From britdisc-owner@csv.warwick.ac.uk Wed Apr 29 20:08:29 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.8.7/8.8.8) id UAA07779 for britdisc-outgoing; Wed, 29 Apr 1998 20:04:29 +0100 (BST) Received: from crocus (pgpyz@crocus-fddi [137.205.4.6]) by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.8.7/8.8.8) with SMTP id UAA07770 for <Britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Wed, 29 Apr 1998 20:04:27 +0100 (BST) Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 20:04:25 +0100 (BST) From: Ms D A Bagley <pgpyz@csv.warwick.ac.uk> X-Sender: pgpyz@crocus To: Britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk Subject: Prodded into action Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.95.980429194812.16302E-100000@crocus> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-britdisc@warwick.ac.uk Precedence: bulk At last I've decided to get into the women's ultimate (AND OTHER VERY IMPORTANT ISSUES) debate. Some personal issues here.......(and I apologise for repeating what others have said). I for one would stop playing Ultimate if it was split into Men's and Women's divisions. How many women actually want to play women only Ultimate? It would be interesting to know. I personally feel that introducing Co-Ed divisions in tournaments/ whatever encourages 'open'(or rather male dominated) teams to side line women as they 'only' have to have women on their team at those times. Yes, women and men have a number of physical differences but these can be played to everyone' s advantage if the players are skilled and aware enough (small women can often out dodge tall fast male players long enough to be thrown to etc). WHy the obsession with splitting female Ultimate from male? It's counter productive in my mind and highlight the DIFFERENCES rather than celebrating the joint experience of playing a fast dynamic game with people of a similar attitude. On a vaguely similar note two FAR MORE SERIOUS issues we need to address include encouraging more people from ethnic backgrounds to play. How many black people do you see play Ultimate in this country - THAT'S SOMETHING WE NEED TO ADDRESS. Onto the WSJ article - illegal drugs are an issue in Ultimate in this country. I've had (British) Masters players boast to me about encouraging (British) JUNIORS to take drugs in INternational tournaments - do you think that gives our sport a good name. Are teams caught smoking/ taking illegal drugs during games punished at all (we can all think of teams at every level who have openly taken drugs on the pitchside)? WHether you think some drugs should be legalised or not is irrelevant - do we want a similar story hitting the press in this country? THESE TEAMS ARE BREAKING THE LAW AND BEHAVING IRRESPONSIBLY.