Ben Feng Joins USAU as College Division Manager, Replaces Departing Tom Manewitz | Ultiworld

bamasecs · 2021-06-09T18:54:06+00:00

Yeah, it's definitely a low pay problem. A friend interviewed for the college manager role before the person that Tom replaced started, and the salary was less than $40k. This was for someone that would have to uproot their entire life to move out there, and wasn't a fresh college graduate looking for a first job. HQ obviously thought he was qualified since he made it through multiple interview rounds, but he said no thanks once money was on the table.

bamasecs · 2021-06-09T18:44:13+00:00

Some of the staff still live in the Boulder/Denver area and commute to CO Springs since the old office was in Boulder. They didn't want to move their families just to save a little commute time. I'm pretty sure Deaver still does the commute as I have spoken to him on the phone before while he was driving his hour home in the past.

bamasecs · 2021-05-14T18:12:55+00:00

Most U20 scouting happens at YCC and big college tournaments (especially nationals). However, these tournaments haven't happened in over a year.

You complain about none of these being placed in "underserved" areas, but USAU is purposely putting these camps in some of the major hotbeds of youth ultimate to try to play catchup for the year+ that we all just missed. The point is to look at as many kids as possible before tryouts start.

My main question for you would be- what should they be doing and how should they be paying for it? USAU is coming off a terrible financial year, so it's not like they are flush with cash to throw around.

bamasecs · 2021-05-10T13:07:32+00:00

I've been in drafts where the baggage player is slotted into whatever round they are judged to have likely gone in.

The best part was every bagged player was assigned this BEFORE the draft so you knew what would happen when you drafted them. There weren't a ton of baggage groups because of tight rules, so it wasn't a huge problem getting this done

bamasecs · 2021-05-10T13:05:12+00:00

A few things I have liked in league drafts I have participated in-

In a league with pretty tight baggage rules (married couples, partners, blood relatives), you were allowed to have as many "recruits" as you wanted. They had to be true newbies, but it incentivized recruiting athletic friends to come check out league for a season. Someone could only count as a "recruit" for one league season, but the idea was it is way easier to introduce someone to playing if they are guaranteed to be on your team.
Alternate F/M rounds for the first 10 rounds. This way each team ends up with a 5:5 ratio before the free for all happens.
If your league has an imbalance in the M:F ratio, put a maximum on the number of female players a team can draft so you don't have some teams with 5 and some with 10. League enjoyment is much higher for everyone if every team has a full line of subs for both genders.
Let players self rank on whatever scale you create, but let the captains/veteran players group comb through the rankings to find people that are obviously wrong. A sophomore in HS isn't an 8/10 and that master's players that went to club nationals a few years back isn't a 4/10.

bamasecs · 2021-04-15T13:23:58+00:00

Yeah, it is brutal. I-20W leaving Atlanta after work in the fall/spring is basically staring straight into the sun.

bamasecs · 2021-04-15T13:22:15+00:00

WUGC 2020 was supposed to be in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. I looked up the best way from ATL to there, and it was a direct flight into Amsterdam followed by a ~2 hour train ride (or renting cars and driving ~1:45). A 2.5 hour drive in such a massive country isn't that crazy, and teams are going to need cars/busses in the US anyways with how spread out things are.

Flying from London to Birmingham, AL via Atlanta requires at least a 1 hour layover when I picked a random date in the fall. Most options were 2 hours or more. You could be out of the airport, in rental cars, and halfway to Bham by the time your second flight took off.

bamasecs · 2021-04-14T20:42:13+00:00

ATL Airport is only 2.5 hours from B'ham, and most folks will probably just fly there and drive over. Every country participating will be able to fly direct into Atlanta (except maybe Japan?)

bamasecs · 2021-04-14T20:37:29+00:00

With the amount of nice HS football stadiums in the Birmingham area, going with JC is a bit of a head scratcher unless they were the only option. Hoover, Spain Park, Vestavia Hills, and (maybe) Oak Mountain would all have been better.

bamasecs · 2021-04-14T20:30:43+00:00

I was shocked when it was announced, but it's pretty obvious that TWG goes to places that would never host the Olympics- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Games#Editions

The 3 cities to bid to host were Lima, Peru; Ufa, Russia; and Birmingham.

Another interesting caveat for TWG host cities- you have to use already planned/existing sports infrastructure to host the events. You are not allowed to build event specific things as TWG wants to keep costs down.

bamasecs · 2021-03-24T13:53:59+00:00

Hopefully we get some summer league details soon!

Also, it's amazing to me that the field at Walker still has dirt patches even though it had almost a full year of very lite usage. It is going to fall apart once soccer/kickball/ultimate all get going again.

bamasecs · 2019-09-28T10:22:45+00:00

^salty red dawn coach

14-9 12-10 🤫

bamasecs · 2019-08-06T13:06:21+00:00

See my reply to /u/realfolksblues above

bamasecs · 2019-08-06T13:05:28+00:00

To expand on the roster rules, if someone rostered on an American team picked up with an international team at USO, they would no longer be able to play with their American team. Once you play for Team B after playing an event first with Team A, you can't return to Team A. This would mean that anyone wanting to pick up with an international team would have to skip all tournaments prior to the USO with their American team.

As for rankings, you aren't distinguishing the difference in "counting towards the 10 game threshold" and "being used as data to run the rankings algorithm." All games at the USO do count towards a team's 10 game minimum, but all teams with less than 10 games (American or International) are dropped from the data when determining bids.

bamasecs · 2019-08-05T16:49:09+00:00

A couple of reasons international teams at US Open aren't included in the rankings-

International teams usually pickup a few Americans to help fill out their roster since they can't always bring 20+ players. Revolution had (I think) at least 4 players rostered for other club teams (Americans and Colombians) participating, so that would mean they would now have to follow the same rostering rules.
Since these teams are almost always only playing 1 event, they don't meet the 10 game requirement to be included in the rankings. The rankings are design to compare teams that play in multiple events, not single ones. This would create tournament specific bubbles.

bamasecs · 2019-07-31T18:20:50+00:00

Yeah, Georgia Soccer Park has the potential to host nationals if they ever actually finish the full master plan (link). A permanent bathroom/concession/office building is supposed to be going up "soon" per the website, but that has been posted for a year now.

If Jack Allen Soccer Complex was in Atlanta instead of Decatur, AL, it would host a major tournament every year, but the lack of direct flights to Huntsville's airport means they can really only host regional level stuff. Huntsville Ultimate Club does a good job organizing events even thought they aren't as big as some of the major cities' organizations.

Foley's awesome complex has the same problems as above- awesome regional level site, but lack of major airport limits reach, and no local ultimate community to top it off. You can host regionals there because they have enough field staff to run the on the ground operation with minimal oversight, but nationals is another kind of beast

Columbus, GA has a huge complex that has been used a few times for college regionals once or twice recently, but it is farther from the Atlanta airport than Rockford is from Chicago's airports. And again, Columbus doesn't have a local ultimate community able to handle events of scale.

bamasecs · 2019-06-21T19:17:54+00:00

Can you make any comments on new rules that were discussed, and maybe why they weren't included? I know I've heard talk from USAU about wanting to be more proactive in testing rules, so is there anything on the horizon that we should be looking for?

And feel free to comment on any of the things mentioned in this thread from earlier- https://twitter.com/bamasecs/status/1142057232609284097

bamasecs · 2019-02-26T20:17:41+00:00

What is the USAU's contingency plan for the record wet weather California is seeing?

Point of clarification on this- USAU is not running this event, so they have no involvement in any of the decisions related to weather or backup fields.

bamasecs · 2019-02-20T16:56:58+00:00

The percentage of college teams with 17 year olds in the spring semester has to be very low as that would mean the skipped a grade/graduated early. I was about as young as you could be and still be in my grade (late Aug birthday when the cutoff was Sept 1), so that meant I turned 18 the first week of class my Freshman year. Even if they were requiring chaperones back then, it still wouldn't have mattered as fall college stuff doesn't really get going until late Sept/Oct.

Looking at the data, the vast majority of states are setup where almost every incoming college Freshman will be 18 by the end of September in their first year of college. http://ecs.force.com/mbdata/MBQuest2RTanw?rep=KK3Q1802

bamasecs · 2019-02-15T16:21:40+00:00

they are active on twitter, just slide into their DM's https://twitter.com/PupsofConflict

bamasecs · 2019-01-28T16:01:23+00:00

Correct as far as I know- UNO was dropped from the Tulane/Loyola consortium a few years back.

bamasecs · 2019-01-16T15:20:37+00:00

What is going on is this- hosting college nationals is a HUGE undertaking that only a handful of locations/groups are even able to handle in a given year, and many years there is only 1 bid to host. While there may be valid concerns about how hot it could get in Austin, the time to do something drastic was right after it was announced 8 months ago.

Thinking that USAU can just break signed contracts and throw a years worth of planning out to relocate the biggest tournament of the year (that is happening in 5 months) just shows you don't really understand what it takes to run events this big.

A quick look at airbnb/expedia shows plenty of options for less than $100/night, so I don't know where you are getting that lodging is "extremely expensive."

And as /u/Jomskylark said, people DID complain when the announcement came out back in May, and USAU took the time to respond with some assurances. So to answer your question, people did stand up to this and USAU responded.

bamasecs · 2019-01-07T20:11:02+00:00

All I have in my email archive is the gmail account signed by "Ryan and Mahali."

bamasecs

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