Do you feel the UPA should be providing/advocating for more opportunities for play at the local level? For example:
• Start/support/run leagues and local organizations
• Secure fields
• Promote and market Ultimate
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3 comments:
The UPA should publish a BMP (best-practice manual), explaining how to plan and maintain a local area organization.
I think it would greatly benefit the UPA and Ultiamte players at all levels to become more involved in local leagues and organizations. I'm sure there are more people playing in local leagues around the country than on teams that are involved in the elite Club Series and College Series. For the UPA to not be more active with these groups is to be missing out on a large portion of the Ultimate community, especially among newer players who can help Ultimate grow.
There are a ton of players in our local B League that don't even know that the UPA exists. I think that showing the newbies that there is an organized governing body and support system for their new activity will show them that Ultimate has a future, and they can continue to bring more people into the sport and be involved in the Ultimate community longer.
Furthermore, if the UPA had more involvement with local leagues, it may serve to help them better organize and keep a more consistent brand of Ultimate from one league to another. The UPA could facilitate communication between local leagues. Having everyone on the same page in some sort will only help the sport, IMO.
Of course, leagues could choose to not be affiliated with the UPA if they want, but I think it would show great leadership by the UPA to be more proactive in local arenas and draw more common threads across all levels of Ultimate.
It seems to me that the benefits of the UPA are only really present at the higher levels.
After college, I let my UPA membership lapse and only used the site occassionally to look for places to play locally a few times (whenever I moved). While I did find a few areas to play on the UPA's list, most of the listings I found were outdated. Google and Yahoo! were much more useful.
The UPA doesn't have much control of this, since it requires the people driving those local scenes to update the UPA.
However, more people would be interested in advertising their local play on the UPA site (therefore making it easier for everyone to find and get plugged into ultimate) if the UPA offered more services to these groups.
If the UPA offered local groups free hosting of forums, directions to fields, email lists, etc. it would draw these groups into the UPA fold.
The UPA could offset the costs of such hosting by running advertisements, or (more valuable) by tapping into this group of unreached ultimate players.
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