Spirited or unspirited?

Here are some scenarios.

Which show poor spirit? Which are acceptable?

1. A player lays out for a disc and lands well out of bounds but doesn't catch it. Her opponent runs the  disc back to the sideline and puts into to play before she gets up. She's not injured.

2. A player picks up the disc and walks towards the front of the end zone. When his defender has their back turned, he sprints past them and puts it into play on the front of the end zone, before the defender realises.

3. A player competing in the World Club Championships calls travel on the thrower as they pivot, but  doesn't know that travel need not be a stoppage, and insists play be stopped.

4. A team winning 14-4 at a Nationals warm-up tournament plays a point where they only throw hammers.

5. A player catches a goal and throws the disc up in the air.

6. A player throws through the legs of their opponent.

7. A player pretends to throw a hammer, but hides it behind their back while the marker looks to see where it went.

8. A captain calls timeout close to time cap, to ensure time cap will go during this point, and reduce/eliminate the chance of the opposing team winning.

Why should people play sport?

When it comes to sport, we have to think about a powerful influence: most athletes love winning. Love it. Winning is sometimes the only thing on the radar.

There is an organisation in the US which has a goal to make youth sport a positive experience, that builds strong character. It says there is more than one thing you need on your radar.

Jim Thompson from the Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) talks about how youth sport needs to talk about its goals: competition and personal development. It can't be only about winning.

Participating in sport is different from watching sports entertainment. Entertainment can have good moral choices or poor moral choices - either type of drama will bring in the ratings and sponsor dollars.

But when everyday people participate in sport, especially youth, we want them to learn to make admirable decisions. Win or lose.

Ultimate obviously has some of this culture built into our sport already. While the PCA talks about Honoring the Game, ultimate talks about Spirit of the Game.

Can we take a leadership role among sports? Is ultimate's approach to sportsmanship robust enough to handle internal and external changes? Do ultimate players view their sport as an activity that develops personal skills such as humility, resilience and respect? Or is it viewed just as a fun community that helps you stay fit?

WUCC2010

World Clubs 2010 wrapped up just over a month ago.

It was the biggest WFDF championships I can recall. I caught up with friends from Germany, UK, Canada, USA, Colombia, Mexico, Hungary, New Zealand, the Dominican Republic, the Netherlands and Italy. It's a great social event.

HoS and Skogs sky for a disc

USA won the Open, Womens, Mixed and Masters divisions. UNO from Japan and Onyx from Canada prevented American hegemony by making their respective finals, and preventing 4 all-American finals. UNO won over the crowd in the Women's final, and a dropped hammer in the penultimate point seemed to be the difference as Fury squeaked home on universe point (note - if you are playing league and it is 15-15 and next point wins, I'd call it golden point or last-point-wins. "Universe point" is better reserved for winning, say, the World Championship final).

The Spirit rankings are online too: Open, Women, Mixed and Masters.

Standout Australian spirit rankings finishes were Colony (6th), Heads of State (8th), Smurf (8th), and Eastern Greys (3rd). Unfortunately, Australian finally broke its run of winning Spirit in minimum one division. Meanwhile the Germans backed up a first and second in WUGC2008 spirit by winning spirit in Mixed and Womens in 2010.

The individual stats are at the bottom of those pages, lead by Masahiro Matsuno (Open), Becky LeDonne (Womens), Tim Lavis (Mixed) and Tom Rogacki (Masters).


The Open final between Sockeye and Revolver

How do you teach Spirit?

I helped deliver 10 workshops on Spirit of the Game in Colombia last year through Project Play Colombia. I had never done anything like it before, and the experience has now given me a lot more food for thought on how you would teach Spirit to a team or group of players.

Possible elements:

• practising how to learn the rules, through a role play of a scenario and then group discussion (either en masse or in pairs, then everyone)
• discussion of the players' interpretation and understanding of what Spirit is
• play a game with a prize at stake (or nominate an important game in the near future). Film the game, then watch the footage, discussing the calls made by both team
• give each player a rule to learn, and refer to them when a relevant call arises during a scrimmage
• discuss how you perceive your team's Spirit, and then bring in people external to the team (particularly rivals) for their perceptions

Some of these things can be done in a one-time event. However, like a lot of learning, many are best done on several occasions with the team or setting where you want to see it used.

Open Spirit winners of WUCC2006, Fakulti

Spirit at TEP Medellín

The final part of the academic program of TEP was a forum focussed on spirit and development of the sport. Eight presentations were given on ultimate and growth in Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, USA, Canada, the Dominican Republic and Australia. I gave a talk on Australian ultimate. My focus was basically the "other ultimate" that is a big part of our community, calendar and culture, as it is to varying degrees in many countries. 

During the tournament itself, every game that I saw was a positive experience.

For the spirit prizes, the winners for TEP 2009 were Revolution in the women´s division and Sockeye in the men´s. The TD, Mauro, was very happy that two finalists took home the spirit awards, illustrating his point that spirit is compatible with high level play.

My personal experiences included calling, discussing, then withdrawing two fouls in the game against Kiê, and bottling up some serious frustration against Warao. That involved getting fouled on a throw (and feeling the smack firmly on the back of my hand), and then four Warao sideline players instinctively yelling "no" loudly when I called foul. The lack of perspective or trust from them had me silently jumping up and down for seconds, wanting to yell back.  

My team Oso-Matanga had none of the really negative experiences of Nationals. The wish to play with spirit was repeatedly mentioned by several of our leaders. This really reaped rewards against a team like Warao who were motivated and who we knew to be a big challenge, but we seem to deflate them by discussing calls calmly and briefly, and even accepting some tight line-calls that weren´t in our favour. They lacked "fire" as a result, which helped us play our game, and win. I felt that we had decided to make the game spirited, and we controlled this.

I received the even more cheery news that Oso played a very spirited rematch against Euforia two weeks later, in the final of Disco Volador 2600. Without foreigners like Sockeye or Furious (or myself) around, and with some established hotheads back on both teams, these two rivals met in an important final and played a spirited game. I hope it is a pattern from here on in.

A week of clinics

Lucho, Laurel, Nicky and I have finished our fifth and last clinic for this mini-tour. We now have lots of friends in the cities of Cali and Ibagué.

We aimed to leave the players with a friendly and positive experience of ultimate shared with players they usually only play against. We shared our perspectives on spirit from our three countries. And offered some tools for the future: proactive methods for learning spirit, tips for discussing calls on the field and activities to use after an ultimate match.

All the players were so welcoming of new ideas, and so many offered thanks for the clinics. The challenge now is to evaluate them and see what impact they make on the communities we visited. They can't just vanish into the past - the aim of the clinics is to help build the communication and spirit in ongoing local ultimate.

By the way, if one day you ever see that topless dude in this photo, holding up a trophy for winning a major tournament in the future, I met him when he was just learning to play ultimate in Cali, and moving like Bruce Lee.

During the week, we also got to participate in a demo-game during half-time of a Cali futbol match. A few dramatic macs and hucks entertained the soccer fans. It was a very exciting experience for the local ultimate players out on the beautiful turf under the big lights. It was eight minutes of fun before the paid professionals returned to play their sport and not layout.

There was also a day of ultimate in Ibagué on Saturday - hot, humid and fun.

Project Play Colombia

Project Play Colombia is a project worth checking out. There is a blog and a facebook page.

The aim is to develop conflict resolution skills in ultimate players while teaching the skills of ultimate.

The project is run by Lucho, a mover and shaker on the Colombian ultimate scene who has recently returned from the fertile fields of Vancouver ultimate.

Laurel, Nicky and I will be his fellow coaches for a series of clinics this week in the cities of Cali and Ibagué. We will run clinics with established men's, women's and university clubs.

A proposal for building stronger spirit

My last post talked about my observations with spirit in Colombia and, to an extent, Venezuela. Between my arrival here in Colombia, the recent Huddle blogposts on spirit and the discussion on line assistants in Australia, the topic seems, well, topical.

There are several factors at work when spirit goes bad.

I believe one of the key ones is a “them and us” attitude. A minority of players adopt a mindset that individuals, or other teams in general, have behaved poorly and are likely to do so again in the future. These other people are framed as “them” in comparison to “us”.

“They” are cheats; “they” often play dirty; “they” think “we” shouldn't have won that last match, but “they” are wrong.

This attitude is built by what ultimate is available.

In Australia, players train and compete with elite clubs during the elite season. It is “them” and “us”.

But, importantly, there is also Other Ultimate, which elite men take part in. There are weekly mixed city leagues. There are numerous mixed tournaments. There are hat tournaments. There are numerous training camps and selection events prior to World Championships. And Australia tends to do well in spirit scores at international tournaments. A bit of a leap to assume causation, but the extent of Other Ultimate in other countries and their reputation for spirit seems to roughly correlate, at first glance.

And this Other Ultimate forces elite players to play with, socialise with and befriend other players outside their club. Ultimate becomes a community, moreso than a collection of clubs where some players happen to know other players, and socialise when they happen to meet.

In a true community, “them” and “us” dissolve into just “us”.

So this is a theory. And there are some facts I have pointed out that seem to support it.

I don't think refining spirit score systems or adding observers address this underlying issue.

I have a different proposal.

The proposal is for the countries and regions that have the desire, to build community through “other ultimate”.

The national organisations and local leaders can build “other ultimate” through many means: ask elite clubs to host hat tournaments, build an annual calendar where mixed ultimate and open/womens ultimate doesn't clash, subsidise travel or minimise travel costs in general, expand selection and development events for National teams, hold gala dinners where a broad range of folk can attend, create incentives for the open club season to be restricted to certain months. When US players head to Kaimana and Paganello on teams with a real mix of players, as they regularly do, this is a positive thing.

And a big "goodonya" for everyone who has built and is building this ultimate.

In the end, with Other Ultimate in place, it's much less likely that Joe Handler will yell abuse at Fred Receiver and complain about Fred when he is in the pub that night, if Fred is on his mixed league team and played a hat tournament with him last year.

Spirit in Colombia

In my two weeks in Colombia, I have seen some worrying incidents relating to spirit in the open division. I have also had a number of Colombians and non-Colombians recount incidents of very poor spirit to me, from intense arguing and border-line cheating to pushing, shoving and punching on the field.

My previous experiences with South American men's ultimate were playing a very fiery Venezuela team and a more subdued Colombian team at Worlds 2008. I also saw that South American teams had very low rankings in Spirit scores for Worlds 2008 in a number of divisions, particularly Open.

The poor spirit has arisen particularly in certain team match-ups and from certain players.

Many other games across Regionals and Nationals had excellent spirit, and this was acknowledged after the game within the teams.

But in a way, spirit is a chain as strong as its weakest link.

Immediately after those disappointing quarterfinals at Nationals, I started talking to players about spirit. It seems to be evolving into a social research project worthy of several PhDs. The more people I talk to, the more I learn.

Many players are aware of the issues with spirit, and have pointed out a range of factors: the strong focus on club ultimate, the culture and history of Colombia (as this Columbian columnist discusses, this country has had "una cultura de justificación de la violencia y de la venganza"), the isolation from other international ultimate, and the lack of restraints or sanctions on those given power within teams.

In my next post, I'll offer an inkling of a proposal aimed at one of these factors. I have started to share this idea with the movers and shakers of Colombia during my time here, and see what they think of it. So far the responses have been supportive.

Aussie Spirit

So the Aussie Women won Spirit at the World Beach Championships in Brazil.

This adds to a long list of Australian spirit winners at international tournaments.

Australia has won Spirit in at least one division at an amazing string of World Championships (Worlds, World Clubs and Beach Worlds):

• King Brown - Open - WUCC1997
  
• King Brown - Open - WUCC1999
  
• Thorny Devils - Women - WUGC2000
  
• King Brown - Open - WUCC2002
  
• Thunder - Junior Mens - WUGC2004
  
• Barramundis - Mixed - WUGC2004
  
• Crocs - Mixed - World Games 2005
  
• Thunder - Junior Mens - WJUC2006
  
• Terra - Junior Womens - WJUC2006
  
• Fear Discinsonia - Masters - WUCC2006
  
• Phoenix - Women - WUCC2006
  
• Fakulti - Open - WUCC2006
  
• Blokes and Sheilas - Mixed - WUCC2006
  
• Australia - Women - WBUC2007
• Australia - Junior Women - WUGC2008

Australia hasn't missed out since 1998. Amazing. And there are at least 10 other top 6 finishes in that period too. I think the Wombats realised this pattern only requires winning Spirit at World Championships, so they gave other teams a chance at the recent Asia-Oceania Champs :) Plus they had Woodley :)

Correction: there was no Spirit award in Taiwan - I'd assumed another team won it. You're off the hook for now, Woodley.

And as for what happened before 1997... well, the records for our sport are pretty incomplete. Who wants to be a historian for our sport? I'll back you.

If you can see, you are responsible

I have seen my share of collisions and excessive contact in ultimate over the years.

Most of my time out of action has been from injuries sustained in collisions.

I believe you should avoid unnecessary contact in ultimate. In many cases it is a foul. In the other cases, it still probably puts people at risk of injury.

One example is a dump cutting up the line for the disc, while a poaching defender from upfield comes in for an intercept. The dump usually cannot see the defender, while the defender usually can see the dump. I feel the defender has more responsibility to avoid contact here. Personal experience: as a dump, I have been slammed in the back by a defender who I never saw, as I was looking at the disc. They claimed they got the disc first, so all was ok. Also, I have been the poaching defender and bailed on bids because I couldn't get past the dump without a collision.

Another example is a player running past the thrower from behind. If the thrower suddenly pivots sideways, there can be a collision. All players should keep a safe margin between themselves and the thrower as they run past from behind.

Parinella, veteran of the US scene, multiple title winner, etc, reported this in a recent post:

"Oh, I also took out a pivoter. The lanky opponent had caught a disc near the line and I thought he may have been out, so was thinking about that a little as I jogged downfield with my guy. I think I followed in my guy’s steps, a foot or two outside the pivot foot (but six feet from the thrower’s body), only to be surprised by a rapid pivot back to the forehand side, and I bowled him over. Whoops. I should have been more alert and known that was a possibility. I apologized to the guy on the other team who yelled at me about it, to the thrower, and again later to the thrower, and now to the unwashed masses."

So a highly esteemed player publicly apologises for creating a collision. He felt responsible because he was sighted, and the other guys wasn't. Kudos to Parinella here.

My general principle is that if you can see the possibility of a collision, you have a responsibility to avoid it.