The UKU Conference took place at the National Tennis Centre on Sat 10th Jan
	Big thanks to Jeff Jackson, Flo Pfender and Matt Hims for their presentations, and Will Parker for the report
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Ultimate players in a room

There aren’t many occasions where you can interact with a group of ultimate players when there isn’t a disc, beer or airport lounge in the vicinity. This weekend was the UKU conference, which did give such an opportunity. Held in the LTA’s National Tennis Centre, in South West London, this was a real insight into the amount of work national governing bodies have to do to ensure a sustainable future of the sports they represent. Not only did the UKU have the chance to go through its successes and achievements of past years but a look around the fantastic tennis facilities showed the rows and rows of desks in a very modern office environment that LTA needs to run its organisation.

Discussions at the NTC

However, of all the things that were on display at the conference it was encouraging and exciting to see how much enthusiasm and dedication there is to Ultimate in our country. Nearly 30 attendees had travelled the length and breadth of the country coming from Devon and Southampton, Manchester and the Wirral thought to St Andrews, with a very healthy dose of Londoners.

And so what do Ultimate players do best when they are together without a disc? Well, they talk about Ultimate of course. It’s also true that they find time to heckle and make rubbish gags, which is good because the conference had some of that too.

Cash and membership
Attendees were treated to some fascinating talks. Jaimie Cross opened with a summary of the UKU’s achievements since 2006. Membership has increased by around 30% to around 2000. However, estimates of the number of people playing ultimate without being members of UKU are around 10,000 hinting at the explosion of growth of Ultimate that is currently occurring in schools and places such as the London leagues. Jaimie also highlighted how UK Ultimate has been able to boost its spending, having taken money by running tournaments and delivering training courses to PE teachers across the country, mostly with thanks to the efforts of Si Hill and Matt Smith. There was also an update on the UKU's structure and how it promotes sustainability, with its various sub committees, and the success of getting Ultimate recognised as a real sport in this country.

Following on, and getting more practical, Jeff Jackson, a personal trainer and long serving ultimate player, then described the Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) research that he has been studying. This gave a fascinating insight into the optimum times to perform different types of training and learning (eg strength, speed, nervous system development) in order to develop into the best possible Ultimate athlete.

Cutting the Rules, WFDF vs UPA
The afternoon saw Flo Pfender, member of the WFDF and UPA rules committees, step up and explain the philosophy of the WFDF rules and the UPA rules. The WFDF have made it a specific goal to make their rule-set as simple as possible. This means the culture of self-refereeing is easier to strengthen, as there is really no reason why everybody should not know the rules. Flo brought a fantastic dimension to the conference, with his experience of European and North American Ultimate and he was able to add real background and depth to discussions that are often influenced by internet here-say.
Matt Hims

Matt “Bob” Hims then threw in an interesting talk about cutting tactics based on his experiences playing for DoG in Boston. This allowed attendees to think a little about the styles of play that the UK, the US and the continent have. Again it was good to learn about real experiences across the pond.

Workshop
It wouldn’t be a conference without a workshop, and this session allowed the enthusiasm of the attendees to be funnelled into useful discussions on how to preserve the spirit of the game, what UKU should concentrate on in the future, how to open up the calendar for more small tournaments and how to improve content for non-players. The results of these discussions give UKU staff and volunteers an idea of what it’s membership wants and helps to shape the future of the sport in this country.

It was an interesting and thought provoking day and this conference showed that UK Ultimate is in the exciting position of being well run, with strategic plans in place and a bubbling pot of junior development that will hopefully see healthy growth in quality and quantity of players and tournaments in the future. It is a very exciting time to be part of and to be able to influence UK Ultimate.

Conclusion

The day finished with an outline of the work done recently to review the goals and purpose of the UKU.  This focused on the requirements of different types of ultimate participant (beginner, elite player, PE teacher, etc) - which were then consolidated to help create an updated "mission" for the UKU and form a set of priorities for the coming 2-3 years: player growth, more local competitions, the coaching scheme, better support for elite players, lead the debate around Spirit of the Game, participant safety and securing a sustainable staff and volunteer organisation.  It is planned that this material will be presented again over the coming months.

Report by Will Parker