Letter from the President - December 2020

Friends,

This will be much shorter than some of the previous letters, so I apologize to the two of you (that may be generous) who were hoping for a lengthy read.

This past month brought the opportunity to attend the Ultimate Canada Conference, which was hosted virtually this year. Staff, a number of board members and a couple MODS community leaders all participated in various sessions with other ultimate administrators from across the country. Topics ranged from managing the financial impact of a pandemic as a sport organization to member retention, growth and marketing to the legal aspect of transferring risk. There were many interesting takeaways from that weekend for me, but the most valuable was being able to connect with other people who also spend their time supporting their local ultimate community. Sharing our challenges, concerns, successes and hopes was helpful and encouraging.

As we move into December we continue to monitor the restrictions and how our province/residents are responding to the pandemic. My hope is that we will be able to offer safe programming in the near future, but to call that anything more than cautious optimism on my part would be a stretch given the way things have been trending locally. As disappointing as this outlook may be, all each of us can do is our part to help improve the situation.

On behalf of the MODS Board and Staff, we hope that you are all able to connect with those close to you – in a physically distant manner –over the coming month. Stay well, looking forward to being done with 2020 as I’m sure many of you are as well.

Daniel Plourde

President - Manitoba Organization of Disc Sports