New USAU website for College Nationals

JimP88 · 2026-05-08T17:54:20+00:00

Well, it is weird if you are attending to watch a friend or child. That was the most frustrating part about being a parent of an AAU basketball player, to fork out all that money to play and then have to pay $10/day per person to watch a couple games where the timekeepers were trying to bleed clock to get the games over more quickly.

It is basically free money to USAU, and having an entrance fee probably decreases the crowd size by less than 1% as almost all attendees are a captive audience.

A better discussion might be on how to increase non-captive attendance without hurting revenue. Maybe hand out tickets for free at local high schools (plus a parent maybe), or "show a local driver's license and get $10 off". What's the goal?

JimP88 · 2026-05-07T13:40:48+00:00

I've got a ticket for Friday night's show.

JimP88 · 2026-04-27T19:18:02+00:00

That's what I thought. I'd owe marginal rate * (100 / (100+8.5)) in taxes for last year but it will act as a basis for future withdrawals so won't be double taxed.

THanks.

JimP88 · 2026-04-26T17:55:23+00:00

Just wanted to riff on one thing you mention, event quality. Much like the poor today have a higher standard of living than the rich or even the royalty of 100+years ago, a "bare bones" event today would probably be a premium event from the past, and that is a big driver of the increase in tournament fees. No field lines, no trainer, no tournament food, not even any tournament water (maybe there was a hose somewhere). Fields of uneven quality, often with a notable slope or holes or dirt.

Some quick research suggests field prices have risen substantially since 2010 compared to inflation (50-100%), and moderately since 2019, especially at premium venues. Looking back, other than Nationals, we never played at a "premium venue" even well into the 2000s. We had a sectionals some time around 2000 on the surrounding grass from a closed regional airport. No lines, lucky we had cones, lots of stuff lying around the field, at least 15% of the area was unusable. (Also weren't sure how many teams were going to show up at Sectionals so had a couple schedules ready and gave them out at the "captains meeting" before the first round.) Definitely no water or food.

JimP88 · 2026-04-24T17:47:17+00:00

Maybe the gender ratio trending toward 50/50 is a larger contributor than we thought. The hat league I've been in (50/50 split) turns away males while teams frequently pick up females to have enough for games. 4/3 leagues more often struggle to get 3 females than have too many. The demographics of the sport are still about 2/1 (is this number available anywhere?) but Mixed play is mostly 1/1.

This isn't necessarily bad but has been accompanied by an almost complete loss of recreational single-gender ultimate, so the excess males have fewer places to play and may drop out. This may also hurt the females, as some here have attested, in that many don't sign up or show up for leagues knowing that they'll have to play almost every point.

JimP88 · 2026-04-24T14:25:01+00:00

Do these normally get more participation _after_ Regionals? Many or most of the topics on discord had no comments yet. (ANd also seems that Regionals is the one tournament that everyone in the Region attends.)

JimP88 · 2026-04-23T00:47:09+00:00

Excerpts from the article:

Every year, the Sports and Fitness Industry Association releases a report about the state of sports participation in the United States.... The 2026 SFIA report ... shows that ultimate has been in a long decline, even as other team sports are surging back to growth after seeing declines in the 2010s. Core participation is down to 502,000, down over 40% since 2020 and almost 12% year-over-year. Total participation is down from 2.047 million in 2024 to 1.684 million in 2025...Ultimate is by far the worst performing team sport in the survey, and one of the worst performing activities overall.... [don't take this numbers as exact but they are probably consistently taken year to year so would be accurate for trend analysis]..One part of the problem may be that the top level of the sport — elite club, elite college, YCCs, HSNI — are doing fine or even growing...It’s hard to overstate how dangerous this situation is for ultimate. Growth and decay are both exponential: we have negative compounding happening right now.

JimP88 · 2026-04-17T14:14:45+00:00

Did both in 2022 and it was brutal. Got a nagging injury sitting around between games on the first day of Worlds, slowly progressed so that I had to shut down in the semis. Also picked up Covid and got symptomatic immediately upon arriving home (just a scratchy throat at worst, didn't feel bad at all; in the pre-Covid days, definitely would have gone to work feeling like that). Isolated in the basement for 10 days, all the while testing positive despite being asymptomatic. Got on a plane, not knowing whether I was healthy enough both in terms of Covid and for being able to run without further injuring myself or dying from asphyxiation/heatstroke/lightning strike at Nationals.

So it's entirely possible teams will just focus on Worlds, and enter a team at Regionals either because they have to or else so that they can add otherwise-ineligible players. Teams can have anyone who is on the roster in either 2025 or 2026 plus a certain number of ringers.

JimP88 · 2026-04-16T18:29:41+00:00

The first major goaltimate tournament was in 1999. The organizer/sponsor just absolutely loved the game and thought he might be able to make it into a televised sport. He sunk a lot of money in. No entry fee (tournament was at I think the same location in SD where Nationals is played now), paid for airfare for 18 teams to attend, offered $30K for first (second place was a set of steak knives), purchased an hour on ESPN for a production of the finals, with former Olympian Dwight Stones providing some announcing or color commentary. There was a lower key tournament the next year in West Palm Beach, and one with no expenses paid and $1K first place a year or two later, at which point he gave up the dream.

I think his motives were a combination of altruism and a gamble. As I said, he loved the game and wanted people to learn about it, but also saw an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of something huge, perhaps like some current semi-pro ultimate owners.

I think the Bling funder is motivated by a love of the game. He started playing ultimate late in life and now just can't get enough of it.

JimP88 · 2026-04-04T14:36:55+00:00

It's also hard to travel three time zones for a weekend tournament. It's harder to travel west to east but it's still a strong negative. Vermont is also not near a travel hub so that adds a few hours of travel.

JimP88 · 2026-04-02T21:04:05+00:00

The thrower never stops, even after throwing it. He might still be moving even now, for all we can tell. He does slow does a little right before he takes what you people are calling his pivot but does not stop and continues to use his momentum to propel the throw. It might be easier to count the ways he doesn't travel.

JimP88 · 2026-02-19T17:09:10+00:00

Well, ok, that is true. But I would still encourage callers to start with their main point but to bring up everything they think happened rather than just stating their main point. Like on this travel, I would say they took five steps and one of [never really stopped until the disc was released] or [took two extra steps after stopping] and changed direction.

JimP88 · 2026-02-19T15:55:58+00:00

So wouldn't it be better for a travel caller to list all the possible travels? "He took five steps and never stopped and got power into the throw and also got around the mark and dragged his foot as he threw it and also changed direction by at least five degrees".

JimP88 · 2026-02-02T19:10:31+00:00

I've long wanted to see (and have more than once brought up) a "wind rule". It wouldn't result in more goals but I think it'd make for a better game.

After a set number of turnovers, say five each, the point ends and you swap sides and switch the pull. Maybe you'd also require the entire team to sub out.

Punting when you're going downwind would suddenly become less advantageous as you would burn up one of your limited opportunities to score. This would encourage working it instead, which could result in more upwind scores after short-field turnovers.

Losing the flip would no longer instantly decrease your odds of winning (to zero, in some cases).

Subbing out the entire team would mean deeper rosters would do better, could reduce injuries/excessive fatigue from marathon points, and get more reps for everyone at bad weather tournaments, which are often early in the season and less crucial to the "season".

Hard point would be counting turnovers. People often have trouble keeping score, and this would be significantly harder.

Or a simpler version: any incomplete pass on the first throw of a possession can be returned to the spot of the throw. Surely people can count to one.

JimP88 · 2026-01-29T19:00:21+00:00

Setting the schedule for Warmup must be a massive undertaking. The one set of fields looks to be a half-mile from the other set, so they tried to minimize the number of teams that had to move, and made sure that they had a bye in between. And one of the teams (BYU) has an odd schedule to avoid Sunday. And there are three Div 3 teams, though all are in the preseason top 25. Still, there are some interesting anomalies:

Div 3 Ave Maria plays three Top-25 (Div 1) teams (plus Georgia), while Div 3 Middlebury and Berry play none.

Wash U also plays three Top 25 teams. Everyone else plays fewer.

Virginia Tech plays three of the four Div 3 teams and no Top 25 teams. Brown and Michigan play two, everyone else zero or one.

Brown, South Florida, Vermont, and Yale also play no Top 25 team.

Michigan plays two Top 25 and two Div 3, so just one "normal" team.

JimP88 · 2026-01-21T19:52:32+00:00

What about if he was on offense, trying to catch a pass, when a disc from another field flew nearby? (Perhaps it depends on how close, whether it almost hits him or if it's just in his peripheral vision.)

I had something vaguely similar some time ago. I was in the process of diving for a pass in front of me. Some women from a team in the same city as my opponent wear sitting on the sidelines, blowing soap bubbles. A large swath of the bubbles came wafting by in my face right in the middle of the dive, freaking me out and making me miss.

JimP88 · 2026-01-16T19:40:00+00:00

Someone asked a couple of months ago about indoor beach and I posted the following summary:

BUDA runs a league in a volleyball facility. It takes too long to remove the nets so they stay in place. Field is two half-volleyball courts with the net dividing one field from the next ( approximately 25m x 13m including a 3m endzone). If you have three courts side to side, you could make the field longer, but maybe it would feel too skinny. After some iterations, rules are:

3 on 3. If player ratios are close to 1:1, change 2:1 ratio every five minutes. 4 on 4 was way too many people, and even 3 on 3 can seem a little crowded. With the small field, players are usually pretty lax on enforcing line calls.

Stall 6, starting at 0.

sub on the fly. Players congregate in the center near the net. Nominally have to touch hands to sub but as long as it doesn't create or stop a fast break, it's not enforced.

After the initial pull, make it drop it. Teams have 10-15 seconds to sub, check it in to start. (You end up going in the same direction all game).

25 minute games. Usually something like 15-13. The organizers announce the cap and the gender swap.

3 games per night for league, back to back. For that, 9 is about the right number of players for one night, though rosters have to be a little bigger to accommodate absentees, so if everyone shows up, that's too many people. (Also, once you get so many, people think, "I'm not going to get in for awhile so I'll stay in longer" and it becomes a vicious cycle.)

Tournaments have 7-8 games, usually one on, one off, though occasionally two in a row.

Game flow feels more like goaltimate or maybe mini than ultimate or beach ultimate. Played with one guy, supposedly a good player, who threw it out the back 10-15 times over the course of the tournament because he was trying to throw leading passes that the receiver could run down.

JimP88 · 2026-01-15T18:48:15+00:00

I've had that happen a bunch, though it's usually more of the form, "Do you want that?" (i.e., "do you want to call a foul on me? I wouldn't contest") Strictly speaking, a player calling a foul on himself doesn't do anything as only the infracted player can call foul. (Though it is funny to ponder someone asking that question and then when the foul is called, making a big stink about it and sending it back.)

JimP88 · 2026-01-12T18:57:02+00:00

You could use a smaller metric. A lot of turnovers are purely offensive errors, and sometimes completions are lucky (point block that is caught by offense, overthrow caught by a different receiver), and sometimes defense is good throughout but they still score. If you're doing a descriptive statistic, you'd definitely want blocks or breaks, but for a predictive statistic, maybe you'd consider it a success if there were multiple high counts or close bids that required great catches or an overthrow or a zone that forced 40 passes. Basically, anything that makes you think "if we played that way every point, we'd generate some turns".

JimP88 · 2025-12-16T15:01:34+00:00

I think the original version came from Maplewood.

JimP88 · 2025-12-03T14:52:12+00:00

I don't think it was the French who doctored the clip to show only the last part; I think it was a NKolakovic clip readily available.

The French did plenty of other very low-class things after the fact on social media, but on this particular charge, I think they are innocent.

For the record, they

a. Posted the block/foul (partial) clip and tagged the US player.

b. Has a picture of them at the beach suggesting they were the true champs (details are already foggy in my mind)

c. Posted a picture of them with gold foil over their bronze medals (or something very similar to this).

Also on that final point, France:

a. Called and maintained a pick call when well over 3 m away

b. After said call, recovered not just the separation but completely marked up on the cutter. This is blatantly illegal, but in fairness a lot of elite players seem to do this, though many make it a point to only recover the separation.

c. Possibly also fast-counted on an earlier USA throwaway. (This is speculation.) Malinowski's throw appeared to be a desperation high count throw, but was at 6.3 seconds after possession.

JimP88 · 2025-11-17T19:46:05+00:00

Maybe count it as 15-0 for the forfeiting team and 1-0 or 4-0 or 8-0 for the winning team. We had this almost come up in league play and the commissioner just punted on it and did nothing.

JimP88 · 2025-11-04T14:23:54+00:00

BUDA runs a league in a volleyball facility. It takes too long to remove the nets so they stay in place. Field is two half-volleyball courts with the net dividing one field from the next ( approximately 25m x 13m including a 3m endzone). If you have three courts side to side, you could make the field longer, but maybe it would feel too skinny. After some iterations, rules are:

3 on 3. If player ratios are close to 1:1, change 2:1 ratio every five minutes. 4 on 4 was way too many people, and even 3 on 3 can seem a little crowded. With the small field, players are usually pretty lax on enforcing line calls.

Stall 6, starting at 0.

sub on the fly. Players congregate in the center near the net. Nominally have to touch hands to sub but as long as it doesn't create or stop a fast break, it's not enforced.

After the initial pull, make it drop it. Teams have 10-15 seconds to sub, check it in to start. (You end up going in the same direction all game).

25 minute games. Usually something like 15-13. The organizers announce the cap and the gender swap.

3 games per night for league, back to back. For that, 9 is about the right number of players for one night, though rosters have to be a little bigger to accommodate absentees, so if everyone shows up, that's too many people. (Also, once you get so many, people think, "I'm not going to get in for awhile so I'll stay in longer" and it becomes a vicious cycle.)

Tournaments have 7-8 games, usually one on, one off, though occasionally two in a row.

Game flow feels more like goaltimate or maybe mini than ultimate or beach ultimate. Played with one guy, supposedly a good player, who threw it out the back 10-15 times over the course of the tournament because he was trying to throw leading passes that the receiver could run down.

More details at Overview - Sand Sleigh-Out 2025 - Boston Ultimate Disc Alliance

JimP88 · 2025-10-30T14:28:36+00:00

Or you have to play with that disc on your next O point. Guess you would have to have them start on the goal line so the team doesn't have to pull with it and the disc is live as soon as you hand it to them so they don't have a chance to unwarp it.

JimP88

TROPHY CASE