19. "I like seeing the "grow the sport angle" but it's a lot of extra respons..." In response to In response to 12
When I was in college, one of our conference rivals had cobbled together an All-American 4x400m team (this is D3, but still) that included two freshmen. The expectation, then, was that they'd end up dominating our conference (at least) for the foreseeable future. But after that season, *both* freshmen stopped running track in order to focus entirely on ultimate frisbee. One of them even transferred to a school in California with a better team.
This is a dumb story, but it always stuck with me because maybe the difference between a sport that's perpetually mockable due to its dumb and ridiculous elements and one that shrugs it off is just popularity. Shit, belts are part of a baseball uniform. Belts.
Anyhow, that's a lot of work, trying to create an atmosphere where people will enjoy it and can still come to it from different angles in order to appreciate the sport somewhere in the range of "appropriately seriously" where "appropriate" is whatever is enough to make sure folks keep coming.
I think coaches in more established sports really take that for granted. Track has a more traditional foothold than ultimate, but it's still most kids' second or third choice.
>The biggest success for sure to me was that a couple of those >kids went on to play club ultimate frisbee in college so at >least we didn't suck the love of the game from them.
That's kind of awesome. The few kids I know who did it even semi-seriously in college had almost universally positive experiences. Nice work.
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"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"