The ACC Championships concluded today just over an hour ago with
Virginia upsetting (based on initial seedings) UNC in the championship
game to take home the shiny gold ACC Champions trophy. Overall there
was great parity among the teams (just as in Basketball). Both 1 seeds
held seed at the end of pool play, though only NC State went
undefeated, while both of the initial 5 seeds in the two pools (FSU
and VTech) stepping up and taking second place, and each of the
original 2 seeds (Duke, Virginia) falling to third.

This set up a Duke V-Tech, Virginia FSU pre-semis that led to two
hotly contested semis matchups which turned out to be rematches of
yesterday's showcase games, UNC-Duke and NC State-Virginia. UNC and
Duke fought down to the wire with Duke going up early before UNC
fought back and ended the game on a break 13-11. Virginia avenged
their Saturday lost to State to advance to the finals in what I hear
was a game filled with plays as well as a couple yellow cards (I
didn't witness them personally, but cards were few and far between
over the course of the weekend, with no reds).

The UNC-Virginia finals was a terrific game full of runs and big
plays, D's and skies. Virginia established a one to two break lead
fairly early which they never really relinquished before they closed
out the game 13-9. Congrats to 2009 ACC Champions Virginia.

I received almost exclusively positive feedback about the majority of
the new rules and the performance of the Observers, which, personally,
I found very impressive given that none of them had ever had this much
responsibility in a game before.

Overall, the active travels seemed to be a success. I was told by some
players that they felt that the Observers didn't call everything that
they saw while the Observers felt that perhaps different players
(usually varying by team) actually had different conceptions of what
traveling entailed. Given that certain teams are more prone to calling
travels and having them called on them, I'd say this is probably
highly likely, however I'm sure there were some travels that were
missed. For a start though, there is definitely potential for this to
become incorporated into Observed ultimate.

The active up/down calls were a bit trickier. I personally saw several
calls that seemed to be made without absolute certainty or cases where
both Observers would simultaneously give opposite calls. I feel that
this is something that is much trickier for Observers (in a 2 Observer
system) because it requires a really good perspective, and while good
Observers are generally in the right spot at the right time there's no
way to account for the receiver's or another player's body passing
between the Observer and the disc and blocking their view.

The other major rule change, the yellow/red cards, didn't seem to have
much of an impact. A handful of players received cards, all yellow,
and mostly for language. There's no reason these have to replace TMFs/
PMFs/GMFs or whatever is actually the term now. We used them to
provide non-player spectators with a familiar symbol as well as to
simply test out how well they cross over into ultimate. I personally
feel somewhat indifferent as to whether they are appropriate for
ultimate, however I think that more emphasis needs to be placed on
protecting players from defensive bids that take the defender through
the lower joints of a receiver (something that I received unanimous
support for emphasis about from the team captains). Perhaps Observers
just need to be more willing to hand out misconduct fouls.

Based on what I saw and feedback from the team captains, the net
result of the new rules was that they dramatically sped up game play
and overall made for a much smoother, cleaner game. While several
games were capped under the hour and a half rounds only a few resulted
in final scores of under 13 (all games were to 13) and not one single
game ran over time.

We will be producing DVDs compiled from all the various footage from
the several tournament Videographers and our friends from the local TV
station for all the attending teams and will eventually make them
available for the general ultimate community, as well as posting some
select highlight reels or other footage online so that people can get
a first glance at these new active calls as well as our other
experiments.

Thanks to all the teams that attended, the fans who came out and braved the cold, and the Observers (Charles Kerr, Mike Gerics, Jason Weddle, Becky LeDonne, Sara Allen, Mitch Dengler, Pat McNally, Troy Revell, and Raj Prasad), who worked the games, and Claire Thomson, Leila Tunnell, Erin Wiltgen and all the rest of the lovely ladies of Pleiades who helped take stats.

Rob Sayre-McCord
President UNC Darkside # 87
2009 ACCUC TD