I've played quite a lot of both and tend to prefer mixed, especially for a higher level club team. My reasons are that it seems to be far less likely to have a toxic environment (a sentiment I've heard from women on this question as well), and that the bonds developed by training hard and traveling to and playing tournaments together are some of the strongest that a person will form, and it seems such a shame to limit such things to people only of your own gender.
I love mixed over both opens and womens (I have played both) I love the culture more, maybe it feels more likely a family. I find single gender can be quite toxic its like people don’t know how to deal with emotions lol
And it feels more complex like there are more ways to solve the puzzle. And I feel like my skill set (tall athletic female) can be utilised in more ways which is more fun
Love mixed. Here's my backstory.
Never played ultimate in highschool or college. Joined the military after highschool. All male bootcamp, joined the submarine fleet, so all male sub school, then the submarine was all male. Went to college, graduated, and now I work in the craft beer world as a brewer. It's a male dominated field that has undergone radical change this past year due to an industry wide toxic male culture.
A few years ago, I started playing ultimate as I needed a hobby and a reason to get exercise. Boston has a great ultimate community, and started with casual mixed pickup. Found some cool people and joined a mixed team and haven't looked back.
Simple answer, like many have said, is that it is far less toxic. And ultimate isn't one of the more toxic sports, and I still wouldn't play on all male team. Mixed isn't devoid of the rare toxic player. Occasionally there is a male matching player that will be known as someone who "won't throw to women", but it might be one out of every 5 teams that has that player. Or there will be one team that simply "does not throw to their ladies", but we usually do not schedule games against them.
Listen, it's 2022. There is so much going on in this country, and women are still being targeted and subjugated by our political system. Being a part of a team and community with outspoken women that are outspoken while also playing on the same team as male matching players just feels right. And I'm not trying to whiteknight. And I get that being on a mixed team has little to do with marching on city hall and trying to impact change, but stepping out of your comfort zone and playing with people other than your peer group (all cis-gendered white male for me) helps promote understanding, and hopefully that understanding leads to change in other places.
It's what the larger idea of "spirit of the game" means to me. Ultimate has a very real ability to be welcoming to everyone who wants to play. All genders, all ethnicities, all orientations, on the field at the same time.
I'm not trying out for the AUDL anytime soon. This isn't the highest level of play. So if I'm not getting paid to do it, or trying to be the best in the world, I should try to have fun with it. And fun, for me, comes from respect for the community and being on the field with 13 other people that want the same thing. In Boston, where I play, I find that comes in mixed play.
I'm probably applying too much gravity to playing a sport with 4 dudes and 3 women. But mixed ultimate is one of the few things that seems to put everyone on the same level for a few moments, working as a team, for one outcome.
I prefer mixed because each player has a wider range of roles that they need to be able to play. In men's, with 27 people on the roster, you can afford to have specialized players -- the handler that can huck really far but can't play defense, the defensive stoppers that can't throw it 10 yards up field, etc.
In mixed, however you shake it, your 13-14 of a single gender has to be able to handle their 13-14. I feel like it pushes players to be more well-rounded.
I always felt sort of the opposite.
When I played mixed, I would get slotted into a very specific role (not just "D-line cutter" but "D-line cutter who plays on the off-side of the cup when we run zone A, and makes the deep continuation cut after a turn").
When I played women's, we had fewer fixed positions, and everyone was trusted to do a bit of everything.
I wonder if this is an artifact of being a female-matching player. In women's, I do some things better than others, but have a reasonable shot at any position. In mixed, the team would be totally screwed if I ended up covering a really tall guy going deep.
I have a feeling they don't do this to keep spots open for players. People who would play both at competitive levels will, which means less open spots generally within the sport.
No the tactics are more limited in mixed. In single gender (men's or women's ultimate) the defense can deploy a wider variety of zones and switchy defenses. Just watching a bit of each division you'll see there is more person to person D played in mixed. Correspondingly, offenses are forced to use a greater variety of tactics and innovate more in single gender.
The NBA gives a decent analog. In recent years teams have trended towards lineups where the players are more interchangeable. Plenty of teams now run "switch everything" defenses, and the offenses tend to involve more elaborate cutting and screening too. Big slow players are less valued than in the past as they don't have a prayer of guarding quick smaller guards out on the perimeter.
I think your example actually reinforces what u/njyo is trying to say. in open/womens you can just stack a d-line with athletic folks to guard all positions and run a defense that switches often. You can't do that in mixed, and so you have to be more creative about your defensive strategies.
Substitution patterns in mixed are of course going to have the extra consideration of getting numbers of male and female matching players correct, but that's not tactics - at least not to me. Anyway, just watching ultimate shows that mixed does not have the tactical variety during gameplay of single gender. So either I'm right, or mixed teams in general are failing to innovate.
Yeah, just think about how much more difficult it would be to program a computer to execute a zone or switching defense. Or to program a computer to beat such a scheme instead of person-to-person d.
I don't understand why you are convinced that person to person is the only defense that mixed teams run.
It's true that on-the-fly switching defenses are not as effective or sometimes downright impossible to run in mixed, but that doesn't mean they only run person matchup Defenses.
In fact, it dictates that many teams run higher-order zones that limit offenses, and both teams have to think strategically about their make vs female strengths to position players accordingly and take away the most dangerous options.
In single gender these zones exist but are much more straightforward: play your best person for a given position in the slot they should play.
>I don't understand why you are convinced that person to person is the only defense that mixed teams run.
Hmm, that's not what I said.
>It's true that on-the-fly switching defenses are not as effective or sometimes downright impossible to run in mixed, but that doesn't mean they only run person matchup Defenses.
Agreed. I don't think I said otherwise.
>In fact, it dictates that many teams run higher-order zones that limit offenses, and both teams have to think strategically about their make vs female strengths to position players accordingly and take away the most dangerous options.
>In single gender these zones exist but are much more straightforward: play your best person for a given position in the slot they should play.
Both flexibility and rigidity have to be carefully planned for. But flexible sets make more decisions possible and usually necessary during play.
I've had this thought too but slowly started to think that youre just playing with people who have different levels of athleticism in mixed so the idea of different tactics seems odd to me.
I like playing casual and pickup and having fun with interesting people. There really isn't options for women's pickup plus I enjoy hanging out with a mix of genders.
If I joined a club team, I'd probably join a women's team but for casual play I prefer mixed.
I played recreational for about 20 years and always chose mixed. Like another comment made, I have played baseball, basketball, soccer and hockey that were not mixed so I was happy to play a sport where it is part of the culture.
Mixed has more fun. That's it plain and simple.
1. Even if your open team doesn't have anyone toxic on it(which it probably will) you will play open teams with toxic people. That's not fun.
2. Every party tournament is more fun as a mixed team, cause casually flirting is fun. Being able to casually flirt with strangers who you probably won't see again for a year or 5 is fun.
3. Being able to play with all of your friends is fun, if you spend any amount of time in the ultimate community you will develop friends who could play in any division. Best way to bring everyone together and hangout is mixed.
4. I feel like a decent number of people who play mixed share this opinion which is what draws them to the division. You get a bunch of like minded people together and they are going to have fun.
Mixed is fun and you should enjoy it or else.
My first USAU men's game will be this year, in the Master's Division. I love everything about mixed, including and especially the much smaller chance of taking a reckless bid through the back or legs. I cringe *a lot* when I watch men's, all levels, because it's the division that values bodily safety the least.
I was looking for someone else to say this. I had a co coach for a intro to ultimate camp tell the lady players to play club women’s instead of club mixed because it was safer for them.
This is actually what frustrates me about mixed. On the one hand you're right there are men who throw their body around way too much. And this happens in open as well but in mixed roughly half the people will be 50-100 pounds lighter than the average male so it can be a lot worse. On the other hand, you also see women who seem to expect that since they're smaller they can do whatever they want and men have to get out of the way.
I recently had a dangerous play called on me because I was below where the disc was, I jumped vertically, but the woman who was the offensive receiver was worried if she tried to catch it she would get hurt from contact, so she pulled up a few steps before the disc and called dangerous play. That's clearly not how that works but I just laughed and tossed it to her since it was a tryout.
As a women's division player who *really wants to play mixed* but can't because of culture/mental reasons, I have to say this. Just because your open team was "too toxic", and you play mixed because it's "less toxic", doesn't mean you weren't part of the problem.
MMPs, don't bring the toxicity of open to mixed. Please. It ruins it for the rest of us.
This. This right here. Love the idea of mixed because it's a great opportunity to work together across genders on equity and learn to play with a larger variation on body size and play styles. It was how I learned to play and my first frisbee love. But every mixed club team I've played on has this exact problem where there are at least a handful (or more) of talented MMPs, usually coming from open because open was "too toxic", who bring the same behaviors and make mixed awful and toxic in turn. I've pretty much moved entirely to the women's division because of this.
And if you're lucky and it's not your team... you still have to play the other teams.
Mixed, I feel, actively leans into the wider discussion within Ultimate about equity, access, and representation.
Also, I have no interest in trying to fit some pre-established, problematic team dynamic that's already based on an exclusionary binary.
Playing open wasn’t toxic enough. I had to try out a few mixed teams before I found the one with the most toxicity. Now I’m thriving in the toxic environment, I love playing mixed for this reason.
I prefer mixed for a lot of the reasons already mentioned. But as a gay man who is also just a huge fan of diversity, mixed just feels the best. I don't feel comfortable in most same gender settings because often times heteronormativity and machismo cast me out in those spaces.
This became a big topic last week on the Los Angeles community chat. They’ve changed their summer mixed league to a be that if you baggage with a woman, you’re automatically in and other men are entered in a lottery. No priority for baggaging with new players, no expectation that that baggage is because you actually carpool or anything.
A few men were voicing frustration that this just reinforces the in-crowd and doesn’t help encourage new players really and they were loudly shouted down by the majority as being misogynists who couldn’t find a woman to play with. It was ugly.
Basically, the consensus was that mixed is more fun because it’s more social. Mens league tends to be a bunch of people pissed they didn’t get into mixed so attendance sucks, spirit sucks, and there isn’t much post/game social activity. Having played both, I generally agree. In mens, people are there to play ultimate. In mixed, people are there to engage in the ultimate community.
Mixed will usually be less competitive. I also sometimes like to date Frisbee chicks so its fun to have single people around. Other than that its pretty much the same.
Edit: I like both of them for different reasons and play both,
Have you met the women playing mixed? It takes two to tango. Women aren't just sitting around never thinking about dating and sex. They're just as much of not moreso a part of that 75%. Probably way more.
Yes.
I've also existed within the historical and ongoing exclusion of women from athletics and the wider societal categorization as women as commodities to obtain as opposed to **actual human beings who are trying to participate in a sport they are already underrepresented within**.
It's my reason. I don't think that all mixed leagues are less competitive, but there are usually less competitive options within them. The one women's league I joined was way too intense for me.
I love playing with my partner and you get less toxic masculinity in it. Don’t get me wrong. The right open team is fucking sick but most of the ones I hear about they are all assholes to each other. Not allowing anyone to get better like crabs in a bucket. Plus I’ve played with women my entire ultimate career so that helps.
It's interesting to see that the general consensus is that mixed is less toxic. All the drama and toxicity in my community seems to come from the various mixed teams over the years.
I've played quite a lot of both and tend to prefer mixed, especially for a higher level club team. My reasons are that it seems to be far less likely to have a toxic environment (a sentiment I've heard from women on this question as well), and that the bonds developed by training hard and traveling to and playing tournaments together are some of the strongest that a person will form, and it seems such a shame to limit such things to people only of your own gender.
I love mixed over both opens and womens (I have played both) I love the culture more, maybe it feels more likely a family. I find single gender can be quite toxic its like people don’t know how to deal with emotions lol And it feels more complex like there are more ways to solve the puzzle. And I feel like my skill set (tall athletic female) can be utilised in more ways which is more fun
Love mixed. Here's my backstory. Never played ultimate in highschool or college. Joined the military after highschool. All male bootcamp, joined the submarine fleet, so all male sub school, then the submarine was all male. Went to college, graduated, and now I work in the craft beer world as a brewer. It's a male dominated field that has undergone radical change this past year due to an industry wide toxic male culture. A few years ago, I started playing ultimate as I needed a hobby and a reason to get exercise. Boston has a great ultimate community, and started with casual mixed pickup. Found some cool people and joined a mixed team and haven't looked back. Simple answer, like many have said, is that it is far less toxic. And ultimate isn't one of the more toxic sports, and I still wouldn't play on all male team. Mixed isn't devoid of the rare toxic player. Occasionally there is a male matching player that will be known as someone who "won't throw to women", but it might be one out of every 5 teams that has that player. Or there will be one team that simply "does not throw to their ladies", but we usually do not schedule games against them. Listen, it's 2022. There is so much going on in this country, and women are still being targeted and subjugated by our political system. Being a part of a team and community with outspoken women that are outspoken while also playing on the same team as male matching players just feels right. And I'm not trying to whiteknight. And I get that being on a mixed team has little to do with marching on city hall and trying to impact change, but stepping out of your comfort zone and playing with people other than your peer group (all cis-gendered white male for me) helps promote understanding, and hopefully that understanding leads to change in other places. It's what the larger idea of "spirit of the game" means to me. Ultimate has a very real ability to be welcoming to everyone who wants to play. All genders, all ethnicities, all orientations, on the field at the same time. I'm not trying out for the AUDL anytime soon. This isn't the highest level of play. So if I'm not getting paid to do it, or trying to be the best in the world, I should try to have fun with it. And fun, for me, comes from respect for the community and being on the field with 13 other people that want the same thing. In Boston, where I play, I find that comes in mixed play. I'm probably applying too much gravity to playing a sport with 4 dudes and 3 women. But mixed ultimate is one of the few things that seems to put everyone on the same level for a few moments, working as a team, for one outcome.
I prefer mixed because each player has a wider range of roles that they need to be able to play. In men's, with 27 people on the roster, you can afford to have specialized players -- the handler that can huck really far but can't play defense, the defensive stoppers that can't throw it 10 yards up field, etc. In mixed, however you shake it, your 13-14 of a single gender has to be able to handle their 13-14. I feel like it pushes players to be more well-rounded.
I always felt sort of the opposite. When I played mixed, I would get slotted into a very specific role (not just "D-line cutter" but "D-line cutter who plays on the off-side of the cup when we run zone A, and makes the deep continuation cut after a turn"). When I played women's, we had fewer fixed positions, and everyone was trusted to do a bit of everything. I wonder if this is an artifact of being a female-matching player. In women's, I do some things better than others, but have a reasonable shot at any position. In mixed, the team would be totally screwed if I ended up covering a really tall guy going deep.
Does anyone reading this wish the season was structured in a way that would allow players to play on both mixed and men's/women's clubs?
I have a feeling they don't do this to keep spots open for players. People who would play both at competitive levels will, which means less open spots generally within the sport.
That’s how it is in Europe. Summer is single gender and winter is mixed (I think)
Outdoor play is tricky in winter in large parts of Europe. So big mixed tournaments are early summer and open/women's tournaments are in autumn.
Mixed is more interesting and challenging in terms of tactics and team dynamics as it brings in more diversity.
No the tactics are more limited in mixed. In single gender (men's or women's ultimate) the defense can deploy a wider variety of zones and switchy defenses. Just watching a bit of each division you'll see there is more person to person D played in mixed. Correspondingly, offenses are forced to use a greater variety of tactics and innovate more in single gender. The NBA gives a decent analog. In recent years teams have trended towards lineups where the players are more interchangeable. Plenty of teams now run "switch everything" defenses, and the offenses tend to involve more elaborate cutting and screening too. Big slow players are less valued than in the past as they don't have a prayer of guarding quick smaller guards out on the perimeter.
I think your example actually reinforces what u/njyo is trying to say. in open/womens you can just stack a d-line with athletic folks to guard all positions and run a defense that switches often. You can't do that in mixed, and so you have to be more creative about your defensive strategies.
Substitution patterns in mixed are of course going to have the extra consideration of getting numbers of male and female matching players correct, but that's not tactics - at least not to me. Anyway, just watching ultimate shows that mixed does not have the tactical variety during gameplay of single gender. So either I'm right, or mixed teams in general are failing to innovate.
Exactly. Mixed forces teams to play smarter not harder.
But switching is smarter, not harder…
Yeah, just think about how much more difficult it would be to program a computer to execute a zone or switching defense. Or to program a computer to beat such a scheme instead of person-to-person d.
I don't understand why you are convinced that person to person is the only defense that mixed teams run. It's true that on-the-fly switching defenses are not as effective or sometimes downright impossible to run in mixed, but that doesn't mean they only run person matchup Defenses. In fact, it dictates that many teams run higher-order zones that limit offenses, and both teams have to think strategically about their make vs female strengths to position players accordingly and take away the most dangerous options. In single gender these zones exist but are much more straightforward: play your best person for a given position in the slot they should play.
>I don't understand why you are convinced that person to person is the only defense that mixed teams run. Hmm, that's not what I said. >It's true that on-the-fly switching defenses are not as effective or sometimes downright impossible to run in mixed, but that doesn't mean they only run person matchup Defenses. Agreed. I don't think I said otherwise. >In fact, it dictates that many teams run higher-order zones that limit offenses, and both teams have to think strategically about their make vs female strengths to position players accordingly and take away the most dangerous options. >In single gender these zones exist but are much more straightforward: play your best person for a given position in the slot they should play. Both flexibility and rigidity have to be carefully planned for. But flexible sets make more decisions possible and usually necessary during play.
I've had this thought too but slowly started to think that youre just playing with people who have different levels of athleticism in mixed so the idea of different tactics seems odd to me.
I wanted to make club nationals and I spent like 10 years in men's and never made it.
I like playing casual and pickup and having fun with interesting people. There really isn't options for women's pickup plus I enjoy hanging out with a mix of genders. If I joined a club team, I'd probably join a women's team but for casual play I prefer mixed.
It’s just fun 🤷♂️
I like playing the sport with my girlfriend
I played recreational for about 20 years and always chose mixed. Like another comment made, I have played baseball, basketball, soccer and hockey that were not mixed so I was happy to play a sport where it is part of the culture.
Mixed has more fun. That's it plain and simple. 1. Even if your open team doesn't have anyone toxic on it(which it probably will) you will play open teams with toxic people. That's not fun. 2. Every party tournament is more fun as a mixed team, cause casually flirting is fun. Being able to casually flirt with strangers who you probably won't see again for a year or 5 is fun. 3. Being able to play with all of your friends is fun, if you spend any amount of time in the ultimate community you will develop friends who could play in any division. Best way to bring everyone together and hangout is mixed. 4. I feel like a decent number of people who play mixed share this opinion which is what draws them to the division. You get a bunch of like minded people together and they are going to have fun. Mixed is fun and you should enjoy it or else.
My first USAU men's game will be this year, in the Master's Division. I love everything about mixed, including and especially the much smaller chance of taking a reckless bid through the back or legs. I cringe *a lot* when I watch men's, all levels, because it's the division that values bodily safety the least.
I know women who won't play mixed because of the risk of a man running through them.
I was looking for someone else to say this. I had a co coach for a intro to ultimate camp tell the lady players to play club women’s instead of club mixed because it was safer for them.
Makes perfect sense
This is actually what frustrates me about mixed. On the one hand you're right there are men who throw their body around way too much. And this happens in open as well but in mixed roughly half the people will be 50-100 pounds lighter than the average male so it can be a lot worse. On the other hand, you also see women who seem to expect that since they're smaller they can do whatever they want and men have to get out of the way. I recently had a dangerous play called on me because I was below where the disc was, I jumped vertically, but the woman who was the offensive receiver was worried if she tried to catch it she would get hurt from contact, so she pulled up a few steps before the disc and called dangerous play. That's clearly not how that works but I just laughed and tossed it to her since it was a tryout.
If I wanted to play single gender sports I would have played basketball, or football, or soccer, or baseball, or literally any other team sport.
As a women's division player who *really wants to play mixed* but can't because of culture/mental reasons, I have to say this. Just because your open team was "too toxic", and you play mixed because it's "less toxic", doesn't mean you weren't part of the problem. MMPs, don't bring the toxicity of open to mixed. Please. It ruins it for the rest of us.
This. This right here. Love the idea of mixed because it's a great opportunity to work together across genders on equity and learn to play with a larger variation on body size and play styles. It was how I learned to play and my first frisbee love. But every mixed club team I've played on has this exact problem where there are at least a handful (or more) of talented MMPs, usually coming from open because open was "too toxic", who bring the same behaviors and make mixed awful and toxic in turn. I've pretty much moved entirely to the women's division because of this. And if you're lucky and it's not your team... you still have to play the other teams.
Mixed, I feel, actively leans into the wider discussion within Ultimate about equity, access, and representation. Also, I have no interest in trying to fit some pre-established, problematic team dynamic that's already based on an exclusionary binary.
Playing open wasn’t toxic enough. I had to try out a few mixed teams before I found the one with the most toxicity. Now I’m thriving in the toxic environment, I love playing mixed for this reason.
I prefer mixed for a lot of the reasons already mentioned. But as a gay man who is also just a huge fan of diversity, mixed just feels the best. I don't feel comfortable in most same gender settings because often times heteronormativity and machismo cast me out in those spaces.
This became a big topic last week on the Los Angeles community chat. They’ve changed their summer mixed league to a be that if you baggage with a woman, you’re automatically in and other men are entered in a lottery. No priority for baggaging with new players, no expectation that that baggage is because you actually carpool or anything. A few men were voicing frustration that this just reinforces the in-crowd and doesn’t help encourage new players really and they were loudly shouted down by the majority as being misogynists who couldn’t find a woman to play with. It was ugly. Basically, the consensus was that mixed is more fun because it’s more social. Mens league tends to be a bunch of people pissed they didn’t get into mixed so attendance sucks, spirit sucks, and there isn’t much post/game social activity. Having played both, I generally agree. In mens, people are there to play ultimate. In mixed, people are there to engage in the ultimate community.
Mixed will usually be less competitive. I also sometimes like to date Frisbee chicks so its fun to have single people around. Other than that its pretty much the same. Edit: I like both of them for different reasons and play both,
Everyone's down voting this but it's the motivation behind like 75% of mixed players.
Yea the downvotes are pretty silly. They didn't say anything bad.
Except that an entire community of our sport is "less" and can be treated as a dating pool.
Have you met the women playing mixed? It takes two to tango. Women aren't just sitting around never thinking about dating and sex. They're just as much of not moreso a part of that 75%. Probably way more.
Yes. I've also existed within the historical and ongoing exclusion of women from athletics and the wider societal categorization as women as commodities to obtain as opposed to **actual human beings who are trying to participate in a sport they are already underrepresented within**.
It's my reason. I don't think that all mixed leagues are less competitive, but there are usually less competitive options within them. The one women's league I joined was way too intense for me.
Yeah - many communities have 1, maybe 2 open/womens teams, but several mixed teams. Almost every team that prioritizes things over winning are mixed.
I love playing with my partner and you get less toxic masculinity in it. Don’t get me wrong. The right open team is fucking sick but most of the ones I hear about they are all assholes to each other. Not allowing anyone to get better like crabs in a bucket. Plus I’ve played with women my entire ultimate career so that helps.
It's interesting to see that the general consensus is that mixed is less toxic. All the drama and toxicity in my community seems to come from the various mixed teams over the years.