PlayUltimate Mailbag: Easterns and Westerns Scheduling

Fresh from the inboxes of PlayUltimate -

I am new to the youth ultimate blogging scene, so forgive me if this topic has been
rehashed over and over but I believe the issue is the number one problem with the junior championship series and that is graduation conflcts with Westerns and Easterns.

I understand that the HS tournaments fit best for the UPA after college, before summer, not in the fall because of club. Some have argued that April is too early and June is too late, but I argue that the date should never be set on any high school's graduation. It is inherently discrimatory. It is unfair. In the last 5 years of coaching ultimate Nationals and Easterns has fallen on our graduation date 3 times. Paideia, one of the top ranked HS teams in the nation has had similar conflicts. I admire Mike Baccarani and his crew. I have never heard him complain once about this issue. I am not that strong. Its wrong and I wish I could enact change. I've spoken with Will and Kyle and emailed board members in past years, but all in vain. So, we plan on taking a Freshman-Junior squad to Easterns this year. There will be no complaints on the field, but the bottom line is it isn't fair.

Sincerely,
David Wu, Coach
Lexington Catholic HS

So what do you think? Should the UPA ask for all school's graduation dates? Should they accept all the teams and then select a date that allows all to attend? Or should things remain as they are now?

As a fan of the game it stinks not to see a top team at the most prestigious tournament, essentially the closest thing to a national championship we have for high school teams at the moment. But is there a feasible way of correcting this? I know my high school graduation was a weekend in early June, as i think most schools in the area were. But is there regional disparity here?

On the same subject, it is also my personal opinion that all state championships should happen before easterns and westerns so that they can be taken into consideration when admitting teams. and in the same line of logic, local league and city championships should be held before states. NFL playoffs are going on right now and as im sure you have heard, it is referred to as the second season, the games take on a whole new level of athleticism and competition because teams are now fighting for survival. But i digress, the connection here being, in some ways it can be unfair to judge a team's regular season individual games for a tournament such as easterns or westerns, because who knows who had a test that day or perhaps playing time was mixed up. Whereas with the direct progression a more accurate depiction of who the best teams are late in the season will come to the forefront.

Agree? Disagree? Let's hear it.

PlayUltimate Mailbag: RRI Reset...

A reader wrote in with this comment -

I read the playultimate blog pretty regularly and have
a suggested topic for a headline. It concerns the
youth RRI and the fact that they get reset after
January 1st. I have talked to my coach on this issue
and he has suggested reseting the youth RRIs in the
summer when most teams graduate players, not in
January when most youth teams are generally
unaffected. I just wanted to suggest this topic to see
what other people have to say on it.

so what do you guys think? id argue for that the high school scene this makes a lot more sense. I'm also of the opinion that as long as it is feasible money-wise for the UPA they should maintain all results ever recorded for the RRI system. perhaps reset the current RRI for a team once a year, but maintain the results and a history of that teams progress and their past rankings.

i think it would be awesome to see 30 years of college ultimate history for a team, (hopefully not all on one page) but perhaps underneath their record links for each year that would have pages with those results and also the rosters.

in the dream world there would also be an RSS feed for every team so that people could stay up to date with all their favorite teams' scores.

what do you think though?

(a side note, email the site with your comments, or questions, story suggestions, or just to chat - playultimateblog@gmail.com)