Voice Post

            Although it was a bit tricky to find a blog with a distinct voice, I think I found one with a more somber tone which comes from the way he presents his day at possibly his last Ultimate Frisbee tournament.  The blog is called Parinella's blog and it talks about many facets of the Ultimate Frisbee experience.  The author also displays his go with the flow personality that seems to stick with him throughout his Ultimate career. The blog author starts with a quote of himself about the fact that he was thinking of hanging up his Ultimate Frisbee cleats.  The quote gives a sense of his personality through his reflection of his previous self and his change of heart.  It gives the reader a quick background of his relationship to the game without divulging too much information.  After the big self quote he says “Another year, another Nationals”; although his shows his love for the game you get a sense that he is almost tired out by the sport, and maybe the culture and people.  From this phrase, he doesn't seem to be overly excited to play on his team in pretty big tournament, the National Championships.  This is NOT the normal sentiment towards Ultimate where there is a giddy feeling to getting on that nationals field.  A line that stood out from the section on his physical condition was “my neck muscles are sore now” because it adds to sense of his weariness in the game physically and mentally.  Phrases alluding to what used to happen give a sense of his beloved pastime like “Wife and son stayed home this year. Just me and 1500 of my closest friends”.  This sentence also reveals a bit of sarcasm because he is generalizing all of the Ultimate community as his friends even though he sees the people changing and the culture changing.

            On a more general note, he uses short sentences to show his emotion to whatever situation he is speaking about.  Some examples are “Second game was uneventful” or “I don't know what's next.” Or “it’s all good”.  These tid bits give his writing a flare off his personality, it gives him a laid back and go with the flow kind of feeling, which kind of ties to the beginning of his post where he says “Another year, another Nationals” right after his story about his last time he was going to play competitive Ultimate.  The section about the “beer tent” also brings out his go with the flow and spontaneous personality because of the way he phrases visiting the tent: “just to see who was there” and to drink “gunni”.  This shows that he is kind of re-living his good old days.

            His last paragraph almost merge these two personality traits of being happy to play if anyone else wants to play and accepting the fact that he isn't going to play Ultimate for too much longer. He displays a lot of nostalgia and sadness through his word choice like “get the band back” and “it’s all good” and “it is what it is”.  I think these word choice decisions also show the loss of the capability to choose to play or not, it is out of his hands.

            The UltimateStrategy and Coaching blog is written by Martin, who seems to be an Ultimate Frisbee coach in person.  This blogger regularly watches club ultimate frisbee matches and is up to date with the direction of the sport.  He focuses on the current news in the Master’s Ultimate National series.  He has very good insider, insight towards the sport and gives not only a newcomer but an Ultimate player a good view of the inner workings of the Ultimate Community and leagues.

            One of his posts highlights one of the problems of the national championship system which is the roster turnover.  Roster turnover refers to the fact that rosters are not very constant in the Ultimate Frisbee world, whether it is club or pickup games.  This presents a problem for strategically planning because the players on the other team can be random.  His solution to this problem is to make the team’s strategy very modular and experimental; the team should be prepared to use many different defenses.  The importance of a coach that recognizes the weaknesses of the opposing team is vital to the defenses that are thrown at the other team.

            Martin also describes the necessities of a coach in Ultimate Frisbee.  Not only has he been a coach on and off, but attended a USA Ultimate Coach Certification session; this only provided very basic information according to him.  What is interesting about his perspective is that he evaluates himself as a coach and in this manner you can see inside the mind of an actively working Ultimate leader.

            Coach Martin does not enjoy the new leadership in the Ultimate competition organization, named Ultimate Players Association.  It has been re-branded to USA Ultimate and he feels that the new CEO does not value the concerns and desires of the new players and coaches in the Ultimate Community.

            I think this blog relates to my blog in several different facets including the topics of USA Ultimate and coaching in general.  Although the blog is not strictly academic, it provides a breadth of information from one coach’s perspective which can be very valuable.  Each of his topics or posts are pretty detailed and gives pertinent information if you are connected to the Ultimate Community as a casual follower on the internet.  I also think playing Ultimate Frisbee and being an active part of the Ultimate Community in real life is required because some of the things he references are common topics among Ultimate Players.   Therefore, I think his audience is the Ultimate Community.  I think this blog could feed my work because of some of the new topics that Martin brings up from a coach’s (or outside) perspective since I am only a player.  I think the different perspective will not only bring different viewpoints on some of the topics I discuss in my blog but bring new ideas and issues to the table that I had not thought of before.  Following and interacting with Martin’s blog will be an interesting endeavor

My Ultimate Friend

My search for someone online that enjoys finding Ultimate Frisbee stuff was actually harder than expected.  Not only did I want to find  a person on the topic of Ultimate Frisbee, but one that was specifically interested in the strategies used in the game.  Using diigo turned out to be fruitless, so I tried me luck on the delicious website.  The searches on Ultimate lead me to one of their public users and they had a decent amount of interest in Ultimate.  This person actually had some websites on Ultimate Frisbee unknown to me.  Here are some of the interesting and useful ones: 

Ultimate Rob’s blog seems to be a well established website with articles on almost any aspect about the sport of Ultimate Frisbee or even disc sports in general.  I think Ultimate Rob is a great resource for improving yourself as a individual player with throwing skill, physical fitness, and keeping on top of the rules.  Ultimate Rob also has a section on psychology, which is unique to most websites about Ultimate Frisbee.  This part of the blog explains how the mental aspect of the game can effect the the events that occur on field greatly.  For example, he has a section on the "pull' which is the first throw of the game similar to a kickoff in football.  In Ultimate, Ultimate Rob explains that a well placed pull allows the defense to get set and show their "intent"; basically this allows the defense to set up and get into the right mindset to shut down the offense.  A pull is a very minute part of Ultimate Frisbee in most people's eyes, but Ultimate Rob brings attention to this play because it almost serves as the anchor for the rest of the point.

One of my favorite Ultimate Frisbee blogs was also publicly linked by this dude: The Huddle.  This blog website is always an easy read for any Ultimate player wanting to learn about strategy or individual tips and tricks.  The Huddle is separated into Issues and Features.  The issues usually are tidbits about skills needed in Ultimate, which is really helpful for a player wanting to improve.  The features are more of whats happening in the Ultimate world and the growth of the game from an insiders point of view, this will be very useful to me in the future for my blog topics.

One of the websites I did not know about is this wikipedia type page for Ultimate: Ultipedia. This website has a huge scope of the history and links to a lot of teams around the world.  Although it is pretty weak on the strategy, it gives a thorough background on how the game was created and progressed over the years.  It also provides information on all notable teams and tournaments available for the Ultimate Community.  This website seems like a hub for all Ultimate related information and directs people to whatever they are interested in.  I will be exploring this website further in the next couple weeks.

GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS

                Men are better than woman at sports. Men do not play on women’s teams.  And a man playing against a woman is not fair.  These are the unspoken rules of sports in a nutshell.  I would say that I understand why these social norms exist because they coincide with other ways that women are treated differently in daily life; for example if a woman is trying to carry something heavy, it is a MAN’s job to carry it for her because we are strong and tough and never break sweat.  In sports, I want to believe the gender divide has only to do with fairness because as everyone knows men are biologically slightly taller, stronger, faster blah blah blah.  I guess Ultimate doesn’t care about these norms for one reason or the other, probably because of the fact that Ultimate Frisbee grew up with the hippies and therefore their mentalities were transferred upon frisbee.  

During pickup games and even specific leagues, men and women are allowed to play on the same team and to play each other.  Not only can they be on the same team but they can match up man to man however they would like, there are no rules on who has to play who (besides the fact that there should be equal number of each gender which is determined by one of the lines each point).  I think this is a HUGE advantage for the sport.  You can play with girls?? That’s how we pull in men at the our USC involvement fair, and it seems to work like a charm.  The only trick is to make sure that the girls are there!  The interesting part about playing with girls in Ultimate Frisbee is that there is not a stigma against it, its not just allowed by the rules.  As long as everyone on the team understands some of the basic principles of the game, it seems to work out quite well as a competitive match.  One of the results of this is the extra sense of community that this brings because it is less of a “men’s club” and more of a extended family feel, and I think it is one of the parts of frisbee that make it so comfortable to just join, learn as a new player, and just to be interested in general.

One thing that does change when playing with girls is that the guys seem to try a bit harder to show off hahaha, this is inevitable and slightly amusing to me (I feel like I can't stop myself from doing it neither).  There is just something that happens when you start playing with women, where you have the need to prove yourself.  Some Ultimate Frisbee girls have actually told me that watching men play did change their perception of whether they liked or disliked that person, so its not just in the men's heads.  But either way, I think this is harmless form of showing off for the girls and just adds to the excitement of playing on mixed gender teams, it really is that fun!