The push into Geelong

So after encouragement from VFDA pres Rueben, Dan is taking the gospel of ultimate to Geelong and I'll be tagging along next Tuesday. This is going to be a great move for Ultimate in Victoria.

Geelong's population is around the 160,000 mark, making it Victoria's second largest city. Given that ultimate is up and running in Ballarat (90,000, 3rd largest) and Creswick (not many, somewhere near the bottom) it makes sense that we should have some sort of presence in Geelong. There is a pocket of disc golf players, and there have been pickup games in the past, but nothing formal.

This year is probably the ideal time to get ultimate happening there. With the town predominantly AFL-centric, there ought to be plenty of athletic types about. The city is also quite strong at basketball, with the Geelong Supercats once being in the NBL. The A-League is also likely to establish a team there in the next few years. Currently, two young blokes living there are on the Aussie Thunder training squad, so there's someone on the ground.

Why is this good for Victoria? The more non-Melbourne teams there are, the greater value a "state championship" would have. It would also be more of a move towards more club-based mixed ultimate. Plus the usual more players, more exposure, more revenue, more touraments, etc etc etc reasons.

This is also a great move for Ballarat - Geelong is about a 45 minute drive as opposed to Albert Park's 90 minutes. A league in Geelong would be a lot more attractive to new Ballarat players than a Melbourne league. For a 7pm AP league game, we leave at 5:15pm and return at around 10:30pm. For a 7pm game in Geelong we could leave at 6pm and be home at 9:30pm. It's also around the same distance for Melbourne (going from Albert Park), but probably a bit longer time-wise. Maybe Deakin Uni could get a team there?

This is also good for marketing - I'm tagging along under the guise of "research". I'm hoping to develop a package/program for bringing ultimate to new cities. Having a base in Geelong is also conducive to my totally kick-ass idea for a K-Rock sponsored series of games on the Surf Coast during January. But I'll save that for another entry.