Growth of the Heroes Club in 2008 - 2010

JdR's got some interesting numbers and graphs over on the Brisbane Ultimate Blog but today we thought it might be nice to crunch some numbers, make some graphs and analyse the infection of the Heroes virus in Brisbane Ultimate.

The mission statement of the Incorporated Heroes Ultimate Club (or iHUC as I will soon regret coming up with) is "To play, promote and develop fun, skilled and spirited Ultimate". Up until 2010 this grass-roots movement has solely been seen in Div 2 BUML. This year, however, has seen the Heroes club field 5 teams in Div 2 BUML (across the 2 seasons), a Div 1 team, a premiership winning WUFL team and a BPL team in each season. On top of this we have entered a team into Halibut, Brisbane Indoor Championships, Mixed Nats Qualifiers and 2 teams in Lovefest. In a couple years we might come back and analyse these other leagues and tournaments but today lets focus on BUML.

Season	Heroes players	Total players	Percentage of Heroes players
2008/1	13	123	10.57
2008/2	15	159	9.43
2008/3	12	138	8.70
2009/1	12	101	11.88
2009/2	23	106	21.70
2010/1	27	128	21.09

This first chart above shows the massive growth of Heroes in BUML Div 2 in the past 2 years. Do you think this is a story that may have influenced the growth of Frisbee in Brisbane as seen on JdR's charts?

Our second chart here shows the percentage of Heroes players against the total number of players in Div 2 BUML. So far it has peaked at 21.70%, which means that just over 1 in every 5 players play for a Heroes team.

What will happen if this percentage continues to increase? A higher chance of trophies in the cabinet? A Heroes league? To be honest I don't think it would be healthy for this number to increase much higher. Realistically Heroes are just set to improve and work our way up through the other competitions. With Heroes vs Discheads in the upcoming semi final we are guaranteed to have a team in this season's grand final. If we can secure WUFL and Div 2 BUML perhaps next season we can really focus on making our mark in Div 1 and BPL.

Give us your thoughts, be brutally honest. Or perhaps just give congratulations once more to Dan on his AFDA recruiter of the year award.

EDIT: Here's one more graph, apparently some people are confused comparing Heroes numbers vs the Total numbers, so I've done a pie chart to represent Heroes vs Others

In this second form of graph you add the percentage of Heroes players to the percentage of Other players and you get the total. This is different to the first form of graph, because if you added the two values together you would get significantly more than 100%. If you wanted to, you could subtract the Heroes players from the Total players to give you the Other players. It's apples and oranges really.

PS: What's your favourite type of chart? And your favourite type of pie?