Indoor Expansion: Building from Within
Prairies By: Corey Draper
The tightening grip of winter upon most Canadian cities is an all-too-familiar reminder of just how short the outdoor season is. Climate is an obstacle to our sport in much of Canada and for Winnipeg this issue is compounded by isolation. Despite boasting one of the largest Ultimate leagues in the world, the capital city of Manitoba finds itself on a landlocked island, marooned, far from the nearest outside competition. The closest Canadian city with any sizeable Ultimate population is six hours away, and cross-border options like Minneapolis are eight hours away, or more. For our club teams, finding competition can therefore be a huge challenge.
is fortunate enough to now run all of its winter programming on high-quality, pseudo-grass fields at three venues around the city. In this new era, long-standing MODS indoor leagues (namely, the women’s-developmental and mixed offerings) have flourished.
The availability of more, high quality, indoor space has also ushered in a new era for competitive Ultimate in the Peg. In 2009, members of General Strike created the Winnipeg Invitational Men’s Indoor Ultimate League (WIMIUL). Since its inception, this 8-team, 72-player league has brought together the top male talent from Winnipeg’s open, co-ed, masters and junior club programs. The results of this chemistry experiment have been pretty spectacular: medals for our junior boys’ program (MOFO) in each year that CUC has offered the division; CUC silver for Strike in 2012, followed by a two-year run to a top-10 finish at the 2014 World Clubs in Italy; 2013 CUC bronze and top-15 finish at WUCC 2014 for Flood (Masters’ men). The city’s established club programs haven’t been the only beneficiaries of this era of unprecedented success; the same period saw the founding of a second open team (Critical Mass), a second junior boys’ team (Manitou) and a second masters team (Intrepid).
Winnipeg’s elite women’s club, Fusion, used a similar formula to create ‘WIWIUL’ (similar name, similar format), which was followed by a medal at CUC 2013, a 10th-place finish in Italy the following summer and the creation of the a second women’s team (the Wheat Queens).
MIUDL play in Winnipeg Photo by: Steve Carmichael
The growth and development of indoor Ultimate in Winnipeg has played a big role in combatting this issue. Indoor leagues have long been a part of the Manitoba Organization of Disc Sports’ (MODS) programming, but have only recently entered their heyday, thanks to a vast improvement in available venues. What used to be gymnasiums and glorified carpet has become state-of-the-art field-turf: MODS
The byproduct of this watershed era in MODS’ indoor programming has been, simply, more demand for the same. This fall, the opening of a new indoor fields complex at the University of Winnipeg has allowed for the creation of the Men’s Indoor Ultimate Draft League (or ‘MIUDL’; slick acronyms are evidently not the city’s strong suit). This second competitive men’s draft league, with a focus and format patterned after WIMIUL’s, functions as a ‘B’ league to its predecessor, to accommodate the ever- growing demand for single-gender Ultimate. A large number of its 80 players (comprising 8 teams) come from the growing list of Winnipeg club teams; many others are getting their first taste of open Ultimate.
Ultimate Canada Magazine -
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Regional Update
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