From:	Ms D A Bagley [SMTP:pgpyz@csv.warwick.ac.uk]
Subject:	Prodded into action

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.

Me;
True, there seems to be discussions about the separation of women's 
ultimate from men's. This would be to the detriment of both games, 
what is needed is the opportunity to allow women to play the women's 
game, without penalize their ability to play open. Eventually as 
women's teams get more, and better the game will naturally drift away 
from the open. We are, as people like Si has pointed out at a nasty 
transition phase, British Ultimate is possibly not big enough to 
maintain two tournaments of sensible sizes on the same weekend, but 
really too big for one tournament, and the same goes for women's 
ultimate, lots of players, but not enough are committed to regularly 
come out and play for a women's tour. This is complicated by the fact 
that just as our discussion about superteams in open, people want to 
play at a high a standard as possible, and for some women that is only 
available in the open teams. I think that the present situation is 
coping remarkably well (mostly due to Sue and assistants), and if we 
try and push to hard it will not help. At the moment the best 
assistance we can give the women's game is to make it as flexible as 
possible to allow these top players to give as much back to the 
women's game without penalizing their ability to play at their highest 
standard.

In terms of women's recruitment; yes many female players turn up at 
university, wanting to play mixed ultimate - often just socially. 
Others want to compete with the men, others want to play women's. But 
a lot of women are ignored, after that initial fresher's phase, 
because often their disc skills are not trusted - rightly or wrongly 
(how often have you seen disc thrown far too softly to girls - 
'because I didn't want it to hurt her' or once they have the disc 
every one cuts for the dump). Solution - those university teams, with 
large women's contingent - every so often have women only practices, 
where when combined with a few experienced players, they are able to 
learn and play the game without being patronised. Then they are ablr 
to cope with the open game, this will bring their confidence up. As 
often the more timid female players when forced to play open because 
nothing else is available don't want to be the teams weak link.

Ms D A Bagley;
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.

Me;
Ohh - messy.
Traditionally people don't like to discuss this for fear of being 
called racist or similar, in any sport or situation. Ok most people 
are brought into the game through university, still a middle / upper 
class institution, that is generally open to those students who have 
had good school education. Since a large proportion of blacks, and 
ethnic minorities, are still based in run down city centre's with poor 
education and sports facilities, they are less likely to make it to 
university, so the majority of places where the sport is available is 
not open to them. Couple this with the fact that we have been 
discussing a lot to do with the image of the sport, until it becomes 
socially acceptable in these hot spots of peer pressure (and this is 
not affected by whether we want this to be true or not), areas where 
people are still assaulted for supporting the wrong team in any sport, 
liking the wrong music, or wearing trainers from the wrong sports 
manufacturer, the game is unlikely to take off. In fact the way 
forward here is to make the sport socially acceptable, and the easiest 
way to do that is to get the game watched and accepted by beaming it 
straight into peoples homes (!!!), and associate the game with the 
right image - i.e. sponsors.

Ms D A Bagley;
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.

Me;
Time to drag up ancient history, and renew people affection with 
Ross-on-Wye, or more precisely the year it was NOT-Ross-on-Wye. One 
year having got fed up with the facilities at Ross we moved up the 
road to (somewhere my memory forgets - close to monmouth) to nicer 
pitches, better shower facilities, closer pub!!!, but no river. On 
Saturday night a number of teams who were taking drugs of some kind 
where generous enough to offer their spliff to a passer by. The 
Policeman in question wasn't impressed and hauled any one he suspected 
of possessing drug off to the local nick. I know one person actually 
had to get a team mate to pretend to their parent to get them out of 
the slammer, and subsequently was up in court (fairly minor). The 
upshot is that we where never able to book those pitches again, and 
Ultimate was considered the sport that brought drugs to that area of 
Wales. They still remember, and still refuse to hire us the pitches.

Hence it has been, and still is Layout Dreams and Druids policy, to 
eject any players found taking illegal drugs from the site. We won't 
evict teams from the tournament, but it is very difficult to play if 
you are not allowed on the pitches. Now that doesn't mean that we go 
around looking for people taking drug, if they are sensible about it 
find a quiet out of the way corner and don't disturb anyone then so be 
it (on the other hand you can drink so much you can't walk and I won't 
complain - am I being hypocritical??). However the question here is 
what is legal? If we are trying to promote the sport then we need to 
consider its image, yet this image is intertwined with the game, 
remove one, and you are liable to destroy the other. However I believe 
that in the game most of the time the worst case scenario is just 
spliffing up - something which if not legal is seen as socially 
acceptable, as is pooping pills. I don't think any one is taking 
anything harder, but is that the point? (perhaps people could 
enlighten us beerheads as to just what the situation with the 
dopeheads is?)

Interesting to note that whilst marijuana if taken in very small 
amount reduces your inhibitions, but not your ability to perform fine 
motor control, and hence can be beneficial to your game (same as 
alcohol) we are not discussing here performance enhancing drugs. As it 
is most ultimate players would fail a Sunday morning drug test using 
IOC regulations through;
1.	Caffeine - 1 large strong cup of coffee will put you over the 
limit.
2.	Paracetamol / asprin - 2 tablets in four hours is excess
3.	Ibufrofen - even if you use the spray / rub enough can invalidate 
you.
4.	Almost any cough remedy available over the counter
5.	Ordinary cigarettes
6.	Of course alcohol - lower than the legal limit for driving
7.	Also any controlled drug

I find it very disturbing that people are boasting about giving 
juniors drug. Yet in my experience those juniors (anyone) that wants 
drugs, ask and will get them eventually

I am not in favour of relaxing the drug laws in this country, yet I do 
believe that 'soft' drug taking in this country is something that we 
are going to have to live with; if not accept. Yet those who do 
endorse, and presumably do take drugs are going to have to act 
responsibly if they wish to prevent the game getting a bad press, and 
shutting the game down, because if we want tournaments to improve, and 
for us to get the better venues, - corporations, sports centres and 
councils cannot be seen to be endorse the widespread use of drugs, and 
so will stop us from hosting tournaments reducing the sport to playing 
on public ground, without facilities or marked pitches.

Take drug if you want - but don't make every one else suffer because 
of it.

Chris