Indoors part one

Hey all,

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while but haven’t had the time to sit down and do it yet. As you are probably aware from the women’s meeting I had some issues with women’s indoor ultimate this year.
My feelings towards indoors are that it’s a fun quick-paced competitive sport, which requires very precise throws, different offense and defensive structures, and allows the use and practice of overhead throws. With regards to beginners it is a perfect environment to teach throws esp. dump passes, which become much harder in windy conditions outside and to teach cutting patterns. To be able to play ultimate at a faster pace is a huge advantage to have and one which you can fine tune by playing indoors. Beginners can be marked by experienced players and still get the disc/score etc. That in itself is a huge boost to the ego for any beginner. I had beginners at Uk nationals playing in the final being marked by GB national players and they were scoring most of our points! I could go on and on about the benefits of playing indoors but by now you probably can see that I’m a big fan.

My problem is this. I feel that in Ireland as a whole we do not take indoors seriously. This especially goes for the guys playing in most colleges but its definitely evident from the girls too. And from the guys perspective it’s okay for them to disrespect indoors as they have so many other venues to play competitive ultimate. In previous years indoor intervarsities was THE ONLY competitive ultimate for female college players to play women’s ultimate. Uk nationals are prestigious to every player in the Uk. It is a huge deal to even qualify to play in that tournament and winning it is an even bigger achievement. It is the tournament that all Uk colleges train for and go to win. With DCU we made huge progress in the last few years at Uk nationals and became respected as a team and a nation- we went there representing Ireland. We became a threat and a team to beat. We worked very hard for it and it payed off but the team, as a whole, wanted it badly!

I was a bit annoyed at indoor intervarsities this year to see that players did not know the rules of indoors, something which is vital in playing any sport!

I feel we see our indoor intervarsities as just something to play in and not take too seriously. It’s something to get over and done with so that we can focus on more important things like outdoors. I know that at open intervarsities in the last few years teams (icl. DCU) have said “if we make the final lets flunk it because I’m not bothered about going to the Uk”. I am hoping this isn't the way that we are starting to think. This, our only competition to date, IS something to take seriously and the title of champions should be fought for! We let ourselves down by not sending a team to Uk nationals. Not only are we reducing the amount of women’s competitions that we play in but it looks very bad for the last Irish team to have won and for none to compete the year after.

At this point we should be entering anything and everything and getting as many people as possible playing competitive women’s ultimate whether its indoors, beach or outdoors- without discrimination.

I am interested in hearing others thoughts/feelings on this issue. I absolutely do not mean to offend anyone by saying this; this is just how I feel on this issue. Please do not take offence.

Laura

Well said shouldies! I completely agree with everything you said. Indoors is a completely different type of game to outdoors, and one that I love as much as I do outdoors. When you work hard at indoors, and respect it the way it should be respected you realise the quality game that it is. We can all learn so much from it

I have mixed feelings about indoors so still pondering this one.

But I do have one question in the meantime:

Laura, Ciara, DCU women - when you went to UK nats last year, were the games played on the size pitches that we usually use for indoors at home (approx 2ft deep endzones) or on 'full size' indoor pitches?

The pitches at Uk nats vary from year to year depending on the venue. The ideal size for an indoor pitch is 40x20m with 7m endzones. None of the venues had pitches of this size. They were generally bigger than our DCU pitches. They were roughly the size of the hall we used to rent out on Griffith Avenue so to answer your question yes and no. No the pitches were not the ideal full sized pitches(this may only happen in the Europe/U.S) and depending on where you played in Ireland they may be bigger.

It's hard for us to explain what it's like in the UK, some people in Ireland have the same opinion of indoors as non-ulti players have of frisbee in general. I think it's terrible that some people treat it as if it's 'not a real sport'. You can't possibly offer an honest or proper opinion on indoor ultimate when you haven't trained/played/competed with a team who actually take it seriously, and respect the game for it's unique type of playing ultimate. It's skillful, quick and very competitive in the UK, which is what it should be here. You may have played in the UK before, but until you've trained hard and travelled over there with the aim of doing your best as you do with outdoors, you won't know what it's really like.

I had learned so much from it and I'm still learning. Having a true heart of a sports man you must go with the flow of your environment.

natural fit.