February = fun

In general, tournaments are fun. That's why most of us play this sport: because we have fun at tournaments. For some people its the thrill of competition, for others its the laughter with teammates in the hotel, and for others its meeting new people at the fields or the tournament party. Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of that simple fact when planning which tournaments to go to for the season.

For teams aspiring to compete at the highest level, it's obviously important to try and play at the most competitive tournaments possible. It's important to see teams from outside the region and it's important to know what to work on to be able to play with the best. These are the tournaments that teams preferentially allocate their resources towards and are how the Stanford Invite, Centex, Easterns, and Presidents' Day have attracted teams from across the country over the years. Usually at tournaments like this the goal is to gain as much as possible in terms of the team's development on the ultimate field.

Especially given how important team morale-building is, I think it's also equally important to have a tournament, retreat, or trip planned for the team where fun is the primary goal, and the ultimate is secondary. Often teams utilize their spring breaks for some such trip, combining a tournament one weekend with a week of partying in a house somewhere. The team bonding and memories created during such a trip bring everyone closer together and help inhance people's personal investment in the team and their teammates. However, if you think about it, the timing of such a spring break trip is flawed because it occurs AFTER the winter months when such fun team bonding is most important.

January through March is the toughest period to get through in the college season. The weather is miserable, forcing many teams to practice inside or in suboptimal condidions. The team's goals of Regionals or Nationals are far away and its easy to want to justify skipping a practice or work-out here and there because there is another demand on a player's time. Often teams struggle with low numbers or low productivity at winter practices.

Once the spring comes around, the weather gets better and so the team starts playing in more tournaments, practicing on grass, and fine tuning its skills and strategy in anticipation of the UPA Series. During the spring it is easy to love ultimate and so the team bonding that occurs over spring breaks is just a reinforcement of the trend towards team love that is already happening because of the sun. Instead, what if that team bonding trip happened in the dead of the winter doldrums as a way to revitalize the waning energy levels and remind people of why they are playing the sport?

Tournaments like Trouble in Vegas and Mardi Gras offer the perfect solution. Both happen in February in places that don't suffer from the ice, snow, and rain of much of the country, offering a necessary glimpse of sun and grass for many teams. Additionally, both are HUGE tournaments with enough room for almost all the teams interested in going, so it doesn't matter if your team is one of the top in the country. Both tournaments also offer locations with a huge emphasis on fun. It just doesn't get much crazier than partying at Mardi Gras or Vegas.

Having a tournament like this to look forward to during January and the beginning of February is key in terms of getting through some of the tough parts about practicing in the winter. Then after the tournament, the enormous amount of team bonding that has just gone on allows people to know their teammates better, earlier in the season. This then carries on during the rest of the winter months and into the spring. Of course, full disclosure would make me acknowledge that one of my housemates is the TD for Trouble in Vegas, but I would be advocating the benefits of a February team trip even if I didn't know Skip. If your team has been trying to decide its tournament schedule for the coming season, just remember that February=fun.