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Our good friends at Without Limits Ultimate hosted the 8th year of Fusion this past weekend at the Smith River Sports Complex in Martinsville, VA. At Fusion, East Cost club players are brought in to run FREE skills clinics - this event is a fantastic opportunity for college teams to kick off their fall season. Tournament Director Kyra Catabay shares her thoughts on the event. This past weekend, we kicked off the women’s 2017-2018 college season at Virginia Fusion. Although a deer took out my driver side mirror, I would still call it a success for the first tournament of the season. For the past 8 years, Without Limits has hosted skills clinics after pool play games on Saturday. It was an honor to continue this tradition with over 100 players — many of them brand new to ultimate. Thank you to our clinic coaches from Phoenix, Backhanded, and NC Warhawks for making this possible! One of the highlights of my weekend was listening to a player explain to her teammate the meaning and story behind the “Nevertheless she persisted” quote that was printed on our new Without Limits jerseys. It’s a reminder that we will be told to sit down and be quiet. And it’s the strength to keep going. Thank you to all of our attendees for making Fusion possible. We hope to see you in the future! Contact Without Limits for more information on their events and programming. Women’s Ultimate.  Community.  Competition.  Empowerment.

VC is proud to sponsor GOAT, an elite touring team from Toronto and our longest standing partner squad. More GOAT players than we could count have helped us grow as VC team members, design strategists, product developers and general all-around supporters. After bringing home gold - and the Open Spirit award! - at the 2017 Canadian Ultimate Championships in Ottawa this summer, The Herd updates us on their season. GOAT celebrating their win at CUC!Photo courtesy of Ultimate Canada 2017 has been a strong year for Toronto men's Ultimate. The Toronto contingent representing our country at the World Games in Poland was instrumental in earning a bronze medal for Team Canada. GOAT took home a national title at CUCs in Ottawa. The Toronto Rush came within one point of an AUDL championship against the Bay Area juggernaut San Francisco Flamethrowers, defeating last year's champions along the way. And now GOAT is poised to carry that momentum into the USAU fall series and prove that last year's stumble was an exception, not the rule. That said, the road to glory is treacherous, and there are a few key members of the herd that won't be making the journey down to the green pastures of Sarasota: Scott "SHooter" HastieSam PaivaGreg EllisMichael JonesGord Harrison ... Did we miss anyone? Nah, that sounds right... ;) In any case, after their 12th(13th?) straight sectional championship victory in the Upstate NY Section, GOAT is looking to take the Northeast Region title back from perennial powerhouse Ironside, as well as assert their dominance over regional rivals PoNY and Dig. With the influx of some premier young talent like Victoria, B.C.'s Ben Burelle, Ottawa, ON's Kinley Gee, and homegrown stars Michael Mackenzie, Bretton Tan, and Jason Huynh, GOAT has found an energetic compliment to their established veteran core and is looking stronger than ever. Check out @ultiworldlive on twitter for scores and updates on the weekend of September 23/24 to track GOAT's progress and cheer them on their road to the 'ship! Follow The Herd online:TwitterFacebookWebsite A special shout-out to recently retired Coach SHooter. We couldn't be prouder to have had Scott "SHooter" Hastie in VC gear on so many occasions - from GOAT to Team Canada(s!). Congratulations, SHooter, on an epic career and best of luck on all that's to come. #Youdabes Read GOAT's heartfelt tribute here.

VC is proud to sponsor the 6ixers from the 6. (“The 6” refers to the city of Toronto. In honour of the city’s main area codes: 416 and 647). The Toronto 6ixers are your Canadian Ultimate Women's Division Champions! After a hard fought 4 days playing against the country's most talented women, the 6ixers cemented their place atop the podium with a 15-13 finish over Vancouver powerhouse Traffic. While this was their first ever CUC appearance, the 6ixers performed like veterans. For the 6ixers the final was defined by clinical, gunslinging offense and grinding man defense. It was the perfect ending to a golden weekend. Good luck to the 6ixers on their upcoming run at the USAU series! The following is a post from the team's players, Jordon Meron. Follow the 6ixers on facebook here. We are your Canadian Ultimate Women's Division Champs! Wow. I am still smiling about that game, and I'm so proud to have been a part of it. Early on this season we knew we had the tangibles - experience, speed, talent, but this past weekend we showed we had resiliency and grit, and that's what I am most excited about. With the USAU series looming ahead, this CUC victory will give us the fuel that we need to continue to push. Congratulations to all the amazing athletes involved in CUC's, and especially the women's final which was chalk full of talent, awesome plays, and tenacity.  We can't wait for the next chance to play on Canadian soil! - Jordo   Thanks to the 6ixers from these awesome photos by Noah Markus Photography!

The following post has been written by VC's CEO Adriana Withers. Over the past few months, the VC team has been sporting staff shirts that say "The Future is Female". More than a handful of times, each of us has been asked, "What's with the shirts?"... and so, please let me explain. A Team Canada player Julie Landry with Daniel Bergson, the designer of our staff shirt, at WCBU in Royan, France. Questions/Comments As we've worn our Future is Female shirts, we've heard all sorts of comments and questions, including: What does that even mean? Why does the future have to be either male or female; that's not fair. Isn't that shirt a bit aggressive? The future is MALE! (folding shirt in half, while laughing) The Future Is Female The purpose of wearing these staff shirts at events, such as the World Championships of Beach Ultimate in France, the USA Ultimate Masters Championships in Colorado and the Canadian Ultimate Championships in Ottawa, has been to start a conversation. To get people asking, talking and (hopefully) thinking about equity in ultimate. When I first came to Daniel with the design idea for the shirts, he asked me a question similar those listed above. I was proud that one of my own team members was challenging me on the idea, and, right then, I knew that this was the message I wanted to get out there and engage about with our community. It means that society, including our wonderful ultimate community, needs to be working together to discuss, understand and make progress around the problem of gender equity.  In order for female athletes to catch up in terms of opportunities available to them with comparison to those available to male athletes, there needs to be equitable action, not just equal action. As a community, we need to focus energy and resources on the development of female athletes and their competitive opportunities to make up for so much lost ground. If we only give female athletes the same support as male athletes, female athletes will never close the gap. Aggressive, no. Assertive, yes.  Thank you to the young male for illustrating exactly why we need to have these discussions. For reference, please see almost every history book, ever, and report back on who it was about. The Future is Female because the past has been Male.  The statement "The Future is Female" is one of will and purpose. It's about where we are going, the necessary journey to equality for all athletes, and what is needed to get there - a distinctive investment in supporting female athletes.  What is the story? Unless you've been hiding as of late under a rock far, far away from "mainstream" ultimate media, you know that equity is a topic demanding the attention of players around the world. It's bringing out the best of our community, and also shedding light on situations and perspectives that I believe are detrimental to the positive growth and exceptional potential of our sport. This post isn't about those examples, though... although I'm happy to discuss them with any one directly. This post is simply to explain why I felt it was important for the VC team to put this message across our chests and out in to the world. The explanation is simple: We need to talk about equity, and each and every one of us needs to find a way to spark that conversation with friends and strangers alike if we're ever going to make progress. I want to hear from one of my team members that he doesn't really fully get it. I want to hear from a masters player who wouldn't want their kid wearing this shirt. I want to hear from the female engineer who is the only female engineer in her firm who wants to wear the shirt to work. I want to hear from the boys team coach who overhears sideline stories from his players which indicate that they have a lot to learn about respecting other individuals. I want to ask the junior player who folds the shirt in half and says to his friends, "The future is male!" if he understands where we're coming from with this shirt and how he understands our message. Why If we don't listen, we don't learn. We don't bust out of our own carefully curated bubbles to more fully develop our own beliefs.  If we don't challenge ourselves to take deep breaths and listen and, then, calmly share our own perspectives, how are we to expect others to do the same for us? If we don't challenge the status quo, we won't know our own potential as a sport. Personally, I want more for ultimate. So, like'em or leave'em, I'm proud of our Future is Female shirts, and all I can ask is that you respect that. Or better yet, talk to me about it. Thanks for reading, Adriana Adriana Withersadriana@vcultimate.com Proudly wearing my staff shirt while talking about... you guessed it... women's development with WFDF's Caz Malone on the #UltiShow Interested in VC-supported equity-related organizations or initiatives? Without Limits Ultimate  Ultiworld/Media coverage: VC Ultimate To Sponsor, Help Grow Women’s College Coverage and VC Extends Women’s Coverage Sponsorship To Support Division III Nationals Reporting VC Women's Development Sponsorship WFDF Women in Sport Commission  What's Else? Let's discuss how the Future Is Transgender, The Future Is Gay, The Future is Multicultural, The Future Is (insert any other credible movement that absolutely deserves support). Let's talk about the Future Is Equality For All.

As the discussions around Gender Equity in ultimate continue to be so prevalent in our community, we feel as though it's our responsibility to contribute.  First, it's important that our community knows where VC stands: We respect all people and believe that all people should be treated equally and fairly. We believe that there is still a tremendous amount of work to be done around gender equality in both sport and the world at large.  We will work with you, our community, to help promote the values of equality and equity as best we can, in everything we do. In 2017, we put all of our online advertising partnership dollars in one basket: Exclusively supporting Ultiworld's coverage of the women's division, which allowed for more division-specific coverage than ever before. We checked in with Ultiworld on the effects of more women's coverage: There was a 2% increase in overall female viewers from October 2015-August 2016 to October 2016-August 2017. That's truly great when you are looking at over 2MM pageviews.  For new entrances to the site, we are tracking at 24.71% increase in the female category! This means that of the total females that go to Ultiworld each day, 25% are first time visitors! VC will continue to work with Ultiworld on this initiative for the 2017-2018 season, and share more effects/stats as available. VC Women's Development Sponsorship This past spring, we connected with a number of women's club teams and offered them a no-obligations sponsorship discount on their uniforms. This offer helped us to get to know a number of awesome women's teams that we hadn't worked with in the past and helped the teams get great gear while saving funds to be able to put them in to what matters most - tournament fees, travel, etc. Given the success of our trial run, we want to go bigger with this idea of a Women's Development Sponsorship. So here we go... For the 2017-2018 season, VC will offer all women's college teams a 20% no-obligations sponsorship discount on their team uniform orders, world-wide.  If your team has a coach, VC will also offset a small part of that investment for you and add a no-charge coach jersey to your order. What's more, if you're an open or mixed team actively working towards promoting equity at your school and in your community, we want to hear about what you're doing and help share your success. You will also be eligible to receive a Women's Development Sponsorship if your actions are tangibly making a difference in the support of female athletes in your area. How does it work? It's really quite simple. We'll ask you to tell us a bit about your team in this form and we'll be in touch to follow up within 1-2 business days. You can also drop us a line any time to get more information. Here is our contact info. A 20% discount will be added to any estimates we send you for your team uniforms and we'll walk you through the order process from start to finish. Other benefits: Free professional design help (up to 3 hours per team) if you submit your requests by December 1st. Individual team and player direct online ordering - check out our current system here, with a new and improved version launching by the end of August 2017! That's it, unless you want more... What more can VC do for your team? We are committed to working every day to be the best we can be, and that includes supporting the initiatives and values of our community. Some examples of what else we can do are: Promote your team and its initiatives via our wide-reaching social media channels Share your success stories and the successes of other teams to help learn from each other and inspire our community Offer your team Discs for Development, which allows us to offer Discraft practice discs for as low as US$5.50 / CA$6.91 per disc Most importantly, we'll continue to stand up and speak out for what's right and do our best to support and promote equity in ultimate through our actions, investments and our partnerships.  Here's that "application" form again, or drop us a line to hear more at info@vcultimate.com - Thank you!    

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This statement has been modified from it's original version to reflect VC Ultimate's on going position on Gender Equity, as opposed to the situation-specific statement that was originally made July 7, 2017. For the original version, please contact us. Statement on Gender Equity It is essential that our community know where VC Ultimate stands on issues of equity and equality. As VC's leader, it is an issue I am passionate about and work very hard to promote in a positive way.  The voices representing our company must be united. We respect all people and believe that all people should be treated equally and fairly. There is still a tremendous amount of work to be done around gender equality in both sport and the world at large.   Adriana Withers Founding Partner & CEOVC Ultimate Inc. For more of our views on gender equity in ultimate, specifically with regards to media coverage, please visit this Ultiworld article. For any questions, comments or concerns, please contact us at info@vcultimate.com at any time. For more about VC Ultimate, please visit our About VC page.

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Elite players from across Canada are heading to Wroclaw, Poland from July 20 – July 30 to compete along side athletes from the 27 official sports and 4 invitational sports featured in the 2017 World Games. VC is a proud sponsor of Team Canada and is excited to share stories about the path to Poland. Author: Scott "SHooter" Hastie, Head Coach Melissa Tancredi is our Honourary Team Captain. Melissa, while now retired, is a superstar soccer forward who is a three time Olympian and two time Olympic Bronze Medalist with Team Canada. She represented Canada from 2004 to 2017 while also becoming a chiropractor in Vancouver. You may be wondering why and how Melissa is our Honourary Captain. Here is how I pitched the role: Dr. Melissa Tancredi, I hope that you are having a great day. My name is Scott Hastie and I am writing to from Clappisons Corners overlooking Dundas Valley where I work as an Engineering Manager at Liburdi Turbine Services. I am also the Head Coach for the Canadian National Ultimate Team for the World Games being held in Wroclaw, Poland July 20-30th. As a chiropractor in Vancouver I am sure you have a few clients who play the game so I won't go into describing it but I would like to let you know about the World Games Team. At the world games the Ultimate competition is mixed and the team is made up of 7 women and 7 men. During the competition that pits the top five ultimate nations from last year’s World Championships (USA, Australia, Japan, Colombia and Canada) and the host country in a 3 day tournament. During the competition we play with either a 4:3 or 3:4 gender ratio that changes every 2 points. The World Games is the highest level that our sport is played and we are all excited to represent Canada.  I imagine you are thinking something along the lines "Scott I play soccer why are you bothering me?" One Saturday morning I was reading the paper when I came upon this article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/soccer/tancredi-among-group-set-to-say-goodbye-to-canadian-national-team/article33902349/ I instantly picked my phone and banged out this message to the team: Anyone out west going to the Mexico vs. Canada women's soccer friendly? Last game for Melissa Tancredi. I am a big fan. Just read an article in the Globe and Mail about their game versus Germany in Rio where she was handed the captaincy. They had qualified and there was a belief that losing the game might set up a better path to the final. Her response: "We play for Canada. We don't throw matches. We don't ever go on the field without giving 100 per cent." It follows: "she essentially told us she expected to beat Germany, she was going to lead the way and we had to follow her...and she did." She scored two goals in Canada first ever win over the Germans a 2-1 victory with some key players resting for the elimination rounds. If you go to the game please tip your hat her way for me. I was hoping our Team Chiropractor Stephen Mogatas from Jointworks would run into you at some industry mixer and he could convince you to make a guest appearance at one of our Vancouver Training Camps to provide us some inspiration before our competition. I learned last night that it appears that he has not been successful. So I would like to come out of the blue and ask if making a brief appearance at either our Vancouver training camps April 14-16 or June 9-11 might be something you would consider. I know the team would be fired up to meet you and get a moment or two of exposure to the fire and leadership that you provided our national soccer team for so many years. Watching some interviews of your teammates describing you I noticed that many talked about your leadership, grit and spirit but also that you knew how to have fun. These qualities are exactly what we are trying to develop in our team as we head to this competition. We would love to be able to ask you in person to be our Honorary Team Captain. The role is undefined, simple but would mean a ton to all of us. Check us out: https://twitter.com/tcwg2017 Be Awesome Well things all worked out and Melissa dropped by our dinner in Vancouver near the site of the 2010 Olympic Village. Adriana at VC Ultimate made sure that we had her #14 jersey for her and the team signed up one of our awesome discs. We started with some small talk and introductions. Coach Tasia looked to me to see if I had something planned. Obviously. I relayed the story to the group about how fired up I was reading the article about Melissa. I explained that one thing that resonated with me was the fire in the statement: “We play for Canada. We don’t throw matches. We don’t ever go on the field without giving 100 per cent.” The second was that she backed up her words with actions. She put the entire team on her back and scored the two goals that were necessary for their first win versus Germany. I also highlighted something I found in this thank you tweet from @CanadaSoccerEN  In this short clip her coaches and teammates related the intensity but also highlighted her balance “we are going to do work today but we are also going to have fun” and that she was the life & soul of the dressing room. This is a key tenet of Team Canada for 2017. Well this fired up Melissa and she launched into an incredibly inspirational discussion with the team where she highlighted some key aspects of preparation for our big event. She was genuinely interested in learning about our sport, our preparation, and how we are supported. She had watched a bit of the US College Championships and was blown away that we can play this sport without referees. She took questions from the team that varied from what her pre game preparation is including all aspects of warm up and ball touches to some strategic questions about having a set national team that trains from year to year. I even threw in the loaded question to see how much time each athlete would spend doing video review. She also got to talk a bit of shop with Stephen on whatever Chiropractors talk about. While I knew that I would be pretty fired up by Melissa I was excited to see that the rest of the team was captured as well. We didn’t expect that the real gold would be when we went outside to get a team picture all lined up in Our VC Ultimate jerseys. Melissa Tancredi & TCWG all in their official VC jerseys. As soon as we were done with our pic Melissa pulled out her newly signed disc and said, “Let’s get this thing going.” After a little instruction Melissa was launching flicks, backhands and hammers around the park. She is a natural and possibly a lock for the World Games 2021 roster. The highlight had to be her catching a hammer that was coming in hot with one hand while taking a selfie. Melissa Tancredi Multi-tasking And this #FlexFriday pic was pretty cool: Melissa Tancredi & Rena Kawabata Showing the Power Certainly in our short time together we learned quite a bit from Melissa. The visit provided an exciting spark that carried through a training camp where in true Melissa fashion, we worked hard but also had fun. Thank you to Dr. Melissa Tancredi for your leadership as our Honourary Team Captain. We hope to do you proud. Be Awesome SHooter Melissa Tancredi is a retired Canadian soccer forward who played for the Canada women's national soccer team. Follow her on Twitter @meltancredi14 or Instagram. Official replicas, sideline, and support gear for Team Canada! Show your support of the players representing Canada by picking up a piece of Team Canada gear today.Team Canada Collection