The trouble with Youth Nats is that it relies on the competing teams forming in the same way that club teams do - player driven. While there certainly are some motivated kids out there recruiting and leading youth teams, there are a hell of a lot more youth players who want to get out and have a run, but have no structured team to compete with. Throw this in with the fact that playing Youth Nats requires flying interstate and eating up school days. The whole "parental permission" thing comes in to play here, which is something club teams (rarely) have to put up with.
This year's solution is to split the event up into two events - Eastern (QLD, NSW, ACT) in Newcastle and Southern (VIC & SA) in Ballarat. Theoretically this is eliminating the travel aspect and high costs, but each event is attracting 4-6 teams each. Considering the 2007 event (2008 was single gender) attracted 9 teams, I'd hardly call this a huge increase. It's time we added a bit of prestige to this event if we are to view it as a major event on the calendar.
The model I proposed to the email group a while back is similar to what Simon Wood came up with - I just expanded on it a bit.
Step 1 - Locally based teams are formed by kids/teachers/coaches
These teams are based on schools or friendship groups or even league teams. Geelong alone would already have four ready-made teams. Ideally we would have an adult, or even former youth player, driving the team. Given the number of current AFDA members that are coaches and school teachers, we need to have an incentive for them to form a team - free AFDA fees for six months? Discount off Nationals? I dunno, we'll come up with that later.
Step 2 - State Youth Championships
No brainer - we already have the massive Gala Day in NSW, the State School Championships in SA, the alternative sports days in Melbourne and State Youth Games in regional Victoria. We just brand these events as State Championships to give them a bit of prestige. This would also prevent the formation of stacked teams, eg: all the gun players in SA banding together to win Youth Nats, rather than getting more friends to play and more teams. Sure, there will still be stacked teams, but I really think this model will avoid that for reasons I'll explain soon.
Step 3 - State FDA's select a representative team
This can be done however they want, but there would generally three methods of forming a team - straight-up tryouts/selection, training camp followed by selection, and a "merit team" selection. It all depends on how many players stick their hands up for selection. Now, the important part of this is that the rep team is given a name and is kept as a continuous "club" because this gives the players some emotional attachment to the team, much the same way there is that attachment to Thunder and Terra. This attachment would also ensure former players came back to support the team.
The management of the team would have to fit within state FDA's youth coordinator role, because it is impossible to have continuation of leadership over 2-3 years. Uni teams only manage it because they are tied to a tertiary institution - youth teams would only manage if they were tied to an ongoing organisation, such as an FDA.
There are other advantages to having rep teams - new coaches and selectors can dip their toes into the role rather than going straight to a national team job, state FDA's have a clear funding avenue (ie: receiving government grants) and - in my mind, the biggest one - added authenticity for parents/schools to grant permission. This matches the model used by... pretty much every other sport there is. I know that when I was 15 my parents would be more supportive of my flying to Sydney with a state representative team rather than with "a group of friends".
Back to the stacked teams issue - while the Lochie Wise's and the Cat Phillip's of the world will be walk-on starters to rep teams, on-the-cusp players would be better served playing with a relatively inexperienced team than a stacked team because they would stand out more to selectors. It could also be part of the selection criteria - captaining a team full of new players could add more weight than playing on a team full of Thunder/Terra candidates (if two players are equally adept in skill).
Step 4 - Rep teams compete at Youth Nationals
The natural progression, really. Each state sends their rep team to compete. However we can't just have the eight teams straight up since NSW and Victoria dominate in terms of sheer numbers. So we split NSW and Vic into Metro and Country. Plus the states with smaller youth populations can be merged into other regions if they fail to get a full team. WA with SA, NT with Queensland, ACT with NSW Country and Tassie with Vic Country. From here, you could also tie the tournament in with Thunder/Terra squad selections, or at least invitations to the National Youth Training Camp.
The Calendar
Ultimate is a great after school sport for Term 1 - the weather is still fine, footy/soccer/rugby aren't stealing all the field space and senior students don't have exams to contend with. We could set a deadline of, say, May 1st for state FDA's to submit their team. This leaves the Easter holidays for the State Championships or training camps. Run the Nationals over the Queen's Birthday weekend in June (national holiday, except for WA but they won't even recognise daylight savings so that's their problem) and Robert's your father's brother.
Pathways
In my time on the board and as an admin, I heard this word thrown around a lot when discussing development. In my ever-so-humble opinion, I don't think this system could be any clearer in terms of a development pathway for a youth player from n00b to 1337.
- Learn-to-play clinic at school
- Form/join a school/local team
- Play State Championships/go to state training camp
- Play for state rep team
- Go to National Youth Training Camp
- Make Thunder/Terra squad
- Play for Thunder/Terra
Thoughts/comments to the usual address.
3 comments:
Completely off the top of my head and without any real thought.
Isn't the other avenue the Club one? Why don't the "big Aussie club teams" (I won't bother naming them) have Junior teams?
I realise this probably leads us in a top-down coercion direction (eg some future where say AFDA requires any team that wants to compete at Nats 2012 to have a youth team attend Youth Nats 2011; or QUDA requires every BPL Club to have a list of 6 high schools it works with; or some stuff like that).
But on the other hand, isn't it in those Club's interests? I guess the issue is the big Aussie Clubs are yet to start thinking in those terms (and not that there's anything wrong with that, but the first one to do it is going to get well ahead of the others).
JdR,
You obviously aren't aware that 'Heads Of State' have won the Youth Championships every time it's been run single gender?
JdR - yes it is in the clubs' best interests to "invest" in youth, but I don't think they should be looked upon to play that role. There's no doubt clubs like HoS, Fakulti and Firestorm do have junior connections, but I think the role of club teams is to look after intermediate-to-advanced development.
We could look to uni clubs to be involved in junior development, but there's very little return on investment for most teams, particularly for bottom-half-of-the-table clubs. BUUF does nothing in Ballarat because most students either go to Melbourne or not to uni at all. There are very few Ballarat born-and-breds at UoB.
There are people around in each state who are willing to contribute to youth development (myself included) but aren't willing/able to drive it from scratch (myself included). An existing, regular structure would encourage more volunteers to get on board.
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