Remember The Mighty Ducks? District 5 Pee Wee Hockey? Gordon Bombay gets a DUI and has to take care of a bunch of misfits that aren't the best hockey players. At one point in the movie he raises a stink because the best team's superstar, Adam Banks of the Hawks, doesn't actually live in the district he plays for. Adam actually lives in District 5 and should be a Duck instead of a Hawk and Gordon wants his talent. Coach Bombay gets fired over it, but he gets the superstar and along with some financial help, turns the Mighty Ducks into Champions.
Sound like anything in Ultimate? Well, probably not because this isn't exactly a requirement in Ultimate. I'm not sure how many people actually have to deal with this, but recently, the frustration of having in-house players not play in-house reared it's ugly head in my little corner of the Universe.
Let me explain what I mean. Let's say you live in a city that is trying to start a club team and we'll call that city Hartford, CT. You are in the Metro New York Section but you neighbor a high quality section, East New England, mainly Boston area teams. You are doing your best to make it as a program, but as I'm sure most understand, this is really challenging, especially in a non-Ultimate hub. You don't have a ton of college talent with which to draw from, but you do your best and make due with what you have. You hit the track, you train, you take a cerebral approach to the game, and hope for the best.
The first year of your existence you are a laughing stock. In the first round of the series you get rocked 11-3 by the best team in the section, you don't make the next round, and you more or less feel like every other short lived club team. But the following year, you pick up a few committed players, one amazing All-Star and sure enough you improve. You make regionals by climbing out of the backdoor bracket on Sunday at sectionals and you're stoked that you made it to the next round.
In your third year you develop some synergy and give the #1 team in the section a close call, 14-16, and take second. Now that's what I call progress. You go to regionals and even win a few games. Wow, what about year 4?
Well that's a problem. See Ultimate is not exactly a sport, it's more of a hobby because there are no contracts or money associated with the game and loyalty is conditional. You can commit as much or as little time as you want to it and you can also make whatever choices you want, regardless of what others might think/do. In essence you are only bound by your passion and likewise, are free to go where your passion takes you.
What am I getting at? See the issue with having a city like Boston near, but not in, your Section is that it has a tendency to magnetize talent. I'm not confident everyone will appreciate this, but sometimes a player finds that their talents could land them on a better team and if they are comfortable driving 2-3hrs or more to practice, talent pools can start to drain. I'm not going to get into particulars but lets just say about a half dozen or so players that have and/or could really help us out this year are all headed out of state and I can't help but feel a little frustrated.
I don't blame these athletes for playing elsewhere, they have a lot to gain by heading to Boston. Some have a chance to win Nationals this year, not to mention earn a spot at Worlds in Prague next year, and most, if not all, will be headed to Sarasota. If I were in their shoes, I'd probably do the same thing. However, I can't help but question whether or not this is good for the sport and I feel that this "out of Section" play should not be an option for players.
Connecticut has this problem in both the Open and Women's divisions but this is not the only example of significant talent playing out of Section, or even out of Region. Chase Sparling-Beckley lived in Oregon while he played for Sockeye, Kurt Gibson lived in Dallas while he played for Boston, and Gwen Ambler and Robbie Cahill are in Seattle but play for San Francisco teams.
What's also interesting is that a lot of these players leave town to play for programs that don't really need them anyway, or at least would be very competitive without them. Chase is/was amazing but Sockeye already has three Callahan winners. Ironside has two college MVP's themselves not to mention all of Boston to draw from. Fury has won Nationals the last 3 years and Worlds, in addition to having San Francisco as a talent pool. It's fairly obvious that each out of Section/Region player probably wants to suit for a great team, but I wonder if their individual gain is worth the performance hit they leave behind. Rhino misses Nationals. Doublewide continually struggles to make it to/past quarters. Riot collapses in the Club National Finals, at the hands of Gwen no less.
Still not convinced this is a problem? Not only does this situation hurt for the obvious reasons, but when amazing talent plays elsewhere, local teams develop an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. It establishes an inferior state of mind that infects current players and potential tryouts. Current players feel incredibly disillusioned because as soon as they start to succeed, they feel like it is only a matter of time before the rug gets pulled out from underneath them. In addition, they can't help but feel like a AAA baseball team because their best players take off as soon as they have the confidence to tryout for a more estbalished contender. But this isn't baseball, we are not a farm system. We are a sovereign program that gets nothing from the teams that siphon talent away from us. Ultimately, we are left feeling as though our efforts and passion for the game are simply misplaced and we are be better off hanging up our competitive cleats, switching to mixed or simply jumping ship as well.
As for potential players, the propensity to pass up said team, or half ass the process, is through the roof because they think "hell if (such and such) won't play for them, then why should I" and who's to call them out? It's not like struggling teams have a bargaining chip. In the end, the level of play suffers, frustration runs rampant, and we become spectators watching our neighbors head off to Nationals and tear it up on Ultivillage. And this completely omits the downstream affect this has on the community as a whole, ie seasonal leagues, youth programs, etc... I feel like the situation is fairly easy to understand but for those needing further clarification, read up on the Gentrification phenomenon of poor urban cities and affluent suburbs.
The UPA does recognize the propensity for players to abuse Sectional/Regional lines, however, and in 2002 laid out series guidelines with regard to this topic. As it stands now, 50% of a team's players must live in the competing Section and 75% must be in the Region. But I wonder if this is sufficient. Our sport has moved by leaps and bounds in the last 7 years and I believe much like College Eligibility requirements, Club Eligibility needs to be more heavily scrutinized.
This topic is prevalent in mainstream sports in the form of a salary cap. Some sports do things better than others, but at least there is a system in place for most American sports, ie baseball, basketball, football, and hockey. In each case, the overall idea is to keep talent form aggregating via superior economic power and thereby maintain parity. This doesn't always work because in basketball and baseball, there is simply a luxury tax to punish teams that go over the cap, but punishing a wealthy owner by making them pay more isn't exactly an ideal system.
However, in the NFL, the salary cap is a big deal. If you go over it, owners face severe penalties and contracts can be canceled. I personally believe the NFL has the most parity, but with the Steelers winning yet another Superbowl and the Phillies winning the World Series for the first time in a long time, one could make strong counter arguments. Be that as it may, all governing bodies recognize the ability for teams to horde talent and try to prevent it in one form or another.
So what am I clamoring for? What is the improvement I seek? In my mind there are two possible solutions. The first option would be to go the Mighty Ducks route and require that players live in the Section they compete in. This rule may seem simplistically fair but it would reflect the real talent distribution across the country and peripheral to a few select outliers, I am uncertain how it hurts players. However, I am very aware of my own personal bias and the controversy associated with this type of idea, or maybe just the level of talent it would affect.
The second option could be the development of a promotion and relegation system where teams move between competitive tiers depending on series results. I believe that this system would be complicated to establish but it seems to fall in line with the Farm System/Combine examples that are showing up in places like Boston and Seattle with Ironside/Sons of Liberty and Sockeye/Voodoo respectively.
Each system has their own sets of pros and cons and are each equally interesting, complicated, and un/likely to come to fruition, but I want to discuss them anyway. Lets start with in-Section requirements. First off, I believe this to be the easier of the two because it utilizes existing infrastructure, and could possibly be a stepping stone towards a promotion/relegation system. According to the UPA:
"The purpose of the UPA Championship Series is to provide UPA members a framework for quality competition for locally-based teams and to serve as a vehicle for the promotion and support of the sport of ultimate. All levels of the Series share certain principles, but the focus changes as the series progresses from one of participation and inclusiveness to the crowning of a champion and the showcasing of the sport at its best.”
In my mind, the existing system has been utilized to establish the competitive backbone we currently utilize as Club players, but I believe in order to continue this mission, more needs to be done. As it stands now, many elite players have a loose interpretation of what it means to play for a "locally-based" team and limitations associated with "the promotion and support of the sport of ultimate" are very significant. Rather than enrich and develop Sectional programs, stagnant Regional powerhouses seem to maintain their stronghold and the competitive growth of the sport is limited.
A 50% in-Section requirement is/was a good start, but it is not good enough anymore. Hubs like Seattle, Boston, and San Francisco have some of the deepest talent pools in the country, but when they need to take players away from up and coming Sections/Regions to compete, there is something wrong. I believe in this instance, the second half of the UPA Club Series mission statement conflicts with the first in that "showcasing the sport at it's best" means sacrificing "locally based teams". Personally, when a team wins or contends for a National title with players that do not live locally, I feel immense sorrow for the teams that are left behind. I can only imagine the frustration/humiliation of facing off against "should be" team mates and when it comes to these sorts of players representing my country, well....
As for promotion/relegation, I think it is time for the UPA to come to grips with the ceiling that most club teams have to deal with. In the last 10 years, the 40 teams that have played a semifinal game in the Open and Women's division are only represented by 11 teams: Open - Jam, Bravo, Chain, Boston, Sockeye, Furious, GOAT, Condors, Pike, Ring, and Sub-Zero Women's: Fury, Riot, Ozone, Lady Godiva, Brute Squad, Traffic, Rare Air, Backhoe, Prime, Schwa, Women on the Verge. Does anyone else think that this is too tight a circle? For a parity comparison, in Football and Baseball, 40 semifinal teams in the last 10 years are represented by 21 different teams in each sport. Regardless of whether or not players are required to play in their own Section, it is fairly obvious that most teams have no shot at winning a National title and it is almost foolish to try.
Much like Div III College Nationals, creating separate competitive spheres for teams of similar abilities might be optimal, for the elite and the not so elite. Pointless sectional games will potentially be eliminated and all programs will have attainable goals to shoot for. If you have what it takes to compete at the next level, your team can be eligible for promotion and if you can't cut it in the division you are in, relegation. At the very least, more than a handful of teams will get the chance to end their season with a win and more programs will be able to play at the National level.
In the end, much like most of my ramblings, the sport needs to mature in order to maintain fairness and parity. Each policy, each regulation, each rule is in place because at some point, some one abused it and things were adjusted accordingly. Everything from picks to college eligibility to alcohol at the fields had to be taken advantage of for a rule or policy to be put into place and now I think it is time for out of Section play to be addressed. Off the top of my head I can think of a dozen or so players that this sort of policy would adversely affect, but in reality, I think it would help a thousand players I will never know and those are the ones that really matter.
just my thoughts
match diesel
13 comments:
match this may in fact be your best piece thus far... i could not agree more. it sucks seeing players dissapear to better teams or being told that they can play from afar when they could be really helping build a team around them and help grow and improve the sport
It's not clear to me what the promotion and relegation idea has to do with the problem originally identified in the post, but it is an overdue idea.
Let's take a step back and look at the feeders, i.e. colleges... if the UPA is issuing such strictures on the ability of club teams to draw from outside their immediate municipality, section or region, why should college teams be given the luxury? A high-school stud now wants to travel across the country to go to a Colorado or a Wisconsin, because the programs are good and going to be good in three years. They're the talent magnets...
What you're talking about is regulating a free market.
Match, you dirty, dirty communist.
Match, good post, except this is not a new phenomenom. The UPA rule dates to the 1980s, not 2002. The rule came from the Fisheads from Michigan, which was pretty close to a 50/50 combo team. Later, the Stains were a combo of Boulder and Dallas, formally located in the weaker South.
Some of the out-of-towners are simply continuing to play with their previous team after moving, so qualitatively, they seem different. I guess I would also differentiate between a long-time resident of a small town and someone who moves there from an out-of-region big town.
Not everyone is or wants to be an organizer. Most people just want to play.
Another sticking point is that Sectional boundary lines are not necessarily natural boundary lines. Take Boston again. Providence and Nova Scotia (!) are in the same section, but Amherst is not. It doesn't make sense to prohibit an individual from Amherst from playing with Boston while allowing one from Providence to do so.
Seattle and Vancouver are in the same section.
Metropolitan NY, on the other hand, is split up not just into sections but regions. Someone who lives in Hoboken would be considered out of region if playing with a NY team.
It is a thorny issue, a tradeoff of the rights of the individual against what (some bureaucrat thinks) is best for the whole community. The current rule (which might not be optimal) is a compromise, allowing individuals the right to choose while limiting how many can jump ship to a particular team.
There are also natural restrictions on this. Teams that allow for a lot of out-of-towners must forgo weekday practices and will schedule their weekend practices to minimize travel problems (say, going Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning) rather than what might be otherwise optimal.
word. man. word.
Match for President of the United States of America. Or maybe just the UPA.
> Does anyone else think that this is too tight a circle?
Nope. It's not fair to compare Ultimate to the other major sports; knowledge and skills are much less evenly distributed in Ultimate than they are in pro sports for many reasons.
I also don't understand why you claim that playing for what is essentially a AAA team doesn't provide enough reasons to play hard. As you show by mentioning that several teams have used the success of Colt to try and springboard to national success, there is plenty of motivation to play hard. Your job is to try and continue finding the talent that wants to move up, and creating a system for fostering their development to maintain a competitive team.
In the end though, do you expect Connecticut to have competitive parity with Boston?
Your use of the "gentrification" metaphor between "poor urban areas" and "affluent suburbs" is flawed at best. According to your argument, no one (or very very few) is/are moving from deep talent pools such as Boston, SF, Seattle, etc (your affluent suburbs) to ultimate vacuums (your poor urban areas) and then investing in these poor (ultimate or otherwise) areas, thus drawing more players/talent into the previously-poor area, while pushing out the original (poor) citizens of said poor-area (i imagine the brash weeknight pickup player who is the default leader due to his amazing thumbflick or chickenwing scoober).
I feel a more accurate social analogy would be an ultimate-based self-sorting (thebigsort.com).
Regardless, i agree with your point in that it would be better overall if players stayed within their respective section/city/region (non-upa defined, though this would req new boundaries as JimP highlighted). I thought this recession would have facilitated this by fostering an ultimate version of locavorism.
Disturbing,
Don't know how much of your comment was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but the free market still exists, minus this whole recession thingy: you want to play for a team based in a given city/region, then get a job/house in said city/region. True, easier said than done, but last time i checked, you still had to apply and be accepted to get into any given university.
Jim P. is spot on. Maybe you plan would work if sectional boundaries passed through barren wastelands devoid of ultimate-playing inhabitants, but that just isn't the case. People living near a sectional boundary shouldn't be penalized for wanting to play on a closer team that happens to be across a sectional divide, regardless of strength. Sure, the NE might have a bazillion teams with-in driving distance, but if someone lives in say Post Falls, Idaho your proposal would make them drive 200 miles to Missoula rather than 20 miles to Spokane.
All of Chain's players live in Atlanta and we still can't manage to have weekday practices.
match, i completely understand your frustration, i agree there should be stricter sectional restrictions. parenell is right that some of the sectional lines are pretty random, but that alone should not derail the argument, unfortunately it seems to me that every restriction of this kind is somewhat arbitrary.
i think this problem is closely related to roster size. 27 is way too many. you mention that teams like boston dont "need" to take the CT all star, and thats absolutly right, they dont even "need" half of their roster (i truely belive that boston would only be marginally worse with half of their talent). if the roster cap was somthing like 20 you would see many more competitive teams, talent would develop faster, and all stars would be able to play on a competitive team closer to home.
Your pain is felt here in Chattanooga. I've witnessed the outsourcing of talent over the past few years.
Last year our team went 2-2 @ Regionals- and the result? Our top 7-8 players decided they would play for another club team.
My solution: recruit the high school talent. They can't go anywhere until they graduate HS. And they'll most likely stay in state(meaning they won't have to travel too far for practices in the fall).
I've noticed a similar thing in the biologics industry. You probably realized but CT isn't really a hub for biotech despite its best efforts. And its hard when you have Genetown and Pharmtown nearby that just take all of the best biotech talent away from the small startups in this area. In the end, many of those companies end up changing headquarters to Cambridge or San Diego.
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