Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays from PHUL.

No new posts until 2009

Last night of PHUL Winter League. SAY WHUT tomorrow

No real updates lately...

Last night of PHUL Winter League is tonight. (Schedule)

Semis:

North Hills vs. Hampton 1
North Allegheny vs. Mt. Lebanon

8:45pm - 10:45pm (Finals at 9:45pm) at Neville Island. (www.rmuislandsports.org
Address: 7600 Grand Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15225, )

And our last outdoor event of the year SAY WHUT is on tomorrow at Fridley Field at Hampton High School- http://www.htsd.k12.pa.us/Maps.aspx?sch=Stadium. Come out and support the scholarship, enjoy some Ultimate and free hot chocolate.

Holiday giving

The whole point of today's blog is really just to share the following with you so that when I look at my gchat friends I can see this message repeated in every single status message:

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Have your holiday shopping support PHUL, use this link and the scholarship gets 5% of your order http://tinyurl.com/PHUL-Amazon
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Now that that's done with, feel free to read up a little more if you so desire, or skip down to the bottom for ways to help (PLENTY of them pass the "I'm a poor college student and don't have any money..." test, so go ahead, check them out.)

Many of you are probably aware of the PHUL Scholarship. For those who are not, the PHUL Scholarship was established in 2003, it is currently awarded annually to one student-athlete who will receive $1,000 per year for up to four years. Winners are selected from a pool of applicants who have participated in the spring PHUL season and show outstanding playing ability, high school academics and Ultimate community service. Only those students attending a school in the Greater Pittsburgh Area are eligible. The scholarship is also badly in need of a new website... but that's another subject.

I have listed the other (United States, collegiate) Ultimate scholarships offered that I know of. This information is almost all from Google searches so it may have inaccuracies and most likely some omissions. Please feel free to drop me a line if you know of more or have corrections.

CU (Colorado University - Open) - Est. 2001, $1,000? $3,000? to an incoming Freshman (first year of eligibility). Alumni funded. (info)
Cornell - Open - Est. 2003 (info) Alumni funded. $1,000 - $2,500 over X years?
Warren Wilson Ultimate Team? - Est. 2003? (info). First I'd ever heard of this, not sure if it happened. $1,000/yr for 5 players.

The PHUL Scholarship is unique in that it is the only community-funded, community-based and endowed scholarship for college Ultimate players. To my knowledge, all other college Ultimate scholarships are alumni funded, are for one specific team and are paid yearly from an alumnus' checkbook as opposed to being paid as interest on a sustainable endowment.

For example of how an endowed scholarship works:

$100,000 is raised and housed in an account at the Pittsburgh Foundation. Once a year this fund earns 4% interest (or hopefully more), and that $4,000 ($100,000*0.04) is given out in scholarships. Thus the principle ($100,000) is not touched and is free to grow with new donations. The scholarship can continue to pay out indefinitely with no additional financial support.

The method described above is the PHUL Scholarship, and our goal is to reach that $100,000 within 10 years of the start of the endowment (est. 2005). To date the endowment is at ~$40,000.

So what can you do to help support this effort? Well there are a few simple ways:

1.) Give money

• Facebook details
• Drop off cash/check at 165 Morewood Ave, 15213 (checks made out to PHUL or Darren Shultz).
  

2.) Shop

• Have your holiday shopping support PHUL, use this link and the scholarship gets 5% of your order http://tinyurl.com/PHUL-Amazon details of how this works here.
  

3.) Tell a friend

• Pass on the facebook link from above
  
  
• Put this message"Have your holiday shopping support PHUL, use this link and the scholarship gets 5% of your order http://tinyurl.com/PHUL-Amazon" in your gchat/AIM/facebook/etc. status. Or e-mail it to friends/family who use amazon.

4.) Play Ultimate

• First Night of Flight gives donations to the scholarship when PHUL players sign up (see this post)
• PHUL runs the SAY WHUT outdoor Hat tournament on Dec. 20th (that's less than 2 weeks away) where the profits benefit the scholarship.

5.) Play pool

• We have a pool table in my basement. Play me in a game. If I win you donate $1 to the scholarship (we have a jar in the house). If you win, I'll pay you $1.
  

PHUL Winter League final team request

Last week PHUL Winter League had its first round of games. We ended up with 11 teams. To make a balanced schedule we combined 2 teams to end up with 10. Since this league is played with only 5 players on a team at a time, we're hoping to recruit 7 players from either teams not playing, or 1-2 players off of larger teams to form a 12th team. Playing for this team would be free if your team already put in a bid, or $5 a player if you are from another school. If you are able to help balance the league and do this please contact Ben Banyas (benbanyas@gmail.com)

Thanksgiving

I'll be honest, while I have much to be thankful for, Thanksgiving has never been that exciting of a holiday for me personally. In high school it meant yet another trip with the family (who, at that time I saw every day...) and in college it meant 16 hour days in the computer lab while other people enjoyed their break.

Due to this travel and academic pummeling, one thing was lacking that every thanksgiving break should include - tradition. I'm happy to say times have changed and Thanksgiving is the happy marriage of cold weather sports and stuffing your face that it should be again. This morning I was invited to play in a Turkey bowl tackle football game with my roommate and his friends. Let me tell you, Michael Quinn can deliver a hit, (Kevin Walko's got moves as well). This week will play host to my 6th annual bonfire, and driving home to my parents house today I saw no less than 3 football games happening at various fields in the city. While Pittsburgh is a drinking town with a football problem, it's also becoming a hub for Youth Ultimate. What's more exciting about this holiday is the number of PHUL Alumni Ultimate games that other people will be driving by this holiday, perhaps doing a double take when they expect a pigskin and see a disc instead. I was able to catch the tail end of Hampton's yesterday, and I know more will be happening. In case you're curious:

Wednesday 3pm (Hampton softball fields) Hampton Alumni game
Friday 11am (Lower Frick) General CPU Thanksgiving pick-up
Friday 1pm (?) Mars Alumni game
Saturday 1pm (Pine Park): Pine-Richland Alumni game
Saturday 2pm (Pie Traynor): North Allegheny Alumni game

I hope your team has some type of get together this weekend with old friends and new faces, if not, maybe it's a tradition worth starting.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posting

Well, obviously the posting has not kept up with my intended Monday/Thursday routine. I'm going to drop back to a post every Monday, with random posts scattered between.

In other PHUL news:

• The PHUL Leadership Council had its second meeting of the year on 11/25/08. The council is currently made up of: Liz Clark, Dave Berg, Ryan Snowden, Gretchen Dausch, Jesse Sidhu, Collin Mackett, Jodi Lincoln and David Clemens-Sewall
• PHUL Winter League has filled up to 10 of 12 teams. We're hoping to find 2 more new or combo teams before the first games this Friday
• An application for PHUL JV Commissioner will be posted soon
• Pittsburgh will be hosting a UPA Level 1 Coaching Clinic sometime between January and March. Details will be posted as soon as a date is finalized.
  

Growth and carrots

So I've got this idea....

I've got this idea that really excites me about getting PHUL more teams, but it's more than that. It goes like this:

1. Make a list of all the schools in WPIAL.
2. Put a bounty (to be paid by PHUL) on all teams that don't yet exist (a team is defined as 10 players registered for PHUL Spring 2009 by the end of online registration)
3. Allow the community to add to the bounty of any team by making a donation. (alumni, schools nearby that want a rival, etc).
4. Reward the person who finds and helps start the new team with the bounty (a cash prize on the order of $100/team).
   

The rules:

1. A team can not claim the bounty on itself.
2. Bounties only exist for teams that have not existed in the PHUL spring season since 2004.
   
3. You must be able to explain why you are the one who "closed" the team (convinced them to be 100% in the league in 2009).
4. Prize money (bounty) may be split, but only with the mutual agreement of the winners, otherwise the league will determine who the sole winner is.

So how would this work?

Example 1: Fox Chapel, which has never had a middle school team before, forms a middle school team with the help of current Fox Chapel player Jesse Sidhu, Jesse could then claim the bounty ($200 for example), for starting the middle school team.

Example 2: Shaler High School has never had a team in PHUL before. Jack Ross from North Hills High School calls a friend at Shaler and convinces him to start a team. Jack is rewarded with $50 cash (for example) from the league.

Example 3: Darren Shultz, who graduated from North Allegheny would like to see his alma mater form a girls team for 2009. At the NAUF alumni game (November 29th, 2008 for those keeping score at home), Darren asks all the Alumni for $20 towards this cause. PHUL's bounty was $100, it is now $300. Suddenly NA's guys team is working hard to help create a girls team and collect the $300.

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The list is already made: http://www.wpial.com/memberschools.asp and we've turned this in to a google document which you can view here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pWsoYzdfRKfJbah_fbnR_Qg

There are 138 schools, with a guys and girls team (assume none of these are single gender schools, but hey... rough numbers) both averaging 14 players a team that's: 3,864 players in PHUL. I like that, a lot. It may not happen overnight, but seeing all the potential for teams in PHUL is exciting.

What else is exciting besides dangling the carrot of cold hard cash in front of potential volunteers?

1. More teams = more good.
2. The League can communicate its priorities to all of the community due to the size of any given bounty.
3. This giant spreadsheet gives us something that can be worked on by any "walk in volunteer" who only has 15 minutes by allowing them to research the information needed to fill in a few cells in the sheet.
4. This database of teams can be used to create lists of Athletic Directors, survey information about how many schools play Ultimate in their gym class, offer gym demos, etc.
5. Allows anyone to increase the chance that a specific team will be formed (donating money to a team's bounty).
   

We hope to officially enact this policy/reward system for PHUL 2009. If you have any feedback before it gets started please share. The biggest concern would be any animosity being created by the cash prizes. We hope we can find a way to avoid this, both by the character of our community members and by coming up with a stronger system of what it means to "be the person who helped start the team".