In my opinion alumni playing with their former high schools is a travesty, and hinders the growth and acceptance of Ultimate. I feel this way for two simple reasons: it hurts current high school Ultimate players and makes our sport look like a joke.

            By this logic, one could create an entire team of “high school” ultimate players who have just completed their first year of college. This hurts the players at said high school because they are less likely to gain game experience because former players are controlling the disc, and receiving more passes (as they rightfully should if they are better) but it also hurts players at other schools. Take Keller for example, we started playing our freshman year, with a team of all freshman, the following year we added three juniors to our team. But under this rule we could have had two members of the University of Texas Ultimate team, and one member of Colorado Mamabird, plus numerous other freshman college players playing with us. This would have been unfair to us in that we would lose the great game experience we had that year, and it would have been unfair to other teams. Rather than use people who did not go to Keller High School in game situations we used them to teach us. We had an alumni game in which former players played with us and then had many practices in which college players helped to teach our team. To properly utilize college players they should be used as guest coaches. They should come to a practice or two and give pointers to their former team mates. It is unfair to everyone involved if college players play.

            Having college players play on high school teams is a joke. If Ultimate ever expects to be taken seriously we must act like a serious sport. There are no UIL sports that allow freshman in college to compete; there are no NCCA sports that allow rookie professionals to still compete. No legitimate sport allows this. As a community of players we all talk about how we want to be accepted as a sport yet we don’t allow refs and do not welcome NCAA assistance. We further hinder ourselves, and embarrass ourselves by allowing college players to play on high school teams. Allowing such a thing makes Ultimate look like a joke and merely a hobby rather then a sport.

I apologize for the rant but I feel very passionately at making Ultimate a main stream sport and believe this limits those chances. If you have any questions or comments about my remarks please reply to this email.