I'm curious what others out there are thinking in regards to the future of the juniors mixed division. It would seem to me that there is a general bias towards open/womens, and a mixed is often an after-thought or something done just for fun. I want to make it clear that I do not think mixed should be more important or even equal with open/womens, but simply that I think I see a trend in our country. Could this be because the most dominate schools in the country run open/womens programs nearly exclusively? And thus, as the role-models for those of us a few years behind, help push us to develop open/womens programs more than mixed? Can schools offer both? Is it possible to run a mixed program while also running an open/womens?
We at Churchill High School in Eugene, OR tried that for the first time last year. The fall was exclusively mixed, helped by the entire lack of HS open/womens tournaments and inability to get into preseason college tournaments. The spring then became an end to our mixed season with the Spring Reign tournament in early April. After that we went to open/womens practice to gear ourselves up for Westerns. Would we have been a better open team for Westerns if we would have practiced sooner? I think so, but cannot tell for sure. Would we have lost a few of our newer players who are now becoming some of our better players if we would have dropped the mixed program that allowed them more flexibility and playing time? Maybe, but I cannot tell for sure.
What has the experience of your teams been at your school? Do you run both mixed and open/womens programs, or just one? What is the logic or reason behind it? Has there been a change in the past few years that you've seen?
Monday, April 10, 2006
Future of Juniors Mixed Division...
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In Colorado the shift has noticably and audibly been made. While state remains a mixed (5-2) affair, the East Invitational tournament was an "open" tournament (though most teams had atleast one girl playing on their open team). Several coaches/schools have been trying to instigate such a change by creating women's divisions to push other schools towards the open/women's split. I think there may be greater competition in games that are purely unisex (based on my lowly three years of tournament experience). I see most of Colorado transitioning to running both if the coaching staff is available at/near their school.
interesting... As far as Oregon goes, this year will be our second year having an officially UPA recognized state tournament and the first state to have two (one for open/womens and one for mixed). There are no other states in the country that have done this... Are we doing things wrong? Are we just unique? Will this not last? We have them seperated by quite a margin, and the Mixed version will continue to be a much more friendly to newer teams and a method of introducing new players to the game.
We were the first program in Seattle to go to single gender instead of coed. Keep in mind that in Seattle we have a huge coed MS league - I do believe coed is best for MS with a little single gender mixed in. At the itme we had a huge coed HS league as well (24 teams).
There were several reasons I pushed our program into single gender:
1. I felt that our high school athletes were not developing as much as they could by playing coed. Girls in particular don't get to handle as much in coed. Plus there are some very athletic boys and girls who want nothing to do with the team dynamics of coed.
2. We had three coed HS teams with at least 8 girls on each team. We had to play other coed teams that couldn't come up with more than 2 girls and it became a big pain especially since our girls would only get to play every 4th point. And by its nature coed only has one A team with 15-16 people, while if you have single gender programs, you can have two A teams serving 30 or so athletes.
3. As an organizer I don't feel that athletic administrators will ever respect coed HS ultimate. They might not ever respect single gender either, but I think there is a better chance of that especially when schools are looking for viable girls sports.
4. We wanted to go to nationals to compete and Nationals was single gender.
Pretty much the only people who agreed with my push towards single gender were the coaches who were high level single gender players. Luckily, one of the other coaches at my school was one of those people. I took a lot of flack from everyone about the move to single gender, but I thought I was right so I kept pushing. In the end it worked out and the other coaches with the strong programs followed. In Seattle now coed HS league is not a very strong league skills wise.
One of the biggest arguments I made to go to single gender was that there should be "ultimate for everyone" in Seattle youth ultimate. Everyone included those who wanted to play single gender ultimate and wanted to play at the highest levels of youth. That same argument is one of the reasons I think it is important to have some sort of coed option for at least one tournament a year.
-Mike Mullen, Northwest School Varsity Boys Coach
Luke,
We don't have the mixed state championship in Washington because we want that tournament to be a chance for schools to play single gender at least once in a seaon. It's the same reason that the single gender programs play Spring Reign, to ensure everyone gets a chance to play coed.
We play mixed 3/4 of the year in Amherst: intramurals in the fall, indoor league in the winter, and summer league. Only in the spring do we have single-gender teams and perhaps sometimes at a random fall or summer tournament. All our hat tournaments are mixed obviously. Our middle school program is also mixed, which includes the travel team. And this year at Mass. States we hope to enter a mixed team of just seniors in the Open division. (All of the camps I run are mixed, except last summer I started an all-girls day camp which was attended by 10-12 year-old girls who were not interested in a mixed camp. We also have an all-women's night at summer league.)
So, as you can see, we are clearly committed to the mixed model for developing players, and then those who have the skill set and desire to play single-gender have that opportunity for 8 weeks every spring.
The mixed divisions is very important to keep in areas where ultimate is still growing at the youth level, especially for girls. I wouldn't have started playing if I would have had to play against all guys. Being able to play with and against other girls on a coed team really helped. Where there aren't enough girls for a full team, keeping the mixed division is critical so that girls can be introduced into the game. Having just open and mixed is okay for places such as Seattle where there are already large established programs, but in smaller areas, mixed is important for the development of girls teams.
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