like that once in a while-- games that let you see, firsthand, in a real sweat, dirt, and exhaustion kind of way, what it means to play high-level ultimate. You do that and think, "Wow, if I work hard enough, someday I could be there." You tell your entire team, "If you work your asses off, we could begin to be at that level." That experience, that firsthand sense that the possibilities in this sport are endless, would, I believe, be diminished within a divisional system. Consider the above my lament for the inevitable end of the current one-division system.

I hope that college ultimate can find a happy medium between the current C1 proposal and my naive dreams of every tiny liberal arts school having the opportunity to play against the Bella Donnas of the world. Whatever system is in place needs to provide healthy competition for teams that are at the top but also for the teams that are trying to get there. I don't think the current C1 system, as explained now, provides that.

Experience: Players and Coaches

2008-10-13T15:31:00.004-05:00

Sorry about the posting delay. Regionals this weekend and midsems this week have made things a little hectic around here, but without further ado...

Last time I wrote about the size of a school being a main factor in the sharp divide in quality of play between college ultimate teams. Comments on that post and some consideration of my own have led me to this post, addressing the experience question. For this post, experience can be divided in two parts: player experience and coach experience.

First, player experience. Clearly, the more experienced players you have on your team, the greater advantage your team will have. I mentioned Carleton College last time and the fact that they attract ultimate players who have played in high school and earlier because of the quality of their program. This gives them a huge advantage in that (I imagine) they don't have to spend nearly as much time on teaching the basics to their players. Size also plays a role here, as I mentioned last week: having enough players to field an A and a B team or, early on in the season, an X and Y team, gives rookies experience they will need to succeed in the competitive spring season. Legacy gives advantages to schools with strong programs because players who are extremely committed to ultimate are, I would guess, more likely to attend schools with good programs. Witness the number of junior world and national competitors on Carleton and Wisconsin's rosters in the past few years (I'm biased towards the Central region and thinking of the women's side, but it's probably true for the men's side and other regions, too).

Having a good club team in the area also helps with player experience. Club teams can, as a commentator on my last post said, take a college team "under their wing" and give promising players exposure to high-level ultimate. These players can come back after the club season with this experience and help out their college teams.

Player experience like this tends to create a feedback loop of sorts. The best high school players tend to play for the best college teams, who build a legacy of greatness and keep attracting the best young players. The best club teams tend to develop talent from the best college teams or invite players from the best college teams if they don't have open tryouts. This creates a bias towards teams that are already strong. Enter my second point: coach experience, or the experience coaches can bring and develop in younger teams.

As a college captain myself, I can attest to the difficulties of serving the dual role as a team captain and coach. Just because you're a good player doesn't mean you'll make a good coach, and though I have more experience than most players on my team, I still have much to learn about the game and sometimes feel overwhelmed with the task of teaching and leading a young team. Having a knowledgeable coach is, in my opinion, one of the main ways for teams to push themselves to a higher competitive level and even out the playing field in college ultimate, in particular, college women's ultimate.

Gwen Ambler has already beat me to this point with an excellent article she wrote for MSSUI. She writes, first, that coaches will usually have more experience than even a veteran college player, and this experience can help the team decide what to focus on to improve most effectively. I've found developing and finding drills for my team to focus on specific improvements difficult, and I imagine a coach would help with this immensely. Second, a coach can see things in games that players simply can't see because they are never entirely off the field in an observer position. Yup...I play probably 75 - 90 percent of the points in any given game just because I am one of the most experienced players on my team, and this means that I miss out on the "big picture" of the game, the view that can only come from watching everything from the sideline. Third, a coach can help with all the logistics of leading a team that make it difficult for college captains who are both trying to play and lead on the field and who also have to deal with calling lines, playing time, and watching what works and doesn't work against opponents. Ambler has this to say in her article:

"Many coached players probably do not realize what an advantage they have over the un-coached squads that are forced to have captains do everything from teaching new players to calling lines to adjusting defenses mid-game to planning practices to leading the team on the field."

And I agree with every word.

I also think a coach adds legitimacy to a college ultimate program. I'm going to devote a later post to this, but I feel like a coach can help focus a team and motivate them to go beyond their usual limits. Especially with new programs, having a coach set a regular training and conditioning schedule can, from the very start, establish the tone of a team. Ambler mentions UCLA as the perfect example of a young program that established itself very quickly as a national contender because of strong coaching.

As usual, there is always an exception, and the notable exception this time is Wisconsin, who has not needed a coach to establish both the men and women's teams as a top or the top college ultimate program in the country. I don't want to pretend to know how they do it, but it speaks volumes of the intensity, dedication, talent, and focus of the captains who organize everything. Like the size issue I addressed last week, having a coach isn't a necessity for success, but because Wisconsin is the one notable exception I can think of, I think it does give a big advantage to teams who have coaches.

So, in conclusion, I strongly encourage players who want to develop more experience for themselves and for their college teams to try out for a local club team. Even non-elite club teams have experienced players from which to learn, and at tournaments you will get to play against some very good players, which is in itself a learning process. My one year of club ultimate has helped me recognize what I need to focus on as a player and has exposed me to new tactics and drills that I use with the college team I captain. Also, if you live by a college that has an ultimate program, contact them to see if they'd like help with coaching. I think anyone with some club ultimate experience and a desire to spread ultimate knowledge and love of the game can be useful as a coach to a college team, serving as a separate set of eyes on the field, giving the team a sense of legitimacy, and helping ease the burden on college captains who have to try to fill the role of captain, coach, and, oftentimes, an essential player on the field.

Some teams, unfortunately, are located in areas that don't have a large pool of available coaching talent or much of an ultimate scene outside of college players. That's a little preview of my next post, focusing on location, coming soon to this blog, assuming I get through midsems week.

The Size Issue

2008-10-02T16:51:00.008-05:00

I think there are a few main reasons for the sharp difference in quality of play between different college ultimate teams. In the next few posts, I'd like to outline my thoughts on the causes of these differences. I'm going to start with the most obvious and most important reason: the size of the school.

The obvious point is that the bigger the school, theoretically, the more people will likely turn out for the ultimate team. But simply having a lot of people come out for the team does not necessarily guarantee quality of players. Rather, I think it has to do more with the options available to college athletes at small schools compared to large schools.

Say I'm a decent high school soccer player-- good enough to play for the varsity team, in shape, committed, accustomed to the rigors and expectations of playing on a sports team, but not good enough to play on a travel team and not good enough to take the high school team to the state finals. I go to Big Public University X with a D-I soccer program, and there's no chance that I'd be able to play soccer there. So, after going to the student organizations fair, some nice people give me a flier about this sport named ultimate for which you don't need prior experience, as much of a time commitment (this is debatable considering some of the top college ultimate teams in the US...but in general, less time), but I still have the opportunity to compete in a sport against other schools, potentially at a national level. Big Public University X gains not just a player for their team, but an athlete who has played a team sport before and knows the expectations associated with playing a team sport.

I'm the same decent high school soccer player, and I decide to go to Liberal Arts College Y. There, the coaches have been courting me to play soccer for their D-III team, and I go to school knowing that I'll have a spot on the team for four years. I never give the ultimate team another thought. So, smaller schools and their less-rigorous athletics take potential athletes away from ultimate teams and ultimate teams at larger schools, in general, will get more athletic players coming from a high school varsity sports background.

The second issue with size is the ability for large schools to have tryouts and field A and B teams. Because they have, say, 10,000 or even 40,000 people at school, this means that when 20 or 30 new people sign up for ultimate, they can hold tryouts and take the best players in the group. At a smaller school, odds are only 5 or 10 new players will try out for the ultimate team, and captains there do not always have the luxury of cutting people or forming two teams.

There is, of course, one notable exception to this: Carleton College. This small liberal arts school in Minnesota has consistently fielded two national-caliber college teams and has enough players "left over" to form other teams. I don't know the entire history behind the Carleton ultimate program, but I do know that they a) attract athletes from other sports to play for them and I'd assume that b) because of their reputation, high school ultimate players come to Carleton to play ultimate. The question is how Carleton initially started its excellent program.

I also don't want to make a blanket statement that all large schools have good or even decent ultimate teams. I've beaten schools that have literally thousands more students than the school I attend (and boy, does that feel good). In general, though, I think that large schools have a big advantage over small schools because the pool of available talent is greater, and because it is greater, large schools have the luxury of cutting weaker players from their A-team rosters.

I'm also, of course, just basing this off of my own experience with college ultimate and what I've read about other teams. I'd love feedback or corrections (that goes for any post).

Bagel Fodder Ultimate: The Introduction

2008-09-30T10:53:00.004-05:00

The name for this blog was inspired by a comment on Hector Valdivia's blog, on his post entitled Splinter Cell. The post talked about the diverging standards of play in ultimate today, and the need for the UPA to adapt to these changing standards. The part that interested me was the difference between college "programs" (schools that consistently make it to Nationals) and colleges that can field a team for sectionals, maybe regionals, but consistently serve as "bagel fodder" for larger, more established programs. (Being "bageled" means not being able to score a point against the opposing team, utter defeat, the hole in the middle of a bagel, the zero score). The comment came from someone named David talking about the need for weaker teams to fill out sections in less-populated regions, and I've reproduced it below:

"One thing about these smaller school teams - in some regions there really isn't a lot of small college teams (or big teams for that matter) - so you might find a college div 2 with only handful of teams in say the southwest region - and even then the 'div 1' needs these teams to fill out sectionals... even if they are bagel fodder."

His point is interesting, and Hector's post is also interesting, but the term "bagel fodder" got me thinking about my own experiences with ultimate, because, the truth is, I play for just such a college bagel fodder team. A women's bagel fodder team at that, and though we qualify for regionals sometimes and win roughly half the games we play, I still play for a team that has been bageled (or almost bageled) by nationally recognized programs. I also read a fair number of ultimate blogs, and none of them have ever focused on the experiences of a small college team, let alone a small women's college team. So, here it is, the bagel fodder blog, tales from the chumpionship bracket.

A little about myself: I'm a junior at a small (solidly D3) Midwestern school and this is the beginning of my third year playing ultimate at the college level and my first year serving as a college captain. I played pickup ultimate in high school and my first experience with real ultimate was at summer league the summer before my first year of college. I also play for a decent (not-quite bagel fodder, middle-of-the-pack at regionals) mixed club team. Ultimate is something I enjoy immensely, it's the first sport I've ever had any talent in, and I do what I can with the time and resources I have here (more on that later, I'm sure). I hope to address issues that many small college teams face playing ultimate today, particularly the women's side of the story.

I have set up an email address for questions: bfultimate@gmail.com

Stay tuned for more substantive posts later.