Women's Ultimate and The Rules
I began to write a lengthy response to Cooke's blog entry on the rules, when I realized I had enough to say to make my own blog entry.
My coach and I were discussing self officiating and rules knowledge on the way home from the Chesapeake Open a few weekends ago. He made a suggestion that I can only help but smile about and hope it becomes real some day. He suggested that every team that competes in an UPA championship series event should have at least two players on their roster who are certified observers. I think this would have a tremendous effect on the women's college level where ignorance of the rules runs rampant, it is an epidemic really. What probably surprises me the most, is the ignorance of the rules exhibited by many of the coaches at the college level. Young college players will live and die by how their coach makes a ruling on a play - even when they recite a rule that does not exist - and it absolutely blows my mind. And, this ignorane of the rules is not just evident with the smaller, younger programs, but programs who have been to the big dance, have almost won the big dance. I think it is time for players and coaches to take a little more personal responsibility and accountability for their knowledge and proper interpretation of the rules. Instituting a "Two Observers per Team" type of ruling would help a great deal and maintain the integrity of our sport.
This past regionals, we were in a game that mattered a great deal and errant calls were being called by the opposing team quite a bit. At one point, one of the younger players on the team - I believe she only had 1.5 years experience - made an errant call on me. I explained to her why it was inapporpriate and told her the rule she was reciting did not exist. I turned to her coach to tell her that the rule did not exist. The coach did not comment. Later, the coach commented to me that she does not like to intervene during a point, but will help her players learn the rules between points. I personally think that is ridiculous! I mean, if my team was blatantly violating the rules, out of pure ignorance (or otherwise, which I hope would never be the case) I owe it to this sport to speak up - especially if my opinion has been asked for. And, this "infraction" was a very black and white matter. It was not a question of whether I was fouled or not - which can be a very grey area. Needless to say, this was about the last straw for me, as many other bad calls were made during this game. At 6-11 I requested observers. We went on a 7-2 run with observers. Too little too late, but I wonder if it would have made a difference if the observers were there from the beginning. We played like shit too, do not get me wrong. But, maybe, just maybe.
At the women's club level, rules ignorance is really not as much of a problem. At least I do not have to throw discs out of frustration and whip out the trusty rules book every tournament. I believe this is probably because every team has a couple of people who are somewhat experts on the subject. We only have discussions about the very obscure rules that the basketall refs were challenging each other with in Cooke's blog. I personally do not claim to know the whole rule book, but it is rare if I am wrong twice about a rule.
If there is one interpretation of the rules that needs better clarification in women's club ultimate - it is fouls on the receiver. Women's club ultimate is no where near as physical or aggressive as men's club ultimate, but some teams are progressing to that style of play. As some teams progress to that style of play - which I like to think of as a more athletic style of play where people dominate who have been in the weight room, like basketball - teams who have not progressed to this style tend to call quite a bit of fouls when they are going up for a disc on the defender. Personally, and I have thought about this a lot, I think about half of the fouls called on my team this year in this situation were not fouls. They were simply the stronger person winning the matchup. Was there incidental contact? Sure. Was it a foul? No. Did the stronger athlete win? Yes. It is very similar to rebounding a basketball or going in for a layup. There is going to be contact. Can you rebound/make the layup despite the contact? There is always contact - contact does not equal foul. Now, if a defender hacks your arm or hand, definitely a foul, basketball or ultimate. But, really, that is my only real beef with women's club ultimate and the rules.
College ultimate? That is a whole other can of worms. This year, we are going to try and do something for women's college programs on the southeast coast - a camp of sorts. And, I can promise you that among the skills, drills, and administrative talks that will occurr at this camp, there will be a rules session.
My coach and I were discussing self officiating and rules knowledge on the way home from the Chesapeake Open a few weekends ago. He made a suggestion that I can only help but smile about and hope it becomes real some day. He suggested that every team that competes in an UPA championship series event should have at least two players on their roster who are certified observers. I think this would have a tremendous effect on the women's college level where ignorance of the rules runs rampant, it is an epidemic really. What probably surprises me the most, is the ignorance of the rules exhibited by many of the coaches at the college level. Young college players will live and die by how their coach makes a ruling on a play - even when they recite a rule that does not exist - and it absolutely blows my mind. And, this ignorane of the rules is not just evident with the smaller, younger programs, but programs who have been to the big dance, have almost won the big dance. I think it is time for players and coaches to take a little more personal responsibility and accountability for their knowledge and proper interpretation of the rules. Instituting a "Two Observers per Team" type of ruling would help a great deal and maintain the integrity of our sport.
This past regionals, we were in a game that mattered a great deal and errant calls were being called by the opposing team quite a bit. At one point, one of the younger players on the team - I believe she only had 1.5 years experience - made an errant call on me. I explained to her why it was inapporpriate and told her the rule she was reciting did not exist. I turned to her coach to tell her that the rule did not exist. The coach did not comment. Later, the coach commented to me that she does not like to intervene during a point, but will help her players learn the rules between points. I personally think that is ridiculous! I mean, if my team was blatantly violating the rules, out of pure ignorance (or otherwise, which I hope would never be the case) I owe it to this sport to speak up - especially if my opinion has been asked for. And, this "infraction" was a very black and white matter. It was not a question of whether I was fouled or not - which can be a very grey area. Needless to say, this was about the last straw for me, as many other bad calls were made during this game. At 6-11 I requested observers. We went on a 7-2 run with observers. Too little too late, but I wonder if it would have made a difference if the observers were there from the beginning. We played like shit too, do not get me wrong. But, maybe, just maybe.
At the women's club level, rules ignorance is really not as much of a problem. At least I do not have to throw discs out of frustration and whip out the trusty rules book every tournament. I believe this is probably because every team has a couple of people who are somewhat experts on the subject. We only have discussions about the very obscure rules that the basketall refs were challenging each other with in Cooke's blog. I personally do not claim to know the whole rule book, but it is rare if I am wrong twice about a rule.
If there is one interpretation of the rules that needs better clarification in women's club ultimate - it is fouls on the receiver. Women's club ultimate is no where near as physical or aggressive as men's club ultimate, but some teams are progressing to that style of play. As some teams progress to that style of play - which I like to think of as a more athletic style of play where people dominate who have been in the weight room, like basketball - teams who have not progressed to this style tend to call quite a bit of fouls when they are going up for a disc on the defender. Personally, and I have thought about this a lot, I think about half of the fouls called on my team this year in this situation were not fouls. They were simply the stronger person winning the matchup. Was there incidental contact? Sure. Was it a foul? No. Did the stronger athlete win? Yes. It is very similar to rebounding a basketball or going in for a layup. There is going to be contact. Can you rebound/make the layup despite the contact? There is always contact - contact does not equal foul. Now, if a defender hacks your arm or hand, definitely a foul, basketball or ultimate. But, really, that is my only real beef with women's club ultimate and the rules.
College ultimate? That is a whole other can of worms. This year, we are going to try and do something for women's college programs on the southeast coast - a camp of sorts. And, I can promise you that among the skills, drills, and administrative talks that will occurr at this camp, there will be a rules session.
posted by Mccants at 8:21 AM
9 Comments:
I certainly agree with a few of your points, and concure with the idea of having two observers on every roster. But, I'm confused a bit by a couple things. First of all, at 6-11 if you went on a 7-2 run, wouldn't that be 13-13? But more importantly, I think I have to agree with the coach not interfering with the calls on the field. Self officiation means that the player who called the foul and the player the foul was called on need to work it out between themselves. You start inviting people from the sidelines to intervene, and you open up a whole can of worms you don't want to (sidelines calling travels, etc). Just my $.02
I think there's a big difference between having someone on the sideline tell players on the fields what calls to make and having someone on the sideline clarify a rule for someone who makes a call or play out of ignorance. Even the rules make a provision under the Etiquette section for explaining rules to newer players:
"If a novice player commits an infraction out of sincere ignorance of rules, it is common practice to stop play and explain the infraction."
In my mind an "infraction" includes both an illegal play and making illegal calls.
BTW, I like Lindsey's idea of requiring each team to have a couple of people that have been qualified to know the rules. However, I think that currently, the UPA's Observer training and certifying system wouldn't be able to handle the volume required to train and certify people from hundreds of teams.
Instead, I think a more viable option would be to have some sort of online training and rules quiz that would be easy to administer to lots of people, and would cover common rules and misinterpretations. It could even have videos and pictures to aid in the training and testing.
The long term goal would be to have every UPA member have to take the rules test. Or we can just rely on Idris to explain the rules to the country, one person at a time.
uncle tim-
yes, we went on something like a 7-2 run. we may have been down 5-11 actually. either way, i believe we lost 13-14. If we were down 6-11, it was a 7-3 run to end the game. If we were down 5-11, 8-3 run to end the game.
the point was how our run simultaneously occurred when the observers showed up. whether that has anything to do with their arrival or not is a whole other discussion.
and this is just one example of many.
According to rsd, final score was 15-14, and observers showed up at 13-10. But let's not focus on this and distract from the point of the post.
I know when I coached college women's ultimate, I was not bashful about getting involved in rules discussion. My knowledge of the rules is pretty well established, but nevertheless I don't think the opposition generally appreciated it (Miriam can probably speak to this). There's a fine line to walk between correcting poor calls and being a boor, and I probably crossed that line more than once. Being right is not enough; it's how you communicate it.
I can say honestly that I didn't let my players get away with bad calls either, but that didn't come up as often, partially because I dealt with rules in practice. (It actually came up more often when I was on the sideline of the men's team.) And I agree with Gwen that it's inappropriate to prompt calls from your players. When I thought a player should have made a call, I would bring it up privately with the player between points, try to get them to describe what happened, and suggest a call for next time if I thought it was appropriate.
As far as physicality and the interpretation of "incidental contact" - this is definitely different between the sexes, and I think it's one of those things that will evolve naturally and is hard to legislate. I definitely notice this in club mixed play, where women will call fouls that will drive men on the opposing side crazy. In these situations, I try to remember (or, if it's my teammate, note to the opposition) that
a) We weren't in the play, we can't know how bad the body-to-body contact was, and
b) There's a different standard in the women's game, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
eh....damn i was wrong on the final score. i knew it was 14-13 or 15-14. i know i requested observers at 11-5/6. i just didnt remember when they showed up and actually began really observing.
i do agree that having two certified observers on each team is not practical. then, if we can not equip ourselves with the ability to self officiate (especially in games that really matter), what is the solution?
not an easy answer. we want self officiation, but we do not know how to officiate. seems kind of odd to me. i know, i know, it is not practical. but that does not change the fact that we have a problem.
observers at every elimination game is probably the first step.
as far as contact fouls in the woman's game, why is the standard different? it is not different in basketball. the fouls always looked the same to me in basketball, but they certainly do not in ultimate.
At the high school level here in Minnesota, we are told that Kyle Weisbrod's position (and by extension, the UPA's) is that the high school players should settle their rules discussions themselves and on the field with no input from the sidelines. Personally, I vehemently disagree with this philosophy. What especially bothers me is when a rules discussion gets settled incorrectly on the field, I'll then talk to my entire team about the way it should have been settle, but I don't see the opposing coach do the same thing with his or her team. So now, we have a full team misinformed who will then later pass their information down to the next generation of high school players. This philosophy really lays the groundwork for a lot of misinformation correction down the road, exacerbating an already difficult and frustrating state of ultimate.
There comes a time when a game is very heated, and the responses from the players are very different when a call is made against them. In games I have encountered situations in which one player tries to assert dominance over another by claiming they know more about the rules. Although, the sport of ultimate is relatively new, there still exist people that know the rules, even in girls games. What I don´t agree with is when players with more experience railroad/attempt to railroad younger players or even experienced with the rules (yelling, cussing, getting close and in their face, name calling, etc). I cannot possibly condone this sort of behavior as it only serves to intimidate younger players, make more experienced players angry, and help to lose site of the enjoyment of Ultimate.
Post a Comment
<< Home