When spirit scores are tied, who gets the prize?

When spirit scores are tied, and there's only one trophy, who should get it?

I've seen a few different ways of deciding.

1. The higher place team gets the prize.
2. Use rock-paper-scissors to decide.
3. If only one of the tied teams has attended the presentation, give them the trophy.
4. The organisers just announce the winner based on their own opinions
5. Let the team that was mistakenly already given the trophy keep it (don't ask).

In general, I think it's okay to leave the spirit award as a tie. If there is a token prize that can't be easily split between two teams, methods 2 or 3 are fine for deciding who to give it to. 

In the case where it's a decent trophy for an important tournament, I can see the merit of having a well-known convention to decide it. Method 1 does fit the bill. Everyone knows what to expect, even if it is a little arbitrary. 

Presumably, the theory behind method 1 is that it's more difficult to be spirited and good at the sport than to be a spirited loser. I would think there'd be more of an argument to be made for it being more difficult to keep good spirit in close games over blow-outs, rather than just finishing position. But working that out could be too much trouble between a final and a presentation. 

And of course some teams give high scores willy-nilly while other teams only give low scores. Calculating which of the tied teams played those teams that were stingy with spirit scores could be the most accurate method. 

I hear recently this call was made based on the team with the better single game spirit score. Or possibly it was the opposite; the team with the more consistent spirit scores. I think there are arguments for either but neither are great arguments.

 

There are so many variables at work, all at the mercy of the subjective judgements of teams filling out a spirit score sheet that it would be difficult, based on some factor or other, to say for sure that one team is slightly more spirited. Its probably best to just stick with the most straight-forward 'higher placed team gets the trophy' convention. 

Any thoughts?

Be the worst guy in the band

“ Always be the worst guy in every band you’re in. ”

-a legendary jazz guitarist's advice for becoming a good musician. 

The idea holds for other things.

If you want to become good at ultimate; play with a team where you're the worst player. (if they'll have you, you'll improve real fast).

Maybe that conflicts with the idea of loyalty to the one club with whom you started playing. (that is, trying to play with a better team). I've heard some people lament the way the ultimate scene works in Dublin, with many players playing for multiple teams, saying it's a bad thing, and they'd prefer to see everyone fiercely loyal to just one team.

If players can play with a team where they're the worst player, and then later take what they've learned and bring it to even worse players; well the level throughout the scene goes up. It's a very good thing.

Awards in Ultimate

There is a caveat on all that follows; in a team sport like ultimate, individual awards are nothing but a bit of craic. Don't get too hung up on them. Keep your eyes on the team's prize. Win some games, win a championship, win the spirit prize.

I therefore think that the tradition of naming MVPs among teams and at tournament finals is an odd tradition. Regardless of whether a particular MVP was on the winning or losing team.

Given that it happens in other sports, non-ultimate players can relate to these awards, and that's not a bad thing. And the annual IFDA awards are a great excuse for an fun awards ball. So I do like the awards.

There is one set of awards that I've found really odd though; the IFDA 'team of the year'. The one where a panel of experts chooses the 7 best players across all divisions. Looking for it on the website, I can't find it. Maybe they got rid of that? Comparing players from different divisions was ridiculously arbitrary anyway- and  the panel of experts implied that the award had notions of not being as arbitrary as the 'everyone gets a vote' main awards.

I think Rob Kiely had previously suggested a GAA style All-star awards system: picking an all-star team for each gender, with players specified for each position. Such an idea would definitely allow non ultimate players to understand what the award is about. And it does seem to make more sense: no longer comparing men with women or specialist handlers with specialist deeps.

I bring it up now, because that awards ceremony is a long way away. I don't want to offend anyone that won anything, and any changes to the award system would most sensibly be made well in advance.

(this is a link)

The January Effect

I first heard this term from Malcolm Gladwell; it's something he discusses in his book 'Outliers' (Amazon Link), with regard to the birthdays of professional ice hockey players. And This article looks at the same effect in a study of the birthdays of Aussie rules players. These have found that a disproportionate number of top sports people have birthdays early in the year.

The idea here is that if you are born early in the year, you'll do well at youth sports by virtue of being considerably older than someone born later in the year. This advantage then means that you're more likely to get picked onto regional teams or the best teams, where you'll then get the best coaching and resources, thus increasing your advantage.

So if you want to have a kid that's good at sports, mid April should be good :-)

Now obviously, in Ireland at least, there's nowhere near enough youth ultimate for the January effect to happen. I do wonder though, would all the January kids, benefiting from this effect go on to play the mainstream sports, leaving behind any sport inclined December kids to find ultimate later in life?

Well, I decided to see if I could use any data to prove or disprove this theory. I took the birthdays of all 24 of this year's Irish national open team (not hard to find), and calculated the average. In a group with a 'January effect', the average birthday would be very early in the year. And for an inverse January effect, the opposite would be the case.

I found that the average birthday is July 13th. Which is a little after half way through the year. Of course, I've got a sample size of 24 - this is ridiculously small. If a player with a January birthday had been selected ahead of the player with the last birthday in the year (Hag), the average would move to before halfway. I definitely haven't proven anything.

And for all I know, January 1st isn't the cut-off date for all of the main youth sports in Ireland. Blonde Rob just told me that soccer only changed it to January 1st a few years ago. Making my theory even more rubbish.

Aside: While I was working out the average birthday of the national open team, I had a look at the average age too. It's 26. By the time of EUC2011, it'll be 26 years, 8 months and 19 days. Back at WUGC 2004, I remember a few lads worked out an approximate average age of our team -which was something like 20 or 21. Things have changed.

Multi-sport environments

In my last piece, I discussed what other sports can be analogous to ultimate. (there are a few comments on it; if you didn't read them, it might be worth another look). I really hope people find some use in analogies with non-North American sports; purely because the rest of the world needs all the advantages it can get if we're ever to challenge North American dominance.

I found this article interesting too; based on some studies of the birthplace of professional athletes in the states, the author speculates that it's better to partake in a wide variety of sports when you're young. As opposed to the Tiger Woods approach of early specialisation.

Perhaps this is something we can consider an advantage to us? (Alas, probably not over the Americans).

I think (without much supporting evidence) that playing a wide variety of different sports is more common for kids in Ireland, than in most countries. I still remember the out-half of our under 16 Rugby team leaving at half time to go and play a Hurling match and such occurrences weren't considered unusual of a Saturday morning.

Of course, there aren't many ultimate players that have never played anything else, so the base number when comparing how many other sports people have played is probably at least 1.

The other sports most relevant to Ultimate

I was discussing this with Shimbo over the summer.

Some of what I've read online has lead me to believe that American Football and Basketball seem to be the sports that have skills and tactics most relevant to our own. For instance: a Sockeye player mentions that their "offense uses basketball terminology" and here are some other ultimate blog references to these sports.

Considering that these are popular American sports, it almost seems like an advantage to the American teams. They can take concepts from these games to innovate in ultimate, in ways that those not as familiar with the games, can not. And perhaps individual players with backgrounds in these sports might be at an advantage.

But of course, one of the main reasons why the comparisons get made, is that all of these writers are from North America. These are the sports they know.

Perhaps there are Irish sports with which analogies can be made? Of our 2 main native games; Hurling and Gaelic football, I think Gaelic might be more useful. Hurling is too fast. Man-marking a guy in Gaelic could be a fairly similar skill as man to man defence in Ultimate, right?  There does seem to be quite a few decent Irish ultimate players that used to play Gaelic. So I can speculate that it helps.

Now I wonder if there are any tactical concepts or even terminology we can take.

How different people look at the field differently

How many open cutters do you generally see when you have the disc? I imagine the answer is one. After you see one, you stop looking for more. If there are two open cutters, I'd usually only see one of them. At least until I either throw to that option, or decide it's no longer open and look for another option.

I think we've all been in the situation, where as an open cutter, we consider ourselves to be the best option. But frustratingly, the thrower only sees some other cutter. When the other option results in a turnover, that's annoying.

Which of two different options is a thrower more likely to see? 
The one they see first is the one that's in the place where they look first. If a player really likes to huck it deep, they probably look there first. If there is a good hucking opportunity, they won't see an open cutter underneath.

Similarly, other players have their own first-look preferences. Plenty instinctively look first for a flow cut down the line. Looking at the person who threw it to you first can be a good move.

I'm still thinking about 2 questions
1- is it easy to change where you look first? Or are habits formed over many years of playing too ingrained to change?

2 - is it preferable to have a whole team looking for the same first option? Or is it preferable to have variety based on the different skill sets of players?

Anyway, look out for this. It's useful to see the patterns of where you, you're team-mates and your opponents are looking.