Saturday, November 18, 2006

weekend tournament open thread - 11/18-19 - your wish is our command edition

enjoy, sorry this wasnt up sooner.

the only tournament on the upa site is the Triangle Area Classic
[website]

but feel free to talk about whatever ya want.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Columbia High School B wins the Jv division of the bronx invite.

Anonymous said...

Hey, I play on Cheltenham in PA, and most of the players are seniors, the rest are sophomores. When the seniors graduate, there's only gonna be maybe 6 players who have played in a tournament. Only 3 of us, myself included, are actually dedicated. Do any of you have recruitment ideas or maybe something that could build team dedication? Get back to me on this, either on this blog or email me at blehboy1221@hotmail.com. Thanks a lot,
Jason Katz, #36

Anonymous said...

What i did was first harrass my friends to play, then, along with other captains, went and harrassed other athletes in the school, hoping to get a couple to show up. Then we also got a few freshman to join, and they brought their friends. At the beginning we had 35+, but naturally that went down considerably, but we still have about 20 members on the team. In terms of dedication it's hard to keep people dedicated. The easiest way is to get them hooked. Keep a positive encouraging attitude at practices and people who don't know the sport will be encouraged to learn the sport. One idea that i always like, and i think some teamates like it too, are layout practices. When it rains or snows, have everyone slide around in the field getting dirty catching discs. If you can get people to faceplant in the mud for a disc, then get up and do it again, then you've solved your dedication problem. Try to spread hype about the ultimate team in the school and just keep things fun and positive, then you'll have people come back. Have everyone bring their friends. And go after freshmen, they don't know any better so they're perfect.

Alex Kinsey, captain P-HUC

Anonymous said...

show them I Bleed Black thats the number 1 movie to hype people up about frisbee

Anonymous said...

at my school we have no problems with amount of people and dedication, but becasue we are one of the top teams in the country people think that we are to competative and things like that. that is a price you will have to pay. you cant have everyone.


Hurtem

Anonymous said...

my school is in a similar predicament. but maybe a bit worse. graduating all of its female players, and 10 senior guys. next year, our team will be left with 2 seniors. 1 junior. and several freshman all who are relatively new this year.

Most of the senior players at our school have given up trying to attract new players because the team is strong as it is and there is little interest.

next year our team will most likely be dead.

what do we do?

Anonymous said...

you have to get to kids early. i know that we have a huge amount of kids coming from a summer camp were the sport dominates and if they get interested early enought the will know that they are apart of that team and stuff. or just have like fun days. like we jsut go out and scrimmage on the days that we dont have practice and more of peoples friends come out at play then. the thing is that people dont want to go into a sport where they dont know a ton, cant run an offensi and toher things like that

Hurtem

Anonymous said...

if you are going to lose most of the team, and you really want the team to continue when you leave, then you need to give young players experience and playing time so that they can learn and be better. Although your senior friends will be angry that a freshman is playing, they are the future. My team is fairly senior loaded, and last year it was almost all seniors, but this year the 4 major returning players have been able to keep it going. So if you train enough young people and give them playing time, your team will not die

Anonymous said...

Find the most athletic 8th grader ever, get him to come out and play with a high school team. He'll think he's so cool he wont play any other sports when he gets to high school, and he'll love ultimate

tiinabooth said...

The single best way to keep a high school program is to have a middle school program. When you get players in high school who have been throwing, playing, and competing since they were 12, you don't have any trouble convincing them of the "seriousness" of ultimate. It also seems to be much easier to convince middle school administrators (rather than a high school principal or AD) to start an ultimate program. Also, parents tend to become more involved with younger kids and that kind of support is important as the players age.
If starting a middle school program seems too daunting, even doing a clinic will bring you more players in the long term.

Anonymous said...

One of the methods we (the 2 other dedicated sophomores on the team) are going to try to go with is going to be a very aggressive push for Frisbee Club in the spring, then try to weed out the bad and the good from there and have fliers all around the school. One of the things I keep hearing from people is that they want to play, but they didn't know where to go for information. We're gonna try to make it pretty clear from now on. One of our other problems is that in the fall, a bunch of our players are lost to soccer and track. Also, people in general do not know that there is a team, and when the team is brought up it's kinda laughed at by the non-playing students. I do not think we have much of a reach into the middle school, but we're gonna try to somehow extend it and we do have some eighth grades that are going to be practicing with us in the spring. So maybe should I get all the un-spirited players together over the winter and watch I Bleed Black?

Jason Katz, #36 Cheltenham.

Anonymous said...

Well, the thing is is that we play in plenty of tournaments. No one comes to the tournaments. Like, we've had to play savage several times this season. We do have somewhat of a established history. A few years ago, the team was the best team not to get into Easterns and was very dominant in Pheul. Then, that all senior team graduated, leaving a good B team, but no where near an A team in its stead. We've had to rebuild a lot, and now we're just beginning to be back to somewhat success. The problem is that the majority of our team is going to be graduating, leaving us with a decimated core group. I want to build up the team so that hopefully we won't have to go through the same thing every two years. It's a destructive cycle of constant rebuilding I want to stop so that I can come back in a few years when I'm in college and have there still be a team. Thanks a lot for all comments so far, by the way.

Jason Katz, Cheltenham #36