Scobel Wiggins Photography

The Development: "Seattle Youth Ultimate began with two middle school teams in the spring of 1992, grew rapidly to a multi team league the next year and a high school league just a couple of years later. By the late 90's dozens of teams were playing in multiple divisions and teams were coming from north and south to play in the annual Spring Reign tournament. All of this happened under the guidance of a handful of youth organizers, working in their spare time. A few years back, those organizers decided to turn much of the operation of Youth Ultimate over to DiscNW in the hopes of growing the sport and making organizing easier." (As told to the author of this article by one of the founders).

The Present Situation: Presently Seattle has year round Ultimate opportunities for youth. MoHo is a training program that runs pretty much year round when coaches can be found. Fall has a coed high school hat league and a Seattle Public Schools sponsored middle school league. Spring has a middle school league, an elementary school league, a high school coed league, a high school single gender league, coed Spring Reign tournament for elementary/middle school/high school teams, and a single gender state championship. Summer has YCC teams for single gender and coed as well as the Seattle Youth Ultimate Camps.

The Highlights: If you ask any of the long time organizers of Youth Ultimate in Seattle the same answer would emerge about the highlights. They would mention how great of an activity it is for children and how satisfying it is to watch the kids playing and enjoying themselves. They would also mention that it sure is great to see the considerable success those players have had on the field winning championships and how great it was to see so many kids being able to walk into their college on the first day and meet so many people so quickly through Ultimate. But the main highlight for the organizers would be seeing so many of the former youth players giving back to the sport as coaches and organizers.

The Future: In Seattle there is a conversation going on right now about the future of Youth Ultimate and whether or not being combined with DiscNW and the adult leagues is the best future course of action or if it actually limits the growth of youth. Ideally there will be a compromise that still keeps youth under the DiscNW umbrella but also allows for youth to have separate funds, their own board, field priority, and a focus on making sure that every child in Seattle has the chance to say "yes" to playing Ultimate.

Seattle as it relates to the UPA is very much up in the air. Frankly, Seattle does not need the UPA when it comes to running high school Ultimate in the state and region, and as Seattle grows it doesn't make sense to send so much money to the UPA for high school teams. There is a natural tipping point for all Youth Ultimate organizations when it becomes obvious that the UPA is not needed. This is a discussion that has been going on in Seattle from day one and a fair number of youth organizers in Seattle lost a lot of faith in the UPA due to both States and Westerns being subpar organizationally. Again there hopefully will be some compromise probably along the lines of having UPA sanctioned leagues built around the MOHO training program that feeds into YCC and provides the UPA with a fair income out of Seattle youth. The best solution would be for the UPA to change their youth membership model to affiliation based model for the bigger organizations that would only charge $1-$2 per youth member but would also require all youth participants to be members. This idea has been floating around for the past couple of years, so it is nothing new.

Closing Thoughts: "Youth First" and "Youth Only" Ultimate organizations are on the horizon. As more and more youth players come in from other sports and bring with them parents and experienced organizers, the question will be raised again and again from Florida to Washington, California to Maine: "Why exactly do we need to be in the same organizations with college and adult Ultimate?" The answer will be: "Well, we don't need those organizations. In fact we are probably better off without them." And then Youth Ultimate will grow at an unprecedented rate. Seattle, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Eugene, Boston, and other bastions of youth will have youth executive directors who will form a federation to deal with regional and national issues and to support each other. Other areas will join in as they get up to speed. It worked for youth soccer and it will work for Youth Ultimate.

Mike Mullen is a former head coach at the Northwest School, one of the flagship High School Ultimate programs in the nation. Mike continues to be a passionate organizer for Youth Ultimate.