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Subject: Re: Sports Council (Non) Recognition
Date: Wed, 14 May 97 02:13:11 +0100
From: Paul Hurt <paul@ultimatum.demon.co.uk>
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Hi

Re: Sports Council decision...

Arse. No surprise though.

I don't think "uniqueness" has anything to do with their decision (what's 
more unique than SOTG?). I think the last paragraph is more telling...

>the Sports Councils identify,
>through the formal recognition process, a range of activities which the
>Councils wish to be associated with and which they believe should be
>developed.

Basically, they don't want to be "associated with" us, because we play 
with a "Frisbee". The quote is (I believe) "...well, if they were playing 
this with a BALL I don't see we'd have any problem with it..."

Jerks. They have no idea. If they'd just get off their fat arses and come 
to see a tournament...

   ---

Okay, calming down for a second... consider this... couldn't it be that 
the REAL problem is that there simply aren't enough people in the UK 
playing Disc Sports? If there were ten or twenty thousand players, 
perhaps we'd have a stronger case thru sheer weight of numbers. But, 
regardless of whether Ultimate (sorry golfers, can't really speak for 
you) is a bona-fide sport, a rough total of one thousand players (at 
best) makes us very very small potatoes indeed.

We need growth. We need to provide opportunities for "ordinary people" to 
try the game. We need to cater for people who'd love to play Ultimate, 
but aren't prepared to dedicate one weekend in every three to the sport. 
To paraphrase Neil Travers - "not everyone is a Frisbee-is-my-life case."

More geo-teams. More local initiatives (like, dare I say, the London 
Ultimate Session). More tournaments staged in public spaces (imagine 
Leicester Ultim-8 with SUNSHINE!). And more attention to how we look 
after interested parties AFTER they've bitten the first time.

Thank god for the Universities. Without the student player-base, we'd be 
dead in the water. And, while student Ultimate is doing very nicely 
thank-you, it's an extremely complacent sport that thinks it can grow 
very far on the strength of eighteen or so University teams. What 
proportion of University-leaving Ultimate players continue playing after 
graduation? While I'm sure it's a higher proportion than it was ten years 
ago (Ultimate's much more fun now than it was ten years ago) it's 
probably not high enough to see our sport take off. Are people really 
taking up the sport very much faster than they're dropping out of it at 
the other end?

Chickens and eggs. Rocks and hard places.

What are YOU prepared to do to help our sport achieve the status we all 
know it deserves?

Paul (normally more mild-mannered than this)






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Paul Hurt
Editor, Ultimatum Magazine, London, England
paul@ultimatum.demon.co.uk