State of the Breakside - 7/17
Summer check in
Announcements(?):
A lot has happened since the last edition of The Breakside went live. In general, it’s been almost a month since Amateur Statistics For Professional Athletes Part 2, which is much longer than I usually want to go between issues, but sometimes life gets in the way. In an exciting turn of events, I’m moving forward with the final stages of the job hunt to do some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) writing for a sports news website. While getting paid to write is about everything I’ve been hoping to accomplish this summer, it likely means that time and energy will not be as free to update The Breakside as I’d like. As I prepare for my grad school adventure and job to flip my schedule on its head, though, I wanted to take some time to reflect on this project up until now. It’s my birthday, and I’m feeling reflective, so you get this right now.
Original Goals
The stated goals I laid out for The Breakside in the very first edition were as follows:
The goal of this newsletter is to tackle what I see as a gap in the present coverage of Ultimate as a sport. I hope that this newsletter will provide an outlet for some important yet overlooked people and stories to receive the coverage they deserve…and I will do my best to make sure it reaches that goal.
I wanted (and still do) to provide an outlet for things I thought people should be talking more about, whether it was the nitty-gritty of local disc organization work, a space for meaningful conversation about equity work in the sport and community, or a place to talk about growing the sport and community most healthily. And I think overall, I’ve done a solid job at remaining on task. But let’s look a little deeper…
Accomplishments So Far
I am interested in being reflective because I know that two distinct periods of writing have appeared on The Breakside. The first handful of issues were profiles on people involved in the community who I was interested in, wanted to platform, and thought had some insight I could pull out of them that would be valuable to share with you all. After that, as I was writing for The Breakside on top of my competitive Ultimate season, impending graduation, uncertain future, and the two-month period where I didn’t get anything out, it turned a little more to commentary and alternative coverage of current community events, while still trying to be grounded in those original goals I laid out for myself. I don’t think one form/style is better, but I want to have more balance across the topics and styles of pieces I end up publishing here.
But to stay on-topic regarding accomplishments, this is the 15th edition of The Breakside. We are sitting at just under 190 subscribers. People in seven countries read The Breakside, and (not to flex too hard, but according to my professor) the open rate on the emails you all get is well above the industry average. So I appreciate that :). I even created my own statistic and had the most fun researching and writing those pieces. But more important than any of those numbers (which are so far beyond anything I imagined when starting this), I’ve met, spoken with, and even formed some friendships with people in the community I’ve looked up to for a long time. It has made my life so much fuller than it was pre-Breakside. So again, thank you.
Next Steps for The Breakside!
Any now looking forward! As I mentioned earlier, I want to find more of a balance between interviews, commentary, and statistics fun. Doing so will help me maintain a more regular release schedule, which is also one of my goals for The Breakside. But my biggest goal is with all of you! I want to engage more directly with my audience about my writing and the topics they cover. As always, please feel free to comment, tweet, email, or reach out if you have any ideas, reactions, or comments on anything I have or should be writing about. So here’s hoping we chat soon. Thank you one last time for influencing my life so positively as I’ve worked on and grown The Breakside, and see you for the next one!
About The Breakside
The goal of this newsletter is to tackle what I see as a gap in the present coverage of Ultimate as a sport. I hope that this newsletter will provide an outlet for important, yet overlooked people and stories to receive the coverage and perspectives they deserve.
About the Author
My name is Noam Gumerman (he/him), and I am a recent grad of Brandeis University in Waltham, MA, and future grad student at Davenport Univerrsity in Grand Rapids, MI. I am from Chapel Hill, NC, and have just finished studying Journalism and American Studies for my undergraduate degree. I captained Brandeis TRON for two and a half years. I will be starting a masters program at Davenport University on an athletic scholarship for Ultimate this fall. My claim to fame within the Ultimate community is running the @being_ulti account during the week of the 2022 WUCC tournament. Contact me for discussions, feedback, story suggestions and more on Twitter at @noamgum, or via email at ngumerman@brandeis.edu.