AWARDS
Written by: Scott Lewis
ULTIMATE CANADA HALL OF FAME
Jim Brown - Builder
It seems fitting that 40 years since he first became enamoured of the flying disc, Jim Brown is one of this year’s inductees into the Ultimate Canada Hall of Fame.
If anyone deserves to be called a legend, it’s Jim Brown. It all started in the early 1970s when he became aware of freestyle Frisbee. Over the next few years, he founded the first disc sports society in BC, was responsible for the first disc-related publications and among many other honours performed in front of more than 70,000 fans at the Rose Bowl, coming second in freestyle in the world championships.
Brown’s involvement with Ultimate began when he participated in the very first Ultimate game in BC, held at a multi-disc sports event at Kinsman Gorge Park in Victoria in
September 1979. Jim continued to compete and work behind the scenes, including organizing the first regular Ultimate pickup in Vancouver at Kitsilano Beach in the early 1980s. In 1985, Brown was the tournament director for the very first Ultimate tournament in Western Canada, which featured teams
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from Victoria, Vancouver, and Calgary. This tournament later adopted the name Flower Bowl and has become one of the premier West Coast Ultimate tournaments. This summer it will be held for its 30th consecutive year.
Also in 1985 Brown founded the Westwind Disc Society, which morphed first into the Vancouver Disc Sports Society and later the BC Disc Sports Society. This was the first provincially recognized disc sports organization and the basis for everything that came later. Dating back to the 1970s Jim had done hundreds of clinics across Canada, teaching kids the basics of throwing and catching, and he had also taught disc sport classes at various institutions. In 1987, under the auspices of the Vancouver Disc Sports Society, he and Liam Robinson started the Outreach Programme which brought disc sports to local schools, exposing thousands of children to Ultimate and other disc sports for the first time. He wrote the first Outreach Manuals for Disc Golf and Ultimate, and attended conferences to promote disc sports and Ultimate to recreation administrators. This set the stage for an explosion in disc sports, Ultimate in particular, and a wave that has made Vancouver one of
Ultimate Canada Magazine -
www.canadianultimate.com
Jim Brown in the early years
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