I was in Montreal over the weekend at the Canadian League Conference held by CUPA. The conference for Ultimate league organizers from all over the country was well attended having representation from 9 of our 10 provinces, with only PEI lacking a representative (and I'm not even sure that they have a league to send a representative anyway).

You can check out the original agenda for the conference, it did change substantially over the course of the weekend. Not all of the sessions were as useful as they could have been, but that is the nature of these things. The balance of them were useful or at least interesting. I skipped the indoor ultimate preferring to spend my time discussing things with the representatives from Ottawa and Saskatoon.

It was incredibly valuable meeting the people responsible for the various leagues around the country including the biggest leagues: Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto and Winnipeg.

I will be writing up a report in the coming weeks, but over the next year you can expect to see some of the ideas presented there to trickle down and appear in Burnaby. Hopefully they will be seen as improvements.

I'm working on the registration forms now... should be up sometime later today (after complete testing). Sorry for the delay.

So it's probably pretty obvious to anyone who's been to the site before, but I'm in the midst of updating it, and in general adding a lot more content. Hopefully it remains easy to use, while being more useful. I'm aware of the display issue on this page, and working on it (although, it's at the bottom of the to do list at the moment).

Folks,
for those of you who were at the games last night, I've lined up our first sponsor, and why not start at the top, eh? So Gaia is on board. They will be hosting a Burnaby Ultimate Appreciation Night 6:30-8:30 on Wednesday June 15th at the Gaia store on West 4th.

GAIA RETAIL Store (NOW OPEN)
2077 West 4th Avenue (between Arbutus & Maple)
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6J 1N3

Now although this is a "Burnaby Ultimate" event, it is not actually an exclusive event, so you can bring friends, family and teammates from other teams you might play on.

Here's why you should go:

• Because it will be fun


• Because you'll get a 25% discount on anything in the store


• Because you'll get an extra 10% (35% total) if you're already a Gaia member


• Because if you reply to this e-mail and tell me that you're going AND spend over $30, you'll get an additional $5 off [Burnaby exclusive]


• Take a sneak peek at what you can expect them to have: http://www.gaiaultimate.com/index.php?currency=CAD

Caveat:

• No rain checks, discounts only apply to in stock items (no other exclusions that I'm aware of). So if there's something in particular that you're going for, include it in your e-mail that says you're attending and I'll make a request that they have it in stock. Just in case people are going for the same colour shirt, or all wanting to buy Gaia bags or something.

If anyone has questions about the sponsorship deal, or concerns, feel free to contact me. Otherwise, hope to see you there,

DC

David Cowley
Coordinator Burnaby Ultimate
burnaby@bcdss.bc.ca
http://www.bcdss.bc.ca/~burnaby/

Games are not moved today, we're still at Burnaby Lake.

So I've finished off my major duties for the BCDSS, and now I need to refocus on Burnaby Ultimate. Of course, I need to figure out what within the gamut of things that compose Burnaby Ultimate are the actual priorities. Oh well, nothing better to do ;-)

So tonight's games (May 19th)of 1 v 2 and 3 v 4, have been moved from Burnaby Lake to Greentree Village Park. A map to the field can be found on the fields page. For those of you taking transit, you either want to take transit to BCIT and then walk through the campus to Wayburn, and then head a little south, or you can take the 110 from either sky train line and get off on Deer Lake Parkway right by Wayburne and walk a block north to the fields.

There are no washroom or change facilities at the field.

If the forcast Thundershowers happen, games will be cancelled. If playing conditions become dangerous, because of field or weather conditions, the games will be cancelled. Otherwise, expect to play. See you there.

So the decision has been made to stay at 4 teams at this time. Although we're planning to go to 6 for the second season. Thanks to everyone for the great feedback. Check the forum for the whole story, in the e-mail archives.

So I've approached the World Games team about maybe putting on a clinic or two in Burnaby as a fundraiser for the trip to Germany where they'll defend they're Gold medal from 2001. I'll let you know details as soon as I have some.

So we had 50 people out to the third and final clinic. I was a little overwhelmed by the number of registration forms that I had to accept. But we're basically full [~ 70ppl] for the first 7 weeks, and I've started looking into getting more fields for the second season so that I can expand the number of teams beyond 4. Thanks everyone for your interest and support. I hope that we live up to your expectations.

So tonight we had an amazing, somewhat overwhelming turnout. I must admit I wasn't really prepared for the turnout of 64 people: 32 people playing pick-up, 18 beginners, 12 SFU players and myself and a friend (doing the beginners clinic).

That's almost double what we had last week (33 including me). So in general things are looking very good for Burnaby Ultimate. I promise to be better prepared for such a large turnout should we get a similarly large one next week...

Keep the registrations pouring in...

So on-line registration is now available [on the Registration page], it's been tested and it works ;-) So what are you waiting for?

Check out the ad on page 26 of today's (Wednesday April 13th) Burnaby NOW.

So met with Burnaby Parks, Rec and Culture. It was a very helpful meeting, and I don't think that we'll have any trouble working with them in future to help grow Ultimate in Burnaby.