i agree with you ben. selection should be about skills. but one key reason
to select players for worlds teams is to make them more skilled, so that
they will come back and improve domestic ultimate a little by their
influence.

this doesn't mean that, if a player announces that, say, worlds is her
absolutely last tournament ever, she can not be selected. it just means that
if there is a choice to be made between two highly skilled players, one who
is going to continue to play nz ultimate after worlds, and one who is not,
the logical choice (in terms of the one that benefits nz ultimate most) is
the former person. i suspect it has less to do with age than to do with
commitment to the game myself.

it is a similar thing to picking players who live overseas (and thus can not
boost the quality of domestic ultimate by definition). you don't take them
if you have highly skilled people in the domestic game.

speaking as somene who is quickly approaching the cutoff point for masters
:-)


h