Ultimate Canada Update Written by: Danny Saunders
When I was in grade 6 a series of ill-advised time management decisions led to missing the school bus home. My day seemed to get worse when I called my mom and found out that she couldn’t pick me up for at least an hour. Bored with an hour to kill, I noticed some of my friends throwing discs around. I decided to check it out and ended up joining my first Ultimate practice… I was instantly hooked. The next week I missed the bus on purpose; a year and a half later I played in the inaugural junior division at the 1994 CUC; 6 years later I got my first “real job” teaching Ultimate at schools and sports camps. I’ve been working or volunteering in the sport ever since.
Ultimate has had a huge impact on my life. I met a lot of friends and the women I would one day marry through the sport. I have had a ton of fun and opportunities to travel, but none of those opportunities would have happened without a volunteer coach running a junior Ultimate program…thanks Dean!
As our sport continues to develop, junior Ultimate is one of the keys for its long-term success. The rosters of our top competitive teams include a large number of players that started at the junior level. This is in stark contrast to a decade ago when most players started playing as adults. In order to continue competing for medals on the international stage we need to invest in training our junior athletes and providing them with quality coaches.
Junior Ultimate is not just important at the competitive level, but is also vital at the league level. Leagues are one of the strengths of Canadian Ultimate, employing ~30 people. They are local champions that advocate for the sport, provide important opportunities to participate and build the sport. Now correlation does not equal causation, but the 2 largest leagues, Vancouver at 4,426 members and Winnipeg at 4,046 members, both have long-running junior programs that
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have helped develop a large number of future league players, volunteers and coaches.
Ultimate is a fantastic sport for children and youth to get involved in, but it requires dedicated volunteers to make it happen. I’ve had a number of great coaches over the years and volunteered as a coach for many years (which I still do), not just out of a sense of penance for all the shenanigans and stress I put my coaches through, but also to pay it forward and make opportunities to participate available for other players.
Whether you started playing in university, as an adult or as a junior, there was a captain, coach, league administrator or tournament director who made that opportunity available. If you have been coaching or volunteering to share the opportunity to play Ultimate, thank you! If you haven’t, now is a great time to get involved as a junior Ultimate coach in your community! There are more resources available now than ever before with the launch of the Long- Term Athlete Development model, the Community- Initiation coaching program and the new Competition- Introduction National Coaching Certification Program launching this fall.
Ultimate Canada Links Coaching Program Approval
Ultimate Canada is excited to announce that we have received conditional approval from the Coaching Association of Canada for our new Competition-Introduction coaching course! The Competition-Introduction coaching context is designed for high school and junior coaches, particularly those in the Train to Play and Train to Compete LTAD stages.
Program Approval
https://canadianultimate.com/p/competitionintroduction-coaching
Long Term Athlete Development
https://canadianultimate.com/ltad
Ultimate Canada Magazine -
www.canadianultimate.com
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