Dear New Zealand Ultimate Community,
It was with great pleasure and feelings of pride and excitement that I accepted the position of Executive Officer of New Zealand Ultimate. It is sure to be a challenging role, but it is a challenge that I fully embrace and I look forward to working with you all to help develop and grow our wonderful sport and community.
I read a lot of industry news and articles from other National Sporting Organisations and Sport New Zealand and it always strikes me as to how well-placed ultimate is in the sports landscape. There are a lot of things that we do very well that other sports are trying to emulate. Things like developing an informal version of their sport to cater for the players who just want to ‘turn up and play’. ‘Pick-Up’ is already an institution in the ultimate community all over the world. The most common way to find the local ultimate scene anywhere is to post on Facebook and enquire as to where and when the local pick-up game happens. There you will find players just playing for the fun of it and instant access to the local ultimate community. Other sports are also investigating modifying their sports for different stages of development or to appeal to different groups of players. We have already modified our school ultimate to play 5v5 on a smaller pitch, promoting maximum time on the disc to help early skill development. A number of our leagues offer 5v5 social versions – again promoting involvement in the game through many touches of the disc. We also play versions of the sport indoors and on different surfaces (basketball courts with an endzone, basketball courts with the keyhole) – something that others sports are just beginning to get into.
But the greatest aspect of our sport is hard to emulate - the warm and welcoming ultimate community. New players know they are experiencing something different when they take the field for the first time and the person marking them introduces themselves, gives them a high five and suggests some open space to cut towards. As we look to grow and develop our sport, I hope that sense of community can be preserved as much as possible.
There are always challenges and people and organisations all over the country face different ones. For some, finding enough players to get a regular pick-up game going is tough. In other areas there are capacity problems as leagues become full and fields to expand into are hard to find. Some will need to deal with the transition from a small community to that critical mass that begins to organise itself, and that time when there are enough people to get a league going, but half want to play socially and half want to play competitively and there is isn’t enough of each.
The way to tackle these issues and build on those things we do well is to work together. There are many people in our sport keen to help out at many different levels, be it in coaching their local team or running the team’s finances, coordinating a regional league or looking after an entire national programme focused on youth or coaching. However we must leverage all of that effort by collaborating towards common goals, rather than working in silos. I see the main purpose of my role to help coordinate the Ultimate community’s efforts to ensure that all the time we put in as volunteers is effective at achieving all of goals.
The key to this is communication. I will be working hard to improve the communication from New Zealand Ultimate to its members and another ultimate organisations, as well as encouraging increased communication between all ultimate groups. And please do not forget – communication is a two-way street, so feel free to email, FB or call me to discuss issues that are causing you problems (ultimate related please!) and we can work together to solve them.
In general, my role as the Executive Officer will be done on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, although as always most of my time awake will be spent thinking about Ultimate. I look forward to working with everyone in the Ultimate community to provide plenty of opportunities for you, and others, to enjoy our sport. Nothing beats chasing plastic!
Regards,
Iain Stewart
Executive Officer
New Zealand Ultimate
