A quick update

Hi Everyone,

OK, lots has been happening so it's a shame I haven't posted lately. I'll give a quick update of some stuff now and give a summary of the last round of WOL some other time.

First, some great news. The ACT has been allocated a third team slot for Mixed Nationals in Brisbane (from the 18th to the 20th of October). Unfortunately for them, WA couldn't find a second team to fill their allocation so we got their spare slot. This means that we'll be able to send a development team to Mixed Nats. We're hoping to get a bunch of Div 2 players to attend, so if you're interested post a comment. As the training numbers for Kaboom become clearer we'll know more about who's going to be running each team.

Kaboom training is off and running, with 27 non-gimps attending last night. We're still missing a bunch of old hands who can usually be counted on to turn up, plus there are a few rookies who should be attending over the next few weeks. It's really exciting to have so many people (especially new people) at training and it bodes well for all the teams we send to mixed nats later this year. If you're still planning on attending but haven't made it along yet training starts at 6:15 at O'Connor Playing fields (near the shops). Bring water, cleats and a light and a dark shirt.

The Development Clinics ended last Monday with a session on smack talk. Players were advised on the correct application and use of visors, sweatbands and a number of other ultimate essentials. The players attending the sessions have made a lot of improvement over the five weeks and ACTUA will definintely look to run clinics like this again. In the ideal world we should run separate clinics for beginner and intermediate players, so that's something to aim for in a year or so. As usual, we need more coaches and more time (and more fields). On the whole, the clinics were well attended, especially given the time of year (my whiteboard froze over last Monday). Hopefully we can build on these sessions by offering coaching for league players and teams during the spring and summer leagues.

The field allocation meeting for ACT Sportgrounds' Summer booking period is on this Monday. I'm rather excited about the possible outcomes of this meeting. We've asked for more fields than we ever have before, with an attempted two nights allocated for leagues and an extra allocation for training. We've never had an allocation for training, because the clubs have always tried to organise their own fields after the allocations have been made. If all goes well here it will ensure that we have decent training facilities available to us reliably over the summer period. Unfortunately, it'll still be a struggle getting fields over winter because of the higher demand for fields, but this approach might help us there as well. If we get what we've asked for it should be easy to provide training fields for league players and teams and for club level ultimate. It's great to see the club admin types co-ordinating with ACTUA to get themselves a better deal. I'll keep ya'll posted on how successful our fields bids are.

We still need league organisers. There are some murmuring within the ANU camp about someone helping with Spring League as a fund-raiser. We need volunteers for divisions 2 and 3 which will be run on the same night at the same place so it's easy to do both at once. League organisers get paid an honorarium by ACTUA and there are plenty of people to support and help anyone who's interested.

There's more stuff going on as well, but I'll have to post about it later. The sun is out so it's time for rehab.