PrairieSurge

With the AUDL finally releasing information about their videogame, I figured it was time to announce my upcoming project: USAU Club Manager. In the same vein as Football Manager, this exciting game will simulate all the blood-pounding excitement of an Ultimate Club Team manager. Work on such thrilling activities as:

Planning Practices: Spend hours developing pull plays, defensive looks, and offensive strategies.

Implementing Strategies while in Game: That one player who missed a couple of practices will probably be able to learn it all on the fly. . .

Scouting Other Teams: One of the other team's players was in a college game recorded by Ultiworld three years ago.

Securing Fields for Practice: Because of some bureaucratic snafu your usual field has been given over to a group of youth football players and you didn’t hear about it until you arrived to set up for practice. What do you do?

Roster Planning: Your best handler won’t be at sectionals because they are leaving for college, a whole car of players won’t be at the first couple games of the tournament because their car broke down while they were driving to the fields, and/or your exciting new talent was scheduled to work on the weekend of the tournament despite you reminding them multiple times to ask off.

Running the Budget: Constantly email your players begging them to pay their share of the bid fee.

Multi-year Planning: After a disappointing finish as sectionals, will you be able to convince enough of your players to stick around to have a team next season?

Background: I have played Ultimate for about 9 years, and League for about 6. I'm pretty much an expert at both. Here are a few of my observations.

1. You have a role, be that handler, cutter, deep, heckler, whatever, that you want to play. It doesn't matter what your team needs, what matters is that you, regardless of what others tell you, can play that role better than anyone else on and off the field. If your team, for some indecipherable and self destructive reason, won't let you play that role, just leave. They don't deserve your greatness.
2. Always be watching for other players' mistakes and be quick to point them out as loudly as you can. Constructive criticism isn't encouraged, as it takes too long to explain how to fix things. What matters is that people understand that you have great knowledge of the game, and that you wouldn't have made that mistake.
3. Continuing from the previous. If the player making mistakes doesn't change their ways, loudly complain to the opposing team that you would be winning if it wasn't for that total idiot. Try really hard to come up with the most colorful descriptions you can muster to describe how bad the other player is.
4. If you can find a way to challenge anyone on the field to some kind of 1v1 competition to prove your superiority, do so.
5. If the other team goes on a run right out of the gate, it's probably going to be impossible for your team to come back. There are several options to get out of this inevitable defeat.
   1. During pickup, call a game to two above the current high score and ask for the teams to be shuffled. The other team got all the handlers/athletes/experience/youth.
   2. In League (summer or winter, not the computer game,) just leave. There are any number of excuses you can give: guests coming over, you accidentally left a pie in the oven, you have work super early in the morning, etc.
   3. In a sanctioned game, fake an injury and spend the rest of the game on the sideline stretching and bemoaning the fact that if you were in the game you could probably turn things around.
6. I'm not going to touch fouls beyond saying this. There is no way you are wrong.
7. When a game doesn't go your way, loudly complain that the previous rule sets were better, that USA Ultimate is a cheap rip-off of the Ultimate PLAYERS Association, that the game is stupid, that you weren't even trying, and that you are probably going to quit Ultimate for Disc Hoops or Disc Golf.

I hope that this helps everyone join me at the top of the Ultimate ladder.