ACTUA update

Howdy Ya'll,

ACTUA had a pretty informal meeting last Tuesday. We were missing a bunch of members to other commitments and overseas travel but we needed to get together to sort out our request for field allocations for the summer 08-09 booking period. It looks very much at this stage like we won't be allowed to wear cleats at Dickson so it seems the long-awaited time when we have to split our leagues may have finally arrived. The current plan is to run divisions 2 and 3 at Dickson on Tuesday nights and division 1 at O'Connor (which has newly upgraded and very swanky lights) on Wednesdays. The change in daylight savings (which now starts at the beginning of October, rather than the end) means we can also add in training fields for league teams to use without needing to raise league fees. Nice, eh?

Now we need coaches. We aim to offer league teams training fields and coaches each week for individual players or their teams to use to improve their games. If you're out there and you're interested then get in touch with me at "who dot is dot the schmooze at gmail dot com". We should even be able to offer you some kind of token payment for helping out.

We also need league organisers. Anthony "I do all the work" Perry will be away for some of Spring league and we're looking for a replacement to run divisions 2 and 3. Again, email me if you're at all interested, you'll get plenty of help and support form ACTUA. We pay people a modest honorarium for that too.

There is also a possibility that divisions two and three might be run in different time slots to free up field space for the leagues to expand. Expect (if you're a div 2 captain) to receive an email from me or Anthony asking about some of the possible details. That's definitely not guaranteed at this stage, it'll depend on how captains feel and how much demand we get for places in those divisions.

In less exciting news we only got two allocations for mixed nationals, and we were hoping for three. We might get a third one if another region can't find enough teams to fill their desired number of spots, but that's not particularly likely. If we can get enough keen players we'll try to send a development team to NSW mixed championships in early September, but it would be great to get that team to Mixed Nationals instead.

I'm going to be on the hunt for organiser types to run four club teams in division 1. These clubs are expected to run perpetually and are a necessary step in the development of high level ultimate in Canberra. There will be two drafted teams as well for those players looking for the traditional mixed bag experience. If you're hankering a secret ambition to run a strong ultimate team in a dynamic and competitive competition this might be your big chance. Again, email me.

We look forward to improving the ultimate on offer in the ACT. Let us know (via an email or leave a comment) if there are any projects you think would improve the ACT scene or if you're interested in helping out in any way. We're always on the look out for new ideas, especially if those ideas come with keen volunteers.