Queensland Ultimate Annual Report 2014 – 2015

Queensland Ultimate Disc Association Inc. Office 2.02, Sports House 150 Caxton Street Milton QLD 4064 web qldultimate.com.au Australia email info@quda.org ABN 31 120 586 575

Queensland had a strong 2014, pushing past 1000 active members for the first time. The State Government continued its commitment to our sport by renewing Queensland Ultimate's funding for a further three years. This will provide a platform that will see results through continued work in schools and regional centres, as well as growth in the major centres of Brisbane and Townsville. We are also very excited that Queensland Ultimate has moved into the Milton Sports House. Thanks must go to the Department as well as Taekwondo Queensland for their support and who have allowed us to co-share an office. These are exciting times for our organisation, which will be looking to continue building our capacity in 2015. Logo on our office door in the Milton Sports House:

Photo credit: Mat Ryan This was the first Regionals for me that Slamtown wasn’t in attendance for. Despite this there were still five Opens teams and two Women’s teams in attendance which meant the competition was wrapped up in one day. Firestorm and Cherry Bomb took out the honours of their divisions. Day two saw a skills clinic put on by John McNaughton and Dom Simpson who had recently attended the Rise Up coaching clinic earlier in the year. Division II Nationals was hosted in Adelaide and once again, Townsville went down to fly the flag for Queensland. The team had a solid first day but encountered a number of challenges going behind early in a must win game against Duff Punk on Sunday. Duff went on to be the runners up in the grand final with Townsville finishing 5th. The Australian Ultimate Championships 2014 were held in Sydney and Queensland was represented by three teams, Black Betty (Women), Cherry Bomb (Women) and Firestorm (Open). It was a tough tournament for all involved with Cherry Bomb taking 13th, Black Betty 10th and Firestorm finishing 8th. Halibut 18 (finally legal!) hit the 200 player mark despite being a World Clubs year, a fantastic follow up from last year, and a tribute to Sam Peters and Myall Hingee as returning Tournament Directors. Not even a day of soaking rain on Saturday could dampen spirits. October saw the unofficial President handover from John McNaughton to Chris Ende. It was definitely a slow transition as I was focused on delivering the Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships. We had an Operational Planning day in November to outline our spending for 2015

Queensland Ultimate Disc Association Inc. Office 2.02, Sports House 150 Caxton Street Milton QLD 4064 web qldultimate.com.au Australia email info@quda.org ABN 31 120 586 575

and to hopefully be in a position to bring a second employee to help with administration matters. Unfortunately since the completion of the audit, I don’t believe that Queensland Ultimate is in a position to take this next step. Not just yet anyway. After two years of planning, the Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships (AMUC) travelled for the first time to a regional Queensland city, Townsville. The weather was amazing, the games were intense, and there was an abundance of food with homemade cupcakes at the social gathering and burritos at the grand final, which ended on universe point! Well done to Cron to edge out Ellipsis for the title and thank you to both for providing such an entertaining final that has been somewhat missing in recent years. Monstars took third making them the most successful Queensland Mixed team since 2007. A special thank you needs to go to the Townsville City Council for their help in the lead up to the tournament and for making funding available to the event that ensured it ran to a high calibre. The end of 2014 saw the AFDA announce a policy review of all policies. This was not an easy undertaking (24 policies) and certainly raised the question of why the AFDA has a policy review policy if it isn’t going to use it. Nevertheless John and I took on the challenge of reviewing them all. We incorporated the feedback of the committee as well as our members that felt strongly about the changes to particular policies. Some of these changes have been implemented, many we’re still waiting to see what AFDA does. 2015 saw AFDA wasting no time in amending the Division II policy excluding any Division I player from competing and mandating that all teams had to qualify through Regionals. Unfortunately this would inflict a number of additional barriers for Regional teams wanting to compete at Division II Australian Ultimate Championships. We identified the issues: the policy was not conducive to growing Ultimate in Queensland; Queensland’s geographical spread of its player base is unique compared to any of the other States; it placed a substantial financial burden on non-Brisbane based teams, and; the skill level of non-Brisbane based players participating at a Brisbane qualifying tournament meant they weren’t having an enjoyable experience or improving their skill sets. With the issues identified I had a one on one meeting with my various directors, we brainstormed solutions, weighed up the pros and cons of each suggestion, weighted each proposal against our strategic plan, consulted with the President of Townsville Ultimate, the President of Cairns Ultimate and the CEO of AFDA; and came out with a new policy which I presented to the Queensland Ultimate Board. This policy has allowed a record number of participants to attend a regional qualifier, a record number of teams being sent to Division II Australian Ultimate Championships, and player development across Brisbane, Townsville and Cairns culminating with Townsville bringing home the shield! Shortly after brining in the new policy Queensland Ultimate sent Samantha Peters and Mat Ryan to Cairns to conduct a Level 1 Coaching Course, provide advice and assistance with club development (particularly governance), helped out with O’Week recruitment and ran a skills clinic. It’s wonderful to see the development of Cairns and their attendance at Division II Nationals and Australia Beach Ultimate Championships. Toowoomba will be host to the Northern University Games and in the lead up the University of

Queensland Ultimate Disc Association Inc. Office 2.02, Sports House 150 Caxton Street Milton QLD 4064 web qldultimate.com.au Australia email info@quda.org ABN 31 120 586 575

Southern Queensland requested some coaches from Queensland Ultimate to help establish a league between their residential colleges and to help with establishing two teams that will represent USQ this year! Hopefully this is the first step to establishing Toowoomba as a new playing centre in the South East. Speaking of new, Queensland Ultimate has a new website which is based off the Ultimate Central platform. A massive thank you needs to be directed towards Tyson Buhagiar for his countless hours behind this website, the Townsville site, the AMUC site and the progressing sites for Cairns and Brisbane. AFDA adopted Ultimate Central four weeks before AMUC as their platform of choice so it makes sense for Queensland to follow suit and to provide a common front for our sport. This provided a great opportunity for Queensland Ultimate to rebrand and make new discs which can be purchased through the shop! From a National Championship standpoint, Queensland has been the centre of attention this year! Firstly Queensland sent four teams (Extinction, Mammoth, Townsville and Troppo) to Division II Nationals which is a massive step up from the one team that has been sent for the past three years. Perhaps then it is exceptionally fitting for that team to be this year’s champions and take the shield home with them! Well done to the TownsVillains! Division I was smaller in the sense of the number of teams that Queensland sent, however the results were impressive. Both Fuse and Mammoth had solid tournaments in Perth with Fuse taking 9th and Mammoth taking home the silver in a tough match against Melbourne Juggernaut which makes them the most successful Queensland Open team since 1993. In May Queensland hosted the Australian Beach Ultimate Championships on the Gold Coast. With 10 teams in attendance it was a successful and enjoyable weekend for all involved. Well done to Jack Lilwall for running the event and we hope to see ABUC return to the Gold Coast next year. This year the Australian Youth Ultimate Championships saw Queensland send its first representative team that didn’t need to rely on interstate pickups! The team comprised of fourteen boys including Daniel Macpherson and Isaac Page who have been chosen to represent Australia and take on New Zealand in September. We were also able to send Ava Mueller to play with the WA girl’s team and she was also selected to represent Australia. Congratulations! A special mention needs to go to Regina Kidd (Manager), Myles McCallum (Coach), Victoria Jeffs (Assistant Coach) and Mat Ryan (Administration) for getting this team through the campaign. Our youth team is a direct result from our previous work within our schools programs showing that these initiatives bear real fruit. In 2014, twenty one schools participated in the program and 847 youths had a disc in their hands. In 2015 our schools strategy changed to focus on delivering more sessions to the same school rather than trying to target as many schools as possible. This has resulted in eight schools being involved with the program and 275 youths playing Ultimate and there are another three new schools joining the program. One interesting difference this year though, we’ve received more enquired from girls schools and we’ve also coached more girls than boys this year! This is a first for us and hopefully means that we’ll have a boys and girls team next year at AYUC. Exciting times ahead!

Queensland Ultimate Disc Association Inc. Office 2.02, Sports House 150 Caxton Street Milton QLD 4064 web qldultimate.com.au Australia email info@quda.org ABN 31 120 586 575

It fills me with happiness to see so many Queensland teams having success at National Tournaments! It also excites me to hear that there are potentially four Brisbane teams wanting to go to Adelaide for AMUC and that there are also two teams from North Queensland wanting to attend. It further delights me to announce that I was successful in securing the North Queensland Zone a second allocation to attend AMUC. It pays to read AFDA’s policies! That brings us up to date, at QHat which is the largest it has ever been! So looking past today, Queensland Ultimate will be running a Development Camp in Townsville and subsidising non-Townsville based players. This is part of Queensland Ultimate’s strategy to raise the player skill of the North to help them prepare for AMUC and AUC. It is hoped that Division II will be held in Brisbane next year and that it will include a Women’s division (which is long overdue). It is then further hoped that this will provide a great lead in to Queensland hosting AUC in 2017! August heralds the 19th Halibut being run which I hear, even the dead won’t want to miss this one. September will see Queensland hosting the AFDA Conference. The committee will be putting a new strategic plan together to guide Queensland Ultimate for the next four years as well as writing a new operational plan for 2016. Our thanks go to all those who gave time, effort and action to growing Ultimate this year. In particular, great thanks to all competition directors, club managers, team captains and the QUDA management committee and staff, for taking on responsibility to make a difference, and doing exactly that. Like many causes, this sport would be nothing without your work. Appendix: Financial Report