HURL to Use Totally Random Scheduling for Summer League 2006

April 5, 2006

HALIFAX -- The Halifax Ultimate Recreational League (HURL) announced on Monday of this week that it will be going with a totally random, completely computer-generated scheduling system for its 2006 summer season. The software has been three years in the making and satisfies some long-standing player demands.

The big difference from the traditional hand-made schedules will be that games can be any day of the week, and at any time -- morning, noon, or night. Game times will be announced up to several hours before they start.

Stephen Creaser signs on to halifaxultimate.ca after a hard day at work to see if he has an ultimate game that night.

"This is going to add some much-needed excitement to the summer league," said Stephen Creaser, a deep strike for Spindrift. "I played in A-League last year, and it seemed like every single game was on Tuesday. And we sometimes knew who and where we were playing days in advance. It was so boring, so predictable. I hated going to bed on a Sunday or Tuesday night knowing that there was no possibility of a game the next day."

League convenor Mark Beasy said that players will have to be on their toes this year. HURL will also be upgrading its web servers to handle the additional load from people logging on constantly to check schedules. "I admit that things fell into a dull routine last summer," said Beasy. "But this year I might log on to halifaxultimate.ca and find out I have a game within the hour. How sweet is that?"

Creaser had nothing but bad things to say about the old system. "The worst thing about last year was you couldn't even use ultimate as an excuse to get out of seeing some lame movie with your friends on a Monday night. Like they'd ask me to go and I'd be like 'I think I have ultimate that night' and then they'd be like 'Don't you play ultimate on Tuesdays?' and the next thing you know I'm sitting in the theatre watching Monster-in-Law."

Summer league kicks off somewhere around June 1.