Deep Look: Mask Mandate, Small Ball

[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to deep look multi-world's weekly radio show about the current state of ultimate i'm the host and the editor of ultima charlie eisenhood joining me multi-world senior editor keith raynor keith it's uh we got a lot of sports going on right now we are on the precipice of the nba playoffs i just want to give a big hearty screw you to the knicks haters out there who were naysaying at the beginning of the season i mean i was getting people were killing me for betting the knicks over on the win total and here they are in the playoffs and keith we might just play the hawks in the playoffs are you ready for that i i am and you know all it took was playing julius randle 98 minutes a night uh i'm sure it'll be i'm sure that'll bear fruit come the the long road yeah the hate continues if you're gonna frame your team against mine i gotta i gotta step up the hate right like i gotta like turn the dial up on the on the venom well let's just understand that the knicks are 3-0 this season against the hawks so it's the regular season you know it's okay sweep incoming sweep oh oh i will take the sweet bet we could give some odds on the sweet bet um it's also the today is the start of the wnba season so go liberty sabrina ionescu back devastating start to the year last year she gets hurt season-ending injury like almost immediately so sad it was terrible but like you know renewed hope uh this year i'm rocking the liberty uh shirt today so i'm i'm excited for the start of the year i can i can't hate there i mean i'm i was really excited to see imsu play last year and hopefully uh we gotta get a better better and longer look at one of the most talented women to pick up the basketball as of today we are three weeks away from the start of the audl season and i think you know it's fair to call that the return of competitive ultimate in the united states uh it has been a long road to get here and you know looks like club season is pretty much on track we have the audl starting up we have plans from the pul and the wul to play uh you know it's it's still going to be a strange season but at least on the audl front it sounds like you know we're getting set for a full competitive year they just announced their new stadium uh for the championship weekend the audi field in washington dc 20 000 seat stadium it's right off the metro so you can take public transportation to the game which i think is not something that's really been possible for past championship weekends um we're going to talk a lot about the audl in next week's show uh but uh so you know we'll set that aside and you know kind of take a look at the season preview next week a kind of high level look at where things stand but today we've got we got some small ball we got a kind of a bunch of different topics to get to i just want to give a quick shout out check out the new ulti world podcasts laying it out has now been out for uh a few weeks i was actually just on the show this past week uh with scotty in pockets and uh highly recommended i would say it's basically a college ultimate focused show but they've had a a broad range of topics to discuss and you can find it on youtube or wherever charlie appears on the show and then suddenly uh really wants you to go look at it interesting i i i have nothing to say i mean it's i know i've already mentioned it on the show so i have that um and i learned something about you in that show by the way there were things about that i there's things that i did not know about charlie that i learned from the laying out podcast what's something that do you remember one of those things oh i 100 do you know what it was musical theater major huh i considered it at nyu i considered it i never actually got through the full application but i was definitely considering it i feel like you were hiding something from me i mean this is a big piece of operation i i almost tried out for uh a musical group like a theater group in uh my first year college like to the point of like i walked into the theater to uh perform a number from well then you bailed from guys and dolls or something and then i was like nah i'm good well because i think they were doing into the woods which is like one of my favorite musicals and a musical i had already been in so i was like all right this is just perfect and then uh i was gonna go in and try out and then i was like nah i don't want to do this since i'm i got too much too much nerves going on i'm just going to leave yeah i mean i i was in chorus starting in seventh grade all the way through my senior year of high school and uh i was jean valjean and les mis junior year and then i was tony in west side story senior year so like you know i was like fairly serious about it late in high school but i still i'm glad that i didn't i didn't have the chop so i didn't enjoy it but anyway i feel like the idea of ulti world the musical could have a lot of legs as a man like i feel like we could get memed long-term as ulti world the musical we have some very creative people some some great singers in the you know ulti world universe certainly some performers if not singers than performers at least indeed um another new podcast coming out starting this coming week you can already find it in podcast feeds huck and a yeah you heard me right huck and a uh it's a brand new canadian podcast theowan dannyprobey hosting that one and uh focusing all on canadian ultimate so shout out to shout out to the new huck and a podcast laying it out as well and uh hey if you ever have a podcast idea shoot it over to us editor at ultiworld.com or you can email me and keith deep look at ultiworld.com um so keith i'm sure you saw the news cdc guidance changed yesterday vaccinated people now don't have to wear masks in pretty much all circumstances except a couple of specific you know very crowded public places but uh the guidance now that you know if you're vaccinated you don't have to wear a mask even if you're inside in many cases so you know before we get to the kind of the connection to ultimate you know what was your reaction on hearing that news it's funny that you know my my ardula who like is a birth consultant basically uh was coming over to visit with me and my wife like basically as that news broke and like so she was like at the front door and she was saying like do i need to be mask on or max off mask off it was like well funny enough the cdc literally just said that given that all three of us are vaccinated we may not actually need a mask given how short the duration of this visit is going to be uh so it was kind of a funny experience but i guess it feels like that has been the trend especially as vaccination has become more prominent there's going to be a larger amount of people who are affected by a decision like this and also that as more people got vaccinated there were going to be more questions about okay now that i'm vaccinated what is what is the proper precaution for me what is safe for the people around me who may not be vaccinated and with those questions you know i think it kind of behooved the cdc to come forward with kind of like here's the guidance given this changing situation that has been how this process has worked there's been a constant shift in recommendations because the situation is constantly changing so i'm glad to see that they were at least like coming forward and making a clear statement so that people knew what to do uh and what the safest course of action would be yeah i mean i've been unimpressed with public health messaging throughout this whole pandemic uh i i'm glad the cdc has come out and kind of made what i consider to be more of a common sense approach to talking about what it means once you're vaccinated because if you actually look at the data around what happens when you're vaccinated like the risk of contracting covid is very low the risk of contracting severe covet is almost non-existent and so what exactly is the purpose of getting vaccinated if you then have to continue to wear a mask everywhere you go it never really made sense for that to be the guidance and we were looking just a couple weeks ago they're talking about how if you're vaccinated but you're still close to people outside you have to wear a mask like it never made sense so now they've kind of swung in the other direction and basically said well if you're vaccinated you're pretty much good to go which you know i've seen now some criticism on the other side that like that's their it's too uh unrestrictive that now it's too lenient and i i think that people really just need to be told what the truth is i think we've had a lot of problems public health messaging being uh kind of untruthful to some extent because of concerns about how you know like the the knock-on effects of like well that's going to cause unvaccinated people to take unnecessary undue risks um but you know as a result we've had i think kind of misinformation getting promulgated at times around what it means to be vaccinated so anyway that's just you know some personal thoughts there i mean i certainly feel a lot more comfortable now that i'm vaccinated being inside with other people uh going to eat at a restaurant kind of resuming life not fully normal you know you're still wearing a mask at many times but feeling a lot more comfortable and and not worrying really about getting covered and i to be to respond to something that you just mentioned about the misinformation like i don't know that there's a way given the cultural climate that we exist in for the cdc to necessarily avoid that or or even mitigate that you know whatever they were going to say was probably going to be misused or attacked or whatnot by a certain subsection of people who want to spread misinformation it's really unfortunate that the cdc and the general like behavior of wearing masks has been so politicized you know even i found myself i was with my father-in-law we were taking some stuff to the town like dump basically we had some bulk items left over from a move and that needed to get rid of them and he had forgotten his mask and they let him in without a mask and i found myself like thinking about like wow i wonder if this makes it look like we're the type of people who just don't care about other people's safety and we're like you know oh it's my right to not wear you know whatever garbage logic people wanted to use to to avoid a minor inconvenience that was a public health benefit like i found myself thinking about how are people perceiving us uh even though only one of us didn't have a mask but uh it's it's there's all these feelings and perceptions wrapped up in the behavior of wearing a mask and following public healthy advice from the cdc that like now you're in a much more complicated situation if you're a public health expert or even just a normal person trying to respond to public health missives yeah i mean you just think back you know sort of the people who are really focusing on like the latest research and science we're talking about things like ventilation and the danger of you know sort of unventilated indoor spaces as being the primary mechanism for the transmission of covid back last summer and yet that was not the mainstream media conversation you know there's still pictures of people on the beach uh you know with the grim reaper walking around and you just wonder like how how much how much unnecessary confusion around what is safe and what is not happened because of the lack of clarity from public health experts so anyway we don't need to get into the to the weeds on all that on today's show speaking of minor inconveniences of wearing a mask the usa ultimate return to play guidelines currently require for all uh sanctioned events that players wear masks at all times including during competition and with this news and just with the general pace of vaccinations increasing i think there are starting to be some more questions about is a mask mandate still necessary given that you know there's widespread vaccine availability and you know ultimate is played outdoors in obviously sort of a maximally ventilated environment so keith i'm curious for your take on this question you know is is a mask mandate still the right approach for usa ultimate and you know at what point should we should should usau say it's no longer required to wear a mask during play now now to be clear i've i've not played with a mask on so i don't know what that experience is like and how it impacts your performance your health your safety or your enjoyment of the experience of playing ultimate so i'm coming from the perspective of having not competed with the mask on yet um all that said you know like like i said to me i view wearing a mask as a minor inconvenience and one of the challenges i think usa ultimate faces is that they don't the they can basically only estimate what percentage of the playing population is vaccinated based on the general population's vaccination rate and they don't really have a way to ensure or follow up on that were there to be an incident uh under their under their watch and i think that that that leads to a very conservative decision-making path and i i can understand where that comes from even if it doesn't feel necessary in part because i view the cost of wearing a mask while playing as very low but it's it's generally not a big challenge and i think we've seen people in our discussions you know there's been a discussion our discord going on about this uh you know i've seen people talk about particularly that there is a specific situation an ultimate that could be potentially problematic and that's marking a person talking very loudly almost directly in your face uh while defending you you know that that is a situation that you know gets past some of the ventilation issues that maybe you would be dealing with in in a normal outdoor performance space so you know you can't you can't necessarily have people like have a mask around their neck and then put it up whenever they're marketing maybe you could maybe maybe that's maybe that's the answer i don't know um but i can see given the cdc stance usa ultimate soon putting out a mask recommendation for people who feel like they need one or have not been vaccinated rather than a mandate like there is a bar between mandated mass usage no recommendation for masks there's space between that and that's what i would expect usa u to go to yeah i i think this is a a very sort of tricky policy decision because of what you're describing you know i i don't think a vaccine passport is coming anytime soon to ultimate uh where you know usa is going to check your vaccine vaccination status and then let you play without a mask if you're vaccinated so in a world in which you're sort of guessing now i don't know if i agree with the general population vaccination rate matching ultimate i mean you think about the ultimate demographics generally college educated generally on the wealthier side uh you know generally younger i expect that vaccination rates are going to be quite a bit higher than your sort of general population um and so you know regardless you're still going to have some level of uncertainty about those who are unvaccinated but at some point if people are choosing not to get vaccinated and we're basically at that point now with some exceptions people are then opting not to get a vaccine even though they have access to it at what point do you you know stop worrying about that subset of the population i mean you you can't we're not going to have mask mandate forever so i what i want to see from usa ultimate is a plan around when the mandate will go away how at what point do you say we're not going to have demanded anymore because you know by the time the club season gets started in you know i think the first week of june and sort of the big travel tournaments don't even kick on for another six weeks after that people will have had ample opportunity at that point with some you know again potential rare exceptions to get a vaccine so it doesn't i i personally don't think it makes a lot of sense to require everybody to be wearing a mask if if somebody's risk-averse enough even after vaccination to feel that they you know are concerned even outdoors about getting coveted they can still wear a mask right it's not like you suddenly masks are disallowed anybody can wear a mask if they want to wear a mask but a mandate to do so is maybe going to be unnecessary it may already be unnecessary in my mind uh given where things stand in the you know the vaccination progress of the united states so go ahead and i have so i i have a question so my understanding and and i feel like you're a little more have a little more research background on on uh code infection rates and some of the behaviors around it mask wearing is generally used as a way to prevent spreading kovid not to prevent being infected with covet is that is that fair it's more in fact the people around you than it is to protect you from them i i think that's i think that's a fair assessment it depends on the mask type but that that's generally a fair assessment so if you're if you're a risk-averse person worried about contracting covid wearing a mask is not necessarily the behavior that would help prevent that that would help you from spreading covet what you would want in that situation is everybody else to wear a mask right sure and if you're dealing with us if you're still worried about some subsection of the population that is choosing not to not to get vaccinated then those people participating without a mask that is a problem versus everybody else wearing a mask to protect themselves from the person who won't be vaccinated but but here's the thing if you're vaccinated you shouldn't be afraid of people who have coveted i mean i'm not saying that you you know you want to actively sit inside a room with them and have them breathe on you but like the point of getting vaccinated is that now you are not at risk of or at very very low risk of contracting covid and all basically a zero risk of severe illness or death so the thing is there's a there's a known cost with having to wear a mask i have played masked ultimate it's fine but it's uncomfortable and it gets more uncomfortable if you're playing hard um and there have been various studies it's a little bit unclear whether there's an actual performance detriment from wearing a mask there have been studies that have shown a drop in like aerobic capacity in vo2 max but there are there's also a sense that potentially it's just in your head um but you know having having played with a surgical mask on it definitely feels uncomfortable and like when you really want to catch your breath there's a strong urge to pull your mask down so i i guess the thing is like there's already such a low baseline risk of transmission outdoors number one number two we have almost no cases like literally at all known of outdoor sports transmission including an nfl football um and this is kind of just like a background thing right if you're talking about playing indoors to me that's a little bit of a different story um but with you know outdoor warm weather ultimate happening in the club season in the summer time in my mind like that is already such a generally safe environment that and i will fully admit we have no way of knowing like what the risk level of marking is it's more theoretical than anything else like right yes you're 100 right being in somebody's face where like i could spit droplets into the person that i'm markings mouth or something like that that is in theory that's a that's a risky scenario the thing is we have almost no evidence that that kind of transmission is actually happening without being like really close in a way that i think that you know typically doesn't happen on the mark time for everybody to do the reverse mark but but towards the person you're marking simple simple solutions with that uh i i i also wouldn't be surprised to see usa ultimate i think probably for the worse going to a more like localized like follow your local recommendations kind of tact which i don't think is necessarily what local discords need like they already know to do that like they're already looking at their local recommendations uh and certainly the the in-betweens college teams trying to have a practice or you know something like that a club team trying to practice like i don't i don't think they're going to benefit a lot from that but i i wouldn't be super surprised if usa ultimate went to the like you know look at your local guidelines to get an idea of what you should be doing uh if that was the path they chose yeah i mean it's a it's a tricky spot to be in i think again i my hope is that usa ultimate sets out a plan for when they would lift the mandate so whether that's a date or a level of coveted transmission in the united states you know cases have are at the lows from last summer already and they've been going down for you know six weeks so i think at some point you have to say we're now comfortable with the risk here and if people still choose to wear a mask that's totally fine but you know if it feels a little silly to be outdoors vaccinated wearing a mask while playing sports it really does well don't tell that to dalton smith because i don't know if this is all all like a positive for him he's like sweet now everybody's in the same vote or is it worse because it's like i'm losing my swag you know [Laughter] well we'll see what happens um it's it's an interesting conversation and you know the it's not an easy answer either direction there's just there's a lack of data on you know well what happens in a marketing situation what is the risk and that's been a challenge entire pandemic i mean trying to research something that's literally happening is really difficult and so i think we've we've had a lot of situations like that you know having uh my wife be pregnant during this process it's like right you know if the vaccine safe for pregnant women not really we don't really know is there long-term effects that could could happen who knows like for pregnant or non-pregnant people we don't know because the vaccine was just invented so how are we going to know what the long-term effects are uh you know there's been a lot of questions like that i think that are difficult because it's so hard to research on such a short timeline well let us know your thoughts deep look at ultiworld.com we're going to take a quick break when we come back we're going to play some small ball stay with us [Music] hey it's keith raynor from ulti world's podcast deep look and i want to tell you about elevate ultimate elevate is a youth focused disc sports organization based out of vancouver canada that is leading the way in helping kids discover and flourish in disc sports and they've got a great new book the art of coaching youth ultimate that can help you do the same in your community from how to recruit kids to how to manage problematic behaviors to running a practice there's lots of great chapters with great content in the book including one of my favorites which is the one about making practices engaging for kids you can find out more and check out the book for yourself either by searching the art of coaching youth ultimate at amazon or by going to elevateultimate.com and checking under the resources tab thanks to elevate for their support of ulti world and deep look back to deep look charlie it's time for a little bit of small ball and to bridge the gap really from the previous segment into small ball i actually had a question for you do you think we will see any teams with team masks this season oh like the custom team masks indeed if if i was a team i would have already done this so yes i think we will they're actually you're probably right that somebody has probably beaten us to the punch like these probably exist they're probably team masks you can definitely get like custom neckies now you know there was like the whole thing about neckies not being like there was that study from like last year that was horribly misinterpreted and people were like wearing a neckie is worse than wearing nothing which is just is completely wrong but like neckies fell out very much out of favor as like a face covering um are are you the double neckie phase is that the recommended if you're going to wear necky wear 2 or something like that is that accurate i don't i don't even know i i feel like you know we we understand the basic like if you want to really be safe wear an n95 the next level down is a surgical mask people should have stopped wearing cloth masks a long time ago but it's been very difficult to find high quality masks on the market also just markedly more comfortable masks oh that's true yeah wearing an n95 is terrible um but yeah no i i think teams will will get the custom mask swag i would so that's basically our first item in small ball then [Laughter] well let's get into this rest of this um brand new team out of dallas fort worth area flash flood there's been some buzz they've picked up some notable players and uh you know we it the south central is a hotbed of solid teams that all that like compete really well at regionals and then lose to double wide and bravo is flash flood in this same camp let's get to that in a second first of all keith tell us about this flash flood team well uh flash flood i think by virtue of of being like one of the only pieces of news going on i think gained a lot of attention uh as as a new club and part of part of i think the draw here is that it felt like they were taking away potential talent from the teams they could be competing with at regionals and you look at the list of names of you know they they did some public announcements on on twitter and whatnot uh you know you look at the the bigger names perhaps on the team uh dylan larberg is gabe hernandez uh jason just his dad uh sam suds ward these are players who have some background playing with some of the other teams in the area like double wide uh with some of the teams in the udl so these are players who who have some good experience behind them but i i think there there's going to be a lot of questions about the depth of this roster and you know what exactly their ability is to to uh excuse the excuse the band phrase but to make noise in the south central region keith you're not allowed to just acknowledge that it's banned and then use it i mean as a troll i am but sure [Laughter] um yeah no it's you know lots of exciting young talent uh pulling some players away from double wide and like there's a you know this is kind of like bubbling under the radar to some extent but this is like a a more progressive team uh in a state where there's certainly compared to relative ultimate terms there's like a lot more uh you know right wing players and so this seems to be a team that has focused a lot on being kind of of this new wave of you know equity focused and i think we've seen that play out a little bit and some of the pickups uh gabe hernandez explicitly talking about that when he signed up with the team so i i'm excited to see what this team can do you know they have some really promising young players and i i do think that it's still going to be a stretch for them to get past those big two you know we've seen inception for example be a really good team for a really long time and not get to nationals out of the south central this feels like a team that's going to be in a very similar position to an inception which of those teams is going to be the best in you know sort of the next best i don't know yeah if you i think you were the first person i heard bring this up but like does this feel like hip all over again there was there was a big a lot of a lot of uh noise made about this hip team uh when they first joined up you know they got mad better like could they could they unseat one of the powerhouse teams it's and young team with a lot of talent and it's like it's a tough tough challenge to in your first year of existence overcome teams with a lot of institutional experience and things like that yeah i'm trying to remember if hip made nationals i think they made nationals one year they got a third bid i think um yeah i think it's similar it's you know maybe there was a little bit more direct continuity with that hip team because you know it's out of houston and there were lots of a m players on the roster who had been playing together in college for a long time they had some really top level uh you know elite club talent as does this flash flood team i just think there's a lot of names that are either unproven or that we haven't seen play uh you know at a high level in clubs so especially after a couple years off what's that going to look like well i mean that's that's what makes it fun i'm excited it's great to have a new storyline right away in the season at a time when we're more we unfortunately have been more concerned about teams deciding not to compete this year as opposed to those you know new new up and coming teams like this one uh joining the ranks i do think i do think that you raised an interesting point with the team kind of have a different attitude you know there there's been no secret about gabe hernandez as friction with some of the existing entities in the club ultimate scene there uh in in texas and south central uh colton green as well and i think that you know seeing those players as some of the the most visible players on this team could be a signal of a shift uh in the culture of ultimate in that area and will that you know have long-term ramifications for how club teams function where the talent goes where recruiting is you know it might not have to be that flash flood has to go out and you know supersede the double wides and bravos of the area in order to be successful this year if they can just have a good year and build a foundation it could lay the tracks for those other teams kind of fall by the wayside as they continue to recruit young talented is interested in being a part of a different type of team than the the type that we've seen in the past few years yeah something to follow along with and uh we're gonna have a story coming out soon about this flash flood team so keep an eye out for that as well i wonder what can i say about flash flood of course at the risk at the risk of getting myself in a little bit of trouble here not not this first part first part so on their on their team announcement flash flood has an exclamation point in it flash flood exclamation point ultimate which is not present on their on their twitter account i really hope that's not the case i'm like really over just punctuating his punctuation team names we don't need it because then when we write it in a sentence you know it's flash flood exclamation point like wham i'm done i'm done with it i can't deal with it so please don't do this with shame for all these years i think i think we're going to have to make a policy that you know if you have random punctuation in your name we're ignoring it i'm for this i'm for this it looks so bad it's really bad but also it's a little weird to name your team after like a natural disaster in 2021 isn't it right like a thing that like like hurts people kills people removes it from their homes i don't know i think it's a little weird in our current state but maybe that's the part that'll get me in trouble i i thought that was a little odd i was like not to say that that's like sweeping across all sports teams there's plenty of hurricanes in the storm and the things like that out there but yeah i mean it's a little weird to me that's i think if you're if you're allowed to be the hurricanes then you can be flash flood that's the way i feel about it i don't know it's just weird it's weird what you're saying all right um and donovan awards the annual college awards should they be handed out in 2021 given that we're not going to have a regular season we're kind of just getting straight into this kind of bonus series this fall and winter should there still be a callaghan and a donovan award given out this year keith yes there should charlie the reason is that these awards are more to me about a positive recognition of people who have contributed a lot during their college careers to the ultimate community and to their own local communities and we don't need a full regular season without an asterisk to give those people that type of recognition uh so i do think that they should be that the award should be given out but i also think that it'll continue to contribute to the denigration of the meaning of the calahan award but you know we're already on that path so like why not just why not just make sure that people feel good and are being recognized for their contributions to their to their local ultimate worlds the denigration of the meaning you're you're uh you got some takes today yeah a little bit i went to the dentist today so like you know they get all up in your up in your gums it causes some pain and now i gotta take it out somewhere else you get the novocaine or you just get a cleaning yeah just a cleaning just okay uh look i i think they they they were given out in 2020 which was a partial season in which some teams didn't even compete so why can't we get out in 2021 same situation and and here's the thing i want to have the the wikipedia entry be there for every year because there's a bunch of players who deserve to get recognized who are not you know who are probably going to have a chance to play in this bonus tournament this bonus series and nationals coming up but aren't going to play in 2022 or beyond i feel like it's a great opportunity for those players to get recognized by their teams and it's already a career award that's what it's become that's kind of what i was getting at and and so what's the problem with doing it in a year where there's no regular season and you're not even really judging sort of like a mvp type performance in that particular season so i i think it's just it's such a nice it's the best award you know set of awards in in ultimate period and so i think let's make sure and give it out in in 2021 as well wow best set of awards huh not not gonna not gonna shout out our own ulti world awards this may be the best set of awards well i i think that those are very important but i'm talking about like those that are no i at the end of the day i still think callahan and donovan are more prestigious and that's fine i think i i agree with that then uh but i will say that i'm a little curious as to like kind of how it works like if you vote in 2021 i mean there are going to be players who probably don't play at all before the series uh like are those players eligible if if or do you just acknowledge that it's a career award this year do you just say in the voting process like this isn't that what they did last year anyway kind of right i'm pretty sure they explicitly changed the rules in 2020 to make it more about career and less about the season so far now very precious you do the same thing here's what you do you wait until after nationals to have everybody vote that's the thing is do you vote after nationals do you have to wait until nationals 100 percent here 100 that's an extra layer uh which you know maybe that's more legitimacy for the award i don't know it'll be more fun to vote on at post nationals oh i agree how i mean it's going to be like old school rsd like people talking about what happened at regionals so and so was unstoppable at regionals oh i missed i missed the old rsd all region are all region threads we had a couple of those on our forums uh the all region thread hyperbole i missed that um nick emailed us at deep look at ultraworld.com and he said basically laid out the case for why wifdiff should postpone the 2022 world club championships so i'm not going to read the whole email because it's quite long but i'll kind of like give you some highlights here nick is australian sent in an email to wifthiff kind of laying this out he he writes my big concern is that hosting the tournament in 2022 will result in it going forward up until a few months before and then canceling or postponing the event due to covid this is understandable and maybe a plan from the event organizers which you know basically see if we can run it in 2022 and then if we can't cancel or postpone the problem with this however he writes is that athletes will start training clubs will start planning for everything to happen and will be left in limbo waiting to see if it will all go ahead i suggest instead moving the tournament to 2023 giving the whole tournament and all the athletes a better chance of peaking on time for a tournament that will actually have international teams be able to travel uh i have to be honest given the progress we made in vaccinations in the united states i haven't given this a lot of thought because it feels like things are on a sort of progress towards normalcy here but that is not the case everywhere we are much further ahead in the us with vaccinations than in many other parts of the world so keith do you think wifthiff should preemptively say wait a minute we are going to postpone worlds until 2023. that it kind of feels like they it kind of feels like they have to to me in part because of the negative feelings around how with handled some of the earlier pandemic cancellations you know we we i don't know if you remember but we had that article about the danger of yellow lights yeah and that was going on both in whiff different and us usa ultimate just like kind of this perpetual state of limbo like this this stasis we were in as a community uh with like maybe we'll have this event but right now we're not committing to canceling canceling it but we're not committing to having it either and i think that's a lot more difficult with the scale of an international travel tournament like the ones that withdrew hosts like the world ultimate club championships like that is a difficult situation to put teams in and we've already seen that create some friction with the financials you know collecting fees ahead of time like reserving fields all that kind of stuff that's a that isn't is a much bigger stakes when you're talking about a world ultimate championship so it kind of feels like this is something that the community they've kind of backed themselves into a corner that which has kind of been backed in the corner a little bit by by the community in my mind maybe that's overstating the impact of some of the earlier complaints but uh it's it's not a rosy picture for me to imagine just kind of like putting things on hold a postponement i mean i'm going to go the other way here i i disagree with you i i think wifthiff has to plan for events to resume in 2022. i mean this is an organization i may not have a lot of full-time staff but they have people they got to pay they got to get ready to come back and i think it would be a total disaster if they were to postpone today and then it turns out that it's totally fine to have the tournament next july uh you know look is it a possibility that there's enough countries that are you know either unable to travel to the united states next summer or that you know vaccination progress is is too slow for them you know to get visas to come to the u.s yeah i mean that is a possibility i i i i think i generally trend towards more optimism on this front especially because you know places that are getting vaccinated now going to kind of start reaching the limits of the people that want to get the vaccines and then those vaccines are going to go other places and you know it's more production it's coming online all the time i expect that you know let's be honest most of the countries that play at the world club championships are on the wealthier side and are going to have access to vaccines by then so i expect relatively normal international travel to be back online by 2022. so yeah is it possible there's going to be a delay and that a lot of people are going to be upset yeah i think but i think you have to live with that that up that chance postponing now for an uncertain future doesn't make sense given how long it takes to kind of like prepare it's so much easier to say you know in february you know never mind than it is to if you cancel now and then then it could happen like you're setting back international ultimate by an entire year that's a fair fair counter point and you're right that summer 22 is is a ways away like we have we have some time for things to settle out in that in that front and we've talked about on the show before it's a lot easier to cancel an event than it is to to prop one up all of a sudden if you know obviously it's out of the question basically if they are if they said we're canceling it and then 2022 summer july rolls around and they're like never mind we're good like you can't just throw the event together uh but you could cancel it at that point and this is a little bit different than you know some of the national team organizations that might be competing at like uh wugc or something like that where they need a much longer timeline i think uh to create the team to have tryouts to gel together that sort of thing and that's a big part of the experience for many of the countries that compete in those even though it is not part of the u.s experience which is a much shorter timeline these world ultimate club championships teams uh it's a little bit different the logistics for them and maybe that maybe that kind of flex adds flexibility that is necessary to make all of this work so maybe you're right maybe i was a little too harsh but i do think that some of the missteps that liftoff has had puts them in a position where it's hard for them to ask people to have a ton of faith in the process yeah i hear that and and i'll you know acknowledge nick made another point in his email that he sent to wiftiff that you know teams need to host national qualifying events a task most countries will not be ready for due to covid for quite some time and we're already seeing that play out indeed we're seeing countries basically say well we're just going to revert to what happened in 2019 switzerland notably because we we can't have a championship due to covid and the united states where there's a whole plan for a full season and a club and a club championship usa ultimate hasn't come out and said what the plan is going to be because they're not sure what to do they don't want to coerce teams to play by having a qualifying sort of normal qualifying procedure you know top three four teams at nationals so what are you going to do i mean are we just really going to have the event be based on what happened in 2019 that seems like a terrible uh compromise and so i i you know acknowledge nick makes a good point there i don't know what you do i think again i i think it's more important to have an event than to have it be like uh you know sort of like perfect qualification process everything perfect um if you can have one in 2022 because we we have to get back playing again we have to like restart ultimate competition and you know frankly i think you should be more worried about beach worlds in april than you should be about the you know world club championships in july i definitely think it's fair to say that april 22 could is a is a much riskier proposition than july yeah so anyway thanks for the thoughtful email nick um ash sadler who used to go uh by lauren sadler has announced her retirement on twitter sadler is i mean one of the winningest players in club ultimate like what what i want to go through the stats i think she made seven headlines yeah seven straight finals appearance from three across three different teams winning four titles with those with those three teams wow unbelievable uh and yeah she's so she announced her retirement from ultimate and uh i mean it's just been an awesome career and just want to give the shout out here we asked dash to come on the show and um you know didn't didn't hear back but you know maybe in the future we we can have her on uh but uh you know just a tremendous overall piece uh do you think do you think that ash was the straw that stirred the drink or it was was she in the right place at the right time that's that's an interesting question i mean i think that that ash was a a tremendous role player like somebody who had a defined role as a top-end defender and teams need that need players who could do that effectively who don't require a ton of usage in order to make a big impact on the game and you know i also i've known ashton's college uh au's finest the finest finest player out of american university that's for sure uh and she's someone who really put in the work to get a lot better in all facets of her game but like was always somebody you could count on and get a stop and that type of that type of player has a role to play on nearly every team like have you ever seen a team that couldn't use a player that could go out and play shutdown defense for a point in a big game like that's a that's a skill set that's going to get you a roster spot on any team in the world any team especially being able to do it in the clutch which is something we've seen a lot uh from sadler over the years and i will say the announcement that it doesn't quite close the door it's not it's not a shirt you know we're not closing the door lock and key here she said i'm not playing this club season and i'm probably not going to play in future years and certainly the tone of the the tone of the message which thanks all the teams that she's been a part of you know implies that it's unlikely we're going to see her play again in a competitive setting but we'll say that it's not completely door shut here and that'll be an interesting thing to see you know like some people are probably going to sit this year out for various reasons and you know maybe they refine the spark you know playing league or realizing that they miss their teammates and we've certainly seen it happen before so uh we'll see i mean i think we're probably gonna have some other notable retirements i mean it's been two years since club ultimate some people just got a little older you know like some people are now masters eligible and are going to be like you know what i don't know if i want to go through the whole full club season thing again but that's that's one of the takeaways here and something that we had talked about previously on the show was the possibility that people would just like it's not like sadler couldn't hack it or that sadler's too old like ash ash said like i'm just choosing to move on to a different phase of my life and i think we're gonna see people who in their time away from ultimate discovered either other passions or saw how much ultimate had taken from them like how much how demanding it was to compete at a high level and would will choose to do other things with their time and i think we're going to continue to see that so i doubt this will be the last but this could be the highest profile player that we see all right well that is going to do it for this week's show join us for our subscriber only bonus segment ultiworld.com subscribe you can sign up for less than four dollars per month and in our bonus segment this week we are going to talk about uh we're going to draft 4v4 mini teams because remember we got we got ultimate fours now keith this is a format this is a thing it doesn't actually seem to exist yet there haven't been any tournaments or anything but at some point there's going to be an ultimate force championship and we are going to draft teams so join us for that and uh we will look forward to talking with you next week right here on deep [Music]

Channel: ultiworld

Views: 336

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: -_AXwJlS14Y

Length: 52min 55sec (3175 seconds)

Published: Fri May 14 2021