Thread by @being_ulti, Almost everything I learned about coaching I learned through teaching at Amherst [...]

Almost everything I learned about coaching I learned through teaching at Amherst Regional High School. I taught for over 20 years there and at the same time I was doing my best to build up a local regional and national ultimate program.

The main courses I taught were African-American Lit and Women in Lit, which morphed into race/gender studies with books as our anchor. Class discussions were essential in understanding the material and I learned how to help students share their ideas in a safe and passionate

environment. The more I taught Jubilee and Native Son and the Handmaid’s Tale, the more I became aware of how institutions work. And how important it was to do more than talk about it.
In December 1992 ARHS was sued by the NAACP for its tracking system. It made national news and

and rocked our school. Our English department toasted with faux champagne when the school lost in court. We moved from rigidly homogeneous classes to mostly heterogeneous ones.
We started the Amherst Invitational the previous spring. Bronx Science sent

six teams and arrived in a coach bus. I met them as they unloaded. The first player stood at the top of the stairs, surveyed our green fields ringed by trees and said, “No one told me we were coming to the fuckin’ boonies.”
Ultimate continued to be seen as a fringe sport. Middle

school students would walk by our practices and sing song “Spirit foul. Spirit foul.” My truck was tagged with “ultimate is gay.” My ultimate bulletin board outside my room was vandalized with “[n-word] lover,” melding a hatred of what I taught and what I coached. The baseball

coach threatened,”If Matt Riddle is not in my outfield this spring ...” Matt was his senior standout baseball player and he played ultimate that spring and then went to Carleton.
The racial and socio-economic profile of the team was changing. The diverse team from the beginning

years was fading away. Housing in Amherst is segregated and mostly white siblings and cousins and neighbors started joining the team. In retrospect I probably could have done more but I was consumed with teaching full-time

and organizing ultimate more than full-time.
Let’s be clear here. In NO WAY did I think that I or any of our ultimate players were oppressed. We were privileged in almost every way. I tell these stories to paint a clear picture of what early ultimate coaches and teams

faced and to connect it to our current quest for legitimacy. Since most of ultimate’s founders and players were from white privileged backgrounds, their concept of growth was to attract that same population to our sport. The

UPA was not founded to expand the sport to everyone. It was founded to provide structure for a select group of people. And for the most part, being in the Olympics is a way to reach status quo legitimacy. I am not saying that this was done intentionally, anymore

than I am saying that I intended to have an all-white program. But when you look at an institution, not the people that work there, you need to look at what its original intent was and how it continues to manifest. Amherst Regional High School, when I taught

there, was designed to serve the children of professors and other professionals. And while both of these institutions have perhaps “changed” or “gotten better,” it is important to look with a critical eye at who is still being served.
In 1998 I cofounded Junior High

School Nationals with David Caruba of Maplewood. There were enough teams by then to field a legit tournament although the UPA was not happy that we were doing this without their permission. Eventually they came on board and asked us to add Invitational to the title. A few years

I co-wrote UPA’s coaches’ curriculum with Kyle Weisbrod, Michael Baccarini and others. It was at this summer session that I was told that the UPA was unhappy with Tiina Booth Enterprises.

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