Winded

"Athletes"

 

What I learned watching the Club Championships today:

1. It's really amazing how much media and ultimate coverage has changed in the last 5 years. To have multiple organizations filming and following all the games? Pretty cool.

I can say I wish I’d had more of a viewing choice, but hey, they’re doing what they can. I hope that in the future we can have NexGen quality footage of all the games at Nationals. How great would it have been to change the channel on that Revolver-Doublewide game and put on the Ring-Bravo or Sockeye-Ironside games?

2. The biggest thing I realized today is that the major roadblock to Ultimate being taken seriously, second to the perception of the sport as a hippy game, will be the wind. If I had to describe my viewing experience today it would be: ‘meh’. I enjoy watching Ultimate more than the average player, let alone a first-time viewer, and I still found myself checking other pages or walking away from the computer.

As an ultimate player who is interested in getting more notoriety for the sport, would you have wanted ESPN or a major network to show today’s games? If that’s all we could get, then yes it would be a great accomplishment. However, if I were trying to sell the sport I would rather showcase the Labor Day Championships or the NexGen tour. Natties haven’t been at all boring and there have been a multitude of upsets, but the wind has seriously and undoubtedly altered the play. 

I watch elite teams to see big throws, big catches, and layouts. There have been plenty of these type of highlight reel plays this weekend and I don't want to take anything away from the players, but there were times when it was almost impossible to work the disc up the field. It's no fault of the athletes and no fault of the schedulers or camerawork, but man, was it hard to watch at times.

Unfortunately, a lot of what has been streamed has been fairly ugly ultimate. Yes the games were as competitive as they could be given the conditions, but watching them on a computer screen was a pretty underwhelming. Worst of all, the wind, as it is apt to do, made even the best players look like they weren’t talented.

Anyone stumbling onto their first ultimate viewing experience couldn’t have been entertained. Watching grown men and women throw waffling, blady, short throws to eachother, which are dropped, misread, or turfed one out of every five or six tries? Ugh.

“But it’s part of the game! The best teams can gut it out in wind!”

Ok, I don’t disagree with that, but as a spectator sport, it’s miserable to watch. Also, and very importantly, only ultimate players who have experienced the difficulties of throwing in wind will appreciate how impressive it is to throw a break or a half-field, upwind huck. As an example, the college championships last year were very hard fought, sure. But they were unwatchable.

I’m not saying that Doublewide gave 100%, or even 80%, but they looked miserable. That’s mostly their problem, but the wind without a doubt contributed to them not being able to complete more than 3-4 throws in a row in the second half. They’re just not that bad a team. I was so excited to watch a game filled with highlight reel players, especially to see Doublewide and their ‘big-play’ style of Ultimate. Instead it was a humiliating thrashing.

And the Slow White-Mischief game, which I’m watching as I write this, is 13-13, by all accounts an exciting, very hard fought game. In the late first and early second half in particular, however, the wind was brutal. Unforced turnover after turnover leads to unexciting Ultimate.

I don’t want to take anything away from the players, who I’m sure gave it their best, but it’s something to think about. I don’t advocate Ultimate being played indoors, and as a player I have infinite respect for players and teams who can succeed in wind. However, as a random sports fan who has never seen Ultimate before, I can’t see this style being very appealing. I don’t know what could be done about this viewing issue, and I wonder if it’s something USA Ultimate has thought about.

Once again, I want to stress that no one who has played Ultimate can be anything less than impressed with the quality of play in 20mph gusting winds. However, looking down the road at attempts to increase Ultimate's fan base, non-players will simply not be able to comprehend why these athletes, heralded as the best in the nation, are having trouble completing in-cut throws.

Irregardless, I still watched, and I’ll watch for the rest of the weekend as I’m sure hundreds of thousands of Ultimate players will (362,184 views on the second half of Slow White-Mischief video right now). I’d prefer it not be windy, and I’m sure the players in Sarasota would agree, but like them I have no choice but to tough it out all the way through the finals.