Letter from the President - March 2020 Edition

It’s March and we all know what that means! Membership renewals! Don’t miss out on your chance to get your early bird membership!

This will mark our first full year on the “new” MODS website. We believe we have everything ready to go for the Membership rollover, but until it actually happens we won’t know for sure. Fingers crossed! If you have any issues with renewing memberships, or any other issues for that matter, please let us know! Hopefully we can get any problems that do come up fixed quickly. Please feel free to contact us with any issues!

So where are we at for Memberships and Team Fees? I am happy to say that membership pricing is staying the same this year. Unfortunately our team fees for summer mixed league will be going up  a few dollars this year ($75 outdoor mixed). That means on an average team with fourteen players, a team will pay a little over five more dollars per player this year.

This wasn’t an easy decision to make, none of the board members wanted to raise fees by this much but unfortunately everything costs money. Here are just a few of the reasons that warranted such a high increase in team fees.

• We all loved the new Assiniboine Park Fields last year and this year the cost to rent those fields is going up by 33%. MODS as an organization knew an increase to rent these fields was coming, but it was still a bit of a shock when the new numbers came in. This increase was one of the biggest changes that forced us to increase fees, but not the only one.
• One of our paint machines that allow us to line fields has been on its last legs for years now, so that needs replacing, and in addition we will be lining the fields at AP!
• Our parking lot at the IJL Ultimate Park needs a lot of repair work which we can’t keep putting off, and our field maintenance costs are coming up for renewal this year as well. So we're looking at park improvements this year if possible, and if not for the spring and summer of 2021.
• One more hopefully great change this year is an increase in Spirit prizing as part of our spirit initiative! Team spirit jerseys from VC and more prizing for great displays of spirit during league play!

These are just a few of the reasons costs are going up this year, but all of it is being returned back to our members, their leagues and venues.

So the bad news is team fees for summer league are going up, the silver lining however is you will be able to see the benefits from those increases in person, including a better effort to make sure everyone gets a chance to play on those hot new fields at Assiniboine Park.

One last thing before I wrap this up. If you haven’t already make sure you check out some of the most recent news stories on our MODS site. There is a new Humans of Ultimate article up on the women’s touring team FUSION. Not only are they a top tier team in Canada but they also consistently rank very high in Spirit at the tournaments they play in. And a great article on Spirit Circles, and how they can make everyone’s playing experience better!

Well that’s it for me until next month! I hope the rest of winter league is enjoyable and that the weather in March will give us a reason to start getting back outside more!