Some thoughts on womens' ultimate

Note to self: the apostrophe goes at the end of "womens".

So coming up at the end of June is the National Women's Development Camp in Brisbane. Fantastic idea, and my hat goes off to Nic and Piers and whoever else is behind it.

Why is it such a good idea?

Let's have a look at Worlds results for the Australian mens' and womens' teams over the last decade or so. In particular I want to highlight WUGC, so that's why they're in bold.

2006 (WUCC, Perth, AUS)
Men - 2nd (Thong), 3rd (Chilly), 6th (Fakulti) of 21
Women - 9th (Wildcard), 10th (Southside), 12th (Ishtar) of 18

2004 (WUGC, Turku, FIN)
Men - 3rd of 18
Women - 6th of 14

2002 (WUCC, Honululu, USA)
Men - 14th (Feral), 20th (King Brown), 38th (Action Men) of 40
Women - 7th (Freya), 10th (Seven Green Bottles) of 24

2000 (WUGC, Heilbronn, GER)
Men - 6th of 19
Women - 6th of 11

1999 (WUCC, St. Andrews, SCO)
Men - 13th (King Brown), 14th (Feral) of 40
Women - 15th (Seven Green Bottles) of 30

1998 (WUGC, Blaine, USA)
Men - 7th of 11
Women - 7th of 8


While the men have slowly worked their way up the table, the women still seem to be hovering around the middle of the field. There could be any number of reasons for this - increasing quality of the rest of the world, outside influences stopping us sending our best teams, etc etc etc. However I think we seem to have a bit of fundamental problem here in Australia. Actually, two...

1) There is a lack of depth in the quality of players.
2) There is a lack of women in leadership roles below the top tier of competition.

For point 1, you don't need to go far. Talk to anyone who has tried to organise a mixed team. As far as point 2 goes, I took a quick look at the registrations for last year's Mixed Nationals (top tier) and AUGs (one notch below). Now the captains who are listed on the rego pages aren't the on-field leaders, but they're the ones driving the recruitment and administration...in short, they get the team to the show. 10 out of the 24 Mixed Nats teams had a female listed captain. And out of the 20 AUG teams, only 1.

So why does this happen? Around Australia, there are numerous social leagues that are pretty much exclusively mixed. And whether we like it or not, at a beginner level the boys are going to dominate the game. So from the start, girls get used to playing a secondary role on the team. The exception to this of course are girls who start playing at a junior level, where there is a distinct separation between boys' and girls' development. Even if it is only in place to generate Thunder and Terra squads, it can't be denied that any girl that goes through the tryout process and training camps come out a much better player. Playing in a women-only environment means they get more of the disc and more confidence on the field.

So what's the answer?

Shit, I don't know. I guess it's something to think about.