Bex, I thought this might come up, and I take your point, as I do
know nothing about how the better teams find playing Texas.
But for me, in Texas, I travelled (and quite far too, to beautiful
Arkansas) to some great tournaments that were enjoyable and
competitive, and sure for the top teams life is a bit more tough (as
I have just been told). My experience of ultimate is more based from
the lower end of playing ultimate, where you don't have the players
to play with the big boys in the top part of the Tour.
For us lower teams, we have two stark choices. Not bother with the
Tour at all, and go to other tournaments (which to my knowledge no
club team has considered). Or go to the tour events, which
consequently carries a lot of commitment from players.
The question is which part of ultimate do you want to develop, the
top teams or the bottom teams? The tour is at full capacity and is
stopping the sport from growing. It is great for having multiple high
quality games at the top end, it is a struggle to keep up with at the
bottom.
maybe less is more?
On 14 May 2007, at 13:33, Rebecca Forth wrote:
For an elite team texas is an awful example. Doublewide the open
sectional
winners each season suffer at nationals and sometimes at regionals
due to
low levels of local competitions.
They along with the women's teams have to travel to chicago, emerald
classic, colorado cup to get good games. They have even started
their own
elite tournament texas shootout - that they had to offer prize
money to
attract the bigger teams- because the travelling is so expensive.
SO if you are using Texas Ultimate as evidence for scrapping the
tour I
think you're seriously barking up the wrong tree. If you spoke to
any of
the players on teams from the southern region competing at
nationals they
would tell you (as they have told me) that they are seriously
envious at
the UK Tour. Infact it was the idea of the tour that sparked off the
Houston CSS (competitve summer series) idea.
Bex
Is the tour creaking at its joints?
Yep, it is time to give it up. We can afford to move to warm up
tournaments, go along to European tournaments, and have our own
sectionals, regionals, nationals/EUCF regionals and the European
finals. Why not? Give me a good reason why not?
Here is why it works:
I spent time playing ultimate in Texas, where distances to travel are
huge but I still went to many tournaments local and far away, and I
went to Sectionals and lost every game. But the ultimate was more fun
and there was no pressure to 'have' to go to tournaments. Sectionals
are competitive events for the smaller teams and a necessary step for
the big Texas teams like Doublewide. Then regionals is a tough
tourney for say Doublewide as there are only a very few qualifying
spots. And nationals is well just tough.
From my experience in America playing with a bunch of students out
of College Station, playing at the bottom end of a sectionals,
regionals, etc structure is fine because of the quantity of other
tournaments that fill the other weekends.
So in the UK we could have a sectionals, which may be an necessary
step for a big team like Leeds, but not so competitive. Student teams
could go as a warm up for the student season, fun teams could go to
play for fun (cos thats what it is all about). Then regionals would
be the next step, probably the end of a tough season for my club in
Southampton (there could be only 4 regions, or just 2). Then a
nationals to select the top teams to go towards EUCF, or nationals
would be the new EUCF west region and our regionals would feed into
the EUCF region, whatever, is it so hard to imagine.
There are plenty of open tournaments through the year, and mixed ones
too. I could go to Paganello, Dive Hard, Windmill Windup, Brugges,
Copa Cobana, Brighton Beyond and I think I would be quite happy
(might have miss spelt one of those, but you get my point). If I then
also went to a mixed and open sectionals plus qualified through to
regionals that would be 10 tournaments, or almost one a month. Is
that not a good ultimate calendar or have you all got nothing else to
do with your weekends?
It is time to move on.
Scot
--
**********************************************************
John Armitage
PhD Student
Geology and Geophysics, NOC
http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/gg/people/armitage/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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--
Rebecca Forth
Colt Foundation Research Fellow
Portex Anaesthesia, Intensive Therapy & Respiratory Unit
Institute of Child Health
30 Guilford Street
London WC1N 1EH
Human Performance Laboratory
London Institute for Sport & Exercise
The Archway Campus
2-10 Highgate Hill
London N19 5LN
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