In case you weren't aware of this already, through UK Coaching, you can access the online course ‘Mental Health Awareness for Sport & Physical Activity’ – usually £18 – for free!

All you need to do is head to ukcoaching.org where you will be able to purchase the course for free.

We would like to form a small advisory group to help us interpret government guidance and check the information we provide to members about returning to disc-based activities, and at some point, to Ultimate.  

Clearly, people working in medical roles are extremely busy right now, so the idea is to create something that would not take up much of your time - rather just an opportunity to review and guide UKU plans or announcements before they are finalised.  If you would like, and have time, to share your first-hand knowledge and experience of what is happening on-the-ground to inform how we, as a community, deal with the next steps, please complete this short online form.

We’re hoping to have a team with a variety of medical roles and from around the UK.

This week, the UK Government is making changes to guidance relating to exercise and outdoor activity.  Of course these changes do not permit team sports like Ultimate, and there is no indication about how or when that might be possible.  

You will be aware that there are differences between the four home nations.  Our understanding is that in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the recent changes relate only to being allowed to spend more time doing exercise.  In England there are some additional changes, and there is a useful summary on the Sport England website here: https://www.sportengland.org/how-we-can-help/coronavirus.

In May we are continuing our series of free, weekly Coach Forums.  These are informal discussion groups led by Ultimate folk who've spent some time thinking about specific areas of the sport and are happy to share their ideas. Please come ready to get involved in discussion, ask questions and learn from each other.

We've added a new session on Monday 11th May at 7:30pm:

[Coach Forum] Less is More with Peter Wright and Si Hill

UKU Members will be given priority to sign up first, with any remaining tickets opened to others a few days before the event. Don’t forget to let us know if you can no longer attend so we can open up your spot for someone else.

On 27th April, the European Ultimate Federation announced that European Ultimate Championship Regionals (EUCRs) would not happen in 2020, but that they are making plans for a larger Finals event (xEUCF) if it is possible.

In the UK, we combine the West region EUCR with UKU Nationals.  For now, UKU Regionals and UKU Nationals are still in the calendar as per our original plan.  If it is possible to run those events, we will go ahead, but Nationals 2020 will not be a qualification event to EUCF.

The UKU Competitions Committee is reviewing this change to EUCS and will confirm how the UK bids to xEUCF will be allocated teams in due course. 

We have a small group of teachers and coaches looking at the need for new resources to help teachers deliver PE and sports competitions when schools reopen for everyone.  The idea is to share simple information about how frisbees can be used in activities, games and competitions that meet constraints that are likely to affect school sports in the coming year.  

We are hoping to find one or more volunteers who have the skills and experience to help with the graphic design and editing aspects of this project.  If you think you could help, please get in touch.

For the competition part, which will probably include teams competing and scoring remotely from each other, we would ideally build some smart-looking, slick scoring-spreadsheets.  If you feel you could volunteer to help with that part, please let us know.

Finally, if you have brilliant ideas for frisbee games you believe would fit the brief, then of course we’d love to hear about them too.  Please feel free to send them over.

If you are available to help, please get in touch: admin@ukultimate.com.

We’re extremely grateful to all of our event partners who have been so supportive throughout the last few weeks and we wanted to send a quick shout-out to to some of them below.  Our venues, our medical support teams and VC Lookfly were all very directly affected when we had to cancel our events.  We also wanted to pass on messages we received from Tokay and the Youth Sport Trust.

Due to popular demand, we're extending the free weekly coaching forums into May.  These are informal discussion groups led by Ultimate folk who've spent some time thinking about specific areas of the game and are happy to share their ideas.