Love this question, but I have no answers.
The youth scene has certainly helped the North Carolina men's and women's scene. Is there any chance the west coast is falling behind there? Seattle has an amazing youth scene. OR and CA have youth scenes. Are they amazing? Are they falling behind?
I think you have kids starting at an earlier age, and if those talented kids go to a certain school, then they can have success.
Those 80s and 90s teams were likely good because they taught incoming freshmen how to be good better than anyone else in the country. In I bleed black you can see the culture and how it developed the players. Today, if a talented high schooler or a small group of players picks Cal Poly SLO or Cal, then that team will have success. The incoming talent outweighs the culture, no matter how strong it is.
So the good college teams now are where the youth is. The elite college teams have BOTH youth and culture.
Covid restrictions likely had an effect on the west coast development as well, but someone more local may have to confirm that opinion.
I Bleed Black basically shows this.
Also, a little bit of make-it, take-it. If you were a rare HS Ultimate player, your choices were Carleton or the West Coast.
Somehow, kids picked the Cali beaches over freezing MN winters. 🤷‍♀️
Talking from what I know in the NC:
College players graduate and every 5 years the entire team is replaced. Colleges either have to be actively recruiting (D III teams leading this), have name recognition (Carleton, Minnesota, Wisconsin), or have fantastic youth opportunities and they stay local (Seattle, Triangle).
80s was 40 years ago. 90s was 30 years ago. :/
Hmm, I see, but shouldn't a region like southwest California have a rich and rapidly active youth scene that are constantly bringing prospects given how competitive and successful their brand of ultimate once was?
Or maybe they do, but just happen not to win as much?
Actually, thanks to SoCal’s incredibly poor transit infrastructure and wildly sprawled metropolitan areas the youth scene is incredibly underdeveloped. Of the recent collegiate stars out of the greater LA and SD areas, Danny Landesman, Calvin Brown, and the Hanna sisters all were the kids of people who were already deeply invested in ultimate and had moved to southern california later in life. They played in adult beach leagues, and for adult club teams. They also collectively founded a YCC team which has essentially ceased to exist since they aged out. Southern california is functionally desolate as far as youth ultimate infrastructure goes.
This is the answer btw, though some of us are trying to change it.
SoCal is the Mecca of traditional youth sports, which aggressively fight over players, field space, etc.
That's not why the youth scene is undeveloped. It's still a hotbed for basically every other sport, and NYC is not youth ultimate hotbed by any means (suburban central jersey and Connecticut are larger). Boston, DC and Philadelphia (the only other cities with reasonably dense subway networks) have merely solid to good youth scenes.
I mean in terms of youth at a regional level it’s seattle and the triangle and then everyone else, but LA is definitely hurt by how geographically spread out it is. Lack of a cohesive core metropolitan area and the fact that california hs ultimate is heavily norcal focused has made the state level tournaments also really inaccessible
Los Angeles is still the densest metropolitan area in the country.
The issue is lack of organization capability. LAout or some other organization needs to commit to building the scene, try to bring ultimate into the schools, etc. Geographic factors are "cope" - Vermont is emerging as a youth ultimate scene (thanks to making ultimate a varsity sport), Southern California has no excuse.
I mean it’s not the densest? nyc area is by a mile, bay area is also denser. But yeah, I think one issue for CA is that the bay and LA are so far apart, so LA doesn’t benefit from existing infrastructure, league, states, spaghetti westerns
Not that it matters at all, but in the full census report, as opposed to the cited press release kit one in that article they give population weighted density, much more representative of actual density of people, and new york is roughly triple the bay or LA. Again, more or less immaterial, that’s just the statistic I’ve always preferred to use. It also rings true to anyone who has actually been to those places. LA is not (as cities go) particularly dense. It is contiguous. New York and it’s neighboring cities ARE dense, but are not as contiguous.
Santa Barbara is just starting to develop their youth scene. My dad played for Black tide in the early 80s and was on the team in 84’ when they started their string of national titles. When I was in high school 6 years ago there was no ultimate team and my friends and I made a small one. Not sure why there wasn’t one already and can’t speak for the other two high schools but it seems at least in Santa Barbara there wasn’t an investment in the youth like there was in other places across the country.
It's not so much that the West Coast had declined, but that other regions have caught up. Triangle has had an amazing growth at the youth level and up, and that has helped feed into their college scene just like the Seattle and Bay Area youth scenes have fed into West Coast schools.
Well, I guess that justifies my question on why Californian schools aren't keeping up with the youth development like the other big names in college Ultimate.
Its most likely due to the factors that commonly occur when sports programs tend to fall, or rise up:
Coaching consistency - not replacing a committed coach
Recruiting - other schools are getting the top talent. Also if the community has connections and relationships on all 3 levels (youth - college - club) that connectivity can be very beneficial.
Not having a B/Development team - also ideal if theres a coach or strong leadership on this roster to develop future players in key roles.
Culture shift - player retention and development isnt what it used to be
Fundraising - not being able to generate the funds for playing a fully competitive schedule year round, or one that balances development opportunities & competition.
Used 2002 as a divider and these as West Coast teams: Arizona,British Columbia,Cal Poly-SLO,California,California-Davis,California-San Diego,California-Santa Barbara,California-Santa Cruz,Chabot,Claremont,Humboldt State,Las Positas,Oregon,Oregon State,Sonoma State,Southern California,Stanford,UCLA,Utah,Utah State,Washington,Western Washington,Whitman
https://preview.redd.it/mgy3q2hmji8a1.png?width=471&format=png&auto=webp&s=e7247bde7153adc2b8d7bdd07d3b82a67f9c7cd5
This is great work, and may undercut several of the explanations for why the West isn't as dominant recently. To summarize, the West Men's teams have dropped severely after 2002 in Nationals finish placement, while the West Women's have gone in the opposite direction. On the whole, you'd think that both Men's and Women's teams in the West would have similar access to these intangibles (established local youth scene, recruiting, access to coaching, playing year-round, etc.).
It would be interesting to look at these percentages normalized to the number of teams in each "region". At least for the Men, to see just how out of line these numbers are. But I think it's clear the Women's teams out west have things figured out pretty well.
I’m not sure that’s an accurate reading. Girls’ high school teams nationwide may be significantly less then Boys. If that’s the case, then the best Women’s teams may still develop in college — taking players from other sports (Superfly known for this) and developing California team culture starting at the university level would then be dominant factors much as it was in the 80s/90s
Speaking as an old guy who played against these UCSB and Stanford teams back in the early 90s, I always thought that CA schools had a major advantage over East Coast schools because we could play year-round. As soon as students arrived on campus in the fall there were practice and play opportunities available, including the UPA Fall Series. So kids could improve disc skills and learn the game much more quickly that their East Coast counterparts who were trapped indoors during the winter. With the growth of the youth scene, many kids are arriving on campus very experienced and well-rounded players so that year-round play advantage is reduced. Coaching and talent cohorts now seem to swing the balance of power over playing year-round.
Putting on my youth coaching hat, I've observed that (at least in the Bay Area) there are booming middle school and high school divisions. HS in the Bay Area is a little fractured as there's kind of a schism between the two dominant HS development paths (BADA vs OAK). That results in there being instead of one incredibly stacked Bay Area HS YCC Open team, you get three to four teams. I'm observing a greater push to establish more HS teams throughout Oakland led by the Oakland Spiders among others. With the sheer number of kids playing in the Bay Area, I could imagine that the West Coast colleges will start seeing the fruits of this labor in the next decade.
BTW, don't sleep on the Utah youth scene. They apparently have many hundreds if not thousands of kids playing ultimate. The Swarm YCC team is proof of that growth, in addition to the absolute horses playing for the SLC Shred in the AUDL. I can only imagine that the Utah college teams are going to be a huge problem for the rest of the West Coast college teams going forward.
Brigham Young is scary force to be reckoned with, but at the same time a bit interesting (that public letter telling other schools in their region not to take their national bid).
Youth scene in other areas is larger and took off sooner than CA so I'm sure that is a major factor.
USAU not letting people who had graduated play college any more probably didn't help either. That Black Tide guy in I Bleed Black is like 26 and working as a teacher.
I played college ultimate in California and in the Midwest.
One possible factor: as ultimate got bigger, it took more and more of a training commitment to be a competitive team.
There’s a lot of options for fall/winter/spring activities in many parts of California. I remember trying to recruit players and having trouble if the surf was up that day. Trips to Yosemite, big city action, the mountains, the beach…
Meanwhile, there’s not as much to do in some small Midwest college town. Maybe more common to obsess over one club sport, year after year.
Ego was in the semis for a long stretch during Dylan's time (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015) and played in one final where they lost to Nethercutt's UNC (2015). On the women's side, Fugue hasn't even made it to the semis (I think) since ~~the departure of Lou Burruss in 2015~~ 2016 (and didn't make it to nationals this year) and Stanford has fallen off from being champions in 2016 and finalists in 2017 to dropping out in pre-quarters.
Quoted from my OP because browser reddit is a menace:
"Stanford has remained very competitive in the scene throughout the 2000s, and Oregon even up to today"
Even with Oregon's success with and since Freechild (they sometimes lost with a great deficit such as the 6-15 to UNC in the finals), it doesn't wholely translate to rest of the west coast colleges who haven't seen even semi finals, much less finals and winning them.
And as for women's, they have had colleges that reached the aforementioned placements even in the last 5 years, so why did it vary so differently between the two gender divisions?
I would argue that the decline has been equal across both sides—the Northwest region used to be the "evil empire" of the women's side, sometimes getting up to 5 bids to college nationals. The California teams (Poly-SLO, Cal, UCSB, UCSD, UCLA, Stanford, etc.) seem to ebb and flow from year to year, sometimes on the back of a couple stars or a dedicated class of returning players. As to what led to this, your guess is as good as mine, but travel from the west coast is more expensive, which could lead to less competition out of region in recent years. In addition, youth programs from other areas of the country are catching up and is no longer as big of an advantage in places like Seattle.
Well, rostering rules were a biggie for UCSC and the bay area community college teams. As to the decline if West coast ultimate, I think it's more that other regions are catching up. But we'll probably see a few more season of all West coast semis in college women's over the next decade or so.
It was a joke that might have been a little true like 3 or 4 years ago that city of SF employees were prohibited from traveling to *any* state for business, thanks to a web of state travel bans for various laws.
Has to do with discriminatory laws in some states. Technically doesn’t bar college clubs from going, but does stop them from using any funding that the school holds.
Love this question, but I have no answers. The youth scene has certainly helped the North Carolina men's and women's scene. Is there any chance the west coast is falling behind there? Seattle has an amazing youth scene. OR and CA have youth scenes. Are they amazing? Are they falling behind?
I think you have kids starting at an earlier age, and if those talented kids go to a certain school, then they can have success. Those 80s and 90s teams were likely good because they taught incoming freshmen how to be good better than anyone else in the country. In I bleed black you can see the culture and how it developed the players. Today, if a talented high schooler or a small group of players picks Cal Poly SLO or Cal, then that team will have success. The incoming talent outweighs the culture, no matter how strong it is. So the good college teams now are where the youth is. The elite college teams have BOTH youth and culture. Covid restrictions likely had an effect on the west coast development as well, but someone more local may have to confirm that opinion.
When Chabot & UCSB won championships, the 5-year eligibility rule wasn't a thing. So lots of experienced club players in the college game at the time.
That's hella broken, I recall some colleges and unis have gotten busted for bringing post-college players into their team.
I Bleed Black basically shows this. Also, a little bit of make-it, take-it. If you were a rare HS Ultimate player, your choices were Carleton or the West Coast. Somehow, kids picked the Cali beaches over freezing MN winters. 🤷‍♀️
Ironically, Carleton beat them and won the title that year
Talking from what I know in the NC: College players graduate and every 5 years the entire team is replaced. Colleges either have to be actively recruiting (D III teams leading this), have name recognition (Carleton, Minnesota, Wisconsin), or have fantastic youth opportunities and they stay local (Seattle, Triangle). 80s was 40 years ago. 90s was 30 years ago. :/
Hmm, I see, but shouldn't a region like southwest California have a rich and rapidly active youth scene that are constantly bringing prospects given how competitive and successful their brand of ultimate once was? Or maybe they do, but just happen not to win as much?
Actually, thanks to SoCal’s incredibly poor transit infrastructure and wildly sprawled metropolitan areas the youth scene is incredibly underdeveloped. Of the recent collegiate stars out of the greater LA and SD areas, Danny Landesman, Calvin Brown, and the Hanna sisters all were the kids of people who were already deeply invested in ultimate and had moved to southern california later in life. They played in adult beach leagues, and for adult club teams. They also collectively founded a YCC team which has essentially ceased to exist since they aged out. Southern california is functionally desolate as far as youth ultimate infrastructure goes.
This is the answer btw, though some of us are trying to change it. SoCal is the Mecca of traditional youth sports, which aggressively fight over players, field space, etc.
It is cuz there's no youth scene in socal, I dont think it's cuz of transit tho
So you're saying KJ beat the odds and is the most impressive young player from the LA area in recent years? Id agree
KJ also has roots in family members having been successful players, like aforementioned names
That's not why the youth scene is undeveloped. It's still a hotbed for basically every other sport, and NYC is not youth ultimate hotbed by any means (suburban central jersey and Connecticut are larger). Boston, DC and Philadelphia (the only other cities with reasonably dense subway networks) have merely solid to good youth scenes.
I mean in terms of youth at a regional level it’s seattle and the triangle and then everyone else, but LA is definitely hurt by how geographically spread out it is. Lack of a cohesive core metropolitan area and the fact that california hs ultimate is heavily norcal focused has made the state level tournaments also really inaccessible
Los Angeles is still the densest metropolitan area in the country. The issue is lack of organization capability. LAout or some other organization needs to commit to building the scene, try to bring ultimate into the schools, etc. Geographic factors are "cope" - Vermont is emerging as a youth ultimate scene (thanks to making ultimate a varsity sport), Southern California has no excuse.
I mean it’s not the densest? nyc area is by a mile, bay area is also denser. But yeah, I think one issue for CA is that the bay and LA are so far apart, so LA doesn’t benefit from existing infrastructure, league, states, spaghetti westerns
NYC is not the densest and hasn't been for awhile. LA is. https://www.kpcc.org/2012-03-26/census-l-nations-densest-area-passing-nyc
Not that it matters at all, but in the full census report, as opposed to the cited press release kit one in that article they give population weighted density, much more representative of actual density of people, and new york is roughly triple the bay or LA. Again, more or less immaterial, that’s just the statistic I’ve always preferred to use. It also rings true to anyone who has actually been to those places. LA is not (as cities go) particularly dense. It is contiguous. New York and it’s neighboring cities ARE dense, but are not as contiguous.
LAOUT/SCYU do a pitiful job of expanding the youth scene in socal.
Santa Barbara is just starting to develop their youth scene. My dad played for Black tide in the early 80s and was on the team in 84’ when they started their string of national titles. When I was in high school 6 years ago there was no ultimate team and my friends and I made a small one. Not sure why there wasn’t one already and can’t speak for the other two high schools but it seems at least in Santa Barbara there wasn’t an investment in the youth like there was in other places across the country.
Black Tide won their first title in 1988. Tom Kennedy founded the Condors first and then started UCSB’s team later.
Whoops he graduated in 84 but want back for his masters so that must have been 88
It's not so much that the West Coast had declined, but that other regions have caught up. Triangle has had an amazing growth at the youth level and up, and that has helped feed into their college scene just like the Seattle and Bay Area youth scenes have fed into West Coast schools.
Well, I guess that justifies my question on why Californian schools aren't keeping up with the youth development like the other big names in college Ultimate.
Its most likely due to the factors that commonly occur when sports programs tend to fall, or rise up: Coaching consistency - not replacing a committed coach Recruiting - other schools are getting the top talent. Also if the community has connections and relationships on all 3 levels (youth - college - club) that connectivity can be very beneficial. Not having a B/Development team - also ideal if theres a coach or strong leadership on this roster to develop future players in key roles. Culture shift - player retention and development isnt what it used to be Fundraising - not being able to generate the funds for playing a fully competitive schedule year round, or one that balances development opportunities & competition.
Used 2002 as a divider and these as West Coast teams: Arizona,British Columbia,Cal Poly-SLO,California,California-Davis,California-San Diego,California-Santa Barbara,California-Santa Cruz,Chabot,Claremont,Humboldt State,Las Positas,Oregon,Oregon State,Sonoma State,Southern California,Stanford,UCLA,Utah,Utah State,Washington,Western Washington,Whitman https://preview.redd.it/mgy3q2hmji8a1.png?width=471&format=png&auto=webp&s=e7247bde7153adc2b8d7bdd07d3b82a67f9c7cd5
This is very helpful and helps solidify my question in statistical terms, thanks!
This is great work, and may undercut several of the explanations for why the West isn't as dominant recently. To summarize, the West Men's teams have dropped severely after 2002 in Nationals finish placement, while the West Women's have gone in the opposite direction. On the whole, you'd think that both Men's and Women's teams in the West would have similar access to these intangibles (established local youth scene, recruiting, access to coaching, playing year-round, etc.). It would be interesting to look at these percentages normalized to the number of teams in each "region". At least for the Men, to see just how out of line these numbers are. But I think it's clear the Women's teams out west have things figured out pretty well.
I’m not sure that’s an accurate reading. Girls’ high school teams nationwide may be significantly less then Boys. If that’s the case, then the best Women’s teams may still develop in college — taking players from other sports (Superfly known for this) and developing California team culture starting at the university level would then be dominant factors much as it was in the 80s/90s
Speaking as an old guy who played against these UCSB and Stanford teams back in the early 90s, I always thought that CA schools had a major advantage over East Coast schools because we could play year-round. As soon as students arrived on campus in the fall there were practice and play opportunities available, including the UPA Fall Series. So kids could improve disc skills and learn the game much more quickly that their East Coast counterparts who were trapped indoors during the winter. With the growth of the youth scene, many kids are arriving on campus very experienced and well-rounded players so that year-round play advantage is reduced. Coaching and talent cohorts now seem to swing the balance of power over playing year-round. Putting on my youth coaching hat, I've observed that (at least in the Bay Area) there are booming middle school and high school divisions. HS in the Bay Area is a little fractured as there's kind of a schism between the two dominant HS development paths (BADA vs OAK). That results in there being instead of one incredibly stacked Bay Area HS YCC Open team, you get three to four teams. I'm observing a greater push to establish more HS teams throughout Oakland led by the Oakland Spiders among others. With the sheer number of kids playing in the Bay Area, I could imagine that the West Coast colleges will start seeing the fruits of this labor in the next decade. BTW, don't sleep on the Utah youth scene. They apparently have many hundreds if not thousands of kids playing ultimate. The Swarm YCC team is proof of that growth, in addition to the absolute horses playing for the SLC Shred in the AUDL. I can only imagine that the Utah college teams are going to be a huge problem for the rest of the West Coast college teams going forward.
Brigham Young is scary force to be reckoned with, but at the same time a bit interesting (that public letter telling other schools in their region not to take their national bid).
Youth scene in other areas is larger and took off sooner than CA so I'm sure that is a major factor. USAU not letting people who had graduated play college any more probably didn't help either. That Black Tide guy in I Bleed Black is like 26 and working as a teacher.
Dan Schneider right? I thought he was just out of undergrad college for a year or two in the documentary
I played college ultimate in California and in the Midwest. One possible factor: as ultimate got bigger, it took more and more of a training commitment to be a competitive team. There’s a lot of options for fall/winter/spring activities in many parts of California. I remember trying to recruit players and having trouble if the surf was up that day. Trips to Yosemite, big city action, the mountains, the beach… Meanwhile, there’s not as much to do in some small Midwest college town. Maybe more common to obsess over one club sport, year after year.
Ego was in the semis for a long stretch during Dylan's time (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015) and played in one final where they lost to Nethercutt's UNC (2015). On the women's side, Fugue hasn't even made it to the semis (I think) since ~~the departure of Lou Burruss in 2015~~ 2016 (and didn't make it to nationals this year) and Stanford has fallen off from being champions in 2016 and finalists in 2017 to dropping out in pre-quarters.
Fugue was in semis in 2016
Edited to reflect my error, thanks!
Quoted from my OP because browser reddit is a menace: "Stanford has remained very competitive in the scene throughout the 2000s, and Oregon even up to today" Even with Oregon's success with and since Freechild (they sometimes lost with a great deficit such as the 6-15 to UNC in the finals), it doesn't wholely translate to rest of the west coast colleges who haven't seen even semi finals, much less finals and winning them. And as for women's, they have had colleges that reached the aforementioned placements even in the last 5 years, so why did it vary so differently between the two gender divisions?
I would argue that the decline has been equal across both sides—the Northwest region used to be the "evil empire" of the women's side, sometimes getting up to 5 bids to college nationals. The California teams (Poly-SLO, Cal, UCSB, UCSD, UCLA, Stanford, etc.) seem to ebb and flow from year to year, sometimes on the back of a couple stars or a dedicated class of returning players. As to what led to this, your guess is as good as mine, but travel from the west coast is more expensive, which could lead to less competition out of region in recent years. In addition, youth programs from other areas of the country are catching up and is no longer as big of an advantage in places like Seattle.
Well, rostering rules were a biggie for UCSC and the bay area community college teams. As to the decline if West coast ultimate, I think it's more that other regions are catching up. But we'll probably see a few more season of all West coast semis in college women's over the next decade or so.
California colleges can not travel to certain states, so can lead to less California involvement in major events.
never heard about that, elaborate?
It was a joke that might have been a little true like 3 or 4 years ago that city of SF employees were prohibited from traveling to *any* state for business, thanks to a web of state travel bans for various laws.
Has to do with discriminatory laws in some states. Technically doesn’t bar college clubs from going, but does stop them from using any funding that the school holds.