Where the Ladies At?
PJ Rowan recently brought the table a proposal to increase the participation of female ultimate players in Houston's hat tournaments (and by extension, leagues). I invite all those interested to comment on his suggestion, provide suggestions of your own, and share your thoughts. This can include your perception of the situation, contributing factors you're aware of, or just general conversation.
Only rules are to keep it constructive and clean.
Thanks,
The HUC Board of Directors
:: The text of PJ's original comments are below ::
Hello, Everyone - I am looking forward to the Hat Tourney this weekend. I hope the females are ready for this co-ed event because it looks like yet again, you ladies will be savage.
There are about 144 signups now, with about 19 females - about 13% females. 144 people could allow ten teams of 14 each: everybody gets a sub. But the gender imbalance would actually leave only 2 women per team (2 females per team x 10 teams = 20).
So, we will AGAIN end up with plenty of guys fighting each other for a chance at close-to 50% playtime, and females on the field ALL the time in this Texas heat -- forecast is calling for 95 degrees, little chance of rain, and little breeze.
After a game or two, the women will get exhausted, and so the rest of us are going to start looking them off. The game cannot be slanted to really favor some co-ed strategies because no one will really have the opportunity to go 4/3.
Over the past few years, I have suggested, to various HUC leaders, a solution for the gender imbalance at our co-ed events (league, hat).
Here is my idea: charge females a much lower registration fee.
That's it. That might solve the problem.
My guess is that there are women who are interested in playing in league and local co-ed tourneys incl this summer hat and hucking for love, but they don't sign up because they know what will happen yet again: they will be savage.
A lower registration fee would do 2 things: 1. change their economic trade-off (plain old supply and demand -- a day of play is more appealing at $20 than $10) -- and 2. make females more willing to sign up because they know there are other females thinking the same thing; "hey, I will sign up cuz I know I won't be savage like always used to happen."
Like I have said, I have suggested this to various HUC leaders at differnt times as these co-ed Houston events have approached. I have heard ppl say they will think abt it, but I have never seen it done.
I am broadcasting this note because it might be an idea that could actually get implemented if a bunch of females asked for this idea.
The downside? Are we gonna go broke if 20 women pay $10 instead of $20? what if it actually doubled the female sign-ups?
Are we gonna devastate the advances for equal rights that have been achieved since Houston hosted the NOW conference in 1977? (what? yes, i was there.)
I don't know if a different fee for women will destroy equal rights, or make HUC go broke. I believe it would be worth a try for at least one co-ed event.
I myself believe it is foolish and/or insensitive to continue to set female players up for a grueling day of savage play, and set up us guys for yet another co-ed event where we are fighting within team to get our sliver of playtime.
Now, everyone has heard my idea. It will be up to anyone who cares to do what they want with this idea. I was gonna patent this idea, but I have decided to just give it away after consultation with a patent lawyer.
-PJ
HUC Sponsors
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Response
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Lisbeth Alvarado
To: HoustonUltimate@yahoogroups.com, prow111
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:16:30 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: [HoustonUltimate] Yet another HUC co-ed event with few women. Solve by charging females less?
First of all,
Thank you so much for taking your time and consideration towards female players.
In my case I decided to sign up because I also counted and realized there were so few of us signed up and it's unfair for us to deal wit the heat, play savage and on top of that just let the male players lead the games.
I completely like your idea. I believe that will attract more female players and they might even bring some friends that would like to try Ultimate.
LISBETH ALVARADO
Yet another HUC co-ed event with few women
I think adding rules for bonus points for cross gender scores, everyone touches the disc, etc. are worth trying out. You're probably going to add some people and drive others away but anything you can do to get new faces is good IMO. You could even go so far as to regulate every player must touch the disc on all but a certain number of points.
You could also address the shortage of females in how you structure the tournament/ divide teams. You could make an open division and a coed division but make the teams shorthanded and funnel them into a combined championship bracket.
For example:
10 teams of 10 men play 5 vs 5 pool play for seeding.
4 mixed teams (5 men, 5 women) play 5 vs 5 round robin for seeding
Combine top four seeds from open/mixed to make 7 on 7 mixed teams going to semi-finals
It's screwy, but hey, it's hat tournament!
Peter
Yet another HUC co-ed event with few women
As someone that have played in both the Vancouver ultimate league and Toronto Ultimate leagues for a significant period, I feel I must convey how I feel about HUC compared to those two top notch leagues. The gender problem I think stems from maybe a culture or some previous league mandate issue.
I've watch Vancouver ultimate blossom into a huge league. The reason is by word of mouth. I see people like at a company (ie KPMG) join together and form a rec league team or just a bunch of friends entering a team. When people come out and see how fun the rec league is, they obviously want to play. HUC from the winter league play that I've played in, is way way too competitive. Frankly, there's no fun to it. All i see is the same few guys whom obviously know each other, throw to each other and dominate the play. The ones that handle the disc, continue to handle the disc a lot and the super fast people who can sky most people continue to go for those long bombs.
I'm not sure why, but people I talk to at work in Houston have this image that ultimate is a sport primarily for the super athletic people. We need to convince them otherwise.
The other thing that I've noticed is the lack of spirit. (i'm not saying that there's bad spirit in HUC) just the level of enthusiasm and associated spirit is not that high. I've played on teams elsewhere that would spend like a 2 minutes scripting a cheer/song for the other team to a "terrible chorus" and we all get good laughs about it. Simple things like that not only builds spirit, but it brings the fun back into the game. That's probably what I think HUC needs, a rec/social league to build that base of ultimate players which would in turn bring more women. There is likely no immediate solution to the lack of women problem and its going to take time to fix it.
The level of play needs to be lowered. I'm not saying we need to dilute the play level to 2 out of 10.. but for the rec league it needs to be like a 5/10 where as right now we are playing at a 7/10. If you want to play at such a high level people can go play with CSS. They do a great job!
Also, I think summer leagues should stay on a weekday.
my 2cents.
From the HUC Board
While we don't currently have an anonymous feature on our website for discussions, if you would like to share your thoughts and/or ideas with the HUC Board of Directors more discreetly than the listserv, or forum please email us: yomama@alumni.rice.edu, dewavy@yahoo.com, or mfuzat@fuelquest.com.
Thank you all,
AJ, Dave, and Mary
How much for the women?
I can't imagine there are any women out there thinking to themselves how much they would love to play ultimate in the hottest part of the day in the hottest month of the year if only the cost was $10 instead of $20. I just don't see it. Not that it wouldn't be nice to attract more female players, but I can't imagine this being an affective way of doing it.
Some thoughts
One aspect of the problem is that female players are marginalized because of 5/2 or 6/1 formats. Even at the club level, I have gone to tournaments where, despite having numerous, skilled women on my team's roster, other teams forced us to play 5/2. Playing 5/2 in league or hat tournament games is not any better.
The dynamic of a 5/2 game is completely different than that of a 4/3 game: the strategies change, the opportunities for male players to poach female players' throws are more numerous, and there are fewer woman-to-woman looks on the field. Don't underestimate this last item...going from 2 to 3 female players on the field doubles (!) the number of possible female targets a female thrower has. Even for top cutters, it's hard to be open every single time for the thrower, not to mention the presence of aggressive male cutters who may cut into the lane first (rightly or not) reducing the number of opportunities.
Imagine, for a moment, that you come to an ultimate game, you run around for two or three hours, you touch the disc only a few times, and you can't find space to cut. How likely are you to return? It takes a lot of persistence to improve enough to consistently get the disc and there are plenty of other ways one can get a two or three hour workout that provide equal or greater satisfaction. It's one thing to get female players to come to a tournament or league game, and it's quite another to get them to show up repeatedly. To accomplish the latter, the structure needs to change.
For me, the arguments that women don't play because of financial or fatigue issues are peripheral. There are plenty of women in Houston who pay out of their own pockets for their various athletic pursuits (usually more expensive than ultimate...), and there are plenty of women who are incredibly dedicated who are generally willing to play without subs. Furthermore, there are more women who play women's ultimate, but not coed, for some of the aforementioned reasons. Yes, there are some barriers to entry, but in the end, what is the return on one's investment to playing ultimate? Enjoyment, fitness, etc... But, ultimate isn't ultimate without touching the disc, and the formats we so often use in our coed leagues and tournaments (5/2, 6/1) aren't conducive to distributing the disc.
One suggestion I think may work for future leagues or tournaments is to create as many mixed gender teams as can support 4/3 splits and require 4/3 at all times. Then, the remainder of the male players should be distributed into an open division so that everyone plays. Change the dynamics on the field, and you'll change the incentives for female players.
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Pascal
good idea Pascal.
good idea Pascal.
very good idea
Pascal has had one of the more rational thoughts on how to make the co-ed / hat game more friendly to women. The idea of getting more touches of the disc equating to a better time being had is spot on. Not every person can touch the disc all of the time. But everyone wants to feel a little love and handle the disc. As you progress more into advanced levels of ultimate you are more prepared for the idea of role playing (not the kind you are thinking about!) and understand when you get limited playing time or touches on the disc. But in the beginning if you want to get someone hooked on the sport throw them the disc and let them contribute to the game.
Up or Out
I think when HUC's decision to focus on "competitive" ultimate and blow off recreational players (e.g. restructuring the officers so that the rec position disappeared - with no public discussion on this forum) is a big contribution to the shortage of women players. If a woman is really talented and interested in competitive play, perhaps she'll be recruited by Showdown or Flashflood. If she's not that talented/fit/young or can't devote the time to competitive play) then she'll find herself lonely as the other local women players focus on their teams rather than recreational league or hfl/hat type events.
Of course, it's not just women who are missing but Ultimate players in general if you compare Houston to other cities of similar size. Again, something I attribute to HUC's disinclination to support recreational play.
Larry Gainor
Women's category for future tournaments?
As a novice female ultimate player, I thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot about ultimate during last spring's women's league. The great players were extremely helpful to me and gave me lots of pointers. Not only that, they even threw me the frisbee! I had more touches and scored more points in my first women's league game than during the entire winter league season. While you may say that's because my skills drastically improved - however, it wasn't. It was b/c my teammates threw more to me and didn't care if I would miss the catch. The women's league was extremely nurturing and I really appreciate all of the great players that were so patient with me.
As a novice, I really do not want to play savage - since I know I'll be tired very quickly. Secondly, after having played on the women's league, I not sure playing 6/1 or 5/2 co-ed would really be that appealing to me since I know I won't get to handle the frisbee as much if at all.
For hat and other future tourneys, you might want to have three categories of play: 1) mens/open; 2) co-ed 5/2 or 4/3; 3) women's only (here you can play either have 7 or perhaps 5 women and make the field smaller for the latter option so that you'll have enough subs).
Lastly, don't make the tourneys during the awful hot months in Houston. Shoot for late fall, winter, and/or early spring. (This is my reason for not signing up for this hat tourney.)
Suggestion to make HUC events more appealing to women
*After reading thuyaitn's post, it occurred to me that with the setup I suggest women might handle the disc a lot more - thus, on offense, it would make more sense to have "Experienced-Jane" be a handler than "Newbie-John."
I do think having 2 divisions in league play might help. However, (and I like to hear from some women on this idea), what about having the competitive/open division be male only, and the rec division be mixed. Furthermore, perhaps restrict the rec division to men whose Athleticism + Experience scores < 5 (or whatever number allows enough teams etc). Of course, men below this score could play in the open division, but if they were above the cutoff, they couldn't play in the rec division. I think the "cutoff" for men in the rec division might be set in such a way as to have enough women on each team to make the games 4/3 and perhaps more appealing.
Larry
PS Any highly competitive women who wanted could play in the open division with the understanding that there might not be a female counterpart on the other team.
PPS When I played pickup in Ft Worth, there were often enough older low/athleticism guys that more athletic women could cover (or sometimes beat) them easily.
I want an all male tournament
Okay. I heard you all on the email bit so I'm posting my comment here.
I want an all male tournament. I'm tired of having to play in tournaments where "unless you throw to a woman" or "unless everyone touches the disc" you don't score. Enough of that garbage.
I want to know how to get green space for enough fields to host an all male hat tournament. Somebody answer me that one. I'll even post all the money up front for that event. I'm rich. I can afford it.
Before I COMPLETELY retire from Ultimate (I'm not playing the Fall series in any division other than Grand Masters) I'd like to be a part of the first all male hat tournament in Houston.
That way I don't have to think about throwing the disc to some woman on my team because "it's neccesary for the point" or because she's gonna have a fit if I look her off because her cut is being poached by the entire team on defense.
Answer that in this Forum!
All-male tournament = two division formats
I think splitting a league or tournament into 4/3 mixed and open divisions accomplishes your goal, yes? If you don't want to play in the mixed division, you can sign up for the open one.
There's a time and place for all the divisions in ultimate. Is it necessary for you to pooh-pooh one side (one gender, really, if we get down to it) to get what you want?
--
Pascal
Another post concerning women by a woman
Hi -
Pascal brought up good point. Why would someone keep coming out
to play a sport when they don't feel included in the play? Of course,
there are always going to be certain players who somewhat dominate
just because they are fast, good at getting open, great throwers, etc.
However, there is no excuse for someone coming to play ultimate and not
feeling like they contributed to the game. In my opinion, that is one of the great things about ultimate...that everyone on the field can play an important role. You may not be the person who threw the score and caught the score, but there is alot that goes on in between too!
I have heard many, many women come out to play ultimate and say something like "If I wanted to just run around, I could have done that at home". That's not good. I've seen countless women standing completely open for a pass, only to be looked off and someone (usually a guy...sorry guys, but let's be honest here!) throw some ill-advised throw to some other guy who is completely covered! These types of occurances are very frustrating for women, although we may not always speak up because then we may be labeled as difficult or a complainer, etc. Some things never change!
However, on the other hand, if someone likes Ultimate enough I don't think they are not going to let others discourage them from playing.
So...I would say, male players - be aware of your actions...are you looking a woman off who is open? If so, stop it! Are you not throwing to a woman because she dropped the previous pass that was thrown to her? Get over it! Everyone drops the frisbee once in a while (ok - some more than others :) )
Female players - if you like ultimate, keep playing!!! Even if you get looked off some or "punished" for dropping a frisbee or making a bad throw...so what? The more you play, the better you'll get and the more
others will trust you....and if they don't, that's their problem.
Most of my ultimate playing (pickup) has been with 98% men, so I guess that has shaped my attitude somewhat. Or maybe it's because I grew up with older brothers so I'm used to it!
It would be awesome to get more women out playing...even in the heat!
Looking forward to tomorrow - Laurie Rowan
Changing structure is easier, changing behavior is harder
Laurie, while I understand what you're saying about men being aware of their actions on the field and women being persistent and sticking with it (all good sentiments that I have expressed myself), I think that unless you change the underlying structure, we'll have a difficult time achieving the changes that increase and maintain women's participation in ultimate.
For pickup ultimate, it's really difficult to enforce rules like gender ratios, and really we shouldn't do so because the beauty of pickup is its flexibility. However, for an organization like HUC, whose goal is to increase the participation of many demographic groups, setting gender ratios for tournaments or having multiple divisions in a tournament reflects the organizational philosophy towards inclusiveness: HUC can't rely on asking people to behave differently. Instead, it has to think about the consequences of choosing a 6/1, 5/2, 4/3, or 3/4 gender ratio for mixed play. Or the ramifications of having multiple divisions. Or the impact of only having one or two events per year specific to women's ultimate.
This isn't intended to be a direct criticism of HUC at all, just examples of how any decision will have some cost associated with it. And in the end, any organization (especially a volunteer one) requires people to see the vision through; HUC has some amazing volunteers, but I still don't envy the Board of Directors and the President the job they have guiding this ship.
--
Pascal
all male tourney/tom rowen
When in houston has there ever been a tourney/league with rules about only scoring if you throw to a female, or if everyone's included????? I've played in alot of the leagues (except summer) and most of the HUC tourneys and the closest there's been is the cross gender hammer in HFL and that's just to add a touch of fun.
Have your all male tourney if you want, but enough with the lame reasons and sexist comments. Your bikini-type comments, while maybe you meant them to be funny, were just lame. And so sorry if we got in your way on the field.
Dana
summer league two years ago
summer league two years ago there was a rule included
everyone touches the disc on a single possession and scores the score is 2 points.
that answers that question
NEXT!
Thanks
I was going to the hat tournament tomorrow... but thanks to Tom R .. I am actually thinking about it... It will suck to go play and have some one with that attitude in my team :P
comp/male - rec/mixed divisions and Cat/Laurie/Tom's concerns
Perhaps I have tunnel vision, but I think the latest posts support my argument for the Competitive/male - Recreational/mixed tournament structure.
1) Cat - I'm not sure if your comment was tongue-in-cheek or not, but if you're concerned about Tom's attitude, consider the effect on a new female player whose first exposure to organized ultimate was tomorrow's tournament
2) Laurie - I've seen the same thing you have (especially where there's a mismatch team1 female consistently beating team2 female and never getting thrown to). If there were a mix of more experienced women and less experienced (or less athletic etc) men, guys might become more accustomed to throwing to a woman. (Especially if the new guys were to teams with a female captain who might coach them in that direction). This might be an example (pace Pascal) where changing the structure could contribute towards changing the behavior.
3) As Laurie said, "why play if you're not included." Well the same point could be made regarding new male players. Thus, if a new guy winds up on Tom's team, and Tom has a more competitive mindset, then Tom is probably going to look off the new guy, and the new guy won't come back. If Tom feels obligated to include the new guy (who then turns over the disc regularly), then Tom's not going to enjoy himself and perhaps he won't come back.
4) In a message to the Yahoo Group, Dana wrote:" It is my opinion that having a mixture of all levels in one league fosters the growth of better ultimate."
I'm not sure that your opinion is supported by the evidence. I think the current mix frustrates competitive male players like Tom (and others who currently skip league play), and discourages women (as evidenced by this whole topic) and probably discourages new/less athletic guys as well.
She also wrote: "Sorry, but it sounds like your rec league would be made up of bad guys, decent women and bad women. Not sure how this would foster better ultimate." I guess that's because my goal is not "better" ultimate but "more" ultimate (or perhaps a "better" ultimate experience). I think that more "bad" (or new) players would benefit HUC because, some of them are going to get better. Also, if there's a campaign to (for example) call your city council member for more ultimate fields etc, I'd rather have more calls and emails even if they come from bad players. Also, I'm guessing that there are at least some decent women players who would rather have a "bad" women sub than play savage every week.
enough for now, but more later.
LG
"bad"
I sincerely apologize for using "bad". Poor choice of words. Mea culpa.
Had this discussion many times.
The houston league has made great strides in creating a lot of new ultimate players through their sponsorship of highschool players.
This has the fortunate/unfortunate effect that now there are many young, fit players who also have good field sense and handling skills.
The better players in the league have looked off new players, weaker players, and females for a long time. If you are going for quality and a fiercely competative community, that's cool.
If you are going for numbers and a warm community, it's not.
We fielded 29 people for our first casual teams back when this all started. Because that was the size of our community. We had a fantastic time and our motto was "everyone plays, everyone gets the disk". Every league was a party. We were a big family.
After two leagues the rules were changed to force small teams (14 max) and the result was that about 15 of those people quit, 3-5 of the best players went to pro teams, and the other half dozen slowly quit over several years.
My second to last league, we had a huge argument because one of the team captains threw to the other team captain while our female player was standing 50' away -- completely uncovered. It became clear during the argument that the team captain literally did not see the open player 50' away. Imagine coming out to play and being reduced that to complete non-existence.
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Low fees isn't the answer. Touching the disk, getting thrown to AND getting to throw is the answer. Not just for women but for all new players.
That's not going to happen when your Rec team has three people handling the disk and when you say it's a Rec league, they say, "Well, it's rec league but we still want to WIN."
Winning is more important than growing the sport. Winning is more important than everyone having fun.
Instead of generously husbanding new players, the attitude is, "If I have to throw to one of those new players, I think I'll just quit playing." You see that in this thread.
When I go out to the pickup games (less as my knee gets worse), I see the trend of certain players to never, *ever* leave the field has reached about as far as it can go. I've been out there with nearly 30 people and the same 7 people on the field refuse to come off for 30 minutes at a time.
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If an activity is fun, people will accumulate around it. If it is not, they won't.
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Considering all that I've seen, the only way I could see to force the issue is to limit the amount of points the ace players can be on the field in a rec league. One ace on the field at any given time. Then they will have to throw to casual players and you will have similar skill levels on the field in both teams.
Whenever you get three ace players on the field at the same time, everyone else becomes invisible.
But what about females?
Some of them are extremely good-- and need no assistance getting disk time as they run like gazelle's around the field. However, a *fairly* common issue I've seen over the years is height. I have no idea how to address the average height difference. Ultimate seems to favor 150lb folks who are about 5'10" tall.
We had narrow endzones (20' wide) in our version and that opened up the game to a much wider variety of physical types (and encouraged a ton of hammers). However, females were scarce even then. Maybe six max ever out of a few dozen active players?
But that's not standard ultimate.
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The main thing that has to change is the attitude. Growing the sport and encouraging new players has to outweigh winning. Making sure everyone gets the disk because you want to- not because there is a rule for it. Discouraging players who don't fit that attitude. Otherwise, in 10 years, this discussion will still be taking place.
Essentially- the "to the death" players need to be contained in a regional team and not play or play a very restricted role in the casual play. Or you will continue to lose novices and casual players.
Mostly retired casual player.