Coed week, part II, Nationals
Continuing to kvetch, I have a problem with the coed nationals being at the same time and location as regular nationals. I don't think there is a question anymore of trying to build coed, because there are a tremendous number of coed teams out there. This has made Nationals harder to host because of the number of fields required. How many sites are there that have the 24 or more fields in reasonable proximity to each other that will gladly accept ultimate players?
Because of the paucity of masters teams, it still makes sense to make them part of nationals because you won't get the participation otherwise (assuming this is a sector that people want to maintain).
If you split off coed, the next question is what purpose do you want Coed Nationals to serve?
If you really want to showcase coed, let the elite players play both. And since we don't have the resources, time, or stamina to host tournaments where people can play both (unlike tennis where you'll find competitors at Wimbledon and the US open playing both at times, although note that you never hear the results of mixed doubles anymore, I actually had to look it up on their websites to see if they still played mixed doubles) and no one is going to be able to practice with both squads through a season, then move the coed nationals to the the end of June. The Labor Day version still wasn't good enough, because people still had to pick, and if they picked open, they weren't practicing coed and the quality suffered. The way it is set up now, coed consists of the players that can't make the time commitment to play elite, or can't make the elite teams, and this is their only chance of going to the show.
If you want to grow the game, then keep it the way it is, with Nationals at the same time, but preferably somewhere else. If you have it on a different weekend, you'll have cherry pickers that will do both. The one time it was hosted during Labor Day was the worst of both worlds. You still had some open players playing, and the season was ill-defined.
So, grow the game, or have coed be the best it can be. Tough question.
My answer? Because I don't want it played at the same site as the Open and Womens, and I still don't have a tremendous amount of respect for the game at that level, use it to grow the game and have it during the fall, but at another site. I don't refer to it as co-dead for nothing...
Next: Coed, Summer Leagues
Because of the paucity of masters teams, it still makes sense to make them part of nationals because you won't get the participation otherwise (assuming this is a sector that people want to maintain).
If you split off coed, the next question is what purpose do you want Coed Nationals to serve?
If you really want to showcase coed, let the elite players play both. And since we don't have the resources, time, or stamina to host tournaments where people can play both (unlike tennis where you'll find competitors at Wimbledon and the US open playing both at times, although note that you never hear the results of mixed doubles anymore, I actually had to look it up on their websites to see if they still played mixed doubles) and no one is going to be able to practice with both squads through a season, then move the coed nationals to the the end of June. The Labor Day version still wasn't good enough, because people still had to pick, and if they picked open, they weren't practicing coed and the quality suffered. The way it is set up now, coed consists of the players that can't make the time commitment to play elite, or can't make the elite teams, and this is their only chance of going to the show.
If you want to grow the game, then keep it the way it is, with Nationals at the same time, but preferably somewhere else. If you have it on a different weekend, you'll have cherry pickers that will do both. The one time it was hosted during Labor Day was the worst of both worlds. You still had some open players playing, and the season was ill-defined.
So, grow the game, or have coed be the best it can be. Tough question.
My answer? Because I don't want it played at the same site as the Open and Womens, and I still don't have a tremendous amount of respect for the game at that level, use it to grow the game and have it during the fall, but at another site. I don't refer to it as co-dead for nothing...
Next: Coed, Summer Leagues
posted by Alex de Frondeville at 1:01 PM
6 Comments:
Get more support by insisting Open, Women's, and Masters are moved to a different weekend. That way, Coed thinks they won by keeping their hard-won spot in the spotlight.
The one year that Coed was a separate series, it was a big burden on the UPA Administration. We thought it might help spread the work flow more evenly over the year, but it created some inefficiencies of scale. Also, it takes at least a couple man-months of staff time to set up the event and to work it, so even though you need less work for each one, having the extra event adds a lot.
I will also generalize by saying the Open and Women players prefer that their two divisions be kept together, they don't care one way or the other about Masters, and they'd prefer that Mixed be separate or subordinated.
I really don't think there is much debate about the quality of an Open/Women's Nationals-level player compared to a Mixed Nationals-level player. The composition of both World Games teams (all single-sex players) attests to this. (This isn't to say that every Open player is better than every Mixed player, blah blah.) And the true Mixed teams generally don't do that great at those summer Mixed tournaments that are open to all.
It's a thorny issue, no doubt. The UPA must serve the needs of its members, or those members will leave. The Mixed series is a big benefit to a lot of people. If we were to go to an alternate universe where the UPA never set up a Mixed series, I really don't know what ultimate would look like. In the Ultimate History book, Joey Gray claims that had she set up a separate organization for Mixed, it would have been bigger than the UPA within three years. I think this is a gross exaggeration, but it's worthwhile to consider where these people came from and what they would be doing without a Mixed series.
(You can't just assume that everyone who plays Mixed now is playing because of the Mixed series, or that most UPA growth is due to Mixed. College play (which is decidedly single-sex) has been booming the last few years, with more than half of the UPA members paying College dues. There has also been a great improvement in catching scammers who played but didn't pay.)
Should all Divisions get equal billing? Should Masters be expanded to 16 teams and be given a Sunday finals? Would it bother you if your division's final was held at the same time as another final? Do you feel that it's important for your division to be held at the same site as another division? What if they don't feel the same way about you?
What's best for the UPA? The UPA represents the players, so they almost have to treat Mixed as a full and equal division, even if they know that the quality of play isn't as high as in single-sex play. But it's tricky because the UPA also represents the sport, and that means that they have to present the game at its best to the outside world. As George and Henry said, it's open to debate what this means, whether it's marketing how well we all can get along, or whether we show our best players.
Hm... so, you agree that leaving it in the fall is best for growth, and keeping it on the same weekend makes sense. You just want it moved to a different site, because... why was that, again? Oh, because "Nationals [is] harder to host because of the number of fields required". This seems to imply that we would be playing somewhere other than Sarasota, if it wasn't for those meddling coed players. Personally, this seems like a sketchy argument at best. Is there something wrong with Sarasota? Does the site need to be able to move for some reason?
Frankly, it seems to come down to you not wanting mixed play to be able to share the spotlight with open and women's. While I'd agree that mixed has less talent than open and women's, so does masters, and you seem OK with them playing alongside open and women's.
Maybe this is because, as you said, you pity masters' small number of teams. But that only explains why masters doesn't bother you -- it doesn't explain why mixed does. So maybe it's because there's a wider understanding (particularly among the masters players) that masters is a lower level of play, so it doesn't threaten open/women's place in the limelight the way uppity mixed play does. In the same vein, maybe it's because masters doesn't get a Sunday final, while mixed does.
The bottom line is that there's no administrative need to move mixed to a different site. In fact, there's plenty of reason not to. If it bothers you that some delusional mixed players think the level of talent in mixed is the same as open, you should get over it. Maybe I'm full of shit and this isn't what bothers you at all. But given that Sarasota is more or less the permanent site right now, the field space argument strikes me as an excuse.
The only thing worth debating, I think, is whether the mixed finals should get their own Sunday time slot. Having three finals in seperate times makes it tough for people who want to watch all three and be at work the next day. Maybe mixed should always get the last time slot? Seems reasonable to me, at least for the next few years.
Re: Sarasota as permanent host. There are valid complaints from the West Coast about this. There are no nonstop flights from the Bay Area (to pick one spot) to Tampa, which is still 1-1.5 hours to the site, then games start at 5:30 am PT the next day. It's a good site, but unfair to require them every year to come east. When you require 30 fields instead of 22 (O/W/Masters) or 16 (O/W), your options are restricted.
Re: Masters. As long as they stay out of the way, there is no harm in having them there. However, there has been a dangerous precedent, which I protested against to Deaver. They tried to make or did make the Masters final a "showcase" game where no other game was played at the same time, thus dictating the whole Saturday schedule for all divisions, including the most important one, mine.
Re: get over it. In a sense, this is like grade inflation. I say, Tarr, you're getting your A, what do you care whether everyone else in the class gets an A? While the _most_ important thing is that _you_ know that you've earned the A, there is also some importance in the fact that the rest of the world, such as it is, does not know that you are any different from the others.
Re: Sunday final times. It would be perfectly acceptable to the Open Division if the Open finals were held at the same time as the Mixed finals, on whatever field is available ("where the MacGregor sits is the head of the table"). Besides the fans, there are also the up to 8 teams who think they might be playing in the finals who also want to catch flights out on Sunday. In effect, Open/Women's teams are being told by the UPA that they have to stay over Sunday night too so that coed can get their day in the sun.
Let me think about this. I've been to at least 5 Nationals. Of those, I have watched a total of zero, null, nill co-ed finals. But I have watched/participated all the open and womens finals at each nationals.
I would bet that most open/women's players would have the same level of participation in watching the co-ed finals.
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