Australian Ultimate Dream - Daniel Rule

22 April 2009

Australian Ultimate Dream - Daniel Rule

Hi! My name is Dan Rule and I am excited to be a guest coach for the upcoming Singapore Frisbeesports (SFS) Junior Ultimate camp! I am 21 years old and a current member of the Australian Dingos Open Ultimate team. This is the story of how I came to be an Ultimate Frisbee player and coach…

Ultimate Frisbee has grown to be a big passion of mine. I first picked up a disc when I was 13 years old - and I learnt some of the basic rules of Ultimate in Phys Ed class at this time in 2000. After this first experience, I started to organize and play Ultimate informally after school and on weekends in my hometown of Creswick, Victoria. However, it wasn’t until two years later that my friends and I were informed that Ultimate was in fact a sport — not just a game that my PE teacher had invented! So, in 2002 our group started to travel the state of Victoria playing tournaments. We even ran our own tournament in Creswick called The Big Wet (which still runs annually and is in its seventh year in 2009). In December 2003, we attended the very big Melbourne Hat tournament. Here, there was a juniors’ showcase game that we were invited to play in! We had never played with other junior players so that was a great experience. We were also informed that there would be an Australian junior team form for the World Championships in August the following year and they wanted us all to try out!

The next month four of us from Creswick boarded a train bound for Sydney. The following week changed my life. I made friends from all over the country and learnt how to play Ultimate from some of the best in the country. To have the opportunity to participate in an Ultimate camp at the start of your career does wonders.

All four of us made the national team! We would be heading to Finland for the 2004 World Ultimate Championships in six months time!

Over those six months, we spent hours and hours throwing and training. I guess we could never fully understand what we were training for — we were the very first Australian junior teams and no one knew what to expect. The trip was my first overseas and my first World Championships. I had so much fun that when I returned to Australia I started to plan future trips — where I was going to play Frisbee, and how I was going to fund the trips!

Since that first World Championship I realized Ultimate would be a big part of my life and I have since been to three other world championships. In 2006 for the Boston USA Junior Worlds, I was a co-captain of the Australian Junior team that I had played for in 2004. Later that year I played for Bronze medalists, Melbourne Chilly, at the World Ultimate Club Championships in Perth, Australia. This is my best result at a World Championship, and I was privileged to experience success with Chilly prior to that in the form of two national championships in 2005/06.

 

In 2007, I helped to form the new club team, Melbourne Heads of State, which was predominantly made up of 2006 Australian Junior Worlds players and up and coming university players from Victoria. I am currently a co-captain of HoS. Last year, at 20 years of age - just over seven years since I first picked up a disc at school - I was selected to represent Australia in the senior Open division for the World Championships in Vancouver, Canada.

During my time playing Ultimate I have also had many opportunities to develop the sport. Being regionally based in Victoria there were no Ultimate coaches to help our teams and new players. So virtually out of necessity, I learnt how to coach by attending an Australian Flying Disc Association coaching course in 2004. Since then I have coached the Ballarat University Ultimate team for three years. I also currently run weekly beginner social league sessions in Melbourne.  In the past year, I have taken my passion for coaching a step further with my friend Matt "Timill" Hill and developed a business to teach Ultimate Frisbee at schools throughout Victoria. The business is simply called Ultimate Victoria and we aim to increase the amount of youth playing Ultimate in Australia over the coming years. One of our visions is for the Australian regional (Southern and Eastern) championships to grow large enough to eventually hold an Australian Youth Championships again. We also hope to take the sport to new cities around Victoria as well as continuing to promote it in the capital of Melbourne. We believe that the future of the sport lies with the youth — so that is where we are investing our time and energy!

Once again, I am very excited to be coming out to Singapore to help promote and teach Ultimate Frisbee to young people. Looking forward to meeting you all then!

 -Dan