Scobel Wiggins Photography

What I really like about the arguments in Let 'Em Play, Let 'Em Ball is that it really captures the essence of how the youth ultimate scheduling system is currently set up by the national governing body. Reading it spelled out so clearly, it is obvious how absolutely wrong the system is not only for the safety of the youth playing, but also for the growth of the sport.

Last year I questioned a UPA representative about concerns with a format that had five games in a day for a state tournament. The UPA rep e-mailed back and among other things said "I [UPA rep] personally don't believe kids need to be babied as much" as you do. I was also essentially told that if a coach doesn't feel the format is safe they could withdraw their team(s) from the tournament. The irony of this statement is that it came from a representative of an organization that requires youth participants to fill out liability waivers for their events, yet those waivers would not cover an injury to a child caused by a fundamentally and negligently unsafe format.

A motivated family of an injured child with a good lawyer would easily win the case. When it comes to youth sports, safety is the number one issue. If a kid gets seriously hurt playing in their fifth (or even fourth or third) game of a day, organizers and involved organizations are going to get sued. And more importantly a youth player will have been needlessly injured.

In the quest to grow the sport to the point where significantly more kids get access to ultimate, it will be professional athletic administrators who will have to be convinced that it is a worthwhile activity. If the current tournament centric game model* is presented as standard operating procedure for youth ultimate, the athletic administrators in the room will laugh the representatives of the sport right out of the room.

Lastly, the vast improvement in high school caliber players is not because of the caliber of coaches, it is because of larger pool of athletes playing the game. In fact I'm sure that a non-ultimate person who has experience in other sports could be quite successful at the highest levels of coaching youth ultimate just by understanding how to run a youth sports program.

*There is at some point in most youth sports a need for tournaments but there are formats that are safe. Check out the formats for the state high school basketball and soccer tournaments. Look at the WFDF World Championships format.