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The following post has been written by VC's CEO Adriana Withers. I recently saw a clip of Billie Jean King being interviewed by Seth Meyers talking about the movie Battle of the Sexes, which tells the story of the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. When asked about the match, King says it was all about social change and recalls being 12 years old at a tennis club surrounded by everything white - including all the players. She asked herself, "Where's everybody else?" I couldn't agree more with Billie Jean King in this interview. This idea of sport, one of the most joyous and potentially empowering activities, being passively (and actively) exclusive to many people is the drive behind all of VC's equity efforts. The VC team is looking forward to working more on projects like Discs for Development with Discraft and the Face of Ultimate campaign with the World Flying Disc Federation. The goals are to get more discs out to as many development programs around the world and to show all potential players that they can be, and are, the face of ultimate. As members of the ultimate community, we need to be thinking, talking about and working on supporting the inclusion of all in our sport. Sport does make a difference in people's lives - through health, community and values. Thank you to all that are making a change with their efforts in this area - please be in touch; we're here to help.   "It's all about social change. Trying to fight for equality and freedom for everyone." - Billie Jean King *** VC & WFDF Partnership: The Face of Ultimate & VC Ultimate Company Values Statement The World Flying Disc Federation is the international governing body for flying disc sports, with responsibility for sanctioning world championship events, establishing uniform rules, setting of standards for and recording of world records. VC is the Official Apparel Partner of WFDF. As our sport matures past the stage of “what is ultimate” around the world, thanks in large part to the amazing accomplishment of WFDF securing recognition from the International Olympic Committee, we are now faced with the question of “who is ultimate”? Ultimate can be everyone, and it’s important that the international governing body promotes that in every way it can. VC wants to be your partner in this mission. To us, this includes showcasing both male and female players from around the world, of all ethnic and religious backgrounds, competing and playing our sport respectfully against one another. To us, this embraces a commitment to having all advertising materials representing players from all continents equally. To us, this means proactively ensuring that on-and-off-field footage from events includes a diverse make up of players and is equitably split between the divisions. To us, this means that no person around the world should think that he or she doesn’t look like an ultimate player. To us, this is the embodiment of Spirt of the Game and it’s what makes our sport so uniquely special and important to grow throughout the world.​

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.

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!    

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.