From britdisc-owner@csv.warwick.ac.uk Thu Apr 30 13:17:03 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.8.7/8.8.8) id MAA11428 for britdisc-outgoing; Thu, 30 Apr 1998 12:53:59 +0100 (BST) Received: from exchpk01.chelt.ac.uk (exchpk01.chelt.ac.uk [194.66.194.228]) by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.8.7/8.8.8) with SMTP id MAA11411 for <Britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Thu, 30 Apr 1998 12:53:56 +0100 (BST) Received: by exchpk01.chelt.ac.uk with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.995.52) id <01BD7436.FCBF66A0@exchpk01.chelt.ac.uk>; Thu, 30 Apr 1998 12:53:35 +0100 Message-ID: <c=GB%a=_%p=CHELT%l=EXCHPK01-980430115334Z-2630@exchpk01.chelt.ac.uk> From: "HUGHES, Chris" <CHughes@chelt.ac.uk> To: "'Britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk'" <Britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Prodded into action Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 12:53:34 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.995.52 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-britdisc@warwick.ac.uk Precedence: bulk I'm going to reply on a lot of issues, esp. some brought up below. -----Original Message----- From: Ms D A Bagley [SMTP:pgpyz@csv.warwick.ac.uk] Sent: 29 April 1998 20:04 To: Britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk Subject: Prodded into action At last I've decided to get into the women's ultimate (AND OTHER VERY IMPORTANT ISSUES) debate. Some personal issues here.......(and I apologise for repeating what others have said). I for one would stop playing Ultimate if it was split into Men's and Women's divisions. How many women actually want to play women only Ultimate? It would be interesting to know. I personally feel that introducing Co-Ed divisions in tournaments/ whatever encourages 'open'(or rather male dominated) teams to side line women as they 'only' have to have women on their team at those times. Yes, women and men have a number of physical differences but these can be played to everyone' s advantage if the players are skilled and aware enough (small women can often out dodge tall fast male players long enough to be thrown to etc). WHy the obsession with splitting female Ultimate from male? It's counter productive in my mind and highlight the DIFFERENCES rather than celebrating the joint experience of playing a fast dynamic game with people of a similar attitude. True, there seems to be discussions about the separation of women's ultimate from men's. This would be to the detriment of both games, what is needed is the opportunity to allow women to play the women's game, without penalize their ability to play open. Eventually as women's teams get more, and better the game will naturally drift away from the open. We are, as people like Si has pointed out at a nasty transition phase, British Ultimate is possibly not big enough to maintain two tournaments of sensible sizes on the same weekend, but really too big for one tournament, and the same goes for women's ultimate, lots of players, but not enough are committed to regularly come out and play for a women's tour. This is complicated by the fact that just as our discussion about superteams in open, people want to play at a high a standard as possible, and for some women that is only available in the open teams. I think that the present situation is coping remarkably well (mostly due to Sue and assistants), and if we try and push to hard it will not help. At the moment the best assistance we can give the women's game is to make it as flexible as possible to allow these top players to give as much back to the women's game without penalizing their ability to play at their highest standard. In terms of women's recruitment; yes many female players turn up at university, wanting to play mixed ultimate - often just socially. Others want to compete with the men, others want to play women's. But a lot of women are ignored, after that initial fresher's phase, because often their disc skills are not trusted - rightly or wrongly (how often have you seen disc thrown far too softly to girls - 'because I didn't want it to hurt her' or once they have the disc every one cuts for the dump). Solution - those university teams, with large women's contingent - every so often have women only practices, where when combined with a few experienced players, they are able to learn and play the game without being patronised. Then they are ablr to cope with the open game, this will bring their confidence up. As often the more timid female players when forced to play open because nothing else is available don't want to be the teams weak link. On a vaguely similar note two FAR MORE SERIOUS issues we need to address include encouraging more people from ethnic backgrounds to play. How many black people do you see play Ultimate in this country - THAT'S SOMETHING WE NEED TO ADDRESS. Ohh - messy. Traditionally people don't like to discuss this for fear of being called racist or similar, in any sport or situation. Ok most people are brought into the game through university, still a middle / upper class institution, that is generally open to those students who have had good school education. Since a large proportion of blacks, and ethnic minorities, are still based in run down city centre's with poor education and sports facilities, they are less likely to make it to university, so the majority of places where the sport is available is not open to them. Couple this with the fact that we have been discussing a lot to do with the image of the sport, until it becomes socially acceptable in these hot spots of peer pressure (and this is not affected by whether we want this to be true or not), areas where people are still assaulted for supporting the wrong team in any sport, liking the wrong music, or wearing trainers from the wrong sports manufacturer, the game is unlikely to take off. In fact the way forward here is to make the sport socially acceptable, and the easiest way to do that is to get the game watched and accepted by beaming it straight into peoples homes (!!!), and associate the game with the right image - i.e. sponsors. Onto the WSJ article - illegal drugs are an issue in Ultimate in this country. I've had (British) Masters players boast to me about encouraging (British) JUNIORS to take drugs in INternational tournaments - do you think that gives our sport a good name. Are teams caught smoking/ taking illegal drugs during games punished at all (we can all think of teams at every level who have openly taken drugs on the pitchside)? WHether you think some drugs should be legalised or not is irrelevant - do we want a similar story hitting the press in this country? THESE TEAMS ARE BREAKING THE LAW AND BEHAVING IRRESPONSIBLY. Time to drag up ancient history, and renew people affection with Ross-on-Wye, or more precisely the year it was NOT-Ross-on-Wye. One year having got fed up with the facilities at Ross we moved up the road to (somewhere my memory forgets - clos to monmouth) to nicer pitches, better shower facilities, closer pub!!!, but no river. On Saturday night a number of teams who were taking drugs of some kind where generous enough to offer their spliff to a passer by. The Policeman in question wasn't impressed and hauled any one he suspected of possessing drug off to the local nick. I know one person actually had to get a team mate to pretend to their parent to get them out of the slammer, and subsequently was up in court (fairly minor). The upshot is that we where never able to book those pitches again, and Ultimate was considered the sport that brought drugs to that area of Wales. They still remember, and still refuse to hire us the pitches. Hence it has been, and still is Layout Dreams and Druids policy, to eject any players found taking illegal drugs from the site. We won't evict teams from the tournament, but it is very difficult to play if you are not allowed on the pitches. Now that doesn't mean that we go around looking for people taking drug, if they are sensible about it find a quiet out of the way corner and don't disturb anyone then so be it (on the other hand you can drink so much you can't walk and I won't complain - am I being hypocritical??). However the question here is what is legal? If we are trying to promote the sport then we need to consider its image, yet this image is intertwined with the game, remove one, and you are liable to destroy the other. However I believe that in the game most of the time the worst case scenario is just spliffing up - something which if not legal is seen as socially acceptable, as is pooping pills. I don't think any one is taking anything harder, but is that the point? (perhaps people could enlighten us beerheads as to just what the situation with the dopeheads is?) Interesting to note that whilst marijuana if taken in very small amount reduces your inhibitions, but not your ability to perform fine motor control, and hence can be beneficial to your game (same as alcohol) we are not discussing here performance enhancing drugs. As it is most ultimate players would fail a Sunday morning drug test using IOC regulations through; 1. Caffeine - 1 large strong cup of coffee will put you over the limit. 2. Paracetamol / asprin - 2 tablets in four hours is excess 3. Ibufrofen - even if you use the spray / rub enough can invalidate you. 4. Almost any cough remedy available over the counter 5. Ordinary cigarettes 6. Of course alcohol - lower than the legal limit for driving 7. Also any controlled drug I find it very disturbing that people are boasting about giving juniors drug. Yet in my experience those juniors (anyone) that wants drugs, ask and will get them eventually I am not in favour of relaxing the drug laws in this country, yet I do belive that 'soft' drug taking in this country is something that we are going to have to live with; if not accept. Yet those who do endorse, and presumably do take drugs are going to have to act responsibly if they wish to prevent the game getting a bad press, and shutting the game down, because if we want tournaments to improve, and for us to get the better venues, - corporations, sports centres and councils cannot be seen to be endorse the widespread use of drugs, and so will stop us from hosting tournaments reducing the sport to playing on public ground, without facilities or marked pitches. Take drug if you want - but don't make every one else suffer because of it. Chris