The University Writers' AGM

Editor/Chair:hazard

Welcome to the AGM for the ShowGame’s University writers. For those that aren’t aware, this scheme has been going officially two years. We get a bunch of people, and they volunteer to be a writer for a year. They do research, they write the preview articles, and then they get involved in all the extra stuff us editors ask them to do as well (such as the discussion pieces or any commentating work). We also have a bunch of students (myself, Haydon and Ali) who work as uni editors, providing feedback, reminding people of deadlines, and writing little extra bits ourselves. Then there’s also Josh, DP, and Sean who do extra editing and formatting, providing quality control and putting the pieces up on the ShowGame. There’s a huge amount of work involved on all count to try to produce all the content, and help develop the way Ultimate is covered in the UK.

The purpose of this AGM will be to have an active and public discussion about Ultimate media in the UK: what we’re currently doing, how we can do things better, and how we can stop doing things which are bad. I feel like this discussion is sometimes held behind closed doors or between a select few editors. It is really easy to accidentally create a hierarchy. Media is something that affects us all, and this piece is aimed to open up those boundaries.

The rest of this piece will be a discussion between the writers, rather than addressed to the reader. I will close out this bit by saying we would love to hear your thoughts as well. After all, you readers are the people we do this for! Any thoughts, criticisms, or even any pieces you want to get involved in and write yourself - I’m always willing to help more people get involved. The output of this AGM will lead to us deciding what to do with the scheme next year, so now is absolutely the best time to let us know what you enjoyed and where to take things. Finally, I am personally very proud of all the writers. I know they come in for criticism at times, but I’ve witnessed firsthand the hard work they’ve all put in, and their drive to improve. I can’t wait to see what they do from here.

hazard

I’m going to start in a bit of an odd place. I’d love to know why you all applied to become a writer in the first place.

Rush

I applied to be a writer because I wanted to give a good account of the amazing region that is Scottish university ultimate. Having dominated the UK nationals scene this year, I hope that I have given a good preview and account of the region!

Slender

This will sound rather petty, but the year before I joined there was an preview article for indoors which I felt did quite a few teams an injustice. I realized that after three years of uni fris I knew a bit about the region and instead of moaning about you guys being wrong decided to have a go myself.

Alun P

I think me and Slender read the same article (plus an extra year of uni...)

Clackers

Because I wanted to give it a go really, and agreed to cover the lower leagues because it's nice for the less prolific teams to get representation. And it's nice to have a reason to attend events since playing in them is unlikely for me these days.

Andrew

The pay was too good to pass up. But seriously, writing gigs are pretty rare, writing gigs about something you love rarer still. That and a nice writing and possibly editing credit for the CV meant I couldn't pass it up.

hazard

So, follow-up - was it worth it? Did you get to do those things to the level you hoped?

Clackers

Yeah it was, and I got to do things like commentating I didn't expect I would

Rush

Yeah I’d say that it was, I got to write about nationals and I was mostly right about predictions for BUCS so all in all I’d say it was worth it. Maybe in future I can write for Tour or Regionals (if those things exist)

Slender

It was definitely worth it. If you're one of those people that loves talking about fris then it gives you a platform to do that all the time. To an extent. Feel free to disagree but I felt what I wrote was fairly accurate and stuff I got wrong had good ideas behind them, i'd have to liked to write my own opinion piece at some point but I never really got round to it with uni etc. though I'm sure you guys would have let me do it if I'd have approached you.

Alun P

I was pretty happy with everything, even my hot takes for Mixed Indoors seemed to be pretty accurate. It was fun getting to throw my endless pre- and post-tournament speculation at more than the same few friends down the pub

Andrew

It is a side gig that is a bit of a time investment, more than I was expecting, but still not too demanding if you know what to expect. ... And I've made some hot take predictions that didn't really pan out. But I've really enjoyed the experience. Everyone is so knowledgeable about Ultimate! It's nice to get some writing and even debate practice in while learning more about the sport.

hazard

What did we enjoy doing most this year? What were the moments which made all the work worthwhile?

Alun P

Being proved right in my prediction about Huddersfield bombing it at UXIN was gratifying. There was some hate when I put that up, but it was worth it.

Rush

I enjoyed talking about UMWON and predicting BUCS fixtures. Just talking to people about predictions was interesting and gratifying

hazard

I’m actually going to throw in an answer for this one too - the live coverage of Uni Indoor Mens/Womens Nationals. It was a *lot* of hard work getting all the commentators and filming stuff together. Finishing with probably the most well-covered non-International tournament the UK has ever seen was really cool.

Clackers

Probably the UMWIN commentating, and just being there in general - it was my first tournament I've attended where I didn't have to play, and could just watch everything happening

Alun P

More seriously, I've actually got to know some of the people I've been playing against for years a bit better through chatting to them ahead of stuff. And got some absolutely gold photos sent to me

Slender

I actually quite enjoyed all the research for the BUCS preview articles, but i'm weird like that. Felt really good to when a relatively new member of the uni club I didn't know very well came up and and started discussing my article with me.

Andrew

For me personally, I really enjoyed the debates that would crop up from time to time, often about the BUCS system. I'll defend Swiss Draw till the day I day, but I invite you to discuss in the comments

hazard

In my mind, there’s four types of coverage we can produce: predictions, live coverage, post-tournament, and general analysis. How well do we think we managed these, and are there areas we should focus on more?

Rush

Live coverage is hard as we only have a few kits. I think everyone enjoys predictions so we can focus on that. Post-tournament we’ve not been great at

hazard

As a heads up, one thought I had in this area was to replace regional post-tournament discussions with articles, since it tended to only be one/two people at a time. This then makes the big chats a bit more special too. It also gives a different article type for variety.

(See the X takeaways article I’ve started experimenting with after tour, although people would be free to do their own style - and I’d still ask for all star picks from tournaments).

Slender

Live coverage I feel is always going to be difficult until we consistently get people there who aren't playing.

Clackers

My predictions haven't been great haha but other people's have been good. I think we could focus more on post-tournament stuff, maybe via the article line, but I like the chat aspect of a chat. I would be up for getting more people involved in tournament discussion - we started getting photographer insight for the regions they were in, but some regions were still missed out/underloved. Whether this happens via chat or article I'm not too bothered

Slender

General analysis is something I think we could do much more on. I guess it's not analysis per say but I thought your interview with the Bath captains was really good, there is much more scope to do things like that. For example, let’s have a look in a years time and see if St Andrew's "Elite ultimate program" scheme or whatever has actually brought in elite players. Maybe start a conversation with a wider audience about alternatives the BUCS league seen as apparently everyone hates it. I feel we didn't do enough of that stuff over the course of the year.

Rush

I mean they do have two guys (Lochlan and Gabe) who were in GBU24 worlds squads so they have a good programme and I don’t doubt that they will have more players in the next cycle. Also they did make Div 1 final so that’s a strong team

Slender

I mean in sense of, now they're advertising across Europe and America, will they actually bring in players specifically for ultimate, or will it just be a fad .

Alun P

There are some cool stories in uni ultimate. Stuff like Huddersfield's rise from not existing to regional champions, the (former) multi-year Nottingham unbeaten run at outdoor nationals, and whatever the hell keeps Hazard going for his 30th year of university ultimate. It might be nice to try and tell some of those.

Andrew

Well, it's no secret that previews require the least organization by far. Just assign a writer and give them a due date with time to edit, nothing crazy. I think they're kind of boring for readers, to be honest. They're mostly just reiterations of things even casually interested Frisbee players would be aware of. So I'd like to shift more focus to post-tournament and analysis. Live is a special case as it's very labor intensive, often requiring people to give up a whole weekend of playing and as you say, our resources are limited so I think we're doing the best we can with what we have on that front.

hazard

The current priority list (as I see the way we treat it):
1st previews, 2nd post-tournament, 3rd live, 4th analysis

Are we right to focus on the basics first given the limited resources we have as editors? As a side note, more people helping us on that side of things definitely helps us push the boundaries of what we can do. I wouldn’t have been able to do a lot of the extra stuff I did without Ali and Haydon.

Alun P

I'd like to see analysis move up, but I'm not sure what you'd move down to make room for it

Slender

I agree with Alun, otherwise it all becomes a bit formulaic, the same narratives kept tending to crop up all season. However yeah what you'd sacrifice for it is a good question.

hazard

Being fully aware we have a slightly male-dominated chat right now, how do we think we do on gender issues?

One of the pieces of feedback we have got is that sometimes Women’s coverage falls a bit short - and one of my personal thoughts on that is that having fewer female writers is a big part of that. We currently only have one per outdoor region. I think having one per indoor (mixed) region would be a good solution - it brings us closer to parity to the men, and, since the women’s outdoor season is so short, it helps us gain familiarity with more of the teams. It also means each writer is covering fewer teams, so can go into more detail. We can only do this if we get people applying however!

(Shoutout to the Gender Equity forum in London for helping with some of this)

Clackers

I agree with this, one per mixed region would be great!

hazard

I also know our mixed outdoor coverage falls short. I more blame the weather and uni structure for that. As a mixed-player through and through, this has always saddened me, and I’m open to ideas.

Clackers

Even if the weather was glorious like it was the year before, I think the major problem is the structure of Mixed Outdoor. Without a change (e.g. mixed warm up tournaments/regionals) that we aren't really in control of it's difficult to cover the event.

Andrew

For perspective, I'd like to point out that Ultimate is the most gender equal sport perhaps in the entire world, but also specifically in the UK. Players think about and care about gender equity. The culture is almost revolutionary, in a way. So my hope is that we can acknowledge the good work so far while knowing there is still more to be done. As for ShowGame more specifically, I think we work hard to give both genders equal airtime. Gaps in coverage for female teams occurs due to a shortage of writers (which we try to address) or, at the uni level at least, differences between women's and men's route to nationals, with the former being a regional tournament and the latter, a league.

hazard

How do we do in covering teams? We have a tendency to focus only on the elite teams, with our second leagues men’s coverage I think being the only exception (although some preview articles mention all teams, the focus is always at the top).

One thing I think we fail to appreciate sometimes is the scope of uni ultimate, and just how many people/teams there are in the UK. Is there something we can do about this, or do we just accept this as the nature of coverage.

AnnieB

I think there needs to be more focus on second teams. It really encourages the newer players to know that the community is interested in their games and their playing.

Clackers

Even the second league coverage only really focuses on the teams at the top

hazard

Personally, I think we do ok - we try to produce Div 2/Div 3 coverage wherever we can. But, being frank, I play for a uni which is nearly always going to be covered. So this is a particular area I’d like to be called out.

Clackers

I don't really know how to cover the teams that never get mentioned without a very long article that covers teams we don't know much about at all (teams like Sunderland, for example), which will be difficult. But I think it'd be nice for us to look into covering ultimate at universities that we don't get to see, e.g. the college leagues of Oxbridge and Durham

Slender

Do you think people in the college leagues read the ShowGame?

Clackers

No, but how many university teams are aware that intra-university leagues exist? It could be something that allows larger universities to explore it for themselves

Alun P

It would be hard to give much more focus without introducing a second BUCS writer to each region to do lower leagues. No offence meant to Clackers but it's a big ask to have one person cover all that. Then you end up talking about all the second and third teams, which might be less popular, and very hard to predict.

As a counterpoint, the women's articles have done solid jobs running straight to the bottom of their regions, although smaller tournaments makes that a little easier.

Clackers

I agree that I would not be able to extensively cover all seven leagues of teams

hazard

Having done it the year before as editor and writer - nope. Nope nope nope.

Clackers

It would help having local contacts in the lower leagues who know more about the league than I do

hazard

The second leagues are so vast that it’s almost impossible to cover with any sort of quality, unless you get really focused. Even as someone who knows a lot of uni Ultimate, I often found myself having to just look at results rather than messaging captains and doing more in-depth research when I covered it - it was just going to be too much otherwise, both in terms of article length and toll on me.

Andrew

All sports coverage naturally gravitates towards covering the winners, as that's what the readership is interested in. Is there a problem with that? I'm not sure there is.

hazard

As a suggestion: Something like a “team of the week” interview. I don’t think we could cover every team, but we could increase coverage of some teams that rarely get mentioned.

Slender

Ooh that was something I wanted to bring up!

Andrew

Same! I was thinking a small spotlight article on a lesser known team--maybe once a month. Ask a few Q's, spread some love for those underdog teams playing decent Ultimate and hugging the middle of the pack.

Slender

We should definitely do a weekly run down of BUCS results

hazard

How are we doing at helping you writers stay in Ultimate media outside of uni stuff? We’re have more scope for commentators/contributors, but it’s still daunting to take that leap.

Slender

I think you've been quite good, there's been a lot more this year that I could have done thanks to you if I'd have wanted to.

Clackers

You're doing good.

Andrew

Harry Mason in particular was always pushing me to do some editing or some live coverage this summer, always unprompted. It's great! Even though my PhD has taken up more and more of my time and I've had to turn him down on many occasions.

hazard

One extra thing: how has our Nationals-level coverage been? In the past, people have found it daunting jumping to such extensive coverage.

Clackers

I didn't think it was too daunting to cover Nationals, but not playing in it helped with that.

Andrew

I'm not sure about this. I didn't follow all that much of the nationals coverage.

hazard

Actual final question: How have we done in providing feedback? Has it been useful?

Slender

Couldn't really ask for more

Clackers

Yeah same

hazard

Sweet, thanks both. Would it be ok to finish on a final message to those thinking of applying next year?

Slender

I'll try not to be cheesy, if if you're even slightly considering doing it then go for it. Everyone wants to help you. It's a great way of putting yourself out there as well and giving more exposure to ultimate which is a really important job that Harry and The Show Game are really helping with.

Clackers

Go for it! It's fun and you get to chat ultimate

Andrew

Feedback has been good. The editors are very competent with both grammar and tone, but you're generally on your own in terms of content. If you want to start writing, my advice is to gather more information than you think you'll need! Pester your interviewees for specific details, like nicknames, jersey numbers. And don't be afraid to let your personality come through in the writing!