Monday, March 19, 2012

The possibility!! Emerald Indigenous Ultimate Disc.



Inspired by a friend who is going to the Middle East to coach for Ultimate Peace, I remembered that I created this blog long time ago without knowing that Ultimate Peace already existed. That's why the lack of originality. But that aside, I started to link ideas about conflict resolution, my passion for ultimate and Emerald, the town where I live now. With an idea in mind, I decided to get in contact with Indigenous Ultimate Association with a proposal. This refined version of it:

Purpose (why): I'am doing this because I'd like to help bridging the gaps that prevent unity and mutual understanding between Indigenous and the western culture. I am interested in the aboriginal communities as such, in what they are, what they believe, what they would like. I'd like to hear about the history, the lives and the culture of Aboriginal Australia by Aboriginals. If we have westernized them, I'd like to volunteer to be "Aboriginalized" to have a better understanding of what it means to be Indigenous in Australia. Since it is a passion of mine, I'd like to use ultimate disc as my ice breaker. I'd like to show them and share my world with them and them to show me and share their world with me to ultimately come together in just one world and say "this is us, this is our team".

Principles: I propose the creation of an ultimate disc club that prioritizes a space for indigenous traditions, culture and spiritual stories to be told and understood through the application of their meaning to the game and the social dynamics of the club. 

Outcome Visioning: I imagine a team which organizational culture has been sown by indigenous people, that brings their traditions back to us in a way that anybody ultimately recognizes as positive culture and environment, without any member feeling forced or influenced to change their own believes.  A team that is competitive, attends to tournaments and works continually towards its development. 

How to get started:

I propose we run a "king of the field tournament" (the team who scores 3 goals first stays on the field until another team takes the crown, that is, scores 3 goals) of minimum 3 teams-no-subs here on the long weekend of June. Run it only for Saturday. The tournament is for locals to watch, with sausage sizzle at 3 different times of the day offered for free to observers/visitors and players. People can come and go all day as we play. 

Then we run a trial for a month. First session starts on Sunday after the tournament. 2 hours. First 45 minutes to say: This is who we are, this is why we are here (purpose above), this is the team of people who helped us to convince you to be here today, this is ultimate in a nutshell for those who missed the tourney, these are the types of players you could be (social, competitive, in between), this is the focus on OZ ultimate at the moment (With my Colombian background, I think it is too social), and we would like to bring a bit of balance (by bringing some balance I mean bringing up some intensity. I would love to know what Aboriginal's perspective on competition/competitiveness are and integrate that). Because you may not know what that implies, we would like you to give us a chance to give you our perspective through a month's trial. We're gonna run training sessions 3 times a week for a month, starting today. After a month we do a reality check and see how you feel to sign up for a tournament in Brisbane that is the perfect mix between social and competitiveness. If enough interest, we keep the training sessions and it is here where we want to talk about how you can bring your cultural, traditional and even spiritual heritage to the game/team...it all depends on that feedback. On weekdays we train skills and concepts, on weekends we play. Questions?? Who came to watch the tourney?? What made you come back today?? What are you or are you not expecting?? 

Next 45 minutes of throwing. Next 15 min of virus game. Last 15 min of feedback (Who is coming on tuesday? Who is never coming back? who's liking it??)

That's sunday...that's my plan to get it started.

As far as the skills, concepts and game coaching goes, I'd like to focus the month trial on awareness development which reduces to the bare minimun the amount of instructions you give. The advantage I see in such approach is that it reduces the feeling of inadequacy that usually comes when I give instructions to my first time throwers and they don't think that what they do matches what I instructed. I have my ideas but I don't think it is worth going there yet.

Big things that come to mind to think about: If they are keen, how much of a constrain would financial issues be for Aboriginal people to actually become ultimate players? (I'm thinking about trips, cleats, uniforms and so on and makes me wonder).

Click here to access my brainstorming session...for some reason I cannot embed the mindmap so I can only give you the link to it until I figure it out.


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