USA Ultimate

College players, teams, and event organizers:

In order to provide adequate advance notice to prepare for the upcoming college season, USA Ultimate is pleased to announce the rules and guidelines governing eligibility, game rules and officiating, and uniform requirements for the 2011 College Series. These rules and guidelines were determined based on experiences and information gathered from the 2010 College Series, including feedback from college players and other USA Ultimate members. Complete competition and administrative guidelines for the 2011 College Season, including more information about the College Division restructuring, will be posted in October.

Eligibility Rules

The College Eligibility Rules for the 2011 College Series were announced and published on the USA Ultimate website this summer. Teams should review these carefully to ensure eligibility of their players throughout the college season. The only substantive change from the 2010 rules applies to players who graduated high school in 2010 or later. The rules were changed such that, generally speaking, participation in USAU events while in high school will no longer have any bearing on when a player’s college eligibility starts. For more details, please refer to the Eligbility Rules. For questions or eligibility inquiries, please contact coll_elig_comm@usaultimate.org. 

Uniform Requirements

New uniform requirements for coaches have been approved for use at the USA Ultimate College Championships. The rules for coaches apply only to this one tournament, primarily because of the prevalence of coaches at the event, field access restrictions in place at the event, and the increased focus of the event on spectators and media. The changes are as follows:

Coach Uniform Requirements

All coaches participating in the USA Ultimate College Championship (Division I) tournament must wear either a uniform of identical color and design as the team, or professional coaching attire as defined below:

1. Professional coaching attire is defined as any combination of the following:
   1. The team jersey, or a sleeved shirt/polo matching the team uniform colors (and/or university, if the team uses the university colors for their uniforms).
   2. Team shorts/skirt or hemmed slacks/shorts/skirt of an appropriate solid color
   3. Business casual attire
   4. Closed toe shoes such as cleats, flats or athletic shoes. Flip flops, open toed sandals and bare feet are not considered professional coaching attire.
2. Coach jerseys and shorts are not subject to the number requirements for players.
3. Names, logos, and graphics on jerseys must comply with Name/Logo/Uniform Guidelines.
4. It is recommended that uniform accessories including weather related gear, tights, undershirts, hats, and socks be of identical or coordinated style and color.
5. USA Ultimate reserves the right to remove from the sideline/field and/or fine coaches who fail to meet the uniform requirements.
6. These requirements do not apply to Conferences or Regionals.
    

Questions about uniform requirements should be directed to ncd@usaultimate.org or matthew@hq.usaultimate.org well in advance of the events for which the requirements are to apply.

Rules and Officiating

All rules governing the game and officiating will apply to both the Open and Women’s divisions and to all stages of the 2011 College Series (Conferences, Regionals, and Nationals).  The USAU Official Rules of Ultimate - 11th Edition will be used for the Series. When Observers are used in the Series, they will perform the duties as outlined in the USA Ultimate Observer Manual.

Exceptions to the above are as follows:

Whenever Observers are used in games that are part of the 2011 College Series (Conferences, Regionals, Nationals), for both the Open and Women’s divisions, the following extra officiating duties will be added to the duties currently outlined in the Observer Manual:

• Travel calls and up/down calls will be “Immediate Referral”, meaning that any time a travel or up/down call is made and contested by the players, the Observer immediately steps in and provides a ruling on the call, without waiting to be asked to intervene.

While these exceptions represent changes to USA Ultimate’s official rules and officiating practices, they are the same exceptions that were used in the 2010 College Series. These changes were approved based on a combination of factors, including an evaluation of data and feedback from experimental events in 2009 and 2010 and USA Ultimate’s organizational and program goals.  Feedback from experimental events indicated a desire by college players for more active officiating on travel and up/down calls than is outlined in the Observer Manual. Both immediate referral and active calls were tested, with immediate referral receiving slightly more overall support than active calls.

In addition to feedback collected about players’ preferences, feedback was collected about the potential impact of these changes on elements of Spirit of the Game. For both active and immediate referral calls, players clearly felt that adherence to the rules was increased. Players also felt that for active and immediate referral calls mutual respect between players was either increased slightly or not affected, presumably because of a reduction in the number of player disagreements. However, players also clearly indicated that for active calls, personal responsibility was significantly reduced. With the immediate referral system for travel calls, players generally felt like personal responsibility was not positively or negatively impacted. 

Additional information considered included the following:

• Preliminary data indicates that the number of travel calls in a game may increase when made actively by Observers, relative to the number of calls made by players.
• Alternative solutions to problems created by players making spurious calls will be the focus of some future experimental events. These include: 1) potential rules changes that may reduce the number of stoppages and the advantage gained by them, as well as 2) the potential for Observers to intervene more strictly and/or more often in cases where players or teams are clearly abusing the rules and the self-officiating system.
• Spirit of the Game and self-officiating have been shown to be important elements of the sport, to both the existing Ultimate community (as indicated through player/member survey feedback) and external groups including youth sports organizations, schools, and current and potential media and sponsorship partners. Because of this importance, changes that may negatively impact these elements of the sport should be approached cautiously.
• While more players every year are introduced to Ultimate while in high school, a large number of player are still introduced to and learn how to play the sport while in college. As such, it is important that players in college learn how to compete in a self-officiated environment where they learn how to appropriately make calls and interact with their opponents.
• International rules do not include the use of Observers, thereby requiring that players make all initial calls. Preserving critical similarities between domestic and international rules, like the ability for players to make calls themselves, will help ensure that players and teams from the US are not put at a disadvantage in international competition.
   

In light of the above, the immediate referral system for travel and up/down calls has been approved for use in the College Series for 2011, where it will serve to address the desires of the players, reduce the number and duration of stoppages during games, and continue to allow the development of players to be competitive in an environment where respectful play and personal responsibility are not only encouraged but are required. USA Ultimate will continue to work with event organizers to test experimental rules and officiating practices. Information gathered from these experiments will help guide future decision-making about specific USA Ultimate competitions as well as the sport as whole.

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