Contesting a Foul call on CUPA?

Nation,

To be well known in ultimate, you need to play for a long time, be good at the game, and have a very distinct/passionate personality. For these reasons, Greg Lang is famous... or infamous... however you want to put it. Seriously, fewer people are as well known for their amazing hucks and ability to play when motivated. If you're playing Lang, I highly suggest you don't bug him. It does your team absolutely no good.

Mr Lang recently participated in the Toronto Ultimate Festival and watched Team Canada's World Games team scrimmage with some of Toronto's best players. He was very disappointed to see that almost all of the Team Canada roster is open and womens players and not coed players. He was so angry that he wrote a late night rant on his local league open forum and has called a violation on CUPA.

Brett Taylor at No Borders 2008
Photo Courtesy Dave Knowles

Violation on CUPA?

"CUPA has yet again selected non co-ed players to represent Canada in an international co-ed competition... Those men and women who choose to and dedicate themselves to the co-ed game of ultimate in Canada are the only Canadian players who should be eligible to represent our country in that division internationally."

As a board member of CUPA, I feel the need to speak to this. Here are my thoughts:

• I don't mind Greg Lang or anyone else having an opinion and expressing it regarding CUPA decisions or team selections.
  
• I'm not sure posting on open forums of local leagues is the best way to reach CUPA, and doing it long after team selection is a little reactive.
• I completely disagree with Gregs violation call (I can't contest a violation) and his idea on how International coed squads should be put together.
  

Greg's idea, as I understand it, is that only Co-ed players should be considered for coed national teams. Instantly, we are limiting the talent that we can pick from, and we are discriminating againsts players and teams who may only be able to play for men's and women's teams in their area. How do we determine who is really a coed player and who is not? This could get messy.

CUPA is really trying to improve its processes for competitive play and team selection. Events such as World Games (the national team in selection) is a small rostered event that will feature the best players from the best countries. We worked very hard to recruit a talented selection committee (Andrew Lugsdin, Jeff Cruickshank, Eva Cham, Sherri Madigan, Lara Mussell) to try and cover all division across the country and put forward a winning team based on lessons learned from past World Games experiences.

It doesn't make it right, but when one looks at the Team USA roster, we see a similar trend in open/women player selection for the World Games roster. I do think that the overall best players are in the open/women's divisions, but I also hope that Team USA has not missed out on any hidden coed gems. It's Canada's gain if they did.

I want to see the best players picked for national teams, regardless of division, location, politics or gender. I think the entire CUPA board also echos that sentiment, and we're trying to make that happen on national team at a time.