What next for UK frisbee?

Another week another blog repost. This again was written by Coach Jam after the World Ultimate Club Champions (WUCC) in Cincinnati in 2018, which right now seems a world away. Have a read, tell me what you think?

What next for UK frisbee?

How do you get the UK ultimate scene to make the next step?

Has UK Ultimate stagnated or even gone backwards? Pre and post lockdown.

With the new J Star initiative the UKU has a clear plan going forward. Invest in the youth, build the player base from the bottom, this gives us an idea of what the UK Ultimate scene will look like in 10 to 12 years. So what do we do in the time being??

No UK based team in the quarter finals of WUCC 2018. In the past Clapham have been waving the flag for UK teams abroad, but even they are coming up short. But what if we go a bit more local and think why do Clapham have this UK dominance? Is it purely economical? Well paid jobs are in London so they get a huge graduate hit every year with new, players eager to improve and reach new heights. Others that benefit are clubs like Reading. Yes they have great structure and clear aims and ideas but again is it economical? Yes London has the jobs but it’s expensive to live there. So you commute, ie you live in or near Reading. So again every year you get an influx of trained players eager to improve. Now I know Reading are trying to up their youth intake and around them are huge recourses they could tap into (parents concerns with rugby contact could push some numbers out wary).

Does it come down to coaching? Other sports have turned to outside coaches and brought them in with mixed results. For ever Warren Garland there’s a Frank De Bor. More clubs are having a designated coach or coaching team. Again part of the UKU plan. But how has this translated to results? Is it to early to tell? Clapham are having their first season with a non-playing coach. North American teams have had them for years for all levels of the sport.

If the future is our children are we giving them the opportunities to play and grow and learn? In Manchester Black Sheep are seeing great intake results with their new junior programmes. Devon have the Airbadger factory run by Paul Ruff in Exeter with Plymouth trying to play catch up as fast as they can at the Devonport High school for Boys. But are these players and coaches being given chances to play what for them feels like meaningful games? Most get 3 tournaments per year. That’s it. But that’s a different problem to solve.

So how do we go toe to toe with North America? Do we adopt a style of play and dictate that all teams must play this way? Thus like in Dutch football all teams play 4-3-3.

Do we get used to throwing more spice? Knives, blades etc? Every throw is a good throw? Do we sack off all play in the winter an focus purely on Spring and summer play, hit the gap that already exists for sport?

What if we look at it another way. Bad Skid from Germany and CUSP from Italy made it to the last 16. Nomadic Tribe from Japan made quarters. Colony from Australia made it to the final. The only difference with Colony is a few American pick-ups. Is this the answer? Renting out elite level players? But CUSP tried this, didn’t seem to help much (yes beating Clapham but fall at the same stage). With WUC in two years time can we make changes and steps forward to give UK Ultimate that edge and get us into the World Games to get more visibility to the sport?

Does it come back to Mark Bicnals point of club vs team? Are the players in the UK scene thinking about any of this? Are they thinking how can I make a difference? How can my team or club help? Does Tour still serve the purpose it was designed for? Do we need more small elite level tournaments? Would this help or hinder grass roots development? A series of Fog Lanes in the very early spring? Make people choose mixed or open/women’s early and that’s where you stay? Would it dilute either division to much? Is there nothing wrong at all and if you look at our number of players in comparison to North and South America, Australia and Japan this is simply a numbers game? Or are our players just looking to run around with their mates and then go to the party??

Do we do what Bliss did to help grow women’s Ultimate in the UK, take a quarter of the top 4 teams players and distribute them to other teams? Make everything go hugely geo based, give regions there own powers to enforce how they want Ultimate to be played?

I don’t have an answer. I know down in the South West DEVON has gone from a club for everyone to a club trying to sit at the big boy table and are trying to be truly elite. Try outs, hard core training with whole professional designed Strength & Conditioning program. Will this work? Till next year we won’t know. But the thing is DEVON was set up to eventually no longer be needed. That’s right Devon’s aim was to not exist . There would be a Plymouth Ultimate, Torquay Ultimate, Exeter Ultimate, Taunton Ultimate. This would then make the playing of a local division possible. Development would start to take on the same sort of process and programs as other sports. Like in North American Ultimate Uni teams know than can take that next step while at uni and if moving down to the south west you know there’s an ultimate scene to look for.

Now at the moment Plymouth Ultimate has been running and growing for the past 5 years. Slowly adding uni players to graduates and now getting more juniors involved.

Exeter City Ultimate started in 2019 to fill the hole left by Devon. Starting completely new has taken a lot of adjusting to. We are getting players that have played GB alongside completely new players. The first few months there was a lot of small drills and hot box and not a lot else. But then we started thinking outside the box a bit. We got more active on social media, we shouted about what we we’re doing (something I don’t think ultimate clubs do enough off), we started to see numbers growing. The lockdown happened. This was a big kick in the teeth for us. We had a spring league ready to kick off. We we’re going to try and get to a UKU Tour event. But when lockdown was lifted we hosted socially distanced training. We had more turn up than we’d had at the start of the season. And it grew. We got more active about what we we’re doing. We added weekly competitions at the end. We then held the 3 legged Joseph Bampton Trophy. People were enjoying training. Old Devon players started to come along as they’d seen how things were being done. There was a big focus on getting fundamentals right. And as we know fun is the start of fundamentals. We’ve kept our focus very, very local. We’ve arranged a two game friendly against Plymouth coming up in October and November. We’ve had some alterations made to the pitch so if the students can’t train indoors when uni starts back up they’ve got 4 indoor size pitches they can use. This then gets them involved with the local open team and we start to see a club growing.

What will be the results going forward?? No one knows. Here in Exeter we are trying to build something we’ve not had before. A proper foundation. We are linked in with the college, we’ve got our own pitch, we are trying to raise money for flood lights to help winter training and for a multi-sports pavilion where we are part of the key founding teams along with football, rugby, cricket and tennis. It might not be the way ultimate has been down in the past but it’s very slowly gaining speed