[Cem]

Hello,

We couldn’t find exact place to ask this but i hope it’s ok.

We have a practical question about using the “WFDF Spirit example scoring sheet”.

At some sections, for example at fouls&body contact, to give very good score(3) it was mentioned “There was at least one clear case of thoughtful contact avoidance” is it enough(one clear case) to give 3 points for fouls&body contacts regardless of total game or should we consider generally and ask to the team for voting? I’m asking that because it was happened in a tournament as some teams did scoring with that example sheet without arguing/gave 3points directly and some others did not (not satisfied with just one case and voted). To be able to use same approach for all teams and good balance of spirit scoring we had such discussion between our sotg committee. So to improve our approach for scoring with that example sheet i’m asking for your advice on how to use it clearly.

From my point it is just for examples and we should always argue in any case but as it is WFDF document it is better to ask first..

Cem

[Richard Moore]

Hey Cem,

Rich Moore from the WFDF SOTG Committee here.

I’m not exactly sure what you meant by, “I’m asking that because it was happened in a tournament as some teams did scoring with that example sheet without arguing/gave 3points directly and some others did not (not satisfied with just one case and voted)”.

Do you mean that in some cases, some teams discussed a single instance of contact avoidance, but the majority of the team didn’t think it was a good enough reason to change their spirit scoring vote to a 3? This is an excerpt from the “Spirit Captain Role” document at

http://wfdf.org/sotg/sotg-downloads/cat_view/42-sotg-documents/133-spirit-scoring-management

“Spirit scoring is a team effort! Encourage all players to hold up fingers to “vote” for the score they think should be given in each category. People with outlying opinions (0s, 4s or maybe 1s and 3s) should speak about why they feel this way. Other players can then adjust their score, and then an average is taken.”

So, in other words, if one person has one good example of “thoughtful contact avoidance” they should tell their story. If everyone believes this sounds like a very good example of avoiding contact (and not just a small example), they generally ought to believe the story of their team mate (SOTG = benefit of the doubt!) and change their vote to a 3. However, there are times when the example given doesn’t sound strong enough to some people for them to adjust their vote, and in that case the majority vote should be applied.

I hope that’s useful, I think it might be good for the SOTG Committee to update our “How to use the Spirit Scoring System” document to reflect this clarification.

Best wishes,
Rich

[Cem]

Hello Rich,

First of all thank you for your quick reply and clarification.

My question might not be so clear, so i’ll try to explain more now.

We do spirit scoring by voting as a team work. But also the Spirit Captain lead it and make some interpretations.

At this point i think my question becomes to “one clear case of thoughtful contact avoidance” is enough to give 3 points to whole opponent team for the fouls and body contact on a regular game? Because on the contrary we do not give 1 point to the whole opponent team just for one bad example on a regular game too. (as it was mentioned on example sheet for Not so Good score(1) :”The amount of non-incidental body contact was a bit too much. “There were a few instances of dangerous or reckless plays”)

So maybe my question was actually a question of leveling the scoring points.

Again thank you for reminding; “wfdf.org/sotg/sotg-downloads/cat_view/42…t-scoring-management ” and that majority of a team decides whether one strong case happened or more instances happened, according to what they feel about the game regardless of the result.

Cheers,

Cem

[Richard Moore]

Cem,

That’s a really good question, I follow what you’re asking now. You’re right that the examples seem a little lopsided on this one. When we originally wrote the examples, I think we were trying to give the impression that one clear, obvious example of contact avoidance (eg a very clean layout bid near other players but with an obvious attempt to avoid all contact) would stand out to many players on the field and they would remember it. In other words, if several players remarked on a significant bid that was very clean, it might be enough of a very good example to award a 3. This is partly because such stand-out examples can be rare, or hard to remember. It’s even hard to remember, I think, whether a game was “mostly clean” versus “extremely clean”.

It’s pretty common for players to report small examples of unwanted contact, and there is often a grey area around whether this was “incidental” (“for the level of play”), so we also wanted to be clear that 1-2 “small” examples of (hopefully accidental!) incidental contact in a competitive game would not necessarily drop the score by a full point.

To be clear: a “Good” (score of 2) game of ultimate contains NO contact. But as we know, some (hopefully small) contact can occur by accident, and that doesn’t necessarily make the game “Poor” (score of 1). It’s only particularly bad spirit if the team is playing carelessly, or is keen to play with some physicality (more than their opposition expects) but refuses to scale that physicality down at their opponent’s request. One thing I’d add: a *single* instance of a very bad, hard, careless or dangerous foul can (and should) drop the score to a 1 (or even a 0 if it was horribly bad and cynical). We maybe could/should clarify that in the scoring examples.

Cheers,
Rich