News

From Ultiworld: A new partnership will support Ultiworld's college women's coverage. We are pleased to announce that VC Ultimate has partnered with Ultiworld to help support a substantial amount of college women’s coverage in the 2016-2017 season. Featuring tournament reporting, video footage and highlights, coverage of D-I and D-III Nationals, and a monthly profile series, Ultiworld’s coverage of the college Women’s Division will be stronger than ever thanks to VC Ultimate’s generous support. Below is a Q&A with VC CEO Adriana Withers about the company’s decision to commit resources to enhanced media coverage of the Women’s Division. Why is this an important moment for women’s ultimate? There are a lot of important developments happening in ultimate right now. The recognition by the International Olympic Committee, the spreading awareness of the professional leagues, the quasi-regular inclusion of plays on SportsCenter Top 10 – these are all signs that ultimate has started to arrive in the mainstream, if it hasn’t already. As more eyes and interest land on ultimate, it is of paramount importance that our incumbent media outlets commit to presenting our sport at its best, which to VC means providing equal coverage of the women’s division, towards the goal of supporting gender equity. It’s important that female athletes have their stories told and are equally and respectfully covered. It’s important that, when new spectators and media consumers read about and watch ultimate, it is just as likely that they are seeing coverage of women’s competition. Further, it’s crucial that any girl thinking about getting involved in our sport can go on to a site like Ultiworld and find a female role model just as easily as a young boy could find a male one, or vice versa for that matter. VC is proud to support Ultiworld’s 2016-2017 women’s division coverage. When we proposed this idea, it was because it was one way that we can help to level the playing field in terms of what events and stories get covered in the coming year. Yes, it’s an indisputable fact that more people watch men’s athletic events, and therefore those events are better financially supported than women’s ones. Yes, this is true even in ultimate. That doesn’t mean that supporting the coverage of the women’s division is less important to VC; we think it makes it more important to put our financial resources behind it. What’s the motivation behind sponsoring Ultiworld’s women’s coverage? As ultimate continues to expand, it is necessary that ultimate organizations, governing bodies, and for-profit businesses commit to working towards gender equity in our sport. We have a real opportunity to cultivate ultimate in a different way than traditional sports have historically grown. In my opinion, that means that companies like VC need to open our pocket books and truly support equal coverage of women’s ultimate, even knowing that we will have a less traditionally “valuable” return on our investment. The motivation behind our idea to support Ultiworld’s women’s division coverage was simple: it was the right thing to do. Why move beyond your focus on Without Limits to support the full college season coverage? Without Limits Ultimate is an amazing organization that will always have VC in its corner. The work that Michelle Ng and her partners have done to create playing and development opportunities for women (and men) over the last 6+ years is inspiring. Organizations like this build our community up and strengthen the foundation on which we can continue to make progress. However, Without Limits is only one of many organizations doing great work – the All-Star Ultimate Tour, GUM, camps like NUTC that make gender equity a focus among both instructors and players, and the many other tournaments with strong women’s divisions across the country. We didn’t want to pick and choose what coverage we helped to fund simply due to an event’s affiliation with partners we are already work with or tournaments that we are already supporting in some other way. It was important to provide financial support to the entire division’s coverage to help get as many stories out there, from as many far-apart places, and about as many different players, teams, and organizers as possible. How do you see a media-focused partnership helping there? As we say at the VC office, 90% of problems we come across are due to lack of quality communication. What better way to focus on the importance of gender equity in ultimate than by supporting the quality coverage of the women’s division?

  What I'm hoping to gain and give from this year's Ultimate Canada Conference.

Ultimate players - you have been heard! Multiple lengths have arrived.

It's time to think about making your team look good in the best performing, highest quality gear around... at a great price.  You pick the offer,VC will take care of the rest. OFFER A: Keep it Simple and get up to 15% off during our Early Bird Sale.12-24 sets*: 10% discount25+ sets: 15% discount*Set: light and dark jerseys + shorts OFFER B: FREE Shorts!Order a minimum of 12 sets of fully sublimated jerseys and we'll give you a free pair of FlexLight shorts for each player! Ordering spot sublimated or screen printed jerseys? No problem!Order a minimum of 12 sets of any type of jerseys and get 50% off of any type of short VC offers! Bonus OfferOrder before Oct. 15 and receive up to 3 hours of FREE professional art time! Order Deadline: January 15th, 2016 HUGE Micro Short News!Micro Shorts are now available in our amazing Women's Cut & in two New Colors!Read about our Women's Cut shorts here, or learn more our our Micro Shorts here.Micro Shorts are now available in BLACK, WHITE and CHARCOAL!!    Need Discs?VC's got practice discs on sale right now for less than $5 US. Check it out, and use discount codeCollege10 to take 10% off any order in the VC store all month! Questions? Comments? Ideas? Drop us a line any time; we can't wait to hear from you!   

The World Junior Ultimate Championships in Poland was a whirlwind World Flying Disc Federation event in the beautiful city of Wrocław! Not all is as it appears however: Polish pronunciation was one of our favorite challenges of the event and by the end of the week we had down the the name of the city (pronounced like "frot-suave") and the word for thank you - dziękuję (pronounced like "jun-koo-ya"...sort of). Wrocław also happened to be the 2016 Capital of Culture which was a well-deserved title judging by the beautiful city, apparently constant events in the main square, and incredible street art all over! We were lucky to merchandise WJUC in such an amazing location! The week-long event certainly kept our staff on our toes. Our problem-solving skills were put to the test when we had to construct racks out of metal pipes that were sturdy enough for all the sweet VC and Lookfly gear! Not to mention weather ranging from hot and humid to chilly and windy to torrential downpour; we had to be ready for anything!   Two of our favorite things from the week: starting a VC Snapchat account (Follow us! "vcultimate") and giving away Trivolle sets all week to all the junior teams. Not only are these young athletes amazing ultimate players - they're also hilarious and very good at Trivolle! Thanks to Trivolle for donating sets to these teams from all over the world, they're definitely going to good homes. Best night of the week: trade night. A crazy downpour cut the night's activities short, but not before we got to run around in these crazy human hamster balls:  Finally, a great week in Poland was capped off with the Canada boys taking home silver and our Canada ladies winning gold in an exciting final against USA! So proud of our juniors teams. Thanks to everyone who helped put on this amazing event - we can't wait for another opportunity to visit Poland!

U23 World Championships 2015 by London was just so fun, we couldn't stay away! This past June we returned to the same fields in St. Albans for the World Ultimate and Guts Championships 2016. We started the week making friends with an adorable cart who we dubbed "Herbie" named after the 1960's Love Bug. Herbie did a great job helping us transport our merch to and from our tent each day, but we wore him out a bit by the end of the week! Thanks for all the hard work, Herbie! One of the most interesting parts of the week for our staff was learning about GUTS - it's a terrifying game! We decided it's very appropriately named. The USA team was looking super fly in their full-sub VC jerseys, but as for our staff....we'll be sticking to ultimate. Unfortunately, Thursday games were almost all cancelled due to an intense downpour with crazy flooding. Luckily, we had Adriana's nephew Otis with us for Friday to make up for lost time! Otis was a champion at giving away stickers and high fives, so we went into the finals on a high note! A location change for the finals did add some extra complications for the last day - especially when the staff sent to pick up gear at the original site 20 minutes away forgot to bring the container key. It ended up being a pretty awesome stadium though so it was totally worth it!  Shout out to Team Canada for rocking our jerseys all week - these were some of our favorite designs ever! If you missed your chance to pick up some sweet swag, you can still order Team Canada gear here, or WUGC fully sublimated gear here. Cheerio, London - until next time!  

Do's & Don'ts of Copyright Law and Fair Use

January 2016 marks five years of Tracie Ching designing jerseys for us! Tracie has made some amazing designs across the years, in particular the sublimated designs from our international World Flying Disc Federation tournaments. Check out her story: a glimpse at what it's like to be an artist in the ultimate community! Should we call it artimate? Probably not, but still.  What was it like when you joined VC 5 years ago? What's the story - how did you get connected with the company? In 2011, VC hosted one of its first sublimated design contests. I didn't know it then, but the contest was one of the earlier attempts to suss out talent for VC's first design team. Funny thing is I lost that contest, but I guess VC liked my design enough to invite me back to submit something for a team. Once again, my design wasn't chosen, but I was invited to join the team regardless, which should serve as a lesson that success does not always manifest as you might think. Talent and a good work ethic can and will be rewarded!How did your history as an artist and ultimate player uniquely suit you to designing for VC? I actually had no official design training. I went to school for fine art with a concentration in mixed media sculpture. I had a minor in printmaking but somehow never managed to touch silkscreen. But in being the "artsy" one, I was often asked to help designing jerseys for my college team, and later my league teams. It was one of my old captains who recommended I submit to the VC contest and it was at that time I had started to dabble in design. VC really helped me hone those skills so in truth we grew together.  Has the company changed a lot in 5 years? What's been the biggest change for you?I think VC has always had a reputation synonymous with quality, and that really hasn't changed. The big difference is that reputation is now international. I think VC's strong presence has been felt, and resonated, in many corners of the world. I feel grateful to be part of a company that has grown into such an excellent ambassador to the sport of ultimate frisbee.  What are a few of your favorite designs/projects you've worked on?That is really tough. Team-wise: I loved helping create Team Danmark's 2015 subs (top pictures). And the Team Canada subs from 2013 and 2015 always stand out in my mind. Special project-wise: I can't get enough of the Dia de los Muertos from our World Class Collection (pictured below). Who in the whole world, past or present, would you most like to design a jersey for, and what would you put on it?Since starting this job I have always harbored a dream of designing gear for one of the first ultimate teams to play in the Olympics. Good Good luck achieving that dream Tracie, we believe in you! If you'd like to see more of Tracie's art, you can check out her website or Facebook page!

2015 is coming to a close, but it's been a wild ride! We've had a lot of exciting news and a lot of fun events this year, and while we're thankful for all of that we're even more excited to see what 2016 brings. Check out our 2015 year in review! We started the year with our WFDF announcement - we're the official merchandisers for the World Flying Disc Federation for 2015 and 2016! This year our USA office out of Atlanta went to a whopping 130+ tournaments between the VC and Spin brands! Wow! In February one of the events was Trouble in Vegas where our staff were enchanted to meet this capybara, Romeo; basically a giant guinea pig. #onlyinvegas We also had the pleasure of merchandising the first-ever USAU Beach Nationals. Virginia Beach was a great time, maybe the most fun being all our VC Funzone beach games! In June we had a very exciting announcement: our merger with UK company Lookfly! We now officially have a VC Europe branch and some electric new plans for a Lookfly revamp. June also gave us a fun giveaway day with the Toronto Elites club. We gave away free sublimated samples of some of our favorite designs - earned through Spikeball games and joke-telling. Everyone loves free sub jerseys! U23 in London kicked off our summer European tour. We met a lot of amazing young players from all over the world and saw some really exciting competitive ultimate. EUC in Copenhagen brought more great European ultimate. Since Denmark is known for their bacon, we hosted a memorable night of fun with our Beer, Bacon, and SpikeBall tournament. EYUC was the last of our European summer tour; what a great note to end on! We saw some incredible youth players - the future of ultimate looks bright indeed! Back on our home turf, we wrapped up the Canadian season with CUC in Winnipeg. It was lovely to be among some of our favorite Canadian teams again. Our final destination tournament of the year was PAUC in Cancun, Mexico. Even though it was the rainy season and we had some new obstacles to overcome, these amazing positive teams made it all worthwhile! In this next year, we're looking forward to new product development and our continued contract with WFDF. Keep an eye out for new designs for bigger, better events, like WUGC 2016 back in London. Here's to an exciting new year!