Apologies, no idea why yahoo decided to send half an email. I think there's a few different questions being somewhat jumbled together here, it might help to think about the following separately.
- Should the UKU move away from the WFDF approved spirit scoring system, and if so what system should be adopted? - How do we interpret the WFDF system - is average spirit 10, 18 or 20? - What do we need to do to enable teams to interpret the system? Moving away from WFDF is a big step and not one that seems justified to me. Everyone's vision of the perfect system will be somewhat different, of course, but I don't think there are many who strongly object to WFDF. Inventing our own system in the interests of only minor tweaks like shifting the scale from 0-20 to -10-10 seems a bit pointless. The answer to the second question, as I have said, is just 10. Average is (surely?) by definition not excellent. As to the issue of clogging up britdisc, does the UKU need a discussion forum? Yet another issue to consider! Cheers, Robbie ________________________________ From: Robbie Finch <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tue, 17 May, 2011 20:55:50 Subject: Re: [BD] Spirit Scoring I think there's a few different questions being somewhat jumbled together here, it might help to think about the following separately. - Should the UKU move away from the WFDF approved spirit scoring system, and if so what system should be adopted? - How do we interpret the WFDF system - is average spirit 10, 18 or 20? - ________________________________ From: Andrew Moss <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tue, 17 May, 2011 19:47:28 Subject: Re: [BD] Spirit Scoring In reply to Gary (and Smatt, who pointed it out in a PM) with regards to what I posted earlier - the unfair 'downgrading' or 'upgrading' of scores from teams who have been unlucky and played all bad spirited teams, or lucky with exceptionally good spirited teams, could possibly be addressed by normalising scores with regards to specific teams' average scores, I'll have a proper think about it later. I'm convinced if all factors are considered, a formula for normalising scores across teams across the different categories is the way to go. The following message is on behalf of Scott Martin (who has trouble signing up to britdisc on his email, so direct any replies to magnitude10 at hotmail.co.uk). Sent by Scott Anthony Martin: I'm taking the chance to weigh in here as captain of a team often referred to as 'badly spirited' - Predominantly due to 'bad' language and physicality. Firstly, 'acceptable physicality' varies team to team. As a general rule, I have found that teams/players lower down the tour rankings or those with little/no experience of higher level play detest contact of any type, whilst those at the opposite end of the spectrum expect, or even relish it. Ultimate is a 'non-contact' sport in so much as football or basketball are. Some contact is deemed necessary to allow the game to be played in a logical manner. By this I mean that if two people are running side by side for a disc, arms moving, there will inherently be some shoulder or arm contact, and provided neither player attempts to impede the other, this is totally acceptable. Furthermore, if a player cuts towards a defender and the defender chooses to hold his ground and thus contact occurs (offensive foul on the defensive player), then in my eyes, this is totally acceptable, and indeed just good defence. However, I have come across many teams - particularly lower ranked teams - who will call a foul on you as a defender and act as though you've punched them in the face and called their grandmother names, whilst throwing allllll the toys out of the pram. This discrepancy is tough to resolve, but I feel that by being made aware, perhaps teams and players who had not realised that this occurs could be more understanding when it does. 'Bad' language is something that has always bothered me. Perhaps being from a working class, northern background, I don't see curse words as offensive, provided they're not directed at me. And rarely do I see or hear that happen on a frisbee pitch. Yet I've had many complaints made towards myself or my teammates who have, for example, been broken for a score and in frustration shouted "Oh for f*cks sake". Why is that an issue? Name one sport in the world where passion is not allowed to flow, and where athletes do not use some choice words to do so. I think people need to lighten up in this regard, and only penalise teams who use language as a weapon, rather than as an excuse to vent at themselves. I'm not against an 'out of twenty' system, but I absolutely HATE the final question of 'your spirit compared to theirs' and have never even heard mention of a team who has marked their own team down in favour of giving points to the other without somewhat ignoring the question to do so. As a result, 18 is surely the "best" mark you can obtain, without penalising yourself? Therefore I start at 18 and for negative influences I deduct marks, and if they display things that I consider excellent spirit (eg calling you 'in' during a sudden death point knowing it likely costs them the game, and so on), then I'll somewhat ignore the deduction to my own team and award bonus points. Scoring 18, 19 or 20 is not terribly unusual from my teams. As has been raised, this can be favourable to teams who face my teams, and be a negative impact on my own team, if every team we face gives a base value of 10 and works around that. Frankly, if we hold spirit in such high regard, I feel that benefit of the doubt should give all teams maximum marks until they prove that they do not deserve such status, and do things to lose points. As a result, I like to work top-down, not from the middle. I would propose the following amendment to the spirit system, to produce a scoresheet that looks somewhat like so: http://i55.tinypic.com/24pw020.jpg Scott __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed
