The Ultimate Nation - USAU Leadership (5/1/2014)

Posted: April 29, 2014 11:11 AM
 

 

Ultimate Nation: 2014 Episode #6

 

Host     Guests
Bourland Matthew   Tom Crawford Payne Mike Gwen Ambler 

 Matthew Bourland
Manager - New Media
USA Ultimate

 

Dr. Tom Crawford
CEO
USA
 Ultimate

Mike Payne
Board President
USA Ultimate

Gwen Ambler
Board VP
USA Ultimate


Note - the following is a transcript of this week's show, lightly edited for clarity:


 
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Hi, everyone.  Welcome to The Ultimate Nation.  I'm joined today by USA Ultimate leadership we have CEO Dr. Tom Crawford. Joining us remotely is Gwen Ambler, USA Ultimate Board Vice President, and joining us on a speaker phone is Mike Payne, USA Ultimate Board President.  Thank you all for joining us today.

 
 
Tom Crawford  

Thanks for having us.

   
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So, this is a great opportunity where we can touch on any sorts of questions we get from the ultimate community. If you have a question for these guests, tweet in your question to #ultimatenation.  We'll be monitoring that during the show, and hope to answer as many good questions as we can.  What prompted this show, let's start out actually with Tom, why don't you describe and give us a quick summary of the Letter to the Members from the Spring 2014 Magazine that touched on some of the topics we want to talk about today.

   
Tom Crawford  

Okay, great.  Thank you Matthew.

First, I'd like to encourage everybody to read the magazine. It is fantastic, and full of all kinds of interesting, really cool stories, not just reporting back on results or previewing the season, but also some really really interesting historical stories and other things. Part of that magazine, and again I'd really encourage you all to open it up and go through the entire thing, is a summary of our board meeting that we had earlier this year, which had led to these topics that we are going to try to talk about and answer questions about this morning. And we made some really important decisions, had a very very productive board meeting, and we're going to cover a few of those things this morning and try to answer some questions about them.

So, the first one that I wanted to start with is, we spent a lot of time talking about the importance of ultimate building a national infrastructure for the sport so that we can truly grow the way that we want to grow. By building a national infrastructure what we mean is having leagues and associations, chapters, whatever we decide to call them, that are functioning, like picture it literally every state in the United States that becomes the delivery system for all of our programs on a local level, because we're right at a point in our growth now, where if we don't have that national infrastructure, what happens is we expose particularly young people, kids, to our sport, and then there's no place for them to go and experience the sport. And that's the last things that we want to do. We want them to go and have the opportunity to learn how to play and then be able to compete and see where they fit into this national infrastructure. So, we're going to be building the national infrastructure by creating relationships, business relationships if you will, with groups with each state in the United States, so that we can have a really good local delivery system for coaching programs, observer education programs, learn to play programs, all kinds of leagues for kids to learn to play in, and we're very exited to be doing that because that is what's going to allow us to scale and grow the sport like we've never been able to do before. So, that's a big big initiative that we're very excited about.  

Tied into that, another big decision that we made that I'd love to have both Mike and Gwen talk about is, and this was a very big decision for us as an organization, is we've created a foundation, the USA Ultimate Foundation, and that work is under way.  We're making great progress. The first part of that is a lot of legal stuff, filing with the IRS, etc.  But one of the things that the foundation will do is raise funds outside of our operating budget in order to do things like provide a lot of support to the leagues and associations that are part of that national infrastructure so that we'll be able to raise funds and then provide some of those funds to those local leagues and associations that are a delivery system for our programs in order to help them deliver those programs, hire staff, do a wide variety of things. So there's a good example of two big decisions we've made are tied directly together. 

And, maybe starting with Gwen, we could talk about some of the other things that we see and have a vision for with the foundation supporting, like, some of the women's initiatives, in particular the girls' initiatives which we think is going to be a major focus of the foundation, and Mike could talk about, perhaps, the support of our international teams as a another area.  So, maybe we should start with Gwen.

   
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Yeah, Gwen, do you want to chime in on that?

   
Gwen Ambler  

Um, yeah, well I think that one of the prior ultimate nations was actually featuring two of the organizers for the girls' ultimate movement, which has been an initiative that USA Ultimate has been working with to help figure out strategies to really promote and grow the girls' youth division, and I think that the foundation would be really well situated to be able to help support a lot of the recommendations that come out of that task force from the Girls' Ultimate Movement, and potentially be able to implement some of those ideas in various places around the country as an example of really, sort of doubling down on some of the youth initiates and youth growth that I think everyone recognizes are really crucial to the future of the sport, and really prioritizing catching up some of the girls' participation and development to some of the explosion that we've seen in the youth boy's side recently in pockets of the country.  

I think some of the things that the foundation would offer a lot of flexibility in terms of allocating some of those resources outside of USA Ultimate's operating budget as Tom mentioned, to be able to target places that are either underserved or behind in various things that we can actually use that money strategically to be able to help promote girls' ultimate, youth ultimate, and then women's ultimate in general. I think there have been over the years certain initiates for women's clinics, and resources for women's ultimate as well to also try and reduce the gap between the membership that we have right now between men and women.  So it is really exciting about the possibilities that we can get into once we get the foundation established and really underway.

   
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I think we should probably chime in with a little bit of background.  We did get a few questions on twitter when we first announced the foundation.  A lot of people didn't really understand how common this is in NGBs. Tom, do you want to kind of touch on and explain why that's structured that way?

   
Tom Crawford  

Yeah, sure.  Happy to.  Yeah, so this is a really common structure for a national governing body.  Some great examples include US Soccer, US Tennis, US Skiing, Figure Skating, Hockey, Swimming, all have separate foundations that are there to raise funds from people that love the sport and want to support the sport because of what it has meant to them and sort of what it has done for them or one of their children in many cases. And so it's a very common structure and they're very very successful. I think we have a couple of examples in the magazine - did I mention that everyone should go read the magazine? I think I did.

   
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Let's see the magazine.

   
Tom Crawford  

Yeah, so we have the magazine right here. If you haven't gone and read the magazine, please do, there's some really really good stuff, that actually is really informative in all seriousness.  

But, like soccer, for example, we always have trouble with access to fields. So one of the things that soccer's foundation did was actually raise funds and they went out and actually built - this is a few years ago - soccer doesn't have the challenge like we do with access to fields, and built a bunch of fields for big cities to have access to soccer fields. The hockey foundation has done some really really cool stuff for disadvantaged communities to get kids that otherwise would not have an opportunity to play ice hockey, not only playing ice hockey, but thriving and growing within their development structure. Same thing for soccer. Really awesome learn to play programs that they have put in place. Swimming has the learn to swim as a huge part of what their foundation does. It introduces kids to swimming and then introduces them to their club structure so that they can become competitive swimmers.

So, a lot of great examples of what other sports have done. One of the other things, and skiing is great example of this, that maybe Mike could talk a little bit about, is they also use some of the funds that their foundation raises to support their national teams and international teams, so that no athlete has to make a decision: "I'm not going to try out for a particular international team because I just can't afford to do it."  

I think our long-term goal, and it will be a long-term goal, we'll get to the point where every athlete that wants to try out for the national team will give it a shot without having to worry about whether they can afford the international travel, because they'll be supported by finds coming out of the foundation, and that's important for a bunch of different reasons, including we'd never want that to be the case if we could avoid it, and also because the talent pool grows once you do that, and I don't know, Mike, do you want to talk about that at all as one of the visions and outcomes that we can get out of the foundation creation?

   
Payne Mike  

Yeah, I think just a couple of comments on that, Tom.  I think that, you know, maybe the folks that are on the line know that we released the organization's kind of second strategic plan, which is basically a six year plan that runs through 2018 and one of the key parts of that plan for USA Ultimate separate from the foundation was kind of competing at the highest level, and frankly winning as much as we can in international competition as the USA.  You know, USA Ultimate is the national governing body for ultimate in the U.S., so we really have a responsibility to those athletes, and frankly, I think, to the community to do that.  

I've been involved in ultimate for 20 years and I think that there's been a lot of talk as national teams that have gone from being less conventional, frankly, and less known, to being something that everyone sees on social media and mass media. So, there's a point 20 years ago where basically nobody really cared or knew about this. This point, I think we're getting to the point where its quite visible. But there's been an undertone of a question in the community whether or not the general population of ultimate players should basically cross-subsidize the national team. I have some personal opinions about that, but at the end of the day we're really sensitive about that, and it's another great reason why I think the formation of the foundation is helpful, because we're not taking in that case as much, or any member dues and redistributing it to national team members, coaches, trainers, etc. We're literally taking the donations of philanthropic folks who either are or are not involved in ultimate, but just love the idea, and giving that to those teams.

So I think it's the right thing to do from that perspective and I also just wanted to say that you know I've heard questions about: "Why do we really need to be internationally competitive within the sport of ultimate? Why does it have to look like other sports", and I think it makes sense in this model of a national infrastructure when you have a bunch of kids out there playing, and we're aiming at having millions of kids playing ultimate as quickly as possible.  And the plain fact of the matter is, having role models both at the club level in the U.S., but especially over time at world competitions up to and potentially including Olympics, it's just a source of pride for the community and something to aim for for those kids.

So, I think as we've grown from a grassroots sport into something that's much bigger and has aspirations to really change the world with Spirit of the Game, the support of international teams is really key because it is something that give those young kids something to look up to and something to aim for.

   
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Nice. Thanks, Mike.  You talked about the strategic plan...

   
Tom Crawford  

Can I make one quick comment on one thing Mike said that I think is really important that we obviously hope to get to is that these teams do become a real inspiration for young athletes around the United States.  I can tell you that with other sports that are fortunate to already be in the Olympic program, after the Olympic Games there is a huge spike in kids signing up to go swimming, or getting into track and field, or pick your sport, and I think that that's the kid of visibility that we want to get for our international teams. As everybody knows, our World Games team was just the most popular team and the most popular sport at the World Games, so there's a lot of focus on our sport right now, and the potential for that is huge, and those national teams become a real source of inspiration and aspiration for the entire community. So, it's really important that we stay on top of that and stay the best in the world.

   
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Absolutely. Well, Mike, you touched on our strategic plan in that last comment.  We have a question in on Twitter from Andy Lovseth related to strategic planning, and I was hoping you could chime in first about it. His question is:

   
 
   
Payne Mike  

Yeah, that's an awesome question. I think the answer is, yes, and its really a question of do we actually write those down and spend a lot of time on them. You know, as we put together the, what is basically a six year strategic plan, we did think out farther. I remember that we were thinking out 10 years into the 2020s thinking, what do we have to get done in the next five to make that happen? There are certain areas of our business where it makes sense to think that far out, but I think that the potential of the Pan-Am Games and be in the Olympic Games that far where there's a tangible goal in the 10-20 year time frame. I think there are some other areas like the growth of youth ultimate where it's a little less tangible. I think that any goal that we set for 10 years, it's just as easy to set a goal, a numerical goal for growth, for six years. So I think, Andy, that's a really good question and at the end of the day the answer is that we do consider that, but its tough to systematically do that across the board.

   
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Yeah, and if anyone else has any questions, use the #ultimatenation.  We're monitoring it during the show, we're happy to answer as many good questions as we get. In absence of any other questions, let's move onto another one of the topics that we brought up in Tom's Letter to the Members, and it's one that many of you have talked about online. I've seen conversations about it - moving the club season into the summer.  Tom, did you want to start in with that?

   
Tom Crawford  

I can just briefly, and then I think Gwen and Mike will have some great perspective on this as well. I think the #1 priority and goal is to have an opportunity to have our national championships in major cities, including northern cities around the United States, and we can't do that when we have it in October.

So, we're going to gradually shift over the next two year into more of a summer season so that when we have our national championships we can have it in Seattle, or we can have it in Boston, and we can have it Chicago, or cities where there's a lot of people that want to come out and watch the national championships but, the other thing we've done with our events, just quickly, is we really think of them know as events that make an impact on the community, and I'll use Dallas as an example last year. We just had a conversation with them leading into this year's national championships, and this was like so inspiring to us, and almost goosebumpy when we heard it, that after the national championships in Dallas, we had - we don't just have the tournament now - we have all kinds of things going on around it, like Learn to Play clinics and field trips for kids to come out watch from schools. They just finished telling us that their youth program has boomed out of control since we had the national championships there. So, in addition to being able to go into the big cities where we have a lot of people that are already playing, it's the idea of legacy.

Every time we have a big major event, whether it's the national championships, or the U.S. Open, or the college championships, there's always a legacy goal where we leave behind programs and growth for those local affiliates and organizations to take advantage of, and as we move it around into all the different cities, we can really start to have an impact in a much more powerful way than we have in the past. So, I'll stop there and see if, maybe starting with Gwen, if she wants to add to that then maybe we go to go Mike if that makes sense.

   
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That sounds great.

   
Gwen Ambler  

Great. Yeah, one thing that I want to say from this about moving into the summer is I think that there's understandably some trepidation from other club players and the members themselves about what that looks like or how that would happen, and I think Tom mentioned that you know it would be sort of over the next two years, kind of a roll-out. I would definitely want to remind the membership that we would be doing this carefully and with a lot of thought as far as timing and conflicts with WFDF, we've definitely been in close touch with WFDF as far as trying to mitigate conflicts with worlds and club events during the summer. And that there's going to be a lot of care about working out these details of how the season actually looks for players themselves and for the club teams that are competing because obviously it would be a big shift to be moving the club championships earlier in the year; however, I think that the possibilities for what we can get out of that are really tremendous.

I know that ESPN, who USA Ultimate has been partners with now for the second year in a row, has definitely expressed more interest in showing ultimate and being able to market that earlier in the year when ultimate is not competing with things like football both at the pro level and college level. There's a lot of opportunity to really showcase ultimate during the summer months when there's not as much on the sports landscape at those times. But I think what would be really great, in conjunction with our strategic plan's #1 goal is increasing visibility and exposure of ultimate which I believe ...

   
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Gwen we lost you for a bit, about 10 seconds.

   
Gwen Ambler  

Oh, okay.  Well, I was just mentioning how the #1 strategy in our current strategic plan is increasing the visibility and exposure of ultimate, and the club championships truly are the highest level of play at a tournament in the world at this point, and being able to really showcase those athletes and teams that have worked so hard to be able to play at such a high level is going to be helped by moving that a little earlier in the summer, not just for the communities that we're able to host the tournament in, but also with potential for more media exposure and visibility of those events, which I think is really going to help drive growth I think, and some of that idea of legitimacy that so many players continually come back to for a goal for the sport.

   
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Mike, Gwen just talked about some of the positive aspects of the timing of moving the sport, sorry, the club season into the summer in terms of visibility. I've also seen some other questions and comments about the impact on college teams. As a former college coach, do have any thoughts on how that might impact the club season for college teams?

   
Payne Mike  

Matthew, just to clarify, you are asking about the movement of the club season into the summer?

   
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Correct.

   
Payne Mike  

Yeah, I think, I'll be honest as a former college coach and now, most people know I also coach Revolver, so I stay close to the college scene and see the transition that happens in the club.  It'll actually create some conflicts, but I think that those are going to be okay. The conflicts are that the tryouts for club teams will end up happening a little bit earlier, so they may occur during the college season, and I think, at least on Revolver, we're doing what we think is the right thing which is having separate tryouts for college people and then making final decisions about teams after the college season is over. But I think there's a nice aspect for college players who are also looking to play club, because it kind of effectively shortens their season, and as a former player that played both kind of elite college and elite club, it was a really long year, and I think it actually leads to more injuries than we would like amongst those players in their late teens / early twenties. So by moving it up a little bit it actually shortens the overall amount of time that those players are playing which reduces the chance of injury. So, I think that's a big deal. And then of course, all the visibility stuff that I assume Gwen mentioned, at the end of the day, it's just a more visible, viewable sport when we have more programming during the summer, especially on national media outlets like ESPN.

   
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Thanks, Mike.

   
Tom Crawford  

Hey, can I?  So, I just, sorry this is a little bit random, but ...

   
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That's fine.

   
Tom Crawford  

I would love for Gwen to talk about something.  This is going to tie back into the - what I'd love to do is try to tie together all of the things that we've been talking about back to national infrastructure, foundation, because part of the national infrastructure vision - if you read the magazine you'll find the piece that sort of lays this out both graphically and describes it. The goal is, to tie all of this together very strategically, so that the club teams are integrally involved in the local community in a really powerful way, and the local community, the local structure that we create is really supporting those national teams, those really top club teams.  And those club teams are supporting the local organization and back and forth.  I don't think any team in the country does that better right now that Riot.  If Gwen doesn't mind, I think it would be really interesting for people to hear how Riot has tied into that local community and supports the local community in really cool ways, particularly a lot of girls' programs and playing opportunities, but the local community helps Riot.  Gwen, would you mind touching on that, because I think that's a big part of the vision for that national infrastructure.

   
Gwen Ambler  

Yeah. So my other hat is as one of the captains of Seattle Riot, and yeah, from when I first joined the team, it's been really impressive, just the culture on the team. There is a certain ethos of really giving back and investing in our local community. And at this point, I think more than half the team is involved in coaching youth ultimate here in Seattle. So players coach high school teams, they coach middle school teams; one of my teammates organizes an elementary school league. And the Riot players run a bunch of clinics and that is sort of, it's part of, those are things that our team as a whole is just sort of on our schedule.

Our calendar is full of coaching things that we actually get a lot of out of. I think we've discovered how beneficial it is for us as players actually to be involved in coaching, in terms of being able to teach concepts, you actually internalize them a lot better. But the benefits for our team, as far as just building the youth program, have been tremendous. I can't even count the number of players who've actually made Riot that came up through the Seattle youth scene and have been stars for our team and that are, their whole childhood looked up to Riot and had that goal to play for us, and now do, and make a huge impact. But additionally, the team has been really fortunate to have a lot of financial support from the community as a result as a lot of this investment and visibility that we have here in Seattle. We've been able to make, actually thousands of dollars each year selling gear that kids love to be able to wear a Riot logo on their shorts and we've been able to have clinics that people really value as far as coming out to and paying and recognizing that they are supporting the team and the sport that they love but also knowing that they're getting a lot back from that as well. And all of this has been also facilitated by DiscNW, which is our local organizing association, and I think that's part of the goal that we're, the model I guess that we're trying to support with our league affiliate model in various places is really having a nice tie-in between club-level, club teams, college teams, youth teams, through the local organizing committee, local organizing organization, rather. And DiscNW has been integral in linking a lot of those things and providing access for those opportunities that I think is a great opportunity for other places to aspire to and to model after. And I actually think it's in DiscNW's benefit as well to be partnering with other places and really learning from them as well, so that we can, as a whole community nationwide of ultimate players, are able to expand on that and these lessons learned. 

   
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Hey, Gwen this is Matthew. We have a question specific, that you can specifically answer. It comes from Party Kang, who asks...

   
 
   
Gwen Ambler  

Yeah, actually it's an interesting question because in Seattle, the boys' season and the girls' season are actually different. So the boys' season here in Seattle is actually in the fall, and then the girls' season is in the spring. And with Westerns and States being both in the spring, for both divisions, a number of the boys' teams, or I think they will sort of come together for Westerns, sort of after their season is over. But those seasons are split, which in some ways is really nice for a coaching pool, because some of the same people are able to coach boys' teams during one season and then girls' teams in another, the next season as well. 

   
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Thank you.

   
Tom Crawford  

Hey, can I follow up, just on. So anyway, Gwen thanks for sharing the background on Riot's participation. I think that is basically our vision. Imagine if in all of the cities around the United States, on all of the states, we have club teams that are really involved in the local affiliates and affiliates that are supporting those club teams, both financially and in other ways that we're hearing stories about. And when you picture that long term, it really creates an exciting future for the sport of ultimate because everybody is working together from youth all the way to the highest levels, at the local level, which gives us that scalability that has been a big challenge for us so far. And it's just really exciting to picture that happening in state after state, city after city, around the country. So very exciting, and we really appreciate you sharing that.

We're going to keep using that story as a model if you guys don't mind out there because we think a lot of people can learn from that. And the other thing that Gwen mentioned that I just wanted to circle back on - when she was talking about the shift of the season, and Mike as well, you know, we have a really busy schedule ahead when you start to think of all the international events that we are plugging our top athletes and teams into. And we work very, very closely with WFDF every year on the scheduling of international events.

The calendar of ultimate is going to continue to get unbelievably crowded throughout the seasons, if you will, and that opportunity to play internationally is very important to a lot of our athletes and players. And so that calendar is just going to continue to get full of more international events. We have some coming up that we're just learning about that are going to get plugged into the calendar, so I think everybody's going to have to be ready to see some flexibility in scheduling and timing of things as we move forward, in order for our national schedule and that international schedule to fit together as well as it's going to have to. So I just wanted to follow up on that.

   
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That's fine. So we have about five or six more minutes, then we're going to have to call it. But, feel free to still tweet in questions. We're going to get to as many as we can. We have a follow up question about the club season move from Glenn Poole, who asks...

   
 

Sorry I joined in the middle of the discussion about moving the club season earlier in the summer, but is there more detail about target dates? A timeline for the shift? Thanks!

   
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Any of you can speak to that, if you'd like to. 

   
Tom Crawford  

I think it's that it's going to happen within two years, as we've described in the magazine. And at this point, what we're doing is taking a lot of input from some of the teams and athletes through the councils that we've set up, so that, as Gwen described, so that we do this really carefully and thoughtfully while we simultaneously talk to WFDF about the international schedule and coordinating and integrating with that. So no more specific details at this point, other than that's the time table. 

   
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Okay. And we have another question. This is from Adam Goff, and it's going back to the national infrastructure topic. He asks...

   
 

What are the things that USA Ultimate plans to do/can do to motivate the type of relationship that is being discussed?

   
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Mike do you want to chime in on that?

   
Payne Mike  

Yeah, I can talk a little bit about that. I'm sure Gwen and Tom both have opinions as well. But at the end of the day, the affiliate model that we're rolling out and is increasingly starting to take hold is the key part of that. And in general, of course the idea there is that we're going to try and help some of the smaller metropolitan area organizations grow up a little bit.

You know the case with Seattle and DiscNW of course is a situation where they have a league structure. They are a league that is really well resourced and really well run, and they have technology tools available to them, but that's not the case for almost every other major metropolitan area in the country, with the exception of a couple. And so when I talk to people about our affiliate program and building those local infrastructures like they have in Seattle, it's really about helping all the other metropolitan areas get to where Seattle is. And we'll be doing that by helping them with technology, by helping them with things like formats, and then this focus on youth and player development is a really key part of that.

With the benefit of being a national organization and also having done this for a long time, there is a lot of content that USA Ultimate can provide to coaches and to local league and association leaders on, not only the simple stuff like, how do you run a practice for a kid, but how do you set up youth competition, how do you think about development of youth athletes into Team USA at the highest level, but also have a really meaningful track for a young person that's never going to be on Team USA but wants to spend a lifetime in the sport. So those are very different things, the type of stuff that USA Ultimate has a lot of experience with and literally can just hand to a local administrator and help them very quickly head toward an infrastructure like Seattle's. 

   
Tom Crawford  

Yeah, I could expand on that a little, in answer to Adam's question. To be a little bit more specific. So right now Adam, with our affiliate program, we provide very specific set of resources and funding. We have a grant program that is directly, only available to affiliates, so we literally give them money to help them achieve programs. We also provide a lot of help so that they can become a legal 501(c)3 entity, so that they can do some of their own fundraising. We help them with fundraising ideas. We also provide D&O insurance. For those that know, that's directors and officers insurance. That is important when you're going to form a 501(c)3. And we also provide direct programs so that once you become an affiliate, we through the agreement that we form, we actually run coaching programs, observer programs, Learn to Play programs, through that affiliate, so it's a combination of funding and programming and sort of legal infrastructure support. In addition, I'm not sure if Adam was on at the beginning of the call, the other area that we're very excited about long term is that our new USA Ultimate Foundation will be raising additional funds outside of the operating budget and some of those funds will definitely be for supporting the affiliates and the local structure, so that there will be even more funding available to help those groups. 

   
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Thanks, Tom. Thanks, Mike. I think we're going to call it. I appreciate you all joining us today. This is an exciting time for the sport. You all have any closing thoughts, parting thoughts that you want to say to the ultimate community?

   
Tom Crawford  

Not sure if I mentioned the magazine.

   
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Could you hand that to me?

   
Tom Crawford  

But I'd love to mention it. So here's the magazine, and it really is phenomenal. And we'd love everybody to go read it, particularly the story that we've been talking about is really informative and important. We really do want to be good communicators and get all of this information out there. So please pick it up, one because there is a lot of good information; two because it's really fun to read. It's really an enjoyable periodical. So please grab it.

   
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And the Aceball feature, the cover story, is a really interesting story about an alternate beginning of our sport, back in Kenyon College in the 40s. 

   
Tom Crawford  

Gwen and Mike might...

   
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Gwen and Mike, do you have any closing thoughts?

   
Gwen Ambler  

I would just want to say that I appreciate you guys having this and having this forum for some of the USA Ultimate leadership to really get out there and talk to the membership. And would also just like to encourage members who are listening to this to please contact your, the board members, contact representatives of USA Ultimate if you have more questions. This shouldn't be a conversation that just ends today. So please, there is an open door for feedback and comments and questions, and we love hearing from the membership. Thanks.

   
USAUltimateLogo 200x200  

Absolutely. Thanks, Gwen, and I'm sure we'll do this again sometime soon. Mike, do you have any parting thoughts?

   
Payne Mike  

Yeah, I guess the only thing that I was thinking in parting is just we talked about a lot of things going on with the sport and with USA Ultimate, and they are kind of big, big changes at the level of moving things around in the season and forming a Foundation. These are big, strategic moves that, as I work with Tom and Gwen on a lot of this stuff, we've been interacting with organizations like ESPN and the U.S. Olympic Committee and then a lot of people who are interested in helping to raise funds for ultimate and underlying theme in all this, as I've thought back over the last year, is really youth ultimate. So for those that are listening and also that watch this after the fact, I think, we can't forget in the midst of all the progress of the sport, the fact that at the core of all this is the real excitement that ultimate is a great sport and that the youth are increasingly being exposed to it. So I would encourage everybody to think about, no matter what you do in the ultimate community, think about how you can get involved in youth ultimate and help push that forward because it raises all boats. It brings more players to every other division. It brings viewership to television. The parents and eventually those youth players are going to be the ones that are donating back to the sport. So in the context of all this, I'm really excited about the kids. 

   
USAUltimateLogo 200x200  

That's awesome. Well, Mike and Gwen, thank you for taking the time. I appreciate everyone who tuned in and sent in questions. We'll have another show in a few weeks. We're kind of approaching our busy season, but we'll keep you posted when we have the next topic. But if you have any topic ideas or people you want to see on the show, send it to #ultimatenation on Twitter. And that's a wrap, guys. Thanks!

   
Tom Crawford  

Thanks, Matthew!


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