Scobel Wiggins Photography

The future of Ultimate as a sport hinges on what we do for Youth Ultimate today. We are at a point where we can continue with organic growth, which is impressive but misleading, or we can do things to radically change the youth landscape. We all owe a lot to the people who put in hours and hours of work for years to coach a high school team with no salary, or run a youth league in their spare time. But we can get more mileage out of Youth Ultimate. We shouldn't settle for teams dying out when a large class graduates because a new one starts up in the next town over. There are six main issues that confront youth organizers and players that need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Growth
We see an increase in youth teams every year, but we're still missing out on big opportunities. There are UPA state championships in only 20 states. Most of the other 30 states (19) don't even have a single competing juniors Ultimate team listed on the score reporter. That's not to say that there aren't youth playing Ultimate there—two of those states without a listed team put players on the 2008 Juniors Worlds team—Texas and Florida. But the UPA is missing a big opportunity if they don't even know about juniors competition and juniors players in 30 states.

At the same time, we're missing an opportunity to provide for real depth of competition in cities and states with established Ultimate backgrounds. New Jersey started the first Ultimate team at Columbia High School in 1968. You'd think that the state would have a flourishing youth league by now, with the most teams in the country. Instead, there were 19 youth teams in the state this year, and one of last year's state semifinalists could not field a team this year. The state's league organization is poor, with the state champion and runner-up each only playing one "league" game in the entire season. State and city youth organizations need to be more proactive, the UPA needs to encourage depth of development in certain locations in order to provide a robust and legitimate league and organization to dissuade parents' fears and persuade school athletic directors to bring Ultimate on board.

Retention
It's a serious issue when teams are decimated by a big graduating class to the point of being unsure if they will be able to carry on the next year. Right now we are content with placing complete organizational control in the hands of high school students. Some can cope. Many others cannot, and recruitment and teaching are too much to ask of most captains. Adults need to be far more involved, so that teams outlive a graduating class or the Ultimate knowledge of a few players. I've personally seen a team that ran a ferocious zone devolve to the point that just two years later, the team didn't even know how to run zone and two years after that struggle to field a team.

Coaching
There must be more coaches in the game. Coaching clinics are few and far between—every state youth coordinator should host at least two coaching clinics a year, and leagues and youth organizations should encourage as many local (adult) league players, parents, teachers, and school staff to attend. By mandating a UPA-certified coach on the sideline at every game and tournament, the UPA increases legitimacy and Ultimate knowledge across the board. It fits in with growth and retention—coaches do an excellent job of growing young programs and keeping them around after the first interested players graduate. The UPA or local organizations should keep a database of certified coaches and their locations, and invite youth players interested in starting a team to peruse the database to find a local coach, or even provide a matching service. Similarly, if a certified coach is a teacher or staff at a school, provide materials and encouragement for starting a new team. Despite what the current trends are, current club and college players do not make the best youth coaches. Just look at the success of Amherst, Paideia, Columbia, and the Northwest School, among others.

Competition
The current focus in youth competition is on tournaments, but there is a growing move towards localized leagues where teams can play one game per day against local competition, much like any other field or ball sport at the youth level. Single games increase exposure of Ultimate to the local community like any other high school sport, and high school and middle school students *will* watch. Playing in front of a 1000+ person crowd was one of the highlights of my high school soccer experience, and I hope that someday high school Ultimate players will be able to experience that too. But the reason that tournaments are still so popular is the lack of local teams to play against, or in many cases, the lack of good local teams to play against. That's why Amherst plays games against UMass instead of Concord-Carlisle. We need to raise the number and skill level of teams in each area before we can, in good conscience, get rid of tournaments like Easterns and Westerns (or at least move them to a youth club season). Also, scrap all youth coed and force girls to start their own teams. Help them with local female players and coaches, but recognize that coed Ultimate is stifling both boys and girls high school Ultimate. With Title IX, schools might be willing to add girls Ultimate over boys, but not if there are only two teams in the state.

There are only four functional organized city leagues (PHUL, DiscNW, PHUEL, SLUJ) and two functional organized larger leagues (MN, BUDA) *in the entire country*. In many cases, the best teams in the area don't respect their local competitions—Pennsbury (Easterns semifinalists) sent essentially a JV team to Philadelphia championships two years running, while Amherst played NO league games the entire year, yet still is listed as a member of the BUDA high school league. In my mind, eventually Youth Ultimate will be modeled on youth soccer—one season is a club season and one is a high school season. High school competition will be single-game based and go as far as a Regional championship, and then eventually just culminate in a state tournament once there are enough teams. Coaches will be mandatory. Youth club competition will occur throughout the year, and high school coaches will be prohibited from coaching or watching practices of their high school players. There will be youth club leagues and youth club tournaments, and the Youth Club Championships will decide the best club team in the country, maybe in several age divisions. It would not be limited to one team per league, so conceivably two Seattle teams could meet in the finals.

Rules Knowledge
Youth Ultimate players do not know the rules. It's as simple as that. Many of them have no contact with any UPA organizer or official rule books, and tempers flare when two teams with different understandings of the rules play against each other. At the same time, the UPA and other organizers have been reluctant to provide observers at the youth level, when I would argue that they become the most useful here. They serve to teach players about the rules while preventing players who have no compunctions about making poor and unjustified calls from ruining a game. And they speed things up—Youth Ultimate has a lot more turnovers than elite club, resulting a lot of capped and unsatisfying games. For a lot of players without a full knowledge of the rules, observers make things clearer and better relations between teams. For years, spirit scores at youth events have been lower than in college, which in turn have been lower than in club. The causes can be debated, but there is a lot more bad blood lower down the totem pole.

Organization
Organization at the youth level, and in Ultimate in general, is extremely poor. Games are scheduled a week in advance, tournaments are announced a month before they happen and bids are announced two weeks later, etc. To parents and athletic directors, this is not impressive. Varsity athletics schedules are set a year (or more) in advance. If a high school freshman comes home and tells her parents that she wants to go to Massachusetts next weekend with the uncoached, coed team she just joined, there's not going to be a very favorable reaction. With earlier schedules, fields can be reserved and permits acquired, so that an Ultimate game is never canceled because there are no open fields. Coaches are the wrong people to be State Youth Coordinators. They are too busy with other aspects of life and Ultimate that they cannot possibly devote the attention to the position that it deserves. The real place to look for leadership is in state or city disc organizations. Appoint and hopefully pay someone to be the Youth Ultimate czar for the area. Take charge, get people on board, and start making things more official. It doesn't mean more paperwork and UPA sanctioning—it means accountability, structure, responsibility, as well as not taking "no" for an answer with rec departments, schools, and towns.

But with all this said and done, Youth Ultimate is a beautiful game. No game is ever over when a team goes up by a lot—a team playing well can force a turnover on every point and keep the game alive. There has been a lot of effort poured into the game by a lot of people, most of them unpaid volunteers. Moving Youth Ultimate forward is a huge task that needs more than just one UPA employee, but if we undertake it together the rewards will be massive. There are so many Ultimate players who are passionate about Ultimate—we just need to harness that passion.

Ryan Thompson has experience with New Jersey and New England youth programs, and now plays with Stanford Bloodthirsty.