Equity, Diversity
& Inclusion

Our Community Development Grants provide financial support and resources for local disc organizations who run programs prioritizing racially and ethnically underrepresented and/or low-income youth.

Since 2019, we have collaborated with AFDC: Project Diversity to support their Color of Ultimate events – showcase games featuring two teams of elite players of color designed to help raise awareness about the current racial and socioeconomic inequities in ultimate.

Photo – Ryan Cameron

With the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating societal inequities underserved communities regularly endure, we provided information detailing areas where players from these communities could face potential challenges. We encouraged coaches and organizers to address these barriers in order to promote an inclusive return to play.

We have published two – and look forward to publishing more – feature stories highlighting some of ultimate’s prominent players of color in an effort to bring attention to their diverse experiences and enhance the visibility of such players.

The first all-Black ultimate team

Jesse and Khalif of national champion Seattle Mixtape

Led by two internal staff co-chairs and an external consultant, with active participation of 75% of USAU staff, our EDI Team is dedicated to managing and implementing our EDI initiatives and programs.

In 2019, D.C. Truck Stop’s Delrico “Rico” Johnson organized a fundraiser to support players of color attending tryouts for the U-24 National Team. Inspired by Rico’s initiative, we’re amplifying the call to contribute to this fundraiser and broadening its impact to support memberships for players of color at all levels.

The Play It Forward program provides membership and financial assistance for youth from underserved and underrepresented communities to give them the opportunity to experience ultimate.

The Ultimate Foundation hosts annual fundraising campaigns encouraging donations to support new and established youth development programs utilizing ultimate to build character and strengthen community.

In December 2020, USA Ultimate announced the unanimous passing of its new Gender Inclusion Policy! After a year of undergoing research and revisions by our EDI co-chairs and Community Liaison Volunteers*, this new, inclusive policy advocates for the ability of all athletes to participate in the division in which they feel most comfortable and safe based on their indicated gender identity.

*USA Ultimate’s Community Liaison Volunteers are paid volunteers who identify across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum and who we work with to address and examine policies and practices that impact them and other members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

In an effort to begin to normalize the conversation around pronouns and leveraging input from ultimate athletes and coaches of the LGBTQIA+ community, we implemented the publishing of pronouns for players and coaches in our printed event guides. We also created an optional pronoun field in the member system for members to indicate and share their pronouns.

In collaboration with Without Limits and GUM, the High School Girls’ Ultimate Resources Manual – catered to anyone involved with a high school girls’ program – features articles and resources from some of the most knowledgeable individuals in ultimate and some of GUM’s biggest advocates and allies of GUM.

The GUM Blog features voices and perspectives of girls and women in the ultimate community to empower girls and help them connect to a shared experience.

Annually held at the U.S. Open Club Championships, the GUM Ball brings together girls, women, non-binary folks and more from across the adult and youth divisions to break down barriers and build long-lasting friendships among people who might otherwise never cross paths.

Modeled after the College Women’s Startup Project, GUM’s Girls’ Team Startup Project is a community-wide outreach program that provides support for participating high schools for up to three years to help them develop into competitive and self-sustaining girls’ ultimate teams.

The goal of the Girls’ Developmental Scholarship, supported and provided by GUM, is to give new or developing U-20 girls’ club teams the funding to succeed as a team and participate at the Youth Club Championships (YCC) in order to ultimately help grow the girls’ division.

The College Women’s Startup Project was launched in 2017 to help foster the growth of college women’s ultimate by incentivizing the creation of teams and facilitating the development of new women’s programs. The initiative provides some of the resources needed most by developing college teams.

After inviting US Lacrosse Director of Diversity, Equality & Inclusion Eboni Preston-Laurent to speak at our 2020 Coach and Organizer Convention, we continued to work with her to adapt and share with the ultimate community some of US Lacrosse’s Diversity & Inclusion resources.

In April 2020, we broadcasted a free webinar featuring a panel of coaches providing insight on how to create an inclusive team environment. The discussion covered a variety of important topics, including key qualities to look for in an inclusive coach and the importance of recruiting coaches from underrepresented communities.

Since 2020, our Coach & Organizer Convention has featured panel discussions with representatives from local disc organizations, National Governing Bodies (NGB) of Sport, youth-serving organizations and more to discuss best practices on how local organizations can best engage youth from underserved communities and work with coaches to create an inclusive team environment.

REWATCH EDI NIGHT at the 2021 Coach Convention

2021 Coach & Organizer Convention Page

At our D-I College Championships and U.S. Open Club Championships, we have hosted and supported equity and diversity forums featuring panels of youth, college and club players sharing their experiences with these issues on and off the field. Topics of discussion have included racial and gender equity, as well as the intersection of implicit bias and microaggressions in ultimate.

Recognizing that coaches set an important example, the inclusion sections of the certified coaching manuals and the coach facilitator’s manual were reviewed and revised to allow coaches to lead the way for ultimate players everywhere.

While Spirit of the Game (SOTG) is one of the great aspects of ultimate, we’ve recognized how it can also be an inroad for bias. Along with reevaluating and modifying our SOTG resources, we have encouraged all teams to discuss how implicit biases impact our interpretations of the actions of others (e.g. when deciding spirit scores), to examine their expectations of “mutual respect among competitors” to be more inclusive, and to use SOTG practices and procedures in place as a means for enhancing understanding of cultural differences.

We have acknowledged that Spirit of the Game, in its current form, can be an inroad to bias, significantly impacting underrepresented members of our community and their experience in ultimate, on and off the field. That acknowledgment led to the review and extensive revision of the spirit score sheet and the spirit captains’ packet. Both are currently being reviewed by external committees.