Fantasy Ultimate

The winter was hard on Ultimate. I stopped sending mass emails to the official club, and we never did get to play a real game of Snowtimate.

It is now spring. Say goodbye to crappy Ultimate. Wave hello to the greatest Ultimate you've ever seen.

"Hi greatest Ultimate I've ever seen. Wanna hang out some time?"

Me and Brad talked about it today. I got some intense ideas. Here's how we're going to take Ultimate to the next level.

~~Note. If you don't wanna read too much, just skip to the third one. That's the important one~~

Step 1: Increase the Upper Level's play

Our Ultimate players are divided into three main categories. The upper level, the functional level, and the run-arounds. The upper level are people like Brad, Kyle, myself, Brady, and the like. These are the guys that know how to throw, run, catch, and position themselves. They're always the first guys picked. They're usually the captains. The functional level are the people that come just a little after the upper guys. They're good, and they know they're stuff. They sometimes make mistakes, and they might not be as athletic. They're not great, but you can count on them and play with them. You want them on your team, but you pick them after the upper guys.

The run arounds are people that simply run around. They don't know how to throw, catch, or play with the team. But they want to be on the field, so they're there. I got nothing against the run arounds, so long as they eventually learn how to play. We'll get to them later though.

The first goal is to up the level of our top guys. We figure that right now we're sort of at a stand still. Brad isn't going to get too much better by playing more Frisbee Friday. We need to branch out and find a way to up our guy, because once we do that, everybody else will be able to learn from us and up their game as well.

So, what do we do? We're gonna go down to Sugarhouse park one of these Saturdays. We're only gonna send a small group, but we're going to go see what they're all about. From what I understand, they're old school folks that play intense, real Ultimate. They play with the force, they play with the stack.

We'll send four guys or so down there to learn how to run the organized offense and defense, and get some tips on how to play better. We'll play in their pickup game, have some fun, and probably feel stupid cause they're that much better than us.

But that's not what's important. We're gonna learn, and we're gonna bring those skills home to Bennion El where we can employ them for reals. It's gonna be good.

Step 2: Cultivate the Masses

We can't just be content to play at the stage we're at now. We want to up our game, so we've got to help up the functional players and the beginning players as well. How do we do it? This one is a little more open. We want to start running some drills and instruction periods between games at Frisbee Friday. With a little coaching, our little flowers will bloom like crazy.

This isn't going to be that hard to do. We've just got to sit people down and teach them how to improve. We'll do it.

Step 3: Get the Community Involved (This is the important one)

This is going to be way too cool. Frisbee Friday is a great place to come hang out and play. Even if you don't want to come play, it's a great place to just socialize and be with friends in a good environment. There's nothing wrong with Frisbee Friday; maybe that's why I love it so.

But I thought to myself, why not let more people love Frisbee Friday? Why not get more non players involved? How do we do it? Check this out.

One Friday night, we're gonna run a Fantasy Ultimate league. Starting the week before, we'll find out who's going to make it. I'll organize a system, and announce the ambitious plan in Junior Choir and pass out forms.

Here's how it'll work. We'll have the list of players that are going to be there. Me, Brad, Kyle, Levi, Glen, Peter, Peter, Brady, Santy, all the rest. Each player will be given a point-value, and people that want to play the game will pick seven of them for their fantasy team. They'll make which ones they want on the form, then give me a copy.

Come game night, they'll show up to see how it all turns out. I probably won't get to play that night, I'll be doing stat tracking. I'm going to track every single stat for every single player. Sounds hard, but not that terribly impossible with a borrowed laptop.

Anyways, let's say that you picked Brad for your team. Since we all know Brad is crazy good, he cost 60 points to choose. The points that your seven man team cost will be subtracted from your final score.

Every time Brad completes a pass, he gets a point. Every time he catches a pass, he gets a point. Each Touchdown pass is worth 7, each TD reception is worth the same. Big sky D's are worth 5, and the list goes on and on.

At the end of the night, I total all the cool things Brad has done, and then subtract the initial 60 points he cost. You come out with a total of +72 points for Brad. w00t.

I go through and do that for all seven of the people on your team, and find out what your final score is. The person that picked the best team gets the prize, whatever that is.

Either way, it brings people out to Frisbee Friday. Chances are I'll only stat track one game, and the rest will just be a party.

My money is on Santy. He's undervalued.

So, Fantasy Ultimate. It's all subject to change and balance, but I want to see how it works. It's worth a shot eh? I want to try to get some small team tournaments going on too, to create some grassroots effort. Maybe a 4 v 4 tournament, excluding Brad. I want to see Glen captain a team, and Thorup captain a team. Have one night of big tournament, figuring out who's the best 4v4 team. That'd be cool.

Either way, more involvement. Let me know what you think, ideas, etc. All that business. It's gonna be primo.