Coed week, part III, summer league
Now for the coed that I like:
Before you get the impression that I am a complete coed hater, I have been playing some form of coed for the last 15 years. And like I mentioned before, it is great for what it is. An opportunity to socialize with your friends and members of the opposite sex. When I first started playing coed, it was in the Boston Corporate League, and it was a team centered at General Electic Aircraft Engines in Lynn, where Jim Parinella and I were working at the time. Since we were also hanging out with Dennis McCarthy and he naturally didn't have a job, we invited him to play with us. In the early days, the league was 6-1 because of the paucity of women players.
After 8 years, 2 championships, and only 3 years of missing the semifinals (and with most of us already having moved on to other jobs), we dissolved the team and joined up with Lincoln Tech. That year we kept up the cycle of winning every 3 years, including winning the 5-2, 4-3 unification bout against the Forch's stacked Brownie Inferno after persuading them to play us even though we had been drinking heavily for the previous 2 hours while heckling them in their 4-3 final (they didn't want us to hurt them through drunken play).
After a few years of Tech, and watching that team slowly get old and wither away, we merged with another team, CUD, and became SwillMillGrill, which has to be by far the oldest team by average age in the league, and probably has a roster of like 40, but we are lucky to get 10 people to every game. And there are often more children than adults at the game. Like I said, we are very old.
When we played with GE, it was the Jim, Dennis, and Al show, to the extent that in one game, we beat the Scotty 'Kid' Runkel-led Puffins 6 against 7. Their cheer at the end of the game was "They beat us with 6, or was it 3, great game GE". Ahhhh, those were heady days. However, for all that, our women scored more goals than the other team's women in almost every game.
Now with Swill, we are playing 4-3 and having fun swilling (well, I hate losing at any level!), milling (we have more injured or non-players come out to these games then we have subs, usually), and grilling (post-game beers and the portable grill).
Back in the early 90's the corporate league scene was small but growing. Then it developed into 3 divisions for the end of season tournament. Now it is an 80-team league. So in terms of growth, in Boston at least, coed is where its at. But again, while there are certain teams that try and put together stacked squads and try and win it all, it is far more of a 'thing to do during the summer.' Most of these players will NOT play in the coed series in the fall. Which is fine, as long as the UPA can get dues out of these players anyway...
I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make here, except that at the ground level, there is lots of coed, and probably more than the single-sex leagues (probably combined), but that doesn't mean that coed should get the billing it does. Coed works because of the social aspect. Also, it would be incredibly frustrating to be a beginner female player and playing with a team of other low-level players. You think even good women's ultimate can be a ding-fest right now, imagine how quickly the newbie women would give up.
That's all the blather I can do right now.
Next: Coed week, part IV, Strategies
Before you get the impression that I am a complete coed hater, I have been playing some form of coed for the last 15 years. And like I mentioned before, it is great for what it is. An opportunity to socialize with your friends and members of the opposite sex. When I first started playing coed, it was in the Boston Corporate League, and it was a team centered at General Electic Aircraft Engines in Lynn, where Jim Parinella and I were working at the time. Since we were also hanging out with Dennis McCarthy and he naturally didn't have a job, we invited him to play with us. In the early days, the league was 6-1 because of the paucity of women players.
After 8 years, 2 championships, and only 3 years of missing the semifinals (and with most of us already having moved on to other jobs), we dissolved the team and joined up with Lincoln Tech. That year we kept up the cycle of winning every 3 years, including winning the 5-2, 4-3 unification bout against the Forch's stacked Brownie Inferno after persuading them to play us even though we had been drinking heavily for the previous 2 hours while heckling them in their 4-3 final (they didn't want us to hurt them through drunken play).
After a few years of Tech, and watching that team slowly get old and wither away, we merged with another team, CUD, and became SwillMillGrill, which has to be by far the oldest team by average age in the league, and probably has a roster of like 40, but we are lucky to get 10 people to every game. And there are often more children than adults at the game. Like I said, we are very old.
When we played with GE, it was the Jim, Dennis, and Al show, to the extent that in one game, we beat the Scotty 'Kid' Runkel-led Puffins 6 against 7. Their cheer at the end of the game was "They beat us with 6, or was it 3, great game GE". Ahhhh, those were heady days. However, for all that, our women scored more goals than the other team's women in almost every game.
Now with Swill, we are playing 4-3 and having fun swilling (well, I hate losing at any level!), milling (we have more injured or non-players come out to these games then we have subs, usually), and grilling (post-game beers and the portable grill).
Back in the early 90's the corporate league scene was small but growing. Then it developed into 3 divisions for the end of season tournament. Now it is an 80-team league. So in terms of growth, in Boston at least, coed is where its at. But again, while there are certain teams that try and put together stacked squads and try and win it all, it is far more of a 'thing to do during the summer.' Most of these players will NOT play in the coed series in the fall. Which is fine, as long as the UPA can get dues out of these players anyway...
I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make here, except that at the ground level, there is lots of coed, and probably more than the single-sex leagues (probably combined), but that doesn't mean that coed should get the billing it does. Coed works because of the social aspect. Also, it would be incredibly frustrating to be a beginner female player and playing with a team of other low-level players. You think even good women's ultimate can be a ding-fest right now, imagine how quickly the newbie women would give up.
That's all the blather I can do right now.
Next: Coed week, part IV, Strategies
posted by Alex de Frondeville at 6:15 PM
2 Comments:
I sit corrected. I didn't even think of that perspective. The coed team I'm currently playing with has very good women (Teens and other old ex-Godiva players) so I have no problems throwing to most of them. Although even now, I often have to make an extra calculation when I'm about to throw to some of them; are there any guys in the area, how open are they, can they read the hammer I'm about to throw, how much mustard am I going to have to take off?
When I was playing with GE, we had so few women that we made sure to make them feel involved, albeit mostly scoring goals because with their nascent throwing skills (none of them had really even thrown a frisbee before we dragged them out), they were frisbee motels (frisbees check in, but they don't check out).
And I definitely witness all the time what you say about teams icing their women, especially beginner women. So it makes sense that they would be more inclined to stick with it if they were among a group of similar women in the same boat, and they also would be guaranteed to be throwing and be thrown to (although the possessions might be really short...).
I was wondering if you were going to hit on this as a post seperately. Basically, how co-ed is a death knell for developing womens skills. They just do not get the chances to develop since the game is still dominated by men.
Personnally, I think co-ed stifles women's growth more than anything else .
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