UPs Winter Hat Tourney: We’ve come a long way!

Let the games begin!

Twice in January we had to postpone the beginning of league play because of stormy weather, so you can imagine our surprise when we arrived at the field in the Village of Daburia on a Friday morning in early February to find the sun shining down on us.  David and Linda, our fearless leaders who work so very hard to raise the funds that we spend on these amazing young players, were in town too.  Almost as soon as we got there, David and Jez began marking out the fields.  Pacing off four equal sized fields on one soccer pitch.

Players started to trickle in.  Lots of hugging and high fives, and then discs in the air.  This was about the time that we got word that our Palestinian friends had passed all their checkpoints and were on their way; a few minutes late maybe, but that should be the worst of our problems.  With everyone else already at the field, we began splitting up the teams.  This being a HAT tournament we needed to create mixed teams, so each mentor coach took one of the communities they work with and split them up between four girls teams and six boys teams.

I got all the guys from Tuba together and started trying to split them up.  They kept moving around to make sure they would be on the same team with their best friends.   Teenagers!  What’ch ya gonna do?  

David and Linda gave a quick welcome speech, and then Jez explained the rules and format for the day.

From the moment I gathered the girls Gray Team together, I lost focus on most everything else that happened.  I think the boys played too, but my eyes were glued to my Gray Team.  Without the last bus of players we started the day with seven players.  With one saying she was ill and another limping on a sore ankle, we started the first game with 5’s.  We were playing a blue team.  Actually, the other three girls teams were all different shades of blue.  It wasn’t a problem on the field, but I can’t for the life of me remember which blue we played when.

The first thing that struck me as the games started was how far we had come in just a few months.  For a lot of these players, they have been to UP camp at least one, if not twice.  When we met a few months ago for a HAT tournament there was still a great deal of clumping and chaos on the field.  Now, we’ve been having regular weekly practices in all of the communities represented, and it showed.  We have stacks, cuts to space, dumps, and force on D.

Patiently waiting for the cuts to develop...

The CIT on my team was great, helping get the rest of the team into a vertical stack on the field and keeping them focused off the field.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of the smaller meeker girls that I coach on a weekly basis but who was playing on the other team threw herself at a disc.  Maybe it’s because we haven’t been having practices on grass, or maybe she stepped up for a competitive game.  Watching a thirteen year old girl laying-out was just the energy boost that I needed.  She didn’t catch the disc, but that didn’t matter.  The rest of the girls saw it, and saw how much respect us coaches were giving her for it.

In the middle of the game the rest of the players arrived, our sick players started feeling better and the one who was limping suddenly was having too much fun to stay out of the game.  We played the rest of the day with 7’s.

7 on the line.

We won our first game going away. (5-1 or something like that)  The Gray Team was playing together, working together, and scoring together.  That’s what I stressed, playing as a team.  I decided not to bother trying to get everyone on the same page with force or set plays.  They were working well together, so I just encouraged them to keep it up.

Goal. Again.

Game number two started much the same as the first.  We scored some points.  I started getting a little cocky as a coach and after one point didn’t really say anything useful on the line.  The girls read that and also started playing lazy and cocky, and we quickly dropped two points.  I was surprised at how much influence I had as a coach not just on how the team played over the course of the day, but by how much each point was dependent on just a few words of encouragement.  We took the second game without too much trouble in the end.

Game three we came out flat.  We were in a quick 0-2 hole, and I didn’t really see what we were doing differently.  I re-focused the girls on playing together, and playing tight defense.    We scored the next point.  The team gained confidence.  We scored another point to tie the game at 2, and they gained more confidence.

Refocusing.

I was so impressed by how they built of one another’s energy.  That confidence coupled with this renewed energy and a pinch of encouragement from the sideline led to some of the best second effort catches of the day.  With time running out and one last point to play, the Gray Team scored to put the score at 3-2.

We had finished pool play with a perfect 3-0 record and a spirit lifting come from behind win in the last game.

The final pitted us in a rematch against our opening game opponent.  Since then, they had won both of their games, so I didn’t think we would be able to breeze through the game like we had earlier in the day.  With a lunch break before our game started, I tried to get the girls into some sort of drill as a warm up.  They didn’t seem too into it.  One of the things that we don’t need to teach to any of these players is how to step it up when the competition rises.  In fact, the hardest thing that we need to teach them is how to keep that intensity under control.

Blue has refocused, too...

The final was a back and forth game.  Our opponents were playing a more structured game especially on defense, and I worried that the Gray Team would get flustered and struggle.  But they wouldn’t let it get to them, passing and dumping and swinging.  The other team was repeatedly knocking on the door to the end zone, but the Gray Team just wouldn’t let them in.  Time was running down and we had a slight 3-2 edge.  Things were getting chippy.  Girls were fouling, in-out calls were being argued.

In? Out? It's a close call.

As coaches we try to stay out of these conversations as much as possible while still not letting them boil over.  After a couple particularly long arguments, we coaches called a Spirit time out.  We gathered the two teams together in a circle and reminded them what Ultimate is all about.  We talked about how they were playing so well all day and that they should not let their being tired at the end of the Final make them forget Spirit.

That was the last foul of the day.  And a few minutes later, the Gray Team managed to push across the winning score.  4-2 in the final, 4-0 over all for the day.

The CITs picked one spirit winner and one MVP from our team.  In the closing ceremony all the spirit and MVP winners from each team got to pick a shirt from a pile of donated jerseys from all over the world.  They took a picture with the winning boys team and the UP HAT Tournament Trophy.

It’s hard to put into words just how proud I was (am) to have worked with these girls on that field.  My team showed me how hard they could work, and how well they could work together.  Even more than that, all the girls on all the teams showed us just how far they had come.

by Abe Chiswick, Year-Round Mentor Coach

How does the emergence of a professional American Ultimate Disc League affect Ultimate Peace?

There is quite a bit of excitement right now over the American Ultimate Disc League and the potential for professional ultimate in the United States. While discussion churns in other arenas about ticket sales, rule changes, and live streaming, I want to look at the AUDL and refereed ultimate from an Ultimate Peace perspective. Naturally, this post will only be able to bring up some core issues and ask more questions than it answers. Also, it is meant for a general ultimate conversation, not as a critique on what the AUDL is building.

“Ultimate is the ideal team sport for
uniting divided societies and cultures”

Daburriya and Kfar Tavor come together for ultimate.

UP believes that there is something about ultimate that makes it different from other sports. UP exists because our sport – and the reliance on “spirit of the game” – teaches tools of listening and resolving conflict that other sports delegate or de-emphasize.

With games scheduled to start this Spring, the AUDL’s stated goals are to entertain through ultimate and make a profit on each team and in the league overall. The league’s ownership structure, proposed style of play, and even the language it employs widely differ from USA Ultimate and smaller ultimate-affiliates. These typical ultimate organizations are mostly volunteer-driven, not for profit, and limited in scope to “promoting the sport in [fill in the state/city/metro area].” From my vantage point, the AUDL’s model, together with a system of third-party refereeing, appears to be steering ultimate at the highest level (or what could become the highest level) away from reliance on spirit of the game.

UP players discuss a call during practice

Refereeing threatens spirit in several ways. Regrettably, some of these threats to spirit already exist in high-level self-officiated ultimate — but I’m confident that these would likely worsen with refereeing. First, fouling grows as a strategic tool not just to stop play but to win the psychological battle. For example: fouling on the first point to deter a cutter from running their intended cut. Even if that has already started, is it consistent with Spirit of the Game? Can you see it growing in a system where players can’t make calls themselves? Second, a referee’s view is necessarily limited on the field of play. The current system of self-officiation allows all players to make calls; meaning that more perspectives are included in the game’s progress. Generally speaking, making some third-party responsible for seeing and calling those fouls very likely invites an increase in rule-breaking.

But just because of this prospect for a professional league, one that doesn’t uphold spirit as the indisputable law of the land, does that mean that spirit in the rest of ultimate on its death bed? Resoundingly, no. From experience in the sport over 10 years in multiple cities, states, and countries, I believe that ultimate and spirit are on the rise for the foreseeable future. In terms of talent, passion, and pure numbers – our sport, with spirit embedded in it – is growing, to the great credit of players, coaches, parents, and other supporters. So if we don’t have to ring the alarm that spirit is dying, what is really at stake?

What is actually at risk is a matter of great debate. Its unclear, first, whether professional ultimate is viable. We also don’t know for sure whether or not spirit will be part of professional ultimate as it sprouts from an idea to a reality. Further, it is yet to be seen whether the examples set by professional ultimate’s players, coaches, and supporters will trickle down to the rest of the ultimate community.

UP player in Ein Rafa: Does SotG only apply to amateurs?

It is becoming clear, through YouTube and Facebook, mainly, that the availability of ultimate videos online across the world can quickly disseminate what ultimate looks like from community to community. In the event a professional league does shed spirit from the core of the sport in that circle, the products and spinoffs may damage the reputation and alter how new players compete. As a professional league develops away from spirit and more towards a refereed product, does an emphasis on spirit start to ring a little hollow? Can you imagine a young ultimate player – in Memphis or Medellin – asking, “So spirit is good enough for the rec leagues, but too quaint for the real deal?”

My hunch is that, if and when professional ultimate relinquishes spirit from its core principles, ultimate communities and players will continue with spirit. Perhaps in spite – or perhaps because of – spirit’s demise in the professional sphere. And although part of my own description of ultimate has always been that spirit reigns supreme at all levels, not having that self-officiation stamp on a professional league won’t by any means spell the end of spirit.

“Ultimate in its current self-officiated form would represent the best on the professional stage (and maybe the Olympics) because it shows that self-officiation is possible at the highest level”

The above quote echoes the Ultimate Peace perspective: that self-officiation is the central reason why ultimate should flourish. Not only are kids (and adults) enjoying themselves, but they are finding common ground, building new friendships, and agreeing to disagree without being disagreeable. Play on, y’all!

By Benjamin Spears, Camp UP Coach and Chain Lightning player

Benjamin Spears at UP Camp 2011

Discovering and Discovered: First Arab team competes in Israeli Ultimate Club tournament!

I might be being a bit dramatic when I say that December 31, 2011 was a historic day, but only a bit. It was the day of the Hannukah Ultimate Club Tournament in Tel Aviv, Israel. A record 14 teams from all over the country came to compete. That’s bordering on historic right there, but what really entitles me to “historic” is the fact that one of those teams was Arab. For the first time ever.

14 teams at the Israeli Club tournament: Tamra Phoenix in red and orange on the left

Ultimate Peace players from Tamra, an Arab village in the north of Israel, organized and encouraged by their tireless Physical Education teacher, Achmed, showed up 18 strong at 7:45am on Saturday morning… to PLAY.

Athletic competition provides unique opportunities for discovery:  discovering yourself, discovering your teammates, discovering your opponent… but it’s also an opportunity to be discovered by others.  Getting to coach a youth team at their first tournament ever– where that process of discovery through sport is just beginning is one of the most special experiences I think there is.   Getting to coach THIS team at THIS tournament– where so much is riding on how they would be discovered to be by others was, well, extraordinary.

I have to admit, I was scared out of my mind. Not because I was worried about any racial tensions, but because this was their first real tournament and I knew they were going to get crushed. How would they handle it?

I tried to set them up: “We won’t win a single game today. But we’ll learn a lot. If we can score a point in every game, I’ll consider this day a success.” “A little support here,” they cried. I smiled weakly. They had no idea what was coming.

Game 1: Working Up the Field

Game 1 started beautifully: the kids ran their vertical stack, not picking up the disc until it was set, even showing some occasional patience and dumping when there was no viable upfield cut. They elegantly worked the disc up about half the field and then.. the inevitable drop. Turnover. Then the pickup team from Givat Ada went for the jugular, picking up the disc and hucking to a lightning deep receiver before any of the Phoenix kids even realized they were supposed to switch to defense. Games were to 11, but nobody was keeping very close track of the score as every point looked the same. Final: Tamra Phoenix 0, Givat Ada 12.  But Phoenix gave their all on every point, even though a win was not on the table.

Even losing 12-0, Phoenix played with heart.

The opposition was very complimentary afterward, telling the kids how impressed they were with their structure and discipline, how pretty their play was, how they never played with a stack themselves. One of the co-captains on the Phoenix asked, “How did you score all the points when you don’t even play with a stack?” Their captain responded, “We have a theory: Stack, bad. Frisbee, good.” I cringed, but even more so as the kids started chanting it to me like a mantra as we sat down to debrief.

Game 1: Unintimidated by their first tournament.

Fortunately, game 2 was against the Sde Boker B team who actually practice and are themselves highly structured. And this turned out to be a battle.  Both teams use a vertical stack and have an emerging understanding of the space that that affords you. And both teams are young, so there are drops and less than ideal throwing decisions. Perfect.

Game 2: The Battle

Sde Boker started on D and capitalized on our first turnover, scoring the first point of the game. But, shockingly, we answered! The celebration after scoring our first point was like we’d just won the World Championship. Everyone rushed the field and hugs and high-fives went all around! I breathed a sigh of relief. Goal of the game accomlished.

Game 2: Goals are scored.

To my great surprise, though, points continued to be traded throughout the game. There were a lot of turnovers every point, but the offensive team continued to be able to put it in. As the hard cap went on, the game was tied 4-4. Universe point.

OK, so we DID throw a disc straight up into the air– and high too– when we scored the winning goal. But we recovered quickly and went straight to the spirit circle. Our co-captain spoke, saying what an extraordinary and fun game it was and praising our opponent for their fierce play. Sde Boker answered in kind, saying what a special match-up it had been. I got some complaints on the side about the physicality of the Phoenix play, but the Sde Boker kids were gracious enough to mention it to me in private and asked me to talk to the team about it after the game. They didn’t say a word about it in the spirit circle.

Game 2: Still working on the "no contact" part of ultimate.

I had nothing to say in our post-game debriefing (deciding to save the talk about basketball defense vs. ultimate defense for the next pre-game and let them bask in their win), except, “Well, I guess I was wrong!” The kids were quite pleased to have me acknowledge this and their “We showed you!” response was very welcome.

The best parts of the day, though, happened off the field in having time to actually have real conversations with the kids. We never talk about politics, and for all I knew, they were completely oblivious to the aims of Ultimate Peace and just liked playing a new sport with a bunch of American coaches. Yeah. No. Wrong again. They are highly aware of the cultural tensions and what we’re trying to do: They just have the good sense to focus their efforts on doing rather than talking. One young player told me that she gets comments in UP all the time about how she’s different from other Arabs and it makes her really sad… because she’s not! She’s realized that the best thing she can do at UP is be herself and help people to realize that she is just a regular person, Arab or not. This is her contribution to breaking down the cultural prejudices that exist here.

Another particularly inspiring conversation took place with one of the co-captains on the team. He said that he felt that he played well, but really had more in him to give and wondered aloud how he could go about tapping into that on the field. This led to a great conversation about motivation, desire, and commitment. While I had some suggestions, it was clear that he was working this out for himself and was just taking the first steps on a great life-long journey. Isn’t it amazing what power there is in athletic competition?

Our energy, though, going into Game 3 was low as the mental demands of a tournament started to take their toll. One of the most difficult aspects of the day was having 18 players for a 7 v 7 game.

Game 3: Regrouping

The captains of the team determined lines and really struggled to make sure people felt like they were getting playing time while simultaneously making sure we always had a strong line on the field. We hadn’t decided ahead of time as a team what our priority was: playing or winning… primarily because it hadn’t seemed that winning would be an option! When that became a real possibility, frustration over drops and bad decisions escalated, lines got tighter, and people got touchier about being called off to let someone else play. Down 4-0, we called a timeout to regroup.

After committing to doing what was best for the team and not worrying so much about ourselves as individuals, we took the field and pulled out an impressive 6 points against the Isotopes, a team of PhD students and professors from the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot. They complimented us on our style of play and our good spirit toward them, if not toward each other.

Game 3: Post re-grouping intensity

One Phoenix player commented that she was embarassed that they had been yelling at each other during the game, because she knew that they were representing the entire Arab culture at this tournament for many people who didn’t know any Arabs personally and for whom this was, if not a first, then at least a rare, personal interaction where Arabs and Jews were on equal footing. That’s a lot of pressure for a 15 year old girl to put on herself, but I couldn’t disagree. One day, that pressure will be non-existent. One day, it will be just ultimate players out there on the field. Not Arabs, not Jews. This was not quite that day, but watching the Phoenix girls joking and laughing with the older boys from Haifa’s Hucking Crazy team during a bye and having several players from other teams remark to me how happy they were to see ultimate in Israel becoming more inclusive (one team even invited us to come and scrimmage with them!) sure made it seem like that day is maybe not so far off.

Game 3: Post-regrouping goal!

Game 4 looked much like Game 2, as indeed it was a rematch against Sde Boker B. Except this time, there was no fouling, and this time Universe Point went in favor of Sde Boker. In our spirit circle, one of the Phoenix players couldn’t wait for the captains to take their turn. She piped up, “This game taught me a lot. We won the first game against you, but you came to this game ready to play hard and give everything you had again, even though you lost already. I learned from this to never give up. Even when you get beat. That you come back fighting to win even when you lose. This is a lesson for ultimate and for life.” Ummm. Yeah. It was a good day.

Tamra Phoenix!

by Sarah VanWagenen – UP Year-Round Coach

Defining OPPONENT as UP gets ready for a league.

Ultimate Peace in the Middle East is at an interesting turning point. It’s the end of 2011 and we’ve seen growth here beyond anything we had hoped for. We have active youth ultimate communities in Tamra, Arrabe, Ein Rafa, Ranaana, Daburriya, Bet Sehor, and Kfar Tavor. Some of them have even started their own Ultimate facebook pages! There are throngs of anxious kids waiting to get started  in Tuba Zangarria, Buena Nujedat and Binyamina and a host of additional villages longing for UP to build up enough staff to be able to support their ultimate communities, too. Coolest thing? Several of our UP kids tried out and made the Israeli Youth National Teams and are going to Dublin for the Youth Championships in summer 2012. Ten of the 33 boys on the U17 open team are Arabs and the girls U20 team is exactly half Jewish and half Arab. Sick.

Tags: competition, Israel, Palestine, Ultimate Frisbee

Day 11: The show goes on the road

Camp doesn’t end when the kids go home. In fact, the hallmark of Ultimate Peace is what happens the next day. They came to us for camp; now we go to their turf.

At a painfully early 8am, coaches divided up into carloads and drove to the villages where our kids live. Some of us hopped over to nearby Tamra, others drove hours and passed through checkpoints to get to the West Bank. Everywhere we went, though, we found one thing to be universally true: we spent as much time eating as playing Ultimate. That’s Middle Eastern hospitality.

Here are some long overdue notes from the village visits.

Tuba Zangoria:

The kids from Tuba Zangaria met in Rosh Pina at a beautiful field. We all hugged, then Jeff threw some long hucks for the kids to run down. Then we played some ultimate with nine on each side. The coaches and kids all had a blast. Finally, we ate some great watermelon before saying goodbye and promising to meet again next year. Then it was off to…

Buene Nujidat:

Day 10: Big boys do cry

It’s only been a week. The moon has only gone through a semi-cycle, from half to full. But within Manof’s gates, everything moves in fast forward, and so much has happened.

We had 45 minutes of team time this morning to circle up with our comrades and decompress. But first, we had to pack and clean our rooms.

Day 9: The big dance

 Tournaments usually unfold over a weekend. We squeezed ours into one very long day. In the morning’s pool play, teams duked it out for seeding. Six rounds of Ultimate, three hours, 190 kids. We’ve got a lot to do before lunch! Games were half an hour, and because they were played to time, pretty much every game ended with a dramatic full-field huck as time was counted down from 10. In the boys quarter finals, the Blue Jeans beat Fanta on universe point in the last three seconds. Ultimate should always be played this way. It’s so much more crowd-friendly.

Day 8: Getting fired up

The last day of practice started like any other, with the breakfast of champions: cucumber and tomato salad, cottage cheese, cornflakes, eggs, yogurt, instant coffee. One kid sprinkled instant coffee on top of his corn flakes. Creative.

Because a wedding is taking place this very moment at Manof, which they started setting up this morning, we were a little more squeezed than usual today. But we’ve got drills up our sleeve for every shape field, so the wedding wasn’t much of a problem until night fell and the colorful lights drew the kids like bugs to a lamp. Counselor-bouncers, lined up along strategic points, kept our kids on our side of campus.

Morning scrimmages looked more than ever like Ultimate, and in the relative sanity, the gaps in what we’ve taught our kids made themselves apparent. Yes, we showed them how to force one direction yesterday, but how to convey the downfield defender’s positioning in relation to the mark?  Yes, we explained a stack, but how to teach clearing when you don’t get the disc?

For every problem, there’s a drill. For Kings of the Sky, today’s drills went remarkably well because we had a breakthrough: our official translator is now a kid who spent three years living in New York.

Day 7: All bets are off

Generally speaking, yelling “fire” in a crowded auditorium is a bad idea. And generally speaking, we play Ultimate at Ultimate Peace camp. But on All Sports Day, all bets are off. Today, we reshuffled our team units into four giant 45-person teams – Earth, Air, Fire & Water – and (mostly) played other games like volleyball, soccer (the level of talent was astounding), soccer-baseball (aka kickball, unheard of here), handball, basketball, Slip n Slide, toss the water balloon in a blanket, throw water balloons at unsuspecting victims, Discross, etc.

Day 6: When you’re here, you’re family

You get to know someone on a deeper level when you sit with them at breakfast before having had your coffee, day after day. Team meals, at this point, feel like family.
I plagiarized that from last year’s day six write-up because I’d started to write the same thing tonight. It sounded so familiar I checked last year’s notes. Oh right, day six. This is that day, when you’re so tired you’re near tears, and then one of the kids does something sweet: brings you a potted cactus like Salem brought for Nancy Barkan. (Just in: During the name game on the first day of camp, Salem – who lives here at Manof Youth Village – took a dove from behind his back and released it while saying his name. Somehow this news item got lost in the melee until now.)  Or takes your lunch tray to the garbage for you unbidden. And then you pass that breaking point and emerge family.