What this Sport Needs: Stats!

This is Part 1 of things I think ultimate needs to become a more popular sport:

Today, I was on ESPN.com reading about Chris Paul's 61 point performance in high school. I was curious about what number pick he was in the NBA draft. The Hawks could have had him, but instead we picked Starvin' Marvin Williams. Then, I flipped through some Major League Baseball stats to see where Chipper Jones' bat put him relative to the rest of the MLB (he is still number 1 in batting average). After that, I missed Game 3 of Jazz-Lakers, so I checked out the box score to see how Deron Williams, Pau Gasol, Kobe Bryant, Carlos Boozer, and other players did in their game yesterday. While reading those stats, I became curious about the playing time of NBA players. I looked that up. Allen Iverson led the NBA in this statistic during the season, with Joe Johnson right behind him.

Do you see where I am heading? We need statistics in our sport. We need a centralized place where we can go and look up different stats from the weekend's tournaments. Statistics are entertaining. They are helpful for improvement, scouting, and determining the best players in the game. They also help record history. For example, what is the most goals one player has caught in a game? In a tournament? In a season?

Last year, our assistant coach kept statistics to help our team. We can see who stood out in a tournament, and who did poorly. It was very helpful.

The kind of statistics I would like to see for ultimate would be: Points played (offense or defense), throwing turnovers, catching turnover, assists, scores, hockey assists, breaks, hammers, poach D, layout Ds, sky D, hand blocks, fouls. Also, I would want this on a point-by-point basis, so we could take the statistics and come up with a game flow and perhaps a recap. We need to come up with a standard statistics template for ALL TEAMS to use. Then, teams need to get a teammate (preferably a rookie) to fill out the stat sheet on the sidelines. Then, after every tournament, every team would turn in a stat sheet to a central website where they would imput the statistics, organize them, and then publish them. With all these statistics, we could come up with different ratios and percentages that reflect players' skills. Also, if we decide to keep statistics, then we should do player profiles as well, which I will talk about on another day.

The addition of statistics would be great for a number of reasons:

1. Prepare Teams to Play Other Teams - Currently, the main way we prepare for teams is to listen to how other teams describe them. We ask other teams about their good players, their strategy, what type of offense they run, and what type of defense they run, who to put our best defenders on, etc. Also, since our coach plays club ultimate, he usually tell us what players he has seen before and their levels of athleticism. However, there are a lot of teams out there that don't have any club players/coaches to help teams get prepared for other teams.

If the ultimate community had stats, we would know which players are their "play makers", handlers, cutters, dunces, jumpers, best defensive players, etc. This would definitely help out with strategy and getting your team prepared before the tournament. Also, the early points wouldn't be filled with mismatches and quick scores off of hucks.

2. To Show Dominant Players - Numbers never lie (unless they are recorded poorly). It would be neat to see the statistics for the dominant players and how they stack up against each other. We can only argue who is the best handler, who is the best receiver, who is the best defender, etc. Also, with these statistics, UPA could give out more awards other than MVP - such as best handler, best receiver, best handler defender, best deep defender, etc.

Also, you can do team awards too with this. Which teams had the most D's? Who has the best defense in the country? We don't know unless we have statistics.

3. Help People Improve their Own Game - There are a lot of different things that get lost while you are playing ultimate. Since there won't be a recap, stats recorded, or whatever, people REALLY only remember if you won or lost a game. However, what about that stupid huck you had that went out of bounds on that first point. Turnovers are easy to forget. We don't want to remember them.

If we had statistics, people would be able to see where their game needs improve. If they don't get any D's, they need to rethink the way they are playing defense. If they are not catching any goals, they need to rethink the way they have been cutting (not all cutters are goal scorers). If you have been dropping discs, you need to work on your focus and concentration. Statistics are very easy to interpret.

4. It will help encourage teams to play hard in every game. If there is a team title at stake, teams won't be content winning close games with lesser teams. This is pretty debatable though.

Things to Think About: Teams can play in tournaments that will fluff their statistics or simply play teams that aren't as good. Would Centex and Nationals' statistics be weighted differently than small tournaments with bum teams? Who would put all these statistics together? We could have a Regional Statistician, which would be responsible for submitting the statistics for each team in their Region. Some teams play in more tournaments than other teams, which would then give them a higher amount of statistics. But, we could do statistics based on tournaments or even games. D's per game or D's per tournament. Also, different teams play a different amount of games in a tournament.