Open Season:
How one city took aim at the winter doldrums
BY YACINE BARA PHOTOS: WTLC PHOTOGRAPHY
On an average evening in January, Winnipeg’s Ultimate fields rest beneath a blanket of
snow that has long since hushed the blithe dissonance of so many lively summer league nights. Historically, so too has the competitive flame of men’s Ultimate in this city lay dormant for the duration of Jack Frost’s vice grip on Manitoban noses; you’d be hard pressed to find a more visibly pronounced ‘off-season’ elsewhere. This past winter, however, Monday evenings were marked by the welcome sights, sounds and palpable intensity of Open-calibre play. Tucked away in a corner of the University of Manitoba’s main campus, the inaugural season of the shrewdly-named Winnipeg Invitational Men’s Indoor Ultimate League played out as a resounding success. Running weekly from late October to mid-April, the WIMIUL was conceived of by members
of Winnipeg General Strike (the city’s Open team), with two primary objectives: to provide an off-season forum for competitive men’s Ultimate, and to identify/develop new talent in order to bolster the population of Winnipeg’s male ‘touring’ players. The league was green-lighted in September with the blessing of the Manitoba Organization of Disc Sports, which recently gained access to the brand-new Winnipeg Soccer Federation Indoor Soccer Complex, now the site of the majority of MODS winter-league games, and home to the WIMIUL.
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