[BD] do we need spirit prizes at all?

[Graham McGill]

I think the spirit prize is a very important part of our sport.  Especially for developing levels, but also at higher levels.  At most tournaments there are a handfull of teams that could win the tournament, but most are just there to do their best, hopefully improve their rankings, or just to have fun.  So for the majority of teams the spirit prize is the more important one, and the one that every team in the tournament a) has a chance of winning, and b) should be aspiring to win.  Even the majority of top team players surely value spirit, even if they covet the tournament trophy more.  I'm thinking of Clapham (may have the details wrong here) coming 2nd at Euros 01 but earning an atrocious spirit reputation in the process.  4 years later they went back, won the tournament, and won spirit.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I assume Clapham made an effort to improve their spirit when they went back, and were rather pleased that their effort paid off.
 
As to why have a prize instead of just a score, it add's something to the prize-giving ceremony at tournament ends.  Everyone knows pretty much where everyone ranked, but not for spirit, and the feeling when you've won spirit, or a team you voted for wins it, is a great feeling.  It's rewarding that team for their effort as much as the trophy for 1st is.  Ok, the scoring system isn't perfect, so the team that wins it may not be THE best spirited team at the tournament, but they're going to be up there, and I think it's important to hold someone up each tournament and celebrate their good spirit, just to remind us all that that's what we should be aspiring to.
 
I very much like the recent trend of publishing all spirit scores though.  It allows you to see if you did as well as you thought you did, or to see if you're one of the ones that really need to work on it.  If you thought you did well, and were disappointed not to have won spirit outright, you can see if you were close.
 
I used the BULA system at beach worlds last year, and really it only takes a minute to do.  All it takes is for captains to gather their teams just after the call and discuss it for a minute.  If they forget then the captains can get whoever they can find later and go through it.  Which happens often enough with any current system too.  It goes a long way to addressing the subjective nature of spirit voting, which is one of the bad things about standard rank out of ten, or 1st, 2nd, 3rd systems etc.
 
Sometimes one player making a couple of bad calls, or behaving badly in general, can ruin a game.  The BULA system doesn't allow for giving such a team a low spirit score, but why's that bad?  It would be penalising the whole team because of one idiot, and it wouldn't be objective.  It forces you to give more thought to the spirit score than just, didn't enjoy that game, that guy was a moron, they're getting a low score.  If there is one bad player then he will drag their score down a little, so they aren't likely to win, but really someone should be talking to that player, not punishing the whole team.
 
I agree with Benji about calling travels.  I should call things more, I usually just let them slide.  If they are travelling as blatantly as you described though, then it wouldn't be classed within that spirit score category, and their own team will be as aware of it as you, so they should talk to the player about it.  You should also either talk to him on the sideline, or suggest to one of his teammates that they do.
 
Anyway, that's my tuppence worth, apologies for any factual errors, my views no one else's etc.
Graham
 
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