As the USAU club season starts taking shape, we noticed teams making waves on social media. Our favorite team announcement was definitely that of a new open team from Dallas, Flash Flood. 

As noted by Ultiworld in the article The Team that 2020 Built: Dallas Flash Flood, the team announced themselves to the ulti-twitterverse with a simple tweet:

So simple, so good. We knew something great was coming. 

The Team | Dallas Flash Flood

As the team posted more roster announcements, it was a flood of folks we'd come to notice over the last year, often as part of racism and social justice discussions on social media. 

Working Together

We received an email from the team about partnering with VC for their uniforms, and it made our day. Here's our favorite part:

“On the field, our team's main goal this year is to make nationals but promoting racial equity is much more important to us than anything we do on the field. We are making this effort to benefit people of color in the ultimate community and outside of the community, especially in the Dallas area. We are doing this because we feel as though much of the ultimate community, especially at its highest levels of play, has failed at promoting racial equity and there are many examples of high-level teams harboring players with racist views just because they feel as though those players will help them win. We want to combat that way of doing things by creating a team whose number one priority isn't on the field but will still be competitive at the highest level.”

This is exactly the type of team VC wants to work with; we try to reserve sponsorships for teams who have a solid activism built into their values/team plans so we can truly help amplify their voices. 

We're so proud to see Flash Flood competing in VC this season! Let's get to know them better, and be inspired by their values.

Get to Know Flash Flood

Dallas Flash Flood is “an open club team focused on promoting racial equity while playing elite ultimate”. How did this team form? What’s the backstory?

The team "Dallas Flash Flood" has existed for several years, but just as a developmental open team in the Dallas area, nothing more. Colton [Green] is largely responsible for transforming it into what it is today. After the racism that Colton dealt with on his former college team at UTD, he wanted to put together a team that could play at a high level while also doing work to promote racial equity.

Bringing the two together shouldn't be that hard, but it is not as common as we would hope. The events and protests in 2020 surrounding George Floyd's death and general police brutality and the United States' system of policing showed some of the best and worst sides of people. We all firmly believe that teams and leagues can't claim to be in support of racial equity (as many did with black squares and social media posts in 2020) if they support, roster, and platform players with racist and harmful views.

How can a team or league claim to want racial equity when not all of its players want racial equity? How could a team even function if there are players on the roster who view their teammates of color as lesser humans? We want to play on a team where racial equity is at the forefront of what we talk about and we want our actions and our players' actions to reflect that.

How did you go about bringing together such an amazing group of players?

It started with Colton gathering a few of his close friends who are all passionate about racial equity and branched out from there. Each person contacted their friends and good players who we knew were serious about racial equity. Once we told people we were starting a team that had high expectations on the field and a focus on racial equity off of it, the dominoes really started falling.

It is easy to get behind a team where you know that everyone on the roster is fun, nice, and genuinely committed to racial equity.

If you had one main message to share with our community, what would it be?

This is an area that we can all grow in. Hundreds of years of racism ingrained in society will not be reversed in a day, a year, or even a decade. It is something that we all have to work to improve as much as we can each day for the rest of our lives.

We would say that every team can do things for social justice.

We have to do things on an individual level such as educating ourselves, but we also need to vote for leaders who are passionate about racial equity, recognize that the United States has an inherently racist society, and want to change the systems that are in place that allow that to continue to be the case.

That is the only way that we can ensure a better experience for people of color, both now and in the future.

Any advice for other teams who want to incorporate their values and the fight for social justice into their core?

We would say that every team can do things for social justice. Most teams spend a lot of time together - dedicating a chunk of that time and energy to things that are larger and more important than frisbee not only benefits the team by bringing them closer, it also helps individual players grow and improve as people.

We would also say that on teams that claim to support racial equity, there is no room for players with views that are harmful to people of color. This should be obvious but far too many teams put winning games over their racial equity statements. Racial equity is more important than winning frisbee games.

You can follow Flash Flood on Twitter at @FloodUltimate and check out the  team's official merchandise store - available now!