How to sabotage recruitment at your university ultimate club

1. Introduction

So, like me, you've come to recognise that there are now enough ultimate players. Unlike me, you’re still in university, so you can bring down a recruiting club from the inside. I know what you're saying: “I was just going to do nothing?”. As effective as that can be, there is still a chance that new players will join your club, and then they'll bring their friends too! Sabotage is the only sure way to stop this vicious circle.

The best university ultimate clubs systematically improve their recruitment year on year using a basic ‘plan-do-review’ structure: sabotage each step in turn.

2. Plan

2.1. Don’t hold any planning meetings

They tend to get the whole club involved in the process. If someone else tries to set one up, try to delay it until it’s too late to sort anything out.

2.2. Second year players are clueless

Put them in charge of as much as you can. Harness their energy, ideas, and love of the sport into something misguided. Perhaps tell them to focus mainly on improving their own game for the time being, or get them to rewrite the website.

2.3. Your target audience

It’s worth taking a moment to define who the ideal recruits to build an ultimate team are and then make sure any recruiting strategy will miss them.  (Hint: be sure to avoid sociable athletes of either gender in their first or second year of a degree or a long PhD - especially any around at weekends).

2.4. Club capacity

If you hope to avoid growing the numbers in your club, there are few things as effective as natural limits on player numbers. Think about:

• The time, place and frequency of your practice sessions. Infrequent, short practice sessions in tight spaces limit a club to about 12 players maximum and encourage drop outs until you get down to this number.
• Limiting the numbers helping out coaching - unless they all say contradictory things!
• Is there a plan B if the usual venue is unavailable? If not, it should be easy to get some sessions cancelled altogether.
• The amount of equipment you've got- numbers of discs, cones and bibs. Enquire with the equipment manager as to whether discs tend to burn or do they melt?
• The number of opportunities to play tournaments that your club can provide. Can you cut back on these in any way?

2.5. Publicity - beware efforts to raise your club’s profile in the run up to recruitment

• Prevent posters. If unavoidable then try to make sure they don’t attract much attention. You don’t want anyone to take an interest in the sport. Posters that make your club look a bit crap can help here. Don’t worry about permissions or official students union stamps - if you can get in trouble with the authorities all the better. Omit any useful information like web addresses, contact details, training times, venues, upcoming trips, etc.
• Forget fliers: they could remind forgetful new recruits of important information like training times. 
• Throwing: don’t let anyone see any club members throwing. If someone does see and looks interested, ignore them.
• Exhibition games - acceptable if executed particularly poorly. Long, unpleasant stoppages and boring error strewn play may deter any interested people.  
• Word of mouth publicity: the first few weeks of term can be sociable, so you've got to be very careful. If anyone asks you what clubs or societies you’re into, don’t tell them about Ultimate. Remember, most players start because they know somebody who plays so don’t tell anyone you know about the sport. If you hear enquiries from any players who started last year but drifted away try telling them that they’re now ineligible. 
• Campus publications: believe it or not, plenty of freshers will actually read the first few students union magazines or campus newspapers, no matter how boring they are, therefore it’s not even safe to get articles about your club published in these.
• The Internet: If potential recruits research your ultimate club, they probably want to find logistical information - how to join, when and where to go - so avoid such functional details. Concentrate on website style.

3. Do! (2 parts)

3.1. Recruiting day sabotage

• Ditch DVDs: College newbies don't know what ultimate is, and well produced game footage will explain it easily. Stick with a confusing verbal description. If saying no to game footage makes your plan too obvious, just stick with a dodgy stream on a tiny screen. 
• Dodge decorating the stand. No big signs, posters, fliers, discs, jerseys, trophies or photos. 
• ‘Man’ the stand. Women at recruiting days attract men and women alike - they give the impression of a gender balanced club. Carefully timed sexist remarks are perfect. 
• Botch the logistics of signing up. Break any regulations your college has about how to do it. Just get anyone interested to sign their name on a piece of paper. No contact details necessary. You’re sure to have trouble reading this later, and if someone is willing to slowly transfer the written details to a laptop, you could arrange to lose the list first. 
• Hold off on the handouts, leaflets, fliers, stickers, membership cards or anything with useful information written down.  
• Eschew enticements. Especially anything incentivising groups of friends joining together or anything likely to get Frisbees into the hands of beginners.
• Information nights - anything like this offers newbies the chance to find out more about the club and current members so it's clearly not ideal. As long as the club doesn’t sound enjoyable, it should be okay.  

3.2. Prevent new players being integrated into the club and get them to quit

• Turn away from tournaments; they hook new players on the sport. Look to create an extended spell without any competitive opportunities to maximise drop-outs.
• Shun socials. 
• Don't allow any ‘girls night out’ early in the year. It can allow female recruits to make female friends in the club, which will severely reduce the effectiveness of that classic tactic - Frisbee guys awkwardly hitting on beginner girls to make them too embarrassed to return.
• Friendliness: don’t make any pretence of friendliness. Ignore beginners to maximise drop outs. Beginners you talk to tend to stay. Spend as much time as possible talking to other existing club members so that they also ignore newbies. 

3.3. Maximising drop outs through non-enjoyable practice sessions

Ensure you try all the classic parody practice session tricks.

• Lead with a long lecture. Explain the rules, skills, and entire sport to everyone for at least the first half of practice. People join sports clubs to play sports, but don’t let them. Make them stand around watching you.
• Insist on speaking exclusively in ultimate jargon and existing club in-jokes.
• Set up drills where participants wait around for long periods (Why set up multiple small drills, when everyone can stand around in one group?).

Preparation for early season practices: avoid at all costs. It could lead to:

• Having enough space, discs and other equipment
• Teaching of the basics
• Beginners getting individual attention. Note: official coaching qualifications will make enthusiastic members of your club much more effective at teaching the sport. Don’t worry, it usually takes a while to organise this so it's unlikely to be an issue.

Names

• Forget about names. Remembering names makes it sound like you care. Instead, invent a stupid nickname any time you address someone. This is an effective way of ostracising new players early on - a very easy way to increase the chances of them quitting. 

Content of early sessions

• The content of early practice sessions may affect which players leave the club first. People like to feel they’re good at something. For instance, a drill where fast people do well, will make fast people feel like they’re good, and then stick around. The key is that all the new players know they suck. If they don’t seem to get the message, just tell them. 
• In practice games try to ensure participants rarely touch the disc. For instance, play larger games (e.g. 15-a-side) rather than regular 7-a-side and encourage experienced players to focus solely on winning by not passing to rubbish newbies. 
• Separate beginner girls sessions should be avoided. In large mixed beginner sessions the girls will rarely touch the disc as the male beginners tend to dominate. Once the girls quit, getting rid of the guys should get easier. 
• Don’t teach throwing or catching - lest they learn how. Go straight to set plays! Don’t get tempted to address any individual beginner throwing issues. Talk to the computer services department about banning access to this GSWAP link from your educational institution. 

4 Review

After things have settled down and you have successfully avoided recruiting too many players (and gotten rid of any that did join) there’s one final step; sabotaging any efforts by other players to figure out why the club is getting smaller. Even if you don’t get found out, club members learning from one year to the next is the leading cause of club growth. Watch out.


[Many thanks to all the contributors to the IFDA recruitment guide for unwittingly helping with this sabotage guide].

Dublin Summer Hat League

It's been quite a while since I posted anything here. I've had a busy summer. I do have quite a few drafts I intend to get back to soon.

One quick post for now about the Dublin Summer Hat League. (AKA Monday night league - it might even be called the co-ed league although I don't believe there are actually any mixed rules in play).

That league is fairly well established by now. It's been going for 9 years, according to the website, but still, it's had exactly 8 teams for as long as I can remember. Ultimate in Ireland grows, but Monday night league doesn't seem to.

Also, I believe it's officially the 'beginner friendly' league. But I think it generally does very little for recruitment nowadays. Have any of our proper ulti-addicts begun their career at Monday night summer league? speak up!

From the 2 times I watched it (I met up with some Irish open team guys to do some fitness in the same park), it looked to be dominated by young players in the "I-just-can't-get-enough-ultimate" stage of their playing careers. Players playing about 1 or 2 years who are there to try to win or to mess around with their mates, seeing who can accumulate the most stats (BTW, recording player stats for a beginner league is a truly terrible idea).

I think once upon a time it was better, when there was less ultimate available in Dublin in general, there would be a greater number of very experienced players there. Showing what a proper game should look like, but understanding that a game pitting the brown team against the green team is not such an important game that the beginners should always get looked off. (and of course, in those days, everyone knew that we needed to recruit every player we could).

I think that both the new players, and the players that started in college 1-3 years ago could be served better. I'm not fully sure how.

In the Cork Summer League, before a proper game, the 2 teams play 3 small simultaneous games of 3 V 3 for 15 minutes (1 in each endzone, 1 more in space across the middle). This ensures everyone touches the disc a good number of times.

Belfast used to always play 5-a-side. Again, it's more difficult for a beginner to be uninvolved.

Perhaps their ideas have some merit.

Or perhaps something should change regarding the 'loose co-ed' system, for the case of beginner girls. Perhaps a mixed tag rugby style rule about girl scores being worth more?

Maybe, as in university beginner tournaments or development inter-varsities, quotas on the number of players on the field with certain years playing experience.

I suspect that adding more rules might not actually fix the issue though. Maybe it's time to quit the hat league in it's current format, and in it's place, have a mixed club league with a pool of 'hat' players to add to teams in need?

Any thoughts?

P.S. if you played, complete this survey for the organisers

Mixed Ultimate

After mixed All-Irelands, I started writing this post with a few comments about playing mixed. I thought I'd add more to it, but apparently not.

In mixed, a girl is open for a pass with less separation distance from her defender than a guy would need. I knew this. (I do think some guys get a reputation for not throwing to girls, because the girls just don't look open to them).

What I noticed, related to this point, at the weekend of mixed All-Ireland's, was that I found it much easier to throw to girls upwind. I could just let it float out in front of them in the wind, if they had any separation distance at all . Whereas downwind, where the disc won't float as much, I'm much more hesitant, thinking twice about how close the defender is; the throw will need to be closer to them. I guess this happens in the open division too...but it's just something I noticed about my own throwing choices that weekend.

The second thing I was thinking about, was the level of contact in the game. In my experience, men play a less physical game when they're playing mixed. I'm not a good person to judge, however, since I've played much higher level open than I have mixed. It could be purely a difference in the level of play, rather than the division.

The theory I'm working with here is that some lads take a little off the physicality in some instances if there are some girls on the field. Say, under a disc that floats long enough for a large group of players to gather beneath it, I think the guys are more careful if there are girls there. Lest they hurt them, I guess. (Maybe that's chivalrous, or sexist, or sensible, or maybe I'm mistaken).

Still, the rules of the game are the same for all divisions in theory. Players should be trying not to injure anyone regardless of gender.

Can anyone that's played a bit of mixed tell me if they think the rules about contact are interpreted a little differently?

I'll play mixed beach worlds later in the summer. That might give me more of an insight. (Although, quite possibly, players are nicer on the beach anyway).

Rules for a Single Game and Rules for a Whole Tournament

I wonder if a 2011 updated version of the rules is due? I think I remember that an announcement had gone out in the last few months of last year that suggestions for the 2011 changes to the rules should be made (to the rules forum) by a certain date. Obviously, updating the rules is a big job, which is important to get right; but hopefully, if there will be any big changes, the update will be released soon.

I had made some suggestions, on this blog and on the rules forum already mentioned. Looking at the rest of that forum, the pick thread is the only one to get to 2 pages long. It seems the pick rule is one that quite a few people would like to see changed! Although, the pick rule is the rule that I see most frequently misinterpreted, so perhaps there'd be less trouble with the rule were it played as it is written. The fact that it's different to the USA ultimate rule probably doesn't help it get played correctly either.

Where are the main weaknesses left in the rules? What causes the biggest avoidable disputes? I was recently talking this over with my brother and I've come to the opinion that quite a few weaknesses of the sport come down to the fact that the rules are written for a game of ultimate, but, virtually all important games are played as part of tournaments. The rules of the sport are pretty good. The rules specific to each competition can vary.

Because of this, we get the over-complicated way games tend to end. (see the piece I already pointed out above on this blog).

We get confusion over who is entitled to play in game. If a tournament director just says "yeah, sure, play for whoever you want", other teams can get annoyed at what they see as their opposition unfairly picking up players from other teams.

And at big tournaments we get sidelines lined with about 10-20 subs from each team, with whom a player could inadvertently blend in with, and be accused of unfairly sneaking past the defence to get open. Not against the rules of the sport, but it's the duty of the competition organisers to define limits for how many subs a team can have, and how close they can stand to the pitch.

The rules of the sport don't actually say anything about not taking performance enhancing drugs either. (Do they?) I think we can take that as a given, but perhaps championship tournament rules should actually state it.

In conclusion, if you're organising a competition, be sure that any associated rules you need to add, separate to the usual rules of ultimate for isolated games, are well thought through. For instance, if your competition includes a rule that says "no time outs can be called in the last 5 minutes of the game" be sure to say what should happen if someone forgets and calls one. Since that isn't a general rule of the sport, what happens next is not defined in the rules.

And maybe state whether or not players can only play for one team in your competition.

eurodisc

This is just a link to one of my first ever posts. It seems a good time to bring it up again. 

Enthusiasm: a finite resource?

Over the last few years I've treated enthusiasm as a finite resource; it's something to be managed. Overuse it, and like overfishing or something, stocks could become dangerously depleted.

When I talk about enthusiasm here I mean volunteer enthusiasm; something like buy-in except not necessarily specific to just to one team, but rather to an ultimate community or to the sport in general. While team buy-in is required to show up to practice, improve your skills and fitness, volunteer enthusiasm is required for the likes of frisbee admin, running teams or governing bodies, recruiting, coaching, fundraising, PR and so on.

Some of it can be rewarding. For the sake of life happiness, it's good to do things for other people. If you enjoy ultimate and are grateful for having been introduced to it, introducing it to others seems like a good way to pay it forward. That, or organise something, or just find somewhere else to do your share of frisbee admin work.

Anyway, what I'm wondering here is this, am I correct to treat this enthusiasm as a limited resource? Is it a good approach to try to do some stuff, but to stay away from my tolerance limit for frisbee admin? Or is that the wrong way to think about it?

It's not that I see it all as a chore, but I think that often, to work on the stuff you consider really worthwhile or enjoyable, you have to deal with some stuff that you don't care for quite so much.

Perhaps its just been too long since I played a decent tournament. Those have a way of renewing all stocks of ultimate related enthusiasm. Bring on Tom's Tourney.

P.S. to all those people that do way more of this stuff than I do, a great big 'Thank you' from me! I appreciate your contributions.

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?