What should the UPA's stance be on officials (refs, observers) in Ultimate?
Please review the findings for this topic before engaging in discussion.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Welcome to the official UPA Strategic Planning Blog Forum. Here you will find data from recent UPA surveys and questions regarding key strategic planning questions identified from those surveys. Please take a second to read the groundrules for contributing on these forums and we look forward to hearing from you!
15 comments:
Personally, I feel it is extremely important for non-profits to document and represent the values of their membership in a way which is clearly accountable. To these ends, I feel the UPA has done en excellent job! The information presented here: http://www.upa.org/upa/mission exceeds my expectations. I am a big fan of Sandie Hammerly. (And you too Mike Payne & Will)
I see a lot of unused potential in the website. I would like to see all UPA business posted there in a more timely fashion. I think rec.sports.disc is a problem for some UPA Officials and Board Members. It is a big challenge to consistently present information in a positive and concise manner. Staff should have posts approved by Ryan or Sandie.
And while I'm thinking about it; I would like to hear more from the UPA about staffing needs. Personally, I would like to see a salesperson added to the team.
The way the UPA should keep our sport self-refereeing, reduce the number of bad calls players make in big games, and support the SOTG is to add a Disincentive to making unwarranted foul calls. (Make players responsible for the calls they make.)
Details are being discussed on teh "Ultimate w/o Self Officiated Play" chat.
I don't think Ultimate needs officials involved if players seriously respect the spirit of the game.
I think it runs directly contrary to the spirit of the game to have referees, and even observers for line calls is a little iffy (especially since in reality it is hard to keep them from getting dragged into other plays). The very reason I started playing ultimate is BECAUSE we are such a laid-back sport that we can officiate ourselves. The way we are going now, with talk of officials and possible tv time, is the way that leads to endorsement deals and selling out. If we follow this path too long, there will be nothing substantive to distinguish ultimate from the fucking X-games, and that is NOT where I want our sport to go.
I don't want Ultimate to be officiated by referees, but I think line judges and Observers are fine. Sometimes, no player on the field has the best perspective--why not ask an impartial person who does?
Honestly, I do not think that I play a "laid-back" sport. Some players, some tournaments, yes. But Ultimate is played by a diverse community, and a considerable percentage of that community wants to see competitive, athletic, and high-profile (televised) play. We are far from "selling out", though, which is a ridiculous concept anyway. I see no comparison between Ultimate and the X-games other than their counter-culture origins.
With the increasing amount of competiveness at the Elite Open level I've seen more and more players making bad calls, screaming at each other and moving away from SotG. We talk and talk about maintaining spirit, but with the new intensity I keep seeing I feel officials can play certain roles.
Line calls are definitely needed, there's really nothing worse than two guys going up without anyone within 30 yards in the back of the end zone and then having people argue about who had best perspective. An official wouldnt stop the flow of the game in this instance as it's a dead disc anyway, and it takes the focus off of the two teams arguing.
Marking violations really can't be solved by an official, and the new rules really make it seem, to me, that if the thrower calls a foul you're really not going to help your cause by contesting, the specific language being "Anytime the thrower and the marker are vying for the same unoccupied area, it is a foul on the marker". But where they could help is just to resolve disputes for on the field fouls when the two players consent to giving up their authority of self-officiating to the offical. Maybe during the course of the game you have to bring in a ref four of five times, hopefully never, but during the course of the game situations occur.
For a quick example: recently in a tournament I had an offensive player run straight into me as I went vertical for a disc, knocking me on my butt. The disc went over my head and was caught by another offensive player for a score. After I called foul the player who ran into starting screaming at me, and if the game was more competitive I wouldnt have let the score count, and I'm sure our argument would've only furthered the bad blood between our teams. I would've loved to been able to turn to an official and ask "What do you think?" and end the argument the way it should've been resolved.
Ultimate should remain self-officiated. It's one of our better traditions and was installed (I believe partially) to instill more sportsmanship amongst its players. But I think its time to end the fighting that is almost inevitable in every game. I'm not looking to install a "policeman"-style official like the NFL, in fact I don't think the ref should be allowed to make his calls independently. We won't be able to staff for officials at every tournament obviously, but I think its a luxury that a lot of us can agree would be nice at the elite level, used only as a way to end arguments and specific questions, not a way to take officiating out of players hands.
I think that the current system of officiation is great for 99% of high school and college games. However, at the very highest level, I think that the stakes are too high to assume that SOTG will prevail. It only takes one team making questionable calls at the national level to cause all the other teams to compensate by doing the same.
Again, I like the current system for most youth and college matches, but at the highest level it must be officiated (much like tennis). It's just naive to think that the incentive to make bad calls will be overcome in all cases by human decency.
-WD
It's also very frustrating to watch a game where all of the calls are a mystery to the audience (and especially the stall count). A coherent referee system with hand signals is necessary.
While I wouldn't use the R-word, I think your last idea, wd, is excellent. Some clear communication about what calls were made would be awesome, especially for spectators and video. The Observer could simply motion as a way of reporting a call made, and then they should have a simple gesture for both "upheld" and "overruled".
I think we can all agree that there will never be officials in every level of ultimate. There will always be fun tournaments and lots of play with self-officiating. However, at the club level, there has to be some degree of officiating. High-level club ultimate has become too competitive (which is an amazing thing) to continue SOTG as it was first envisioned. I personally don’t think this has to be an entire sport decision. We don’t have to set in stone that every game forever will have officials, but seriously, something has to be done at the higher levels. Games are too close to be decided on bad calls. It really does make for bad blood between teams. Let's take this sport the next level.
I like the idea of signals for spectators (and other players) to know what the call was. That makes the sport more interactive, and more watchable, thereby making it more marketable.
There could be a 10 second Rock-Paper-Scissors rule instead of referees. After 10 seconds of BS, disputed calls settled by two other players on the field using rock-paper-scissors.
Realistically, the game already has an excellent mechanism for unresolved calls: a do-over (ie back to the thrower).
Just about anything is better than referees. You want refs? Go play something else with refs, just don't call it Ultimate.
A few immature players shouldn't ruin it for the rest of us.
Ultimate is the sport of the future!
I think we need to think more towards that goal. All other sports are well-established, weighed down beaurocracies (spelling?) bent on getting money. Ultimate is everything that all other sports are not. It takes enthusiasts and makes them good athletes and good people.
And it is the only sport whose rules and future are decided by a network of thousands of PLAYERS and not a small group of board members thinking about money. Think about it: Ultimate is the MySpace of sports and it will explode in the next several years. It will be the most common family sport! And it will be started by a network of college kids who loved a sport and had a dream. And i think nothing else should be our goal.
No Officials, SOTG...Observers are exceptable, but officials go against the idea of SOTG
Post a Comment