Category Archives: All audiences

Managers, Coaches, Coach development, Conference, elementary, middle school, high school

William Bartram’s Perspectives on Youth Ultimate Programming for Coaches

October 26, 2015 Scott Veirs Leave a comment

William Bartram (aka “Bunny”) had been Executive Director of the Northwest Ultimate Association (aka DiscNW) for almost 10 years when he gave the following presentation at the inaugural 2014 Youth Ultimate Coaching Conference.

Below are the notes I took (along time stamps) while watching the recording archived by the Bay Area Disc Association and Skyd Magazine’s YouTube channel. The first slides offered a little background on Bunny (which is otherwise hard to find):

“Perspectives on Youth Ultimate Programming for Coaches”

Overview of youth ultimate in Seattle

Time line —
Early youth scene in Seattle was all coach-driven. Key coaches were teachers who formed teams independently at their schools and eventually organized scrimmages
- Mary Lowry – SCDS
- Dan Costigan
- Joe Bisgianno — Northwest School?
Mary would photocopy rules & newspaper clippings and send to PE teachers around town
Over time a league developed (MS in lat 1990s)
Those middle school players drove development at HS level because they wanted to keep playing
Jeff Jorgensen, Mary and Joe started Spring Reign [in 1998?]
Joey Gray and others formed DiscNW (mostly focused on adult players)
Mike Mullen and Roger Crafts start summer camps (originally in partnership with Seattle Parks with 40 players; 10 years later it would partner with DiscNW serving 900 campers each summer )
Over time, DiscNW took on administration of youth programs (web site, registration tools, insurance, communication, scheduling, etc.)
- 2004: first full-time staff
- Eventually hired admin assistant
League thrives due to DiscNW handing logistics so coaches can focus more on coaching
Financial story
- Originally subsidized by adult leagues
- Now many youth programs are self-supporting
- Youth Development Fund provides financial aid and important programs that might otherwise be unsustainable
- Fall Bid fundraising event
- Hosted youth summits (to get feedback from community)
(6:10) Overview of DisNW youth programs
- (6:30) Leagues
  - Good financial performer
  - Spring elementary and middle school
  - Fall boys HS; spring girls HS
  - Fall middle school league with Seattle Public Schools
    - Started when Joey Gray & others lobbied District to use funds from the Families and Education Levy
    - SPS pays for fields and coaching stipends
    - Principals love it because $ comes from District budget, not their own, and it’s a great after-school program
    - DiscNW provides expertise, scheduling, free discs
  - Spring club league (but most teams still based on school affiliations)
  - Summer league leads towards YCC; 2014 new winter club league also popular with the U16 crowd
- (8:45) Camps
  - Very successful as a learning program and financially
  - 2013: 255k$ revenue, 150k$ in expenses (100k$ profit supported $16k financial aid & 4k$ for south Seattle free camps [led by Sam Terry])
  - Camp directors, counselors, leads all paid
  - More popular with MS than HS, but elite HS players getting new elite & leadership training during summer 2014 implemented with Lou Berris (sp? skilled coach)
- (10:33) Tournaments
  - Many run but most discontinued because they aren’t profitable & sustainable
  - Usually take a lot of energy and serve teams that already have regular playing opportunities
  - Trying now to serve teams that have fewer options?
  - Spring Reign is largest
    - 96 teams (8 elementary, 40 MS, 48 HS)
    - Last week of April
- (11:45) Elite Club
  - Started with MoHo in late 1990s
    - Not affiliated with DiscNW initially
    - Started when NOMS MS players wanted to keep playing together as high schoolers
    - Interest has waned, but spirit of that program guides current programs
    - Elite player development centered on Youth Club Championships
      - Early summer club leads into Championships in Minnesota
      - League incorporates YCC and other high-level teams
      - Hiring committee for coaches who select assistants
      - Coaches paid by DiscNW and travel with teams, manages player fees, order uniforms, logistics
      - Rusty Brown serves as general manager
- (14:25) Beyond DiscNW (filling gaps, developing new programs)
  - Fryz – Started by Randy Lim (over 200 players in 2014; travel to play teams across U.S.)
  - RiseUp
  - Ultimate for Peace
  - All Girl Everything
  - Future YUCC focus?
  - Up Dawg (UW Element)
  - Fall Drizzle (WWU Chaos)

(16:20) Conceptual Framework for Events

Build it and they will come works for a while; but long-term growth requires more planning
Focus here is on local or regional level (not National like RiseUp)
Ultimate does not yet enjoy “Varsity Status” —
Ultimate can grow within a club sport setting with key advanatages:
- Self-officiation, Spirit of the Game
- Strong community
(22:19) Youth ultimate event components
- Spring Reign as an example with goal being “celebrate community”
- State Championships
  - in fall for boys and spring for girls
  - (31:30) tried co-ed a couple times, but interest wasn’t there

(32:00) Building a Coaching Community

“Finding coaches to meet player demand is one of the biggest hurdles to growth in our area.”
- We try to find coaches within our membership
- Low rate of success, but matches are valuable!
- Learning ops for coaches
  - Host USAU clinics
  - Educate PE teachers
- Development ops
  - YCC coaching ops
  - Many returning players choose to coach
  - Fall 2015 Disc NW starts paying stipends to fall HS boys coaches
- Role of coaches to make organizing easier —
- (40:00) Couple anecdotes about coaches
  - Ken Round
    - Didn’t know ultimate when he formed MS team and brought to Spring Reign (caused friction)
    - Parents brought RVs, set up tents
    - Took 6th grade cohort through 12th grade
    - Some players went to YCC and Westerns (2nd)
  - Fighting in ultimate!
    - Seattle team and less experienced Vancouver team
    - Fisticuffs in 2nd half
    - Spirit circle later in the weekend (including some parents)
    - Vancouver team made finals on Sunday playing OR team
    - Foul called on final point; resolved without violence; came back to win!
  - Help find more coaches! Builds resiliency
    - Mr. Jamsheed
      - Large program at Bailey Gasherd (sp)
      - Terrible at administration (e.g. Spring Reign registration)
      - Started team at Jane Addams and recruited team parent to handle logistics

(45:00) Q&A

(47:00) How do transition from volunteer to staffed organization?
- (47:25) DiscNW example
  - Managing DiscNW was done by operational Board and voluntary E.D.
  - Lot’s of uber-volunteers doing things, but buy-in from Board and understanding from the community that there was going to be a paid leader
  - 2001: Part-time E.D. Mike Keiran (main job was to figure out how to fund his position!) IT guy, so he made changes to web site and forced payments (via a waitlist).
  - As you get organized, you can deliver higher-quality events and therefore raise fees.
- Youth director was hired because Bunny was doing it on his own, but youth was a different customer!
  - Hired a part-time organizer and lost money, but promoted youth programs, and hired Wynne and later an assistant to 3.5 FTEs…

Coaches, Coach development, Conference, News, Women-girls

2016 Youth Ultimate Coaching Conference (YUCC) theme: Developing Girls’ Ultimate

October 14, 2015 Scott Veirs 1 Comment

The new Executive Director of the Bay Area Disc Association announced in his 9/30/15 welcome letter that the theme for the 2016 Youth Ultimate Coaching Conference (YUCC) will be “Developing Girls’ Ultimate.” The conference is to be held next March (2016) in the Bay Area and plans to “convene inspirational role models from around the country like Qxhna Titcomb (All-Star Ultimate Tour founder and World Champion) to present…” Watch their youth ultimate event calendar for further details.

In anticipation of learning more about how to coach girls, here’s a related presentation from the 2015 YUCC by DiscNW’s Heather Ann Brauer entitled “Giving Girls a Voice: Tools for empowerment and confidence on and off the ultimate field” with my notes appended —

1:05 Asked 7 girls and 7 boys why do you love ultimate

girls: community, spirit, friends, athleticism, fun
boys: similar themes (though also + layout, callahan, greatest, aggression, intensity)

2:00 More important than these differences is how we approach the off-field culture and connectedness of the team.

Girls (and women) often under-rank themselves

How do you empower them? CLEAR

Culture – giving girls tools to create a culture they want to see in their team
Language – e.g. not saying “sorry,” saying “person-defense” instead of “man defense”
Emotions – talking about empathy, connectedness; being able to be where you’re at and valuing those emotions
Agency – giving girls a voice or say, adds to the buy-in they have in the team
Role models – getting women to be role models, but also giving girls a chance to be role models themselves (e.g. GUM clinics)

4:55 Tips and tricks

Create a team charter
1. How do you want to feel as an individual (at practices, at games)? [Challenged to learn; happy and social; enthusiastic, excited; valued; accomplished; improved/better; successful]
2. Narrow down to 4-6 words and create actionable items, e.g. for “confidence” the high school girls came up with: “We will consistently attend practice and hold one another accountable. We will not say “I’m sorry.” We will be stars. We will give one another positive feedback. We will give each other high fives. And we will conduct ourselves with the utmost swagger.”
3. (11:55) Establish a buddy system
  1. Usually not established friends
  2. Check-ins throughout the season; ask buddy if you missed practice; share personal goals
4. Coaches can help create tangible goals (e.g. 50 completions in a go-to drill) and remind team of the goal, especially if they are straying away from the key-words of their charter
5. Attendance at practice went from ~8 before charter to 12-14 afterwards because they felt bought-in
(15:40) Check-in/Check-outs
1. At beginning of practice let each player say one word describing how they’re feeling (or using thumbs up/down/sideways)
2. Check-out? [presumably the same process, but at the end of practice…]
(17:35) Interactive warm-up
1. Variation of team USA U23 warm-up
  1. (19:30) Demo of paired, interactive plyos
  2. hi-5s are the most important part!
(22:35) I’m a star!
1. If a player makes a mistake and says “I’m sorry”
2. Teammates say “What did you say?”
3. And player jumps up and says “I’m a star!”
4. To which teammates respond “Yes you are.”
(23:35) Collaborative challenges work really well
1. Try to meet a goal. Each time you make it as a team, reduce your 10 planned 40-yard sprints by one.
2. Create drills that have progressions to create challenge: dishy pass + look to huck + add defender + a fake + under pass…
3. Supportive drills: e.g. 3 or 5 lines with people cutting towards you. By saying names and making eye contacts, you make a social connection every time.

Coaches, Coach development

Danny Saunders on Long Term Athlete Development in youth ultimate

October 8, 2015 Scott Veirs Leave a comment

Deciding what a youth ultimate player should know and be able to do is a prelude to assessing youth ultimate curricula this fall, and possibly designing a new one for the elementary and/or middle school levels. One way to get at such learning objectives is to understand “Long Term Athlete Development” (aka LTAD). A search for LTAD and ultimate quickly takes you to Ultimate Canada’s LTAD model for ultimate (released in 2014).

While the 72-page document (overview pamphlet; full PDF) needs to be reviewed from a U.S. perspective, I figured I’d start with a video introduction by Danny Saunders, the executive director of Ultimate Canada and a co-author of the model. Below are my notes (with time-stamps) taken as I watched his talk from the 2015 Youth Ultimate Coaching Conference, thankfully archived by the Bay Area Disc Association.

1:48 end of introducing himself; verbal outline of talk (what is LTAD, key aspects, what Ultimate Canada is doing with it)

3:20 Plays this video from the American Tennis Association to help us understand what’s motivating the athlete development model across all sports (kids have trouble playing with adult sized fields, equipment, and rules)

5:35 Ten factors to optimize for each age group

Excellence takes time
1. 10 yrs, 10khrs vs cross training in other sports [may be developmentally appropriate for youth!?]
2. (7:25) Develop physical literacy
  1. fundamental and sport skills before age ~11
  2. ABCs: Agility; Balance; Coordination & speed
  3. Have fun [are “standard” ultimate games the best idea for grades 3-4? what about disc golf?]
  4. (12:20) Hockey video showing how other supports (including ultimate) help train good youth hockey players
3. (14:00) Specialization
  1. Very few sports require early specialization (eg. gymnastics) for long term development (Martindale et al., 2015)
  2. Ultimate is a late specialization sport (40% ultimate and 60% other sports is appropriate for ages 6-10ish)
4. (17:45) Developmental age
  1. Same age kids have huge variation in physical and mental maturity
  2. Playtime guidelines (make sure everyone gets a chance, tries different positions, that coaches are balanced in their attentions
5. (22:20) Sensitive periods
  1. At certain ages, kids have accelerated adaptation (in strength, speed, etc)
  2. Peak height velocity (growth rate) has maxima around puberty for both genders
    1. Before they are more adapted to speed/agility, suppleness/flexibility (age 6-10)
    2. Skill window is near ages 8-12: best time to learn a new sport! This led them to adjust sport at this age to acquire skills (LOTS of touches, keeping it fun):
      1. field size
      2. disc size
      3. adjusting rules to focus on skills (no zone in middle school)
      4. fewer players per side (4v4, 5v5)
    3. After they are more adapted to speed and strength training
  3. (27:15) Holistic coaching
    1. Develop whole athlete (build character and ethics)
    2. Spirit of the game (developed resource about children and SotG for youth coaches)
  4. (29:10) Periodization
    1. How do you sequence training and growth in logical, scientifically-based ways
    2. What level of competition is appropriate?
    3. How do you obtain peak performance at different stages
  5. (30:40) Competition calendar
    1. Does the coach have enough time to develop the athlete?
    2. Does competition favor athlete development? (Too many games to absorb skills optimally… Parents love games and may want more than is appropriate.)
    3. <8-9 y.o. (~3rd grade) just have FUN
    4. ~9-16 (4th-8th): 30-40% competition
    5. ~16-23 (9th-college): 60% competition
    6. Adult: 75% competition; 25% training
    7. How many games per tournament and how much time/$$ to spend traveling
  6. (34:55) System harmony
    1. Everybody has their baggage (interests, biases): players, coaches, administrators, parents, etc.
    2. Schools; community center recreational ultimate; high performance clubs
    3. Canada has both player & coach development models
      1. How do we incorporate
      2. National Coaching Association of Canada oversees
      3. Community coaches (introducing kids to sport)
      4. Competition coaches (don’t take community training)
      5. Evaluator comes out to watch you coach as part of certification!
      6. Developing resources that describes coach roles at each stage
  7. (38:25) Kaizen
    1. Continuous improvement and openness to change
    2. The LTAD model should evolve through
      1. Pilot projects, e.g. I love ultimate program (Canadian Tyre sponsored)
      2. Planned updates

40:00 Summary of talk

Need good coaches — ones who take an interest in athlete development beyond just the field!

41:10 end and questions

Questions:

Can you explain about your coaching delivery methods (online? full-day workshops?)?
- Community one is a 1-day workshop
- Competition is more complicated
  - Coaching Assoc. Canada handles: planning practice; making ethical decisions; nutrition
  - This limits in-person course length and frees learning facilitators (coach instructors) to teach their passion: ultimate-specific elements
  - Evaluation has a grid/rubric to make coach expectations clear
Did you have to integrate with Sport Canada’s LTAD and coach certifications to be aligned with everything that’s going on in Canada?
- Yes. To obtain funding and meet goal of developing high-level Canadian athletes, we needed to use these approaches and templates.
Can you talk about how mddle school games on a full-sized field can have low scores relative to one on a slightly smaller field?
- Snow-bound, windy tournaments on prairies had middle school games actually finish with just 10-15 yards shortening!

Coach development, Co-ed, Coaches, middle school

Matt Tsang on coaching middle school ultimate

September 29, 2015 Scott Veirs Leave a comment

As I launch into the fall season of coaching at Eckstein Middle School in Seattle with a great group of new and experienced coaches I’ll be reviewing helpful resources, including curricula, drills, and videos. To set the stage and delve into how to develop team culture with middle schooler, here are some notes on this great talk by Matt Tsang, a coach and teacher at a middle school in Berkeley, from the 2014 Youth Ultimate Coaching Conference.

Matt’s goals (and talk outline):

Team Culture
- How to be a good teammate
Expose diverse group of kids to a new school
- Gets them hooked
- Goal was at least 1/3 girls
Teach ultimate

Ways to build team culture

Make good mistakes
1. In drills, explain that some mistakes still leave a play possible (while others are worse).
2. For example, in a passing drill over-leading a player is better than throwing it behind them.
Learn from your teammates
1. Encourage players waiting to run the drill to actively observe their peers. (This gave me the idea to ask them to line up along a sideline so they can all see, rather than orthogonal to it where the end of the line has nothing to do but chat.)
Acknowledge players at the end of practice
1. Not just for skill, but more importantly for spirit or team work
2. For example,
Talk it up (14:00)
1. Demonstrate and incorporate supportive phrases to say when someone makes a mistake (important in middle school dynamic which is often critical or judgemental)
2. For example:
  1. Good bid
  2. Nice try
  3. Way to go to
  4. Plus let them invent their own (builds team identity)

How to teach ultimate (23:30)

Goals for his 8 week season (most coaches try to teach too much in Middle School)

Throwing
Catching
Stack (these are the types of cuts you do from the front/back of the stack; front into the lane; back downfield for yardage)
Switch fields (when trapped on sideline)
Mirror defense
Force
Not zone. (Instead counter zone offense with a dump swing and turn the corner)
Not plays, except maybe a pull play (what should be happening in our normal offense) to ensure we don’t always turn it over near our end zone
Don’t talk about positions. (Everyone or no one wants to be handler. Habitual cutters won’t even look up field! No dumps to habitual handlers. Rotate to build depth.)

A 6th grader might start with the just the first 3, but would tackle most of these topics by the time they’re 8th graders.

38:00 Groups share thoughts about a few key middle school issues

How to deal with disparate skills and size?
How do you get a couple disrespectful kids to not poison the whole practice or team? (42:00)
How to convince kids to share the disc to develop other players and their team. (44:15) [Try drills without a disc, or scrimmage with 2 discs!]

Good ideas:

Warm up with Monarch or tag. Don’t limit throws, at least during free play. Part of the joy of throwing is all the creative ways you can throw the disc.

All audiences, Parents, Players, Coaches, Managers, elementary, middle school, high school

Seattle parent’s guide to DiscNW accounts and child registration

February 18, 2015 Scott Veirs Leave a comment

Parents: jump to the ~~2015~~ ~~2016~~ 2017 DiscNW registration guide

As a coach and team manager I know it’s always a challenge to efficiently use the cool tools that DiscNW offers to the parents of of elementary and middle school players. The process of rostering players and getting parents and players to all sign their on-line waivers and concussion forms is the logistical crux of the spring season. But it’s worth it, because if you do it right the web site will do wonderful things, like automatically sending out game reminders with RSVPs, and bypassing reams of printed paperwork.

So, here’s a guide to creating a parent account at discnw.org and then adding your child to your account. If you can get through this step, then it will be easy for your coach to put your child on the team roster. Only after the coach is done will e-waivers auto-magically appear in your account for you and your player(s) to read and sign. The good news is, once the process is complete, you’ll get nifty functionality, like: automated game reminder emails; handy calendars with all your game times and locations; and RSVP emails and back-end so the coach knows who is playing in a particular game.

2016 DiscNW registration guide

Get your child ready to play in a DiscNW leage by following one of the following options, depending on if you DO or DON’T already have a parent account on the DiscNW web site.

Jump to the guide for parents who DO have an account
Jump to the guide for parents who DON’T have an account

(If you’re not sure if you have one or not, you can go to this link and enter emails/usernames to see if you’re in the system and/or to re-set your password.)

If you DO already have a parent account

Login to the DiscNW site here — https://www.discnw.org/login
Click on the Hello message in the upper right corner to reveal a menu like so —
Click on “Your Profile” and you should see a page with an “Edit profile” menu which — if clicked — will show an “Add child” option like this —
Click on the “Add child” link and fill out the form that loads. It should look like this:
Email your coach or team manager to let them know your child is ready to be added to the team roster. To grease the skids, be sure to give them the first and last names you entered, and the child’s gender. That way they’ll be able to quickly add the right child to the roster (by using the nifty auto-complete functionality provided by the DiscNW rostering tool).

If you DON’T already have a parent account

Create one here — https://www.discnw.org/@@create-account
After you create your account you should see a handy link (within a light green highlighted message) offering to “create a player record for one of your children” like so —
Click on that link and fill out the form loads. It should look like this:
Email your coach or team manager to let them know your child is ready to be added to the team roster. To grease the skids, be sure to include the first and last names you entered, and the child’s gender. That way they’ll be able to quickly add the right child to the roster (by using the nifty auto-complete functionality provided by the DiscNW rostering tool).