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Michelle, can you hear us?
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Thanks for having me.
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So, we got a lot of good questions in from Twitter.
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I can, can you hear me?
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I can, we've got a little bit of a delay, so I will try to pause in between my questions better this week.
Our first question comes in via Twitter #ultimatenation, from Bill Bourret. He asks:
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Well that's definitely a good question. I guess I really try to think about the experiences that I've enjoyed as a player and build on those. For me, it’s really about the people who attend the events. I want to create the best possible experience for them, and so I'm committed to doing whatever I have to do to ensure that. So I think that really means paying attention to the details. Often, it’s the little things that make or break a tournament experience. I think it’s about preparing, or over-preparing, just making sure that I'm ready for anything possible that can happen and have solutions kind of already on the board so that if and when something goes wrong, I can adjust quickly.
I would also say I'm really personally invested in the players and teams that come to my tournaments, and I think that that level of investment, naturally, I guess, kind of shows itself in the product that comes out there. So, I would say that, for me, I think that is the single biggest factor that kind of sets my events apart is that I've really developed a relationship with the players and teams that attend.
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Thank you. And, for the people who might not know, what is Without Limits?
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Well, Without Limits is an organization dedicated to creating playing and development opportunities for women's ultimate players.
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Thank you. I think we're going to move to another question we got via twitter. This is from LizzyJ:
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Yeah, that's a great question.
Well, I played ultimate in college and really enjoyed it. I was really invested with my undergrad team and my team in grad school. I think that when I moved to Texas for grad school, there was a really clear, I guess, difference in the types of opportunities my team had versus the opportunities that I had when I played on the west coast, and that was when things kind of started clicking for me, where I realized that these opportunities weren't going to be handed to us on a silver platter, and we were going to have to go out and create those opportunities.
I remember my last year of playing college ultimate in 2008 at Centex, which is, you know, one of the biggest college women's tournaments out there. We had just a kind of informal meeting in the parking lot where there were about 30 of us. We kind of just got together and talked about what we envisioned for the future of college women's ultimate, and just seeing so many of my friends who were so invested in the future of the sport, who wanted to make a difference, but kind of just didn't know where to start, I think that was a real catalyst for me, and many of Lizzy's teammates at Northeastern were a part of all of that.
So I think as things have kind of developed over the past handful of years, again it’s really all about the people. It’s about wanting to create opportunities for my teammates, for the people that I've had the privilege of playing against over the years, and it’s easy to be invested when I care about the people involved.
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Absolutely. We have a question for you. Your current focus is on college women's ultimate. Do you ever see, or would you like to see, Without Limits broaden down into the Youth Girls’ Division, maybe down to even like the 10-15 year-old age range?
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Yeah, I mean absolutely. I would love to increase, kind of, the scope of Without Limits. I think the limitation right now is just really that I feel like I'm pretty much at capacity, and so adding more projects on isn't super feasible. I've been involved in some youth ultimate stuff in the Triangle Area. Heather Ann [Brauer], who has done tons of stuff with USA Ultimate, has kind of brought me on board for a couple of her projects. I think, I don't have a lot of experience in youth ultimate, and there are some people like Heather Ann, like Hana Kawai on Riot, who are doing tons of great things for youth, and I guess for right now I see like an intermediate stuff as being kind of supporting the work that they're doing.
As opportunities arise, I'd love to be doing more at the youth level. I mean, I think that's where we are going to see a lot of exciting growth, and you know, the same way that we've seen college feed into the club system, those high school girls, those youth girls, those are going to be the people who are the future of our sport, so investing in them is definitely really important.
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Yeah, absolutely, and the Triangle Area has done a really good job with taking on our Learn to Play programs, and, you know, they also have some other, Take the Field I believe is North Carolina, and they've done a great job there.
On a related note, we have two more questions that are related to what you just talked about. This is via Twitter. This is from Gwen Ambler:
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Yeah, this is definitely a good question, and kind of a personal question. I think first, coming from Gwen, I think Gwen does probably more for women's ultimate than anyone else I know, so I think she'll understand when I say if you love what you do, then that makes all the work not really seem like work. So that's the first thing I would say to that. The second thing is, one thing that could help is right now outside my window there is a lot of snow coming down, so a weather machine would help a lot with the burnout. I seem to have had a lot of bad luck with weather the past few years, and that seems to be continuing this season.
But on a serious note, I think that a few things: one thing I think is just getting more young leaders engaged. You know, like I said before, where this really started clicking for me, I was playing college ultimate, about to graduate, and I just really saw a need. And I feel like as I start to get a bit older and a bit more removed from the college division, I think there are some limits on what I can do, and I think that more young leaders is going to be incredibly important for the college women's division to continue to keep moving forward.
I'd also love to see more club players getting engaged. I mean, there's plenty of great players and teams doing a ton out there, like Gwen, and it would be great to get just more people with that level of involvement. I mean that's something that I've really been pushing my club team Phoenix on this season. We're running a bunch of college clinics for free for teams pretty much within four or five hours of us, and I think it’s important for club leaders to kind of encourage their teammates to just jump in, and even if you don't know exactly what you're doing, to do something, even if it’s a little bit outside your comfort zone.
Kind of on that same note, I think the other thing is, that if you don't have time to give, I think there are projects that could use an investment of money. For example, I'm running an event next month that's bringing in a bunch of different guest coaches, and I was going back and forth with Brute Squad some ways they could support one of their players who is coming down to coach at the tournament. So even if you don't have a ton of time, there's lots of ways to support the growth of women's ultimate, college women's ultimate specifically. It’s just about thinking outside of the box a little bit.
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Great, well, you heard it right there. Michelle is asking for your help. If you value what she's doing with Without Limits, send her an email.
We have another question. This is from Bill Bourret again. He asks:
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Man, well. Yeah, this is another personal question and definitely a tough one. You know, for the past five years, I feel like I've been really going at a bit of a breakneck speed. Like, just doing a ton. Trying to do as much as I can. Trying to say yes to every opportunity or ask that's made of me. So I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how do I make this sustainable. How do I make sure that the impact I'm making lasts longer than just what I'm doing right now.
I think this process has really taught me or helped me to understand the importance of doing something I love and fighting for whatever I believe in, even if that isn't easy or even if there are challenges. So I would say I don't know what I'm going to be doing in five years, but I think this entire process has taught me that those two things are really important to me. So whatever I'm doing I want to be doing whole heartedly, and I want to love it. I also definitely want to spend some time, at least in the next year or two, doing more locally. There's a lot of cool things happening in the Triangle. So I'd love to be investing more in my club team and more in some of the other things that are happening here.
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Thanks. Well, we have a few more questions ourselves. People still have time to send in questions. Use the hashtag #ultimatenation on Twitter. We have someone monitoring it, and we're happy to answer your questions on the air for Michelle.
Michelle, you've been travelling a lot over the past few years. Tell us, what's the craziest thing that's happened in all your adventures?
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Oh man. Yeah.
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That you're willing to share.
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Okay. Well that narrows it down a little bit. I've had some pretty interesting luck, I would say. I'll share two stories. So, one is from a couple of years ago. There's a tournament called Keystone Classic that has had perennial bad weather luck. Every single year, there's something going wrong. So this one year, the forecast looks great. We get to the fields, they're in great shape. We had had a bit of a water issue at the fields, so we had to go to Costco and buy a couple of van loads of water. So we unload the water, we have it all on the side of the field. And it's in some pretty rural area, so we're thinking, not a big deal. And a police officer comes by and tells us "you can't leave the water there. There's been a bunch of theft recently, and the water is going to get stolen". Well at that point, we don't have any place to store the water, so we decided that the best solution would be for me to sleep overnight in the van, to make sure the water didn't get stolen.
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Well what if you got stolen?
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That was a distinct possibility. I had my cell phone charged and ready to call for help. And that tournament, it happened at the end of Saturday, the fields actually got pulled from us because, I guess, the weekend before, another tournament had kind of destroyed them a bit. So we ended up going on Google Maps and searching for all available nearby fields, going out the next morning at 5am to walk fields out, and somehow putting on the rest of the tournament for these 40 teams, which was really crazy. There were a bunch of fifth-year players on Wisconsin that year, who I had known pretty well. And at that point, I just don't even know how we pulled that tournament off.
And then another quick story. Last year, some of you guys know, at one of my tournaments, a bunch of my stuff got stolen. I mean, everything: my passport, my wallet, my social security card, my iPad, pretty much everything I needed. So I ended up having to drive six or seven hours to Atlanta to try to get a new passport, and since I didn't have any identification, I couldn't fly, so I had to drive all the way to Austin, which was another 25 hours. Ran the tournament in Austin, which was super fun and great. And then I had to leave for another tournament in Ohio. Again, I had to drive because I didn't have any identification. So I drove another 18 hours to Ohio. On the way there, I get word that I had lost all my fields for that weekend due to a snowstorm. So thankfully, had some great friends in Columbus who helped me kind of pull things off. But ran that tournament, mostly without a hitch, then drove another 12 hours back home to North Carolina. So, I would say that was probably the craziest two-week stretch that I've ever had. Which obviously, the beautiful silver lining was just all of the people in the ultimate community who heard about what happened to me and stepped up to replace all the stuff that got stolen. Which was really encouraging to me and meant a lot.
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Well, there's community for you.
I imagine a lot of tournament directors can relate to last-minute things coming up, and as many tournaments as you run, you have to expect that is going to happen from time to time.
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Yeah.
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So what's next for the next few weeks for Without Limits? What events are you most looking forward to?
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Well, we've got a busy slate ahead. This weekend is supposed to be Commonwealth Cup, but we've got a ton of snow right now, so I'm not really sure what's going to pan out with that. We should know a lot more in the next day or so. And then in March, I have five events in five weeks, so I will be in St. Louis for Midwest Throwdown, in Nashville for Music City, back to Virginia for Virginia is for Layouts, then down to Austin for Women's College Centex and then back home to North Carolina for a new event called I-85 Rodeo. And then, probably sleeping a lot for the next month after that.
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Nice. Well, I think we're going to put this to a close. We don't want to take up too much of your time. I'm going to put you on the spot. One question: who is going to win Nationals this year, if you had to pick right now. And pick right now.
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Okay. Well, I mean, obviously it's tempting to go with a west coast team, since they've won for the past decade at least. But I'm going to put my money on a team that I really love. I just love their heart. I love how hard they work, and I love how far they've come in the past five years, so I'm going to go with Ohio State. I'm definitely rooting for them to do well. Great bunch of girls, and DeAnna [Ball] is great as well. So yeah, I'm going to go with Ohio State.
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Well there you have it. Michelle, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. We really appreciate having your perspective on things.
For everyone else, Tom is not going to be joining us today. We're preparing for the board meeting. We're going to take a week or two off and then have a couple good shows in a row. We want to hear from you what you want to hear from the ultimate nation. Who do you want to hear from? We're going to expand to have more than one guest on at once and do some round-table things, but we're going to take a break for a few weeks. I'm going to close with what Tom used to always say, "Have a great - have a nice night tonight and a better day tomorrow." I totally messed that up. But Michelle, thanks for joining us today.
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Yeah, thanks for having me. Bye.
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