Saturday 10 May 2008

University / College Ultimate Comparisons

Last weekend UK Open University Nationals took place in York. My team, Thrown (King's College London) were competing in the second division. To my dismay I couldn't play due to this shitty shoulder injury. However the team did fine (if not better) without me, finishing a respectable 8th, or 24th overall in the UK (a report by our very able president, Adnan can be found here http://www.thrownultimate.com/uno2008/) . The eventual champions were Cardiff 'No Frills' who beat Cambridge 'Strange Blue' in the final.

Thrown at UK Uni Nationals (Courtesy of Eric Dahl aka Fingers)

Most seasons we (Thrown) are lucky enough to get a couple of US college players over on exchange programs. This year was no exception and our two star additions, Eric and Jesse really embraced the club and helped out no end. One of things I'm always asking them is: "How do the good British teams compare with the US teams?". The feeling I get from the replies is that the British teams would probably do alright at regionals but would not be good enough to qualify for nationals. I suppose this isn't all that surprising considering the quality of UK ultimate in general.
But I do think that university / college ultimate could prove to be an area where British teams could raise their games and provide a level of ultimate closer to that of their American counterparts. Essentially the pool of talent available to a Uni team in the UK is comparable to that of a College team in the states. Therefore a uni with a really good program could, with a little bit of luck, potentially produce a US nationals standard side. From what I've heard some of the Japanese Uni teams are playing at a decent level too (taking several points of Sockeye at Dream cup is quite an achievement).
Obviously there are other factors to take into consideration: previous playing experience is a big one; There are about 15 British secondary schools with ultimate teams compared with a huge number of American high schools. Publicity / popularity is another factor; In the the UK virtually no one out-side of University and the ultimate scene itself actually knows what ultimate is. Obviously this can be a massive problem when recruiting players for teams.
I would love to see the UKUA and the UK ultimate community put more emphasis on the Uni scene. University ultimate get quite a lot of stick about how rubbish it is in the UK - It seems pretty self destructive if you ask me. University is the place where most people start playing, it is the future of the sport! Hopefully over the coming years some UK programmes will really get there acts together. It would be fantastic to see a UK Uni team play at one of the big US college tournaments like Centex and do well.

Thrown set off for another point at natties (Once again courtesy of Eric Dahl)

1 comment:

Drew said...

"Essentially the pool of talent available to a Uni team in the UK is comparable to that of a College team in the states."

This assumption bears a bit more exploration for accuracy, I think. One would first need to look at the relative sizes of universities in the UK and US. Also, how many universities are there of that size? To wit, Wisconsin-Madison has over 20,000 undergraduates enrolled but not every school of that size has a Nationals caliber Ultimate team.

Next, what is the athletic draw and culture of a given school? Does a university with strong basketball, soccer, track, American football, etc. programs attract more athletic students in general?

If so, do UK universities tend to have stronger or weaker athletic culture than US universities? What is the relative likelihood that an average student has an athletic background prior to university?

Then you get into quantities and qualities even harder to measure. What is the average Ultimate/athletic potential of a US uni student versus that of a UK uni student? What is the relative prioritization of Ultimate over academics?

Finally, they are outliers and exceptions to the standard university profile resulting in a competitive Ultimate team. Carleton and Dartmouth are good examples. I do not feel qualified to explain full these phenomena but I expect a historical Ultimate culture and strength of program are at work.

My take-home message is that there are numerous factors that must converge to produce a Nationals caliber university Ultimate team. They don't always have to be the same factors, but a university must have enough of them to get over the hump, as it were.

If the total number of schools and students in the UK is much lower than that of the US, the likelihood of an elite team might just be too low.

But really, who knows?