Hello again! I’m back with updates on AGE UP’s spring clinics and graduation. If you missed the boat and don’t know what I’m talking about, you can read my intro post on AGE UP here. We have wrapped up stage two of the program where the AGE UP participants coached middle and elementary school clinics.
AGE UP ran clinics at Bailey Gatzert Elementary, Dearborn Elementary, Graham Hill Elementary, Kellogg Middle School, Kimball, Chinook, and Cascade. In total, we had over a hundred elementary and middle school clinic attendees! Each clinic has been outstandingly fun to watch and play in.
Our clinics usually started out with a fun game as the kids filtered in (usually boot). Then we devoted some time to learning names and partner throwing. Next we would run a drill or two (dog drill is the standard favorite), and hopefully have time for scrimmaging or another game. Some of the clinics had so many participants that we got to run drill rotations, while at others we had such a high coach-to-participant ratio that each clinic attendee partnered with an AGE UP player-coach for one-on-one throwing. Both formats have worked out really well to keep the younger players engaged and develop the AGE UP girls’ confidence in their coaching abilities.
I think my personal favorite was when we had so many kids at Dearborn (which we had to hold indoors because it was pouring out) that we set up a giant squishy mat in the hall and I got to watch two of our eighth grade coaches run a layout drill for rotations of kids. They received awed gasps from the elementary schoolers after every demo run, and encouraged even the most nervous participants to try at least once (which of course always led to them trying again and again). Special props also to our eighth graders (plus three high schoolers) who held it down at our first middle school clinic at Kellogg while most of the AGE UP participants were playing in HS States games.
What has been particularly thrilling to see over the course of the clinics is that the kids are almost always engaged no matter their skill or experience level, and the AGE UP player-coaches always have something to teach them. Our very own evaluator extraordinaire Natalie Ortega drew up beautifully colorful evaluations based on feedback forms from clinic attendees and AGE UP participants to share back with the girls at each subsequent clinic. We got to reflect on our successes and areas for improvement from the previous clinic, as well as share how we felt about the clinic we just finished coaching. Natalie did a particularly great job of demonstrating to the girls that the clinic participants overwhelmingly felt like they learned something, so regardless of whether the girls could always tell that they were effective at teaching, each of the kids came away with new skills or understanding of the game.
We wrapped up the first year of AGE UP with a number of the girls participating in the awesome Riot Clinic on June 12 (a huge thank you to Riot for the annual success of the event as well as the generous scholarships provided to the AGE UP girls to attend) and a graduation ceremony on June 16. The ceremony included a rousing scrimmage of coaches-plus-families versus AGE UP girls (don’t worry, we managed to score a few points and keep their egos in check) and an unbelievably tasty potluck followed by a presentation where a club-level coach spoke about each of the attending players and gave them a personal jersey along with a certificate of completion. We concluded with a video slideshow, and an awesome group photo.
We are looking forward to our first reunion gathering coming up at the end of this month in which we will get to see the girls reconnect and pick their brains for ideas for next year!

Leah

P.S. I really wish I could share clinic photos with ya’ll, but we don’t have photo release forms from the clinic attendees, so we can’t publish pictures – sorry! Just close your eyes and imagine a high school player with mad skills in a sick 5 Ultimate jersey and shorts dropping some knowledge on an adorable, wide-eyed, brand new player whose hand can hardly fit around the rim of the disc, but is ripping out a sweet flick nonetheless while a proud facilitator in a Five Ultimate side-zip watches on with tears in her eyes.

We love contributing to the growth of Ultimate with our extra gear. Check out the latest project we’re supporting:

Hi, my name is Rebecca Ciciretti and I am a Peace Corps volunteer in
El Salvador. My Peace Corps program is environmental education, where
I work in the schools and in the community to raise awareness about
environmental issues in my community and in El Salvador. In addition
to my primary projects of environmental education in the school and a
fuel-efficient stove project for my community, I also have secondary
projects, such as teaching English classes and starting an Ultimate
Frisbee program in my school. Ultimate was such a huge part of my
college career at Case Western Reserve University that I wanted to
bring it to my community in El Salvador. Soccer is the main sport in
El Salvador, and kids here are not exposed to many other sports,
especially girls. I hope to use Ultimate Frisbee as a way to not only
bring the students closer together and develop teamwork, but as a way
to empower girls and show them that it is acceptable for them to
participate in sports as well. I have been meeting with a group of
kids to teach them how to throw and catch, and they love! Some of
them were actually pretty good right from the start. The kids are
very anxious to play every week, especially after seeing Ultimate
videos that showed them how fast paced and exciting the game can be.
I am really excited about the prospect of teaching so many kids a
sport that is so important to me. I am hoping that after the kids
feel comfortable enough with the sport that we can have tournaments
amongst the students in the school. This is a really exciting project
for me and I hope that it really catches on in my community!

Hey Five blog readers! My name is Leah and I play for UW Element. For the past eightish months I’ve been working with an awesome team of awesome people on an awesome program called All Girl Everything Ultimate Program. There is so much cool stuff to say about the program that I could write about, but I will try to give you a basic breakdown for now.

A little background
The All Girl Everything Ultimate Program (AGE UP) brings together girls from all over Seattle to play Ultimate together, meet elite college and club players, and discuss issues they face in life as female athletes and teen girls. Made possible with grants from the Women’s Sports Foundation and USA Ultimate, AGE UP’s program goals include empowering female athletes, building community across geography, age and race, and engaging in critical discussion of social justice issues.
Volunteer coaches and participants all had amazing time kicking off with a hat tournament in the fall followed by 10 sessions over the course of the winter at Jefferson Community Center on Beacon Hill. In total, over 30 middle and high school girls (from over ten schools) and 15 volunteer coaches participated in the sessions and attended the retreat. For many of the girls, the hat tournament and weekly practices were their first experiences playing single-gender Ultimate, and we all enjoyed the opportunity to build skills and confidence on the field.

Session highlights
Some of the outstanding discussion sessions included collage projects to examine body image in popular media, a visit from a nutritionist to discuss healthy habits, an activity co-facilitated by one of the participants that examined how we experience socioeconomic status in our lives, and a sex positivity jeopardy game that emphasized sexual health and access to information. While the Ultimate practice portion was a little restricted by the gym space we were playing in, we overcame with lots of conditioning, core, and agility as supplemental to the practices coached by some of Seattle’s (and the world’s) best!

Retreat highlights
At the retreat we had the opportunity to play some extended practices outdoors (in the snow – thanks, Seattle weather gods) and ran a mini coaching clinic for the girls in preparation for the next stage of the program (read on). What else did we experience at the retreat?
Sardiiines! At night. At the Shoreline YMCA (hooray for the Shoreline Y and Caitlin Cordell!!). Also, an impromptu dance performance by program coordinators Lisa Niemann and Hana Kawai. Okay, maybe those are just my personal highlights. We also were super lucky to be joined by some outstanding Masters students from the UW School of Social Work who facilitated interactive evaluation and appreciation activities for us. Social workers rule, you should make friends with some.

Reflections
Everyone has been having an awesome time, as demonstrated by our keywords generated by the girls during the retreat: community, support, LOL (that’s lots of love, though there was also plenty of laughing out loud…). The workshops and retreat offered unprecedented spaces to talk about personal and community social issues with girls and women from diverse backgrounds. Volunteer coach and Element beast Jillian Goodreau wrote:
“Programs like AGE UP are so beneficial to the community. The participants (both players and coaches) now share both the bond of trust created by openly discussing the tough issues we addressed, and the love of ultimate. I look forward to cheering for these girls, and the opportunity to possibly play with them in a few years.”

Five Ultimate and AGE UP
Five has been super supportive of AGE UP in providing gear for the participants and coaches (plus they share Lisa with us!!). Their sponsorship has provided us with shorts for the girls, jackets for the coaches, and jerseys for the participants. Not only is it a helpful plug for participation, but the Five gear is an important part of community building, and will provide a professional appearance and attitude for the girls when they begin coaching the upcoming clinics. Which brings me to…

Looking forward
Stage two of AGE UP is starting next week with clinics coached by AGE UP participants with support from the volunteer coaches at elementary and middle schools. Coaching at the clinics will implement the leadership and Ultimate skills that the girls have developed over the course of the Winter. I’ll write again soon to let you know how it’s going!

Hello!  My name is Christian, I’m the fantastic fall intern here at Five, and I’ll be rocking the ultimate blogosphere for the next few months.  I’d like to begin my tenure by asking for your thoughts on an issue that is painfully apparent to many die-hard ultimate players:

WHY IS ULTIMATE RARELY FEATURED IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA?

I started this post thinking that I’d have a weekly or even bi-weekly ultimate-related news article to present and comment upon, but the material just isn’t out there.  It appears that we continue to be the fervent supporters of a relatively underground sport, even fifty years after its inception.

Sure, everyone has seen Beau Jumps Over A Guy, and the catch by Andrew Fleming of Seattle Sockeye featured as the number one play on ESPN’s Top Ten a few weeks ago, but for a sport with over 5 million players in the US alone, we are proportionately under represented in the national news media.

Many have claimed that ultimate just isn’t a spectator sport, but those who play the game are routinely and patently awed watching elite teams play.  Maybe it is just better viewed in person.  Maybe it’s the transfer to television and internet that kills the mood.  UltiVillage has done a great job filming important games since 2004, and we’ve all enjoyed their Clip of The Day series, but the subscription fee required to view additional content inevitably deters the casual viewer.

Admittedly, there are also arguments in favor of remaining below the national media’s scope.  The instant replay, professional players & contracts, and referees are all things that I would like the sport to avoid.  But anyone who has felt the sting of convincing non-players that dogs are not involved in play can see some benefit in a more popularized version of the sport.

On that note, what has the new and improved UPA/USA Ultimate branding change done for the sport’s notoriety?  What could they do better?  What could Five Ultimate do to help spread knowledge of our sport?

Is Ultimate a spectator sport? Can it be formatted for your viewing pleasure?  Here at Five, we sell a good number of replica jerseys (check ‘em out at the online store!), so there must be fans out there somewhere, right?

What if you could make ultimate mainstream?  Would you do it?

We all know that Hydro Shorts are just about the most comfortable thing around. And Five jerseys feel great laying out or just chilling. So the question is, how far has Five Gear taken you off the field?

Several years ago, Dustin hiked the Appalachian Trail (2174.6 miles!) in just under 7 months wearing a High Tide jersey.

Tom worked at Five until recently (we miss you, Tom!) and ran a 100-mile race with Stephen also wearing Five jerseys.

Here’s Julia over 5000m in Zhukar La Pass, Tibet repping Five!

Monarch Ultimate players climbed Colorado’s Mt. Elbert in their sweet Five shorts (thanks for the tag, Andrew!).

Leo showed us that Five Ultimate and CrossFit go perfectly together.

Some people, like Katie, just use our shorts to get closer to their friends.

So how far has Five taken YOU? E-mail us or become our friend and tag us on Facebook letting us know!

We all know how precious a commodity discs can be. We hoard them in our disc bags and our best to protect them at tournaments. Every team, especially the ones trying to grow, has those discs in their disc bag that no one wants to get stuck with – the old ones that are banged up from concrete, maybe a little warped and don’t quite fly straight. Everyone wants the new, shiny, soft-on-your-hands-and-fly-perfect discs. But there are discs in the middle that aren’t as shiny and new as the league discs and aren’t as well loved as the cement discs and, if you can stand to let them go, I have a great new home for them.

Five runs a program called Discs for Development which you probably haven’t heard of but should definitely know about. More and more programs are using Ultimate as a development tool, especially working with kids, and, of course, they need discs to be effective. Five will collect your old discs of decent quality and make sure they’re put to good use with Ultimate programs around the world. It doesn’t matter if they’re a tiny bit scratched up or if your phone number’s still on the back (all press is good press, right?); we’ll take them and pass them on to our current Discs for Development beneficiary – right now we’re donating our discs to Ultimate Peace.

So next time you’re looking to get some new discs for your team, or stopping by a Five Ultimate tournament, bring a couple of your old discs along – we’d love to help share the Ultimate love!

Quick note, if you’re in the Seattle area check out the Sockeye v. Emerald City Ultimate showcase game tonight (7pm Interbay Stadium) or Emerald City Classic this weekend. It’ll be awesome.

Last week, from Aug 2-7 the World Junior Ultimate Championships went down in Heilbronn, Germany. Of the 44 teams representing 19 countries, the USA boys and Colombia girls emerged victorious in the U20 division (the Colombia v. USA girls’ semifinal was an awesome match, check out the highlights here) while both winning U17 teams hailed from host country Germany. There are tons more highlights on the WJUC 2010 website, like this greatest score (video after the jump):

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Last week’s Youth Club Championship benefit was a huge success!

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If you’re in the Seattle area looking for something to do tonight (July 30th), definitely stop by our YCC fundraiser! Details here.

This week I wanted to take a second to tell you about a team Five sponsored this year that I can barely believe exists, they’re so awesome. So here’s Khayoba:

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About 3 weeks ago, half our office took off for the Czech Republic to attend, play, and work at the 2010 World Ultimate Club Championships in Prague. It got a little quieter and a lot busier around the office as Five Ultimate prepped for the simultaneous start of two huge tournaments, Potlatch and WUCC, despite the ocean between us.

Between working and playing and the enormous amount of energy that goes into orchestrating a tournament like WUCC, it’s no surprise that we didn’t always have time to chat with our coworkers abroad during Worlds. But we kept tabs on the scores, streamed a game or two live in the office, and made sure that players could still order sweet Worlds Merchandise, even after we ran out on site in Prague. And now that everyone’s back and the pictures are up on Facebook (maybe the most important step) I’ve finally gotten a chance to see how things went down.

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