[BD] Student Ultimate - Taking over the world?

[IndoorsDOC]

Due to laxness in some of the University regions, a clash has 
developed between UKU Open Indoor Nationals and some regional 
university outdoor qualifiers. This has meant 3 things:

1) Oscar has to work to chase up teams who aren't yet sure whether 
they're free that weekend to attend nationals, despite the dates 
being announced over a year ago.

2) Nationals again looks, despite my best efforts, like a nonsense 
schmindoors pissabout event that no-one cares about.

3) Non-student members of the teams who've had to pull out of 
Nationals are left without any ultimate to play at all that weekend. 
They've probably already booked fridays off work and such. Pretty annoying.

The point of this email is to raise a serious discussion - is student 
ultimate getting too big for its boots? Is it not ludicrous that 
student tournaments should be seen as more important than Open 
tournaments? I don't just mean this one, which could be explained as 
outdoors being more important than indoors; I mean in general, 
student ultimate is seen as the only competitive level outside the 
tour. Certainly student indoors is more prestigious than club 
indoors. This is stupid in terms of the future development of the 
sport away from it's traditional Uni base towards school and local 
club participation.

Look at the facts - the universities now have 12 events 
(Open/Mixed/Womens, Indoor/Outdoor, Regionals/Nationals).
In the calendar, they demand two possible weekends for each of them, 
in case venues aren't available. That's 24 weekends a year, very 
nearly half the year. Take out things like Christmas and new year, 
and it IS half the available year. And still, despite these dates 
being agreed way in advance, a clash develops because 2 weekends 
isn't enough to find a bid...

Anyway, forget that whinge, the point is that 24 weekends a year is 
insane. There's been mention of the idea that the tour is driving out 
other tournaments, and preventing the growth of ultimate. That's 
nothing compared to the strangling effect of 24 weekends of Student 
tournaments. If you plan to run a tournament, and look at the 
calendar, you won't find a space.

This is not a dig at Ed and Felix, who've done a great job with 
student ultimate. Possibly too good a job. Felix's pet Ladder League 
project, for one, could certainly benefit from a few more available weekends.

One solution would be to only give one week for each student tourney. 
At a stroke, 12 weekends open up in the calendar. What this means is 
that Unis would have to book events early, and possibly look a little 
harder for venues. But the current situation is massively unfair on 
every non-student tournament organiser in the country.

Benji

PS
1) Yes I'm aware I've written a lot on BD lately, but dammit I've got 
a big mouth...
2) Yes I'm aware that I need to liaise better with Kev Lowe about 
Junior Indoors to avoid that clash. We'll work on it. Tell you what, 
if we could clear out some of these student weekends, it wouldn't be 
a problem... ;)


At 21:26 15/02/2007, Oscar wrote:
>BD,
>I am still yet to hear from Cardiff regarding their place at Open Indoor
>Nationals.
>The deadline I set was tomorrow so please can somebody from Cardiff get in
>touch and let me know if you are going to take up your spot.
>Also, there may be one or two spots not taken up. I'm not sure how these
>spots will be allocated but one would certainly be available to Uriel should
>they want it?
>Could someone from Uriel (Pretty Boy?) please get in touch and let me know
>if they would want to take a spot should it become available.
>Any other teams that mey want to play. Watch this space, there may be an
>offer comingout early next week.
>Thanks to everyone else who has already responded. If you haven't
>e.mailedGrant regarding your accomodation requirements etc. please do
>so so that we
>can begin to get organised and not leave things until the last minute. He
>will be chasing you up next week if you don't get in touch with him first.
>Cheers all,
>Oscar
>Open (sorry, Club) Indoor Nationals TD.
>
>--
>The e.mail of the species is more deadly than the mail.
>__________________________________________________
>BritDisc mailing list
>BritDisc at ranulf.net
>http://fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc
>Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/informed.asp
>