Who is BULA?

"To assist, educate, and promote the Spirit and the Game of Beach Ultimate worldwide"

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Who is BULA?

BULA is an organization promoting and assisting Beach Ultimate worldwide. It is run by an international group of volunteers who all share a great passion for the sport and agree to work on projects throughout the year.

Pedro Vargas

A 28 year old Portuguese who truly loves Ultimate as well as sports in general. With a degree in Sport Sciences and MSc in Human Performance, Pedro has dedicated his career to sports coaching.

Pedro started playing Ultimate in 2003 and since then he has been constantly pushing Portuguese Ultimate forward. In 2006 he created the Ultimate team BUFA, which he successively led to the Portuguese Beach Ultimate league title in 2008. He was also a player for the Portuguese national Open team at WCBU2004 and Portuguese mixed team at ECBU2008 and WCBU2011.

Nowadays, Pedro divides his time between his job as a swim coach in Portimão (Portugal), his family, Ultimate practices and the newly formed Portuguese Ultimate and Disc Sports Federation (FPUDD), where he stands as VP for Sports Development and through which he is now working towards the implementation of an Ultimate for schools project, in Portugal.

Setting BULA Europe as an official entity and lead the organization of ECBU2013, from BULA's perspective, are two of his major goals during the next couple of years.

Matt Kass

Matt was a player and an organizer for the US Team (Master's Division) that participated at the World Championships Beach Ultimate, Figuera do Foz, Portugal in 2004. Playing ultimate since the late 70s, he has volunteered and organized tournaments, leagues and presented compelling value propositions to sponsors for tournaments for BULA, UPA, WFDF, HULA (HI, USA), and SF's (CA, USA) SFUC, SFUL (now jointly known as the Bay Area Disc Assoc "BADASS") and in Japan, Tokyo (JFDA/KFDF/FFDA/Ebashi Cup) Taj Ultimate, Hakata/Fukuoka Ultimate, Kyushu, Japan). Matt continues to plays, volunteer, organize and sell sponsorships for teams, leagues and BULA, not only in Japan and US, but at WFDF events including: 1992 WUGC (Utsunomi, JPN), 2002 WUCC (Honolulu, US), 2006 WUCC (Perth, AUS), 2010 WUCC (Prague, CHE).

Matt runs a boutique entertainment advisory and management agency for live and produced entertainment events in arts, culture, music and sports, including comprehensive media development, traditional and digital strategy planning, project management and execution. iem's services extend to hospitality, event production, operations, revenue generation and expansion, license management, sponsorship and ticket sales and all forms of delivery, operations and execution for worldwide brands and leagues (NBA, NFL, PGA Tour, PBA, and smaller, lower profile sports brands and brands which support them).

Matt co-founded www.sportscharities.org in 2000 which has raised in excess of ~$3.0MM for a host of 501(C)3 charitiable, US government audited, causes/organizations including, since ~2005 the US's UPA (Ultimate Players Association). With his passion for Beach Ultimate in particular, Matt has been a valuable asset to BULA for many years.

Rusty May

Rusty had the good fortune of being a volunteer at the World Championships in 2011 and instantly fell in love with the game and the spirit of the ultimate community and it's volunteers.

While officiating a game between Germany & Ireland, Rusty was blown away when the German squad presented with a speaker on wheels and commenced to play each nations National Anthem before the match. It was at that moment that Rusty's pledged he would do whatever he could to help this amazing sport thrive and to be a part of this incredible community of athletes.

Rusty is a school counselor and basketball coach and immediately saw the value of this sport in teaching social skills and life lessons to young people and looks forward to the day when Ultimate is the game of choice in schools around the world.

Rusty also makes daily educational videos for classrooms around the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is a proud Uncle of 12, loves to hike & bike and lives in Mill Valley, California.

Wayne Davey

Information to come

Patrick van der Valk

Patrick at the WCBU2011

Patrick started playing disc in 1979. He organized several Dutch DDC championships, was the coach of the Toronto Women's Ultimate team that became Canadian Champions in 1989, and was the founder of many Ultimate teams: Ultimate Stars Leiderdorp (Holland 1981), The Zoydz (Toronto 1991), and Diz-Cu (Portugal 1996).

After organizing the Bar do Peixe Beach Ultimate tournament (Portugal) for several years he started to coordinate BULA in 2001. Patrick has Master degree in Organic Chemistry and is co-founder of ChemConnect Inc.

Patrick still plays a lot of Beach Ultimate with his local team Diz-Cu that won the Costa Brava tournament in 2012, as well as with the international pickup team SeXXXpensive that was a finalist at Paganello many times.

Patrick works as the Director of Marketing for Archimedes in San Francisco. Patrick is father of Sara and Tomas and is married to Sofia. His personal homepage can be found at http://pereiravandervalk.com/patrick/