Apologies to all outside London receiving this on BD or UU...
We are planning some changes to London Summer League this year. We're going to be splitting Summer League into two parts: a 3-4 week introductory 5-on-5 tournament, aimed at hat teams and corporate teams, and a 9 week version of the traditional Summer League. We're also trialling two additional venues. Read on if you want to know more details and why we're doing this. There is some time to for us to make small adjustments - so we're interested in feedback or ideas. You can email me back; or use the London Ultimate forum; or I guess there could be a conversation on facebook for people that like that sort of thing. - Post feedback in the forum: http://londonultimate.com/forum/ (requires registration); or... - Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/London-Ultimate/436353630505?ref=hl We don't think the LSL is doing enough to help us bring new players to Ultimate - in fact we think the structure we've had for the last couple of years may almost be doing the opposite. The big change is that we are going to use May to run a 3-week Start-Up league. . We intend to make this a 5-a-side league - pitches will probably be done with cones not lines; and we may even switch to 3-a-side or 4-a-side if that works better for the numbers in any given location. . We will run "hat" teams to enable people to enter as individuals and we will be asking for your help as we want plenty of experienced players in the hat please. . Our favourite exception to hat-teams is your work team. We want corporate teams to enter this competition. You only need people to come for 3 weeks; and complete beginners that are trying out ultimate for up to three weeks are not required to become members for that period (we'll provide more details about this later). . If you're desperate to play with your mates we probably won't stop you... but we do want to discourage groups of experienced and strong players just playing together. . Depending on numbers we may run the Hat leagues separately from the work-team-leagues. . There will be FOUR locations for this competition. In addition to Balham and Clissold we are going to run leagues at Richmond Old Deer Park and East London Community Sports Association (in West Ham - where Fire train). You might notice that these are roughly West and East - and both of these venues are SHORTER walks from their respective nearest stations than Balham and Clissold are from theirs. . If we can make it work there'll be a finals night between the winners of each "region" - or perhaps an all-stars team from each region. This will be in June. And there will be a party. But I love Summer League the way it is... why are you messing with it? 1. We know that some people are really keen and happy on 13-weeks of LSL competition. But we also know that the length of that commitment puts off newer potential players and teams. 2. We think a 3-4 week section will be really easy for people to sign up to; we hope that the now shorter "main league" (9 weeks) will also seem less daunting to someone after they've done the Start-Up league. 3. This way we can have two parties. Si is pushing this because he's always on family holiday for the August party. 4. We want to expand the geography that we cover with LSL. We know you love Balham and Clissold. A 3-4 week Start-Up League is a great way to test out some new locations - and it will help us figure out how many people (new or existing players) come and play at these locations that can't or don't get to Balham/Clissold. 5. 5-a-side is beginner-friendly (compared to 7-a-side) 6. Many players quite reasonably don't want or can't afford the time to spend an evening every week teaching people to play Ultimate. But 3 weeks in May relatively early in the year is a small enough ask that we hope you'll sign up. More news on entering etc will follow later in March Si Si Hill, UK Ultimate <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] Tel: 0844 8045949 Skype: sihill22 __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed
