Friday, February 23, 2007

YCC early application deadline coming soon...

C/o rsd announcement by Will Deaver -

Early applications for the 2007 UPA Youth Club Championships are being
taken until Feb 28th (next Wednesday). The early bid process is for
league-based teams only, with bid priority first to UPA youth leagues
and second to UPA high school leagues. Please check out
http://www.upa.org/juniors/championships/index.html for more
information on eligibility, competition guidelines, and a link to the
application.

Will Deaver
UPA Championship Director
Deadline is quickly approaching, what leagues have sent in bids? Will it be roughly the same field as last year? Will Philly repeat as champs? Will (should?) the field be expanded to 16 teams? Are there enough competitive leagues in the US so handle such an expansion?

All these thoughts and more, in the comments....

(Remember to post your college choices in the earlier thread if you haven't already done so)

17 comments:

J. Becker said...

A great series of questions, Matt.

St. Louis's HS league is in its third year, and proves to continue getting more and more competitive as the player and skill base grows; however, sending a team to YCC's seems to be beyond us right now.

It's tough, asking an adult to take 20 youngsters hundreds of miles away for the pure love of the game. No one is willing to take the gig, it seems . . .

So, how do/did other leagues out there go about recruiting/finding/keeping a coach for their YCC team? Are they just that kind-hearted individual, willing to devote his time and energy gratis? Do any leagues offer this coach a stipend or similar incentive? I'd be grateful for the advice. . .`

Mike Mullen said...

Coach Becker,

Two suggestions to help you get a YCC coach.

1. Pay the coach. $1000 stipend should be about right. Comes out to $50 per kid which is a value if you have a good coach.

2. Pay someone to do all the organizing paperwork so the coach can focus on coaching. I think the organizing side dissuades a lot of people from wanting to coach.

Hope this helps.

-Mike

Kyle Weisbrod said...

The YCC will expand the field of teams (from 8 to 16, 32, and later 64) and add divisions (U-17, U-15) and days (to make it a 4 or 5 day event) as UPA sanctioned youth leagues expand. As I recall only four of the leagues that sent teams last year were UPA sanctioned - Pittsburgh, Seattle, Minnesota, and Denver.

The event will (should) always remain big enough to take every UPA sanctioned league, but in order to encourage sanctioning and greater structure and standardization, non-sanctioned league based teams will not have a gauranteed spots. So sanction your leagues if you want to attend the YCC.

Also, this year the 2008 US Junior Team coaches (not yet chosen) will be on hand at the YCC scouting players to invite to try-out camps (there will still be an open application process for players that can not make the YCC).

Finally, Atlanta has sent in an application for the open division.

-Kyle

Anonymous said...

Who does everyone think will be the team to beat in the upcoming YCC's? Will it be the defending champs SEPDA?

Anonymous said...

How many UPA sanctioned leagues are there this year? It'll be interesting to see who gets shut out - and it'll be really unfortunate for those teams. I suppose we can assume that Pittsburgh, Denver, Minneapolis and Seattle are all in. I'm going to guess that Atlanta is UPA sanctioned too (Kyle a big proponent of sanctioning, after all). That leaves 3 spots for Philly, New Jersey, Oregon, New England, Madison, and Texas - assuming there aren't any other new teams that haven't announced they are applying yet. Who is going to be left out in the cold?

-Rob Olson

Anonymous said...

Question for Kyle:

It can be tough to convince a young player to part with cash. What sales pitch would you go with to "sell" youth players on sanctioning a league, other than participation in YCC?

-Rob Olson

Anonymous said...

would they leave the defending champs philly in the cold?

Kyle Weisbrod said...

Good questions all,

Atlanta is not sanctioned (I just got here, I'm going to work on it for the fall league) so we're in the same boat as all of those other non-sanctioned leagues.

I doubt there will be more than 8 teams per division this year. Until there are 8 sanctioned leagues applying for teams, I doubt any of the divisions will expand. It will definitely only be two days this year.

As far as sanctioning goes for those of you adults that are organizing a league do you have liability insurance? Insurance is often the biggest reason for leagues to sanction.

When leagues sanction, not all players playing in the leagues need to be full UPA members. Youth can pay a $5 one-time fee as well.

Sanctioned leagues receive other benefits like discounts on UPA stuff like rulebooks and discs and a $5 rebate on every new member that signs up through that league.

Of course the players get benefits such as the magazine and the ability to play in any sanctioned events like club sectionals.

And now gauranteed bids to the YCC. Top finishing sanctioned leagues at the YCC also get to help assist in choosing the US Junior team coaches by putting someone on the selection committee.

Despite all of this, I think the altruistic reason is the strongest. The UPA is really doing some great work supporting youth Ultimate and helping it to spread. From coach training and certification, to PE curriculum development and outreach to instructional DVDs the UPA can do a great deal with your $20 to make Ultimate bigger and better.

-Kyle

Kyle Weisbrod said...

Ryan,

Unless things have changed recently, I don't think New Jersey's league is sanctioned. The state tournament is UPA sponsored but not the HS league or any other youth league.

This, btw, is another reason you should sanction. Since most of you already have sanctioned state tournaments and will need to be UPA members anyway, there is really no additional cost to players.

-Kyle

Anonymous said...

is PHUEL sanctioned by the UPA?

Anonymous said...

there would be no additional cost....

except for the ~25-30 teams that dont make states.

Anonymous said...

PHUEL is not sanctioned by the UPA. Instead, they are sanctioned by PADA. Instead of paying $25 a player for insurance, PHUEL teams pay $50 per team. That's a bargain! PADA runs a loss every year on juniors ultimate - but that's because we think we should. We don't feel it's our place to make money on juniors - instead, we feel as though our other programs should subsidize juniors.

Can a New Jersey person verify whether or not NJ actually has a UPA sanctioned league?

-Rob Olson
PADA Board member

Anonymous said...

Is the USA coaches applications up any word on who has applied?

Mike Mullen said...

Rob,

You bring up a good point. It is the same point that we deal with in Seattle since we can insure through DiscNW. I don't think the model of every player paying $20 to the national organization is realistic once you get to a certain point. I wrote the below in an e-mail to others on the DiscNW youth committee concerning my idea for an affiliation program (I think we might follow up on this with the UPA):

Youth Committee,

Here are our numbers from single gender last year:
179 full UPA members 179 * $20 = $3580
24 $5 fees from state = $120
Grand total $3700

And a comparison from 2002 Washington State Youth Soccer Association Annual Report
125,000 members * $5.25 member fee = $656,250
WSYSA paid the National Governing Body USSF/USYS $187,500 or about $1.50 per member.

What is the parallel? Certainly not economic model since USSF/USYS has other sources of income and WSYSA has local affiliates charging players for other costs. The parallel is that there is an affiliate program and DiscNW and UPA has an affiliate program in essence but not really in contract except when DiscNW runs UPA tourneys.

My suggestion is this for a youth affiliate program.

DiscNW pays the UPA an annual sum of $5,000 for up to 1000 youth memberships, bumped up to $10,000 for unlimited youth memberships. This would be a trial 3-5 year experiment.

This is an economy of scale that can create benefits for both sides, but first what exactly does DiscNW need from the UPA?
1. A national governing body similar to other youth sports.* The UPA would recognize DiscNW as the state organizer for youth ultimate in Washington.
2. Online rostering tools including waiver tracking (that means all waivers are collected by the UPA - or maybe UPA waivers are collected and processed by DiscNW as the UPA rep?)
3. Misc forms such as medical authorization forms, chaperone forms, etc.
4. Guaranteed access to regional and national UPA tournaments including a minimum of 1 bid per division for Westerns and YCC.
5. Tournament Tools and Kits - (We use the online tournament tool to a great extent already)
6. Affordable UPA youth memberships - that should actually be #1 on the list.

What does DiscNW not need from the UPA (stuff that may drive the price of UPA memberships up)
1. Insurance - We have insurance, we just are not strong enough at collecting waivers.
2. UPA magazine. I love the UPA magazine and I have no idea what the cost is to produce each copy of each issue for each member. But this is a want and not a need. There obviously could be something like an added $5 subscription fee for youth members who want to receive the magazine.
3. What else?

What does the UPA need from DiscNW?
1. We have been leading the way on the youth side in many ways nationally. While many other areas are cathing up we are still one of the main innovators.
2. A trial affiliate that is already a 501(c)3 non-profit with a board of directors, bylaws, etc, etc to serve as a model to other youth (and adult maybe - but especially the players who only play local leagues) organizations. The youth participation in the UPA will probably pass adult participation (Especially if the UPA doesn't get in on the local adult leagues) but only if the cost per membership thing can be sorted out.

All in all, I think there are a lot of things in this plan that make sense but it obviously needs some refining and of course the UPA and DiscNW would need to approve it.

*Someone mentioned that there are people who think the only thing we get out of the UPA for our coed is YCC. I disagree. I also think we get a national governing body and that is something that almost all other high school sports have. For the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA - HS sports in Washington) the national organization is the National Federation of State High School Associations: http://www.nfhs.org/ That is what administrators want to see as part of accepting a sport as legitimate.

Anonymous said...

The NJHSU is not sancationed by the UPA but I know that it is being considered for next year.

Anthony Nunez
Columbia High School Coach

Kyle Weisbrod said...

Good discussion, y'all. I'd like to add one thing here, the vision of the UPA's youth club championships is to have teams from Youth Leagues not HS leagues. For the reasons that Rob and Mike mentioned, as HS leagues grow it may be difficult to have every player pay $20 (or even the $5 one time fee) to be UPA members.

However, in Denver, the youth summer league is the UPA sanctioned league that sends teams to YCC.

Here in Atlanta we are looking to run a fall club league that will have players from different HS on teams together. That will be our sanctioned league and the one that we use for the YCC application in 2008.

All of this is fully explained on the UPA website at: http://www.upa.org/juniors/championships/ycc_faq and http://www.upa.org/programs/youthdev/comp_guidelines#YCC and http://www.upa.org/files/2007_UPA_YCC_Guidelines.pdf.

The process for selecting teams is an objective forumula with the criteria listed in rules. So, yes, Philly could be left out if they are not one of the teams chosen by the formula.

The US Junior Team coaches application is not yet up.

Unknown said...

I can guarantee that in any case, Philly will once again be the best dressed.