As Wood mentioned in a previous post, Vicious Cycle, Tanasi, and much of Dallas (3 of the top 6 teams in the southern region) have decided to make the switch to mixed. I started digging around to see what kind of impact mixed has had on the growth of the single sex divisions. Unfortunately, a lot of the old data has disappeared after the migration of upa.org. Anyway here's a table summarizing the info I was able to find (If anyone has more complete numbers, please let me know). The numbers from 1999 are closest to the numbers before the split as mixed was still a fledgling division at that point. Another factor to consider is that UPA membership was roughly 11,000 in 1999 whereas current membership is at approximately 19,200.
Region | MA | NE | C | S | NW | SW |
04Open | 60 | 53 | 46 | 27 | 20 | 20 |
03Open | 49 | 43 | 30 | 20 | 10 | 17 |
02Open | 39 | 38 | 33 | 25 | 9 | 7 |
99Open | 55 | 60 | 60 | 39 | 30 | 27 |
04Wom | 28 | 24 | 25 | 15 | 13 | 9 |
03Wom | 20 | 21 | 16 | 11 | 12 | 8 |
99Wom | 30 | 28 | 24 | 19 | 14 | 9 |
04Mix | 24 | 28 | 15 | 15 | 39 | 14 |
03Mix | 20 | 23 | 20 | 17 | 39 | 14 |
Obviously, there are way too many holes in the data/external variables to be super confident in any conclusions one might draw from this data. However, it's interesting to note, that while most of the 1998-1999 RSD posts on the subject bemoan how coed will destroy women's, it's actually open that has taken the biggest hit.
Have other people noticed this in their regions as well? It looks like the Northwest Open region took a particularly big hit going from 30 on time rosters in 1999 to 20 last year. Meanwhile mixed has exploded in the Northwest.
9 comments:
This is a little off of what you're saying, but sort of ties back in at the end.
In Atlanta the past two years there have been about three good coed teams, which somewhat frustrates me because if you took the top players from all of those teams you would end up with a much better team. But in Atlanta coed there isn't a team like ozone or chain so the talent spreads.
So to ease my frustration all I can think is that by spreading out the talent and bringing in other players then hopefully these players will improve and in the end we'll have a greater number of better players in our city. Who knows if this will actually work out that way, but I think the addition of the coed division is a similar situation. It takes talent away from the open and women divisions but allows people to play club that normally might not. It would seem that coed would help women's more than hurt it. Just look at the way many college women's teams are formed. At first there's never enough women but by getting a few in there playing coed eventually the numbers can build up to form a women's team.
So anyway I agree that coed takes away from open and women's teams but I think it also provides more opportunities for people to get into the sport, which can't be all bad.
I think the situation of mixed teams taking players away from open or women's teams is exacerbated in a section where you might have at best a dozen open teams at Sectionals and maybe half that many in the women's division. In the Northeast there are a lot more teams playing open and women's, so if a new group decides to play mixed, I don't think it is as noticable in the other divisions.
Another issue is men who are choosing to play in the mixed division rather than masters, so sudenly you lose out on seeing these guys at Sectionals as well. Older women don't have the same option (Jen C. once called mixed the "women's masters"), so when they make the move they likely don't take a potential team with them.
The long-term solution to this problem, which I imagine plagues other Regions as well, is to get those SCs hustling to have more open and women's teams participating at the Sectionals level. Atlanta made a big jump in this department when Strike formed two years ago; adding a competitive second open team this year is another step in the right direction.
Jim sent me a more complete list of rosters from 1992-1999. I started to make it into an html table, but it was going to be an incredible pain due to an annoying blogger feature. Anyway, I posted ithere. If you're interested in the history of you OFFL, you can also find it at that site.
GO TROLLS!
aj
Wow, ultimate history and the Boars' legendary season all in one place.
Angelfire hates you. If you want to get the rosters, copy + paste this into your browser:
http://www.angelfire.com/mac/football/Copy_of_FallTeams92-99.xls
Go Boars!
That still doesn't work for me.
Hmm...what type of browser do you have? What error message are you getting?
aj
Was using Opera. I got the "no remote linking allowed" message. Tried it with Firefox, and it worked.
Norcal had 36 open teams in 1995? Wow.
The NorCal SC (Billy Layden), a member of a team on the bubble of making Nationals in a very strong region, organized and recruited a Div II in order to help the NW get a size wildcard (and to promote ultimate, of course).
Some other sections are extremely large owing to dedicated SCs who try to get the size wildcard for their region, even when they don't stand to benefit themselves.
How does recruiting a Division II work exactly?
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