[BD] Re: Student Ultimate - Taking over the world?

[IndoorsDOC]

It appears that next year's provisional calendar does indeed only 
have one weekend for each Uni fixture, as I discovered when I opened 
the very next email in my inbox. Timing, eh? Great minds think alike 
or something like that...

Anyway, we can still debate the point - why are uni events seen as so 
important?

Benji

Crawling back into his little hole...



At 11:29 16/02/2007, IndoorsDOC wrote:
>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