- Pawel Janas
Note: The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the WUL.
Welcome to the first edition of West Perspective, a blog on the current events of the WUL, or, as I like to call it, a weekly mixtape of spicy 🔥 takes from a distinguished group of players, coaches, and commentators (and me). Each week, our expert roundtable will share their solicited opinions on all things WUL, from big-picture perspectives (where is the league heading?) to strategic minutia (which teams would benefit from the German Offense?). So strap in and put your egos aside because you may not like what these unfiltered talking-heads have to say.
Before diving into this week’s topic, let’s meet our Week 1 contributors (listed alphabetically):
Kenny Baldwin (he/him) is a contributing writer for the WUL and a broadcast commentator for the AUDL's Salt Lake Shred. Catch him on Twitter at @FlatballKenny.
Michael Ferguson (he/him) is a contributing writer for the WUL. He coaches Oregon Onyx in the WUL and Schwa in the USAU Women's Club Division. You can see his IG birding pictures at @cardinalsandallies.
Nicole Garnes (she/her) has played Ultimate frisbee since 2016, playing Club in both the Women's and Mixed Divisions in Arizona, and currently resides in Los Angeles, CA. Follow Nicole on Twitter @bring_snaaacks.
Bobby Gough has been coaching in the USAU women’s club division since 2016 with Oregon Schwa. He spent the 2022 WUL season in the broadcast booth for Oregon Onyx, and in 2023 he joined the team as an assistant coach. You can find him on Twitter at @BobbyGough.
Pawel Janas (he/him) is the curator of West Perspective, so send your complaints his way. He plays for the Los Angeles Aviators in the AUDL and Chicago Machine in the USAU Men's Club Division. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram at @secondarypotato.
Bryce Merrill (he/him) is a youth ultimate organizer in Utah, Head Coach of the AUDL's Salt Lake Shred, and the inaugural coach of the Utah Wild for the 2021 Winter Cup.
Ben Sadis (he/him) is a data collector and statistician for the WUL. He plays for Washington DC Rally in the USAU Mixed Club Division. He can be reached on Twitter at @ben_sadis.
Aly Steinfeld (she/her) is an at-large member of the WUL Board of Directors and a former player for the Oregon Onyx. She has played ultimate since 2003 and also coached high school and club ultimate. Follow her on Twitter @AlyNotAllie and Instagram @AlyStein83.
Angela Wells (she/her) is the head coach of San Diego Super Bloom and San Diego Wildfire. For nearly two decades, she has coached and played for women's teams in San Diego. She is unapologetically loud and bossy, and endlessly supportive of providing opportunities for female, trans, and non-binary athletes of all ages to play sports together in her community.
Let’s get into it. For this first week, I asked the group about Seattle. Why? Because you either hate Seattle or you live in Seattle. You can’t run, you can’t hide, and ambivalence is not an option. In other words, a perfect first topic to get the people going.
Question for February 22, 2023:
In 2022, there was a big gap between Seattle (+6 point differential per game in the regular season) and everyone else. How important is competitive balance to the sustained growth of semi-professional women's ultimate, if at all?
Group 1: Seattle Haters and Parity Lovers
Aly: I want to challenge the premise a little bit here. Seattle Tempest had a great season in 2022, no doubt. We shouldn't forget, though, that Seattle has had a professional women's team longer than any other city in the WUL. Despite this huge head start, in 2022, they trailed Oregon, then the newest WUL team, for most of the second half in a regular season match-up. Any league will have winners and losers, and the WUL is still in its infancy. It may be that Seattle ends up winning big NOW, but that is going to change sooner or later. I expect that the big roster moves from Oregon, San Diego, the addition of Colorado, and the previous underperformance of San Francisco will bring more parity to the league in 2023. Until that shift happens, though, just as NFL fans rallied to make a common enemy out of the Patriots in the Belichick-Brady decades, we may see a similar pattern in the WUL with league fans rallying against Seattle.
Kenny: A studio executive once told me that if he had it his way, every NBA game would be decided by one or two points. Every game. Sports are built on competition, but there is a different type of relationship between a sport and its participants compared to a sport and its viewership. If the WUL's goal is to expand viewership, it must have a significant interest in making every game important to those viewers, and that means paying them back for the time they've invested watching. One way of making good on that investment is by providing exciting games to watch. Even people who know almost nothing about the sport can appreciate a neck-and-neck scoreline.
The WUL isn't the NBA. So far, its growth has come largely from within the ultimate community. If the league's goal is to capture a greater portion of the community's attention, then the league should be positioning itself as the top rung on the competitive ladder for its athletes. It's hard to frame yourself that way if you have one team blowing everyone out so dramatically. I think the best success for the WUL comes in three steps: 1. Make the championship title the coveted accolade for women and non-binary athletes. 2. Make it possible for any team in the league to achieve it. 3. Make that journey a can't-miss spectacle for the fans of every franchise.
Nicole: Even though there was a gap in point differential for Seattle in the 2022 season, there was still a good amount of competitive balance. That differential started early in the season with a whopping 28-16 win over AZ Sidewinders and only grew from there. But not every game of their season was a blowout. In fact, UT Wild, who came in last in overall rankings, nearly took Tempest to Universe, and Super Bloom gave us many tight games vs. Seattle. Ultimately, as a fan, it's not entertaining to watch one team dominate every other team week after week. What is important for the growth of semi-professional women's ultimate are tight close games that give the underdog hope and leave fans on the edge of their seats. Even with a large gap in point differential, fans just want to hope their team can slay the dragon and win it all. Competitive balance is important to keep fans watching, hoping, and wanting more.
Mike: Seattle was the clear dominant team during the regular season in 2022. But the +6 point differential doesn't tell the whole story to me. Half of Seattle's games were "blowouts" (+8, +9, and +13), but the other half were close (+3, +2, +1). In addition to these 3 Seattle games, there were 5 other games won by 5 or more points, and 2 more won by 4. Out of 21 regular season games, nearly half were not "close" as the clock ticked down to the final moments. A quick look at the pre-quarters and quarters results at 2022 Club Nationals tells a similar story: 5 of the 8 games were won by 6 or more points.
Bryce: Not to take away from the dominant 2022 performance of the Seattle Tempest, a wire-to-wire undefeated championship effort, but the +6 point differential doesn't tell the story of the season. Kristen Pojunis's layout with 2 minutes left in the championship game on the Hana Kawai's IO might've led to an entirely different season narrative had it not bounced into the waiting hands of Jennifer Ricaurte. Tight wins over Wild, Onyx, and Super Bloom in the 2022 regular season speak to a highly entertaining competitive balance that left fans pining for more. Yes, they had a couple of big wins where the fourth quarter felt little more than a formality, but the WUL's 2022 teams had more than enough talent and competitive balance to keep the entire season, and especially the championship weekend, a thrilling fan experience.
For 2023, The Northwest Conference looks to be stacked with exciting matchups--I can't help but see a squad ready to challenge the Tempest in their regular season meetings when I see the Onyx Roster. As for the Alpenglow, there might not be a more exciting ultimate scene than Colorado after their 2022 seasons across college and club, and I'm thrilled to see them take the field this WUL season. Utah has retooled its roster and added some critical depth in Songer, Caldwell, Sjordal, and Stanislawski that will help them match up with these three strong teams. The Rocky Mountain Rumble in week 10 should have massive playoff implications for all 4 teams and will be must-watch ultimate. I have more questions than answers for the Southwest Conference, and they're likely questions that won't be answered until after the Week 3 Super Bloom Beach Bowl. But the battle for the second invitation, alongside the presumed-to-return San Diego Super Bloom, to the championship tournament could be a great, season-long story.
The WUL has done a great job of finding ways to have these matchups, the weekend-long events, the two conferences, and the narratives build a sustainable league model; If the recent Megafan jerseys were any indication, Felicia Yang and her team at the league offices have struck a vein in connecting the fans and communities with the league that tells me the sustained growth is here to stay and only going to get better in 2023.
Group 2: Hedgers and Analysts
Bobby: I’m sure that competitive balance is, and will be, a factor in the growth of this league. I’m just not sure how large that factor will be. New leagues like the Western Ultimate League depend on the time, effort, and equity of a lot of individual actors, all of whom I believe have good intentions and are putting in the best work that they can. It’s tough, in a vacuum, to simply operate in this space. Success in operating would be not only a cherry on top of the simply existing cake, but it can also be the flavor of the cake. And the problem with flavor is that people like different ones. Some individual actors in the league — or supporting sponsors, donators, etc. — won’t mind if their team isn’t winning or at the top of the competition. But many will. Without balance, and without that version of success, an individual, or a supporter, or a team, could falter. And the league is nothing if not a collection of teams and their supporters.
I believe there is more balance than the goal differential might suggest, and I’m not worried about any team doing demonstratively better than Seattle did last season, and most teams have a roster full of experienced players now. I believe this season will be competitive and balanced, and I believe, in a vacuum, this league will remain competitive and balanced well into the future.
Ben: While Seattle may have gone undefeated en route to winning the inaugural WUL championship, they were presented with plenty of challenges along the way. The championship game against San Diego was a back-and-forth affair, with Seattle leading by one at halftime and Super Bloom keeping the margin within three throughout the fourth quarter. And in the final regular season game against winless Utah, they squeaked out a one-point victory. Competitive balance exists in the WUL, but there's an expectation surrounding the Tempest that they are the team to beat. That's a best-of-both-worlds scenario and puts the WUL in an ideal situation coming into the 2023 season. One of the most compelling storylines in professional sports is that of the potential upset. College basketball's March Madness draws so much interest because the top teams lose just enough to make those upsets relevant but infrequently enough to make the moment special. The NFL, the most-watched sports league in the United States by a wide margin, is able to tout the phrase "any given Sunday" as its calling card for a reason. As teams establish themselves at the top of the league by winning a championship, they are supplanted within a few years by a new challenger to the throne. It remains to be seen if the challengers will be victorious in the WUL this season, but with returning teams like San Diego adding even more talent and the brand-new Colorado Alpenglow stockpiling an impressive amount of it in just their first year, it's clear they are coming. In 2022, WUL teams proved that Tempest can be beaten. In 2023, the question is: will they?
Group 3: Pro Seattle
Ange: Throughout my 20-year ultimate career, Seattle has been a model of exactly what investment in our sport and our players should look like. A handful of long-established USAU club teams from Seattle (across all divisions) consistently perform well in the regular and postseason. UW and Western Washington field nationals-caliber teams year after year. Seattle youth programs are wildly inclusive, accessible, and successful…not just at creating young athletes who have bigger flick hucks than I’ll ever have, but athletes who have long-term investments in our sport and in the greater Seattle community.
None of this is by accident. Long before the rest of us started doing it, players, coaches, and frisbee fanatics in Seattle created sustainable programs that offered opportunities for folks of all ages and skill levels…and they did it in much worse weather conditions than here in San Diego. Players like Shannon O'Malley, Khalif El-Salaam, and seemingly every member of the Titcomb family have developed in this incredible community. Youth teams, college teams, club teams, and even USA teams are better because the Seattle frisbee scene is strong. So it’s not shocking to me that the WUL is also dominated by a team from Seattle. If the rest of us want to compete with them, the winning recipe isn't a secret - it's just going to take a lot of work.
However, I will point out that Super Bloom beat Tempest in the WUL’s 2021 Winter Cup; lost to them by just three points in the 2022 WUL Championship game; and is coming for them this season…stay tuned.
Pawel: Look, the question is about competitive balance and what is best for the league. I am not Pro-Seattle, but I am also not Pro-Parity. My fellow pundits gave nuanced takes, though faulty, and I applaud them for that. As a no-nuance kind of guy, let me unequivocally state that I want to see more super teams in the WUL. I want to see Seattle win by an average of 8 points this year. And in 2024, I want all of Fury to play for the Falcons and win by an average of 12 points. Why? Because every good story needs a villain. Good stories lead to good marketing, and good marketing leads to cash money. Who doesn’t want that?