How to sabotage recruitment at your university ultimate club

1. Introduction

So, like me, you've come to recognise that there are now enough ultimate players. Unlike me, you’re still in university, so you can bring down a recruiting club from the inside. I know what you're saying: “I was just going to do nothing?”. As effective as that can be, there is still a chance that new players will join your club, and then they'll bring their friends too! Sabotage is the only sure way to stop this vicious circle.

The best university ultimate clubs systematically improve their recruitment year on year using a basic ‘plan-do-review’ structure: sabotage each step in turn.

2. Plan

2.1. Don’t hold any planning meetings

They tend to get the whole club involved in the process. If someone else tries to set one up, try to delay it until it’s too late to sort anything out.

2.2. Second year players are clueless

Put them in charge of as much as you can. Harness their energy, ideas, and love of the sport into something misguided. Perhaps tell them to focus mainly on improving their own game for the time being, or get them to rewrite the website.

2.3. Your target audience

It’s worth taking a moment to define who the ideal recruits to build an ultimate team are and then make sure any recruiting strategy will miss them.  (Hint: be sure to avoid sociable athletes of either gender in their first or second year of a degree or a long PhD - especially any around at weekends).

2.4. Club capacity

If you hope to avoid growing the numbers in your club, there are few things as effective as natural limits on player numbers. Think about:

• The time, place and frequency of your practice sessions. Infrequent, short practice sessions in tight spaces limit a club to about 12 players maximum and encourage drop outs until you get down to this number.
• Limiting the numbers helping out coaching - unless they all say contradictory things!
• Is there a plan B if the usual venue is unavailable? If not, it should be easy to get some sessions cancelled altogether.
• The amount of equipment you've got- numbers of discs, cones and bibs. Enquire with the equipment manager as to whether discs tend to burn or do they melt?
• The number of opportunities to play tournaments that your club can provide. Can you cut back on these in any way?

2.5. Publicity - beware efforts to raise your club’s profile in the run up to recruitment

• Prevent posters. If unavoidable then try to make sure they don’t attract much attention. You don’t want anyone to take an interest in the sport. Posters that make your club look a bit crap can help here. Don’t worry about permissions or official students union stamps - if you can get in trouble with the authorities all the better. Omit any useful information like web addresses, contact details, training times, venues, upcoming trips, etc.
• Forget fliers: they could remind forgetful new recruits of important information like training times. 
• Throwing: don’t let anyone see any club members throwing. If someone does see and looks interested, ignore them.
• Exhibition games - acceptable if executed particularly poorly. Long, unpleasant stoppages and boring error strewn play may deter any interested people.  
• Word of mouth publicity: the first few weeks of term can be sociable, so you've got to be very careful. If anyone asks you what clubs or societies you’re into, don’t tell them about Ultimate. Remember, most players start because they know somebody who plays so don’t tell anyone you know about the sport. If you hear enquiries from any players who started last year but drifted away try telling them that they’re now ineligible. 
• Campus publications: believe it or not, plenty of freshers will actually read the first few students union magazines or campus newspapers, no matter how boring they are, therefore it’s not even safe to get articles about your club published in these.
• The Internet: If potential recruits research your ultimate club, they probably want to find logistical information - how to join, when and where to go - so avoid such functional details. Concentrate on website style.

3. Do! (2 parts)

3.1. Recruiting day sabotage

• Ditch DVDs: College newbies don't know what ultimate is, and well produced game footage will explain it easily. Stick with a confusing verbal description. If saying no to game footage makes your plan too obvious, just stick with a dodgy stream on a tiny screen. 
• Dodge decorating the stand. No big signs, posters, fliers, discs, jerseys, trophies or photos. 
• ‘Man’ the stand. Women at recruiting days attract men and women alike - they give the impression of a gender balanced club. Carefully timed sexist remarks are perfect. 
• Botch the logistics of signing up. Break any regulations your college has about how to do it. Just get anyone interested to sign their name on a piece of paper. No contact details necessary. You’re sure to have trouble reading this later, and if someone is willing to slowly transfer the written details to a laptop, you could arrange to lose the list first. 
• Hold off on the handouts, leaflets, fliers, stickers, membership cards or anything with useful information written down.  
• Eschew enticements. Especially anything incentivising groups of friends joining together or anything likely to get Frisbees into the hands of beginners.
• Information nights - anything like this offers newbies the chance to find out more about the club and current members so it's clearly not ideal. As long as the club doesn’t sound enjoyable, it should be okay.  

3.2. Prevent new players being integrated into the club and get them to quit

• Turn away from tournaments; they hook new players on the sport. Look to create an extended spell without any competitive opportunities to maximise drop-outs.
• Shun socials. 
• Don't allow any ‘girls night out’ early in the year. It can allow female recruits to make female friends in the club, which will severely reduce the effectiveness of that classic tactic - Frisbee guys awkwardly hitting on beginner girls to make them too embarrassed to return.
• Friendliness: don’t make any pretence of friendliness. Ignore beginners to maximise drop outs. Beginners you talk to tend to stay. Spend as much time as possible talking to other existing club members so that they also ignore newbies. 

3.3. Maximising drop outs through non-enjoyable practice sessions

Ensure you try all the classic parody practice session tricks.

• Lead with a long lecture. Explain the rules, skills, and entire sport to everyone for at least the first half of practice. People join sports clubs to play sports, but don’t let them. Make them stand around watching you.
• Insist on speaking exclusively in ultimate jargon and existing club in-jokes.
• Set up drills where participants wait around for long periods (Why set up multiple small drills, when everyone can stand around in one group?).

Preparation for early season practices: avoid at all costs. It could lead to:

• Having enough space, discs and other equipment
• Teaching of the basics
• Beginners getting individual attention. Note: official coaching qualifications will make enthusiastic members of your club much more effective at teaching the sport. Don’t worry, it usually takes a while to organise this so it's unlikely to be an issue.

Names

• Forget about names. Remembering names makes it sound like you care. Instead, invent a stupid nickname any time you address someone. This is an effective way of ostracising new players early on - a very easy way to increase the chances of them quitting. 

Content of early sessions

• The content of early practice sessions may affect which players leave the club first. People like to feel they’re good at something. For instance, a drill where fast people do well, will make fast people feel like they’re good, and then stick around. The key is that all the new players know they suck. If they don’t seem to get the message, just tell them. 
• In practice games try to ensure participants rarely touch the disc. For instance, play larger games (e.g. 15-a-side) rather than regular 7-a-side and encourage experienced players to focus solely on winning by not passing to rubbish newbies. 
• Separate beginner girls sessions should be avoided. In large mixed beginner sessions the girls will rarely touch the disc as the male beginners tend to dominate. Once the girls quit, getting rid of the guys should get easier. 
• Don’t teach throwing or catching - lest they learn how. Go straight to set plays! Don’t get tempted to address any individual beginner throwing issues. Talk to the computer services department about banning access to this GSWAP link from your educational institution. 

4 Review

After things have settled down and you have successfully avoided recruiting too many players (and gotten rid of any that did join) there’s one final step; sabotaging any efforts by other players to figure out why the club is getting smaller. Even if you don’t get found out, club members learning from one year to the next is the leading cause of club growth. Watch out.


[Many thanks to all the contributors to the IFDA recruitment guide for unwittingly helping with this sabotage guide].