SANTOS ULTIMATE CLUB (2024)

15/12/2018

14/08/2018

Kate Kingery of Seattle BFG, and Ricardo Flores of Yanomami Ultimate Club Venezuela, were the inaugural winners of the 2018 Ultimate Peace Global Spirit Champion awards. They received their honors, which includes a check for $1500, at WUCC just a few weeks ago in Cincinnati. Criteria for the award:

1. A high level Ultimate player who embodies and practices Spirit of the Game in Ultimate competition.
2. A person who strives to facilitate positive social change off the field, applying Spirit of the Game attitude and the five values of Ultimate Peace (mutual respect, non-violence, integrity, fun, and friendship) as her/his tools.

As exemplary international ambassadors of SOTG, we’d like to share some of the reasons they each emerged as this year’s champions. Please learn about Ricardo’s amazing work below - we’ll share similar info about Kate later this week.

Ricardo is widely known as a player, coach and organizer who gets hard things done. For example, after he moved to the US from Venezuela, he stayed focused on strengthening Venezuelan Ultimate from far away. Ricardo helped men’s and women’s teams however he could, by collecting discs in Houston to send back to Venezuela. He was able to collect more than 40 discs, which gave the teams a big injection of emotional energy to keep practicing and playing. Considering that Venezuela is going through such a terrible economic crisis, where the minimum wage is 5$ a month, buying a disc is daunting.

Over time, Ricardo has also helped find funds for transportation and uniforms, and developed new drills for the teams. He found food to feed players who were short on supplies, and housing for teams in need during competitions. He co-created a manual for positive conduct during games and practices that greatly shapes how local players enact SOTG. Ricardo simply knows how to create, find and use resources to do the most possible good.

After generating such good results, Ricardo created a Foundation that he named "Ultimate Support Foundation" (USF). In order to improve Ultimate and the community, the USF created Ultimate Academies, where the values and lessons taught are based on the Spirit of the Game. Ricardo truly believes that Spirit of the Game is a tool to change the world and the community. Right now, only after a few months of creation, the USF has two academies running with two full time staff making the project happen every day. In each academy, there are more than 30 kids of different ages and genders on each of them. Ricardo, you are a an amazing champion and we are proud to support your vision and work!!! Arriba!!!

Check out his video!
facebook.com/186817631925296/videos/198442970762762/