Announcement of appointment for NZ WUGC2012 Team Coaches

New Zealand Ultimate is pleased to announce the coaches for the Women’s and Open teams for the World Ultimate and Guts Championships being held in Sakai, Japan, on 7-14 July 2012.
 
Michele Simpson (Women’s) and Peter Sisam (Open), have accepted the challenge of guiding their respective teams through the next ten months. Michele is one of the three Women’s selectors and Pete is also a current member of the NZU executive board. 
 
Pete was a member of the first NZ team to attend a world championships in 1992, also in Japan. He says he is excited by the new generation of players. “There is an exciting group of athletic talent playing at the national level and I am looking forward to working with them.” ‘Street’ started playing in Wellington before moving to Auckland where he is currently a player/coach with Magon. He has won Australian Nationals twice and played a season with Valhalla in the US Championship Series. He has also attended 5 WUCG/WUCC in his playing career.
 
‘Meesh’ is also excited about the future of ultimate in NZ. “It’s great that women’s ultimate in New Zealand has transformed over the past few years to become a competitive environment to nurture and foster talent among our elite players. The 2012 worlds campaign in Japan will mark an important step to lift the women’s game here even further. Ultimate has reached a point in New Zealand where we now have a number of women coaching and leading teams at various levels of the sport.” She believes it can only get better: “I’ve no doubt in future world campaigns our Kiwi women will start making a big impact firstly against the likes of Australia and the UK and then we can have a serious crack at the Japanese and North American teams”, the current dominant forces in world ultimate.
 
Please join us in congratulating Michele and Pete on their appointments and wishing them well in their respective roles.
 
Nathan Moore, Worlds Campaign Manager
Sherif, Helen, Iain, Pete, Sarah, NZU Board.