White Mountain Mephisto Magic!

Nation,

Some great pics of TUF 2010 are available via Corry Berghout's site.

Teams are still in the tryout mode or the feeling out mode of the summer touring season, but we're finally starting to get some tournament results in on the new upa score reporter site.

This past weekend, the White Mountain Open took place in Hanover NH. Despite having a population of roughly 11,000, it's highly regarded as a place to live, and there is just enough to see and do for a weekend. It's a beautiful little area for a tournament.

6 Canadian teams were in action, as well as a number of highly regarded teams in the north east region.

Magma of Montreal had a tough Saturday in a very tough pool. They did not manage to score more than 5 points in any of their games. Any team would have tempered expectations if your schedule read: Sons of Liberty, Q, Chuck Wagon and a Bodhi split squad.

Q from Quebec City is back after a two year absence, and that is a welcome site for Canadian open ultimate. Q put up strong fights against Bodhi and SOL, and lost a heartbreaking one point loss to Chuckwagon. Expect this team to improve throughout the season.

Firebird from Ottawa has returned this season after a one year hiatus. Despite struggling against a Bodhi split squad, the team manage to pound Red Tide 13-2, the first time Firebird has beaten Portland's finest open club.

Demon from Montreal, coming off a fantastic 2009 season, went 1-3 record on day one. Demon had a tough day against their A team Mephisto and strong New York club Replicants, but handled Dartmouth Plane Train easily and lost a one pointer against Sherbrooke.

Bloody Gary is a new open team from Sherbrooke... building on the past juniors and coed development in that city. Bloody Gary had a great first weekend, going 2-2 on day and beating Montreal's Demon by one. I smell a rivalry in the making!!

Mephisto of Montreal (defending CUC champs) had a strong weekend. They breezed through day one play in three of their games, and beat the Replicants 14-12 in a strong pool match up.

In the championship bracket....

Mephisto was the only Canadian team in the quarterfinals. They easily outscored a Bodhi split squad and Sons of liberty to advance to the final.

The finals pitted Bodhi Y versus Mephisto. Montreal was able to take home the WMO crown with a single point win over the boys from the Boston area.

A small victory on the road to Prague Preparation! Next major open tournament in the area will be CUT in Cazenovia, NY.

Toronto Ultimate Festival 2010 Preview

Nation,

The first major outdoor tournament of the season in the Upper/Lower Canada region takes place this weekend. It's used as either a tune up tournament for teams recently formulated, or as a final tryout out for players looking to make a team/program.

The 2010 version of the Toronto Ultimate Festival (TUF) promises to be one of the stronger editions in recent years.

Open

8 of the 14 teams in the division will be from Toronto. The open program in Toronto, GOAT/Grand Trunk/ROY, will be entering 5 teams. Other local teams include Too Bad, Fuel, and Fossil.

Ottawa, Montreal, and Waterloo have decided to participate this year, and as such add some great teams to the pool.

National champion Mephisto from Montreal begins its title defense this weekend, and will be joined by affiliate Demon.

Ottawa will be sending two Phoenix squads and Firebird, which makes its return after a one year hiatus.

Maverick is a new open team from Kitchener-Waterloo. The new team played well as an open team (Medicare) at both Jazzfest and No Borders last year, and will be a strong opponent this weekend.

Womens

There are three local teams from Toronto, with one Lotus team (defending national champions) and two Lily squads.

Ottawa is sending both their A and B squads to the event, and Montreal is sending Storm as a representative.

PPF from K-W should also be a very strong entry this season, benefiting from the folding of coed powerhouse Liquid from the same city.

A team from Peterbourough is listed. No team name is given, but I hope this team is the start of a regular women's team from this city. It's ultimate, so maybe it's just a ringer team from somewhere else.

Mixed

Usually the strength of the TUF tournament, the division has 27 teams this year but is missing some of the key coed teams in the region. (Gecko, RIP, etc)

Monster, Bytown Flatball Club, Mayhem, Big Fish and Big Hammers will be introducing their 2010 squads. Tundra will be continuing their tryouts with split squads entered.

After a great experience last year, Saint John's (Newfoundland) will be sending two squads this year. Currently, there is no word on whether the team will employ the services of Gavin "Zone Buster" Thompson this year.

2010 Junior National Teams

Nation,

Ultimate Canada released the rosters of the open and women's 2010 Junior National Teams.

These players will represent Canada in Germany at the WFDF World Junior Ultimate Championships August 2-7, 2010.


Junior OpenJunior Women's

Head Coach: Kirk Nylen Assistant Coach: Patrick Mooney	Head Coach: Stephanie Chow Assistant Coach: Dan Byma
Ben Mussell Ethan Kovacs Evan Cole Fred Lam Greg Moore Hollis Maradyn-Jowsey Isaiah Masek-Kelly Joel Ruelens-Lepoutre Keanen Grant Kevin Greer Marc-Andre Perreault Myles Sinclair Nick Boucher Nima Mostaghimi Quin Rusnak Robert Schmidt Ryan Kremsater Tim Tsang Willem Konrad	Chantal Africa Jessica Chen Mira Donaldson Laura Hatch Katherine Ho Lauren Kimura Jacqueline Kwok Amira Maddison Kayla Pangos Aya Peloquin Dominique Rioux Adrianna Rowe Katie Scarth Kaylee Sparks Gera Stancheva Erica Tucker Nicole Vidal Olana Wach Claire Williams Lisa Wong
Alternates Gregory Loscin Jackson Byrne Kyle Patrick Thomas Canale	Alternates Sara Lawlor Emily Lublow Rebecca Saaltink Helen Thompson Jo-Hannah Yeo

Team Manager: A.J. Sainsbury

March Madness- Things picking up in the Ultimate Scene!

Nation,

The world of ultimate is starting to buzz again as teams have already begin to announce final rosters for World Clubs and UPA College sectionals are mere weeks away

WUCC and U-19, U-23 and other Canadian Buzz

Teams are at various stages of organization for WUCC. Rumors about where certain Furious or GOAT players are headed for the Prague tourney are now being realized as fact (Andrew Lugsdin to Mephisto, various Furious players to Invictus, Blackfish players to GLUM) or fiction.

Kudos to Phoenix of Ottawa for being so early with naming their team. It would have been easy for them to delay naming their team in the hopes of landing some of the big names out there still available, but instead they went local and loyal to the players who helped them win their bid. And they spared themselves the ordeal of being "disc teased"by superstars.

U-19 tryouts will be starting soon in various cities, and men's coaches Kirk Nylen and Pat Mooney are in fact implementing some base testing measurements (40, shuttle drill, vertical, etc). These numbers will assist them in the tryout process and be very valuable to Ultimate Canada to compare to future years. Finally, we'll be able to quantify it when people say "Players are getting bigger/faster".

U-23 coaches and team manager will be selected this week. Tryout dates have already been tentatively set by Ultimate Canada.

There is also rumors that Furious George will attend Canadian Nationals in Sherbrooke this year, while Lotus will most likely not. Let the dominoes fall...
UPA College Sectionals

Is your college team representing Canada in the UPA college series. Send me an e-mail with your team preview!!!

College sectionals begin on April 10. After Roll Call this weekend, I will have a Canadian specific preview on both the men's and women's division.

Other News

It's been brought to my attention that Cultimate is taking over the running of the Emerald City Classic. I don't know the people of Cultimate personally, but they organize over 10 tournaments per year, and they are famous for trying to create a elite championship tournament series separate from the UPA before.

Most of the comments I have gotten about Cultimate is that of concern, and many question whether this group will be able to continue the reputation and standards of ECC.


Possibility that a very key member of North Carolina women's team Backhoe will be starting a new team, possibly sharing the same team name as Ottawa men's team Phoenix.

Backhoe has long been a UPA finals club trying to take the next step and challenge Fury and Riot. A new team and the loss of a key teammate might not be good news for the team.

Intelligence in Ultimate- Is it Valued Enough?

Nation,

Every year the NFL carries out an extensive "combine" of potential NFL draft prospects. It has been formed into a profitable sport event that has extensive TV coverage and is fodder for pre draft discussion and hype.

Players are weighed, measured and fitted. They are poked, prodded, and sampled. They sprint, run, jump, listen to beeps and read charts. They dash, cut, catch, tackle, and block. It's a very complete process. Everything is taped and technologies (Dartfish) are used to analyze players.

In fact, if I am selected to help with Team Canada U-23 team, any type of tryouts will borrow from these types of combines. Limited by manpower and funds, it might simply be a case of videotaping and coding all scrimmages in the tryouts, and recording vital sprint, shuttle, and jump stats for each player. These "stats" shouldn't decide a players fate.. but they can help put a true numerical value for comparison and it can be used over time to see the development of players and the ultimate development system. (e.g. Are the athletes getting better)

The NFL and IQ- The Wonderlic Test

I have never played Football but it fascinates me that one of the most barbaric sports in the world is so sophisticated in planning, preparation and evaluation of its players. It is very impressive.

The NFL understands the importance of athleticism. Seeing them overlook Heisman Trophy winners and college championship players for division three players from small town Arkansas is done for a reason- They understand the link between winning and various player traits.

One of these traits is intelligence. They use a simple IQ test called the Wonderlic to get a measure of how well each NFL prospect will be able to mentally understand and adapt to the rigors of the NFL game.

Wonderlic is used in many professions as well. Getting a score of 10 out of 50 means a person is literate. Below that score of 10 suggests a person might be mentally challenged. The average participant scores a rating of 24

Here is an article on the scores for this year's best QB prospects. It also lists some of the current NFL Starting QBs and great past QBs for reference.

What has the NFL learned from this process?

• Intelligence certainly helps, but it is not the lone factor in deciding stardom
  
• Players with low Wonderlic scores have a tough time playing the game despite any great physical dominace (Vince Young, who originally scored a 6 in his test, and is alleged to have gotten someone else to write the retest in which he scored a 15)

Player scores in the Wonderlic vary by position. Some positions have higher averages than others. Here is the breakdown:

• Offensive tackle – 26
• Center – 25
• Quarterback – 24
• Guard – 23
• Tight end – 22
• Safety – 19
• Linebacker – 19
• Cornerback – 18
• Wide receiver – 17
• Fullback – 17
• Halfback – 16

Back to Ultimate- How do We Value Intelligence?

With respect to ultimate, our tryout process are a little more primitive. They usually involve tryouts where most of the spots are already decided before the tryouts (Few teams are upfront with that) and the majority of the spots are available for the following

• Tall people
• Athletic and Fast people
• Flavor of the month (Those who make a few big d's or layouts at the tryouts, someone new in town, etc)
• In co-ed it sometimes simply comes down to romantic relationships
  

One of the reasons for this is the majority of captains who serve as leaders or coaches are handler types. I hypothesize that they have longer careers, and assume such roles of leadership. Asking these people to pick players who can/might replace them on the field is a tough task. Naturally they will pick players that compliment their importance to the team. This is understandable, simple human nature. That doesn't mean it is best for the team though.

I can say with some pride that the teams I played for or lead did place value on the mental makeup of a player and intelligence. Just like "you can't teach tall", you'll also be hard pressed to teach players how to think, read and react both on and off the field if they have a limited amount of grey matter to work with.

Along with cognitive ability, emotional intelligence is very important in picking your ultimate team. It's a long season with ups and downs, and few things disrupt a team faster than people who can't keep their own goals and emotions in check for the team.

Yes, there are many "smart" people in ultimate. However, there are many great stories of incredibly smart people who cannot relate to the real world, let alone teammates. Their inability to read and react to teammates is not helpful to team success.

Failing Wonderlic exams for your tryouts, I pose some simple guidelines to use in spring tryouts

• Value the cognitive ability of players being considered
• Take the time to correctly know and understand the emotional intelligence of people you are considering.
  
• Be very clear about the goals of the team and the expectations of how players will carry themselves.
  
• Have leaders that talk the talk and walk the walk (competent leaders in their roles who carry themselves well)

I look forward to reader feedback on the importance of IQ in ultimate.

Team Fundraising- What Works, and What is Acceptable

Nation,

There are three world championships this summer. The implications of these events include but are limited to the following.

• Some very good ultimate is going to be played
• Some very deserving players are going to get some great experience
• We're going to take the temperature of Canada's competitiveness at the world stage and who the emerging countries are

And...

• Players will be scrambling to raise funds
• We as a community will be exposed to a number of fund raising schemes and efforts.

Yesterday, I was asked to assist one of our Canadian clubs by taking part in an orange order (Mephisto is the team, if you are interested in buying some contact them). I have not been involved in the "buying oranges"game since I was in grade four. I remember the school fund raising oranges being of good quality, but even grade four me knew that I was selling a product that people could get in a more timely and cost effective manner. The chocolate bar racket was much better for the school, the sellers and the buyers, but it became less popular as getting kids pimping chocolate became less acceptable socially.

It doesn't stop at oranges. Fund raising efforts have included the following

• Teams running their own tournaments for profit
• Raffle tickets
  
• Illegal poker tournaments
  
• March Madness and other fantasy pools
  
• Selling Live strong rip off bracelets (That has ceased thankfully)
• Calenders (Most notably Storm of 2004)

All of the fund raising schemes appear to be the quick hit easy to plan and make happen projects. Unfortunately.. most of these projects end up merely taking money out of the pockets of loved ones and ultimate community. That raises a moral dilemma for people who think.

So, I ask you the reader to tell me

• What is the Return On Investment for these Projects? Do people do them because they actually make money?
• Which activities have worked the best for you or your team in the past?

Just some Friday Banter in Early March

Nation,

Where have all the bloggers gone during the off-season?

First Jeters left his post early last year and hasn't returned. The Huddle has not put out anything new all year. MSSUI was a classic example of a hype site with a bad name and even worse dedication follow through (started in 2008.. no new articles since 2008). Parinella has been the most active blog whose posts I consider a must read.

As for me, I've been silent as well. Partly because some of the Ultimate Canada groups I am working on with require me to be silent. Partly because work and life have been pretty hectic as of late. However, all excuses have to be put aside when I get e-mails from readers like this.

"Dude that was one hell of a break on the blog...I felt like an abandoned child in a mall"

I'm not just a deadbeat blogger.. I'm also a terrible parent. Let's make some amends then shall we?

U-23 Worlds- Go of No Go?

It's a go. Men's and Women's divisions.

A very tough decision for Ultimate Canada. Here is why:

• WFDF really rushed the decision to move forward on this tournament. No real bid process was followed.
  
• The USA has pulled out for some very valid reasons.
  
• Other countries were slow to commit
  
• The tournament directory team looks a little inexperienced and their ability to carry about such a tournament at an International level is question.

We had a tremendous amount of feedback from players interested in attending. Hopefully that will remain the case when these players must spend money to travel and train with Team Canada. (Interest does not always equal to Commitment in ultimate).

Personally, I have put my name in for the Team Manager and Coaching positions. I feel like my experience working with the Operations section of the Canadian Olympic Committee for the 2008 games should be a strong case for the Manager position. Visas, accreditation, travel, accommodation, and tryout processes are all "little things" that are surprisingly important.

Coaching wise, I'd love to get a chance to coach some of the under 23 players who have expressed interest. Who wouldn"t? The players I've seen through college and open play are talented and have the ability to carry out gameplans and schemes. U-19 and U-23 National Teams are a great way to prepare these players for future development and World/Club level participation.