Values of Seattle Cascades

The Seattle Cascades — Seattle's AUDL pro Ultimate team — recently published their organization's mission and values on their website. This Seattle sports team is owned by the 5 siblings (3 brothers and 2 sisters) who founded Five Ultimate apparel company. The Cascades are scheduled to play their first American Ultimate Disc League season in 2015.

Read their words and you will immediately grasp their inspiration of recognizing history of the sport, appreciating the sport's population and understanding their larger role as a "professional" sports franchise . Their strongly (and beautifully) worded values statement reads like an equal rights manifesto reinforcing their belief in self-officiated ultimate:

"As we work to build an outstanding ultimate program, we carry with us a set of core values: integrity, community, and athletic excellence.
As a subset of these core values, we believe in a world where integrity and athletic excellence go hand in hand, and male and female athletes have equal value and opportunity to compete.
To get there we have to reshape societal norms around gender, sports, and honorable competition. We're making progress on this vision by focusing on officiation and gender issues in our sport. Through our partners, sponsors, athletes, and community we are excited to play a role in building a better sport, not just a bigger one."

Officiation (AKA refs):

Via the webpage text: Refereed games may be necessary for ultimate to be a spectator sport with fans online and in stadiums. Meanwhile, for all other areas of competition, self-officiation is ideal. In fact, the good sportsmanship that thrives throughout ultimate is in large part due to the self-officiated roots of all current elite, professional ultimate athletes. We will actively promote the self-officiated version of the sport to everyone our franchise touches. Furthermore, we will work within the AUDL to ensure that the rules and officiation systems in place are serving the current and future best interests of the sport.

Gender (i.e. mixed teams; women pro players):

Via the webpage text: The incredible growth we've seen in the past 10 years is thanks to women's ultimate, men's ultimate and mixed ultimate. Meanwhile, AUDL and its franchises are focusing solely on the men's division. By putting our time and money towards this asymmetrical representation of the sport, we are weakening the gender balance. Thus, it is our responsibility to be advocates and action takers for the mixed and women's divisions so that our sport grows sustainably over the long-run.

[All quoted text and screengrabs via Seattle Cascades web site.]

[h/t @kdubsultimate]