A worlds campaign is a unique challenge of bringing together the nation’s top talent to quickly build a high performing team with the challenges of competing priorities and responsibilities.

Beach Worlds is especially interesting in the Canadian landscape – currently, Team Canada Beach is selected through online applications and referrals, with one or two training camps and/or tournaments before competition.

It is a limited ramp up for a team vying for the podium.

To add to the challenge, the Canadian Beach Ultimate scene is small, with maybe a half dozen tournaments across the country, with Beach Nationals recently established in 2024.¹

Here are my reflections after this 2025 Team Canada campaign of how 20 women’s masters players put on a world class performance of being ideal teammates, co-created championship team culture, and spoiler alert,

we pulled it off.

• 0 blame
• autonomy
• co-creation
• full trust
• uplifting check-ins

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0 blame

Not a single moment did I hear any player assign blame – it’s a solution-oriented mindset.

How can we iterate as fast as possible to set ourselves up for success?

Offense turns it over – what did you see, what can we do to help each other? What’s the best choice we can make in that moment?
Defensive sets constantly iterating, adjusting, tweaking, to grind down the offence and convert.

autonomy

Team Canada has geographic diversity requirements, plus any elite player, let alone masters aged, would develop strong preferences for all kinds of things – warm up, playing style, travel, and communication.

It may appear to be a recipe for disaster, bringing together people who may not know each other and potential for clashing opinions.

Yet, leadership designs for autonomy – self warm up, personal time, player-dictated pods with matching playing styles. This is a system that lets players flourish and do what they do best.

co-creation

Experienced players at this level also come with thoughts to shape the team and tackle the competition.
This was welcomed and encouraged. Everyone was invited to co-create the team experience through team roles.

I felt hesitant and detached with my ‘alternate’ status and in my challenging comeback season, yet over time, I felt just as welcomed and part of the team as anybody.

full trust

What is the most remarkable to me about a worlds campaign, let alone Team Canada’s beach worlds campaign structure, is that it is an exceptionally short timeline to ramp up to be a cohesive, trusting, podium-ready unit. A big contributor to that success is full trust in each other, in the systems, and in leadership.
Even in challenges and errors on the field, the full trust was palpable. It shows up in…

uplifting check-ins

In these intense containers of game play, 15 games across 8 days, it is easy for mistakes to fester insidiously and unchecked.

Not only was there a constant encouraging culture of noticing and cheering success on the field, there were also quieter moments, noticing when a teammate was struggling and starting to slip into a hole. We pull each other out of it –
“we trust you”
“I believe in you”
A squeeze. A knowing look. A comforting presence.

We climb out of the hole together and march on.

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With all these parts, we ramped up in our six month campaign to put forward our best performance for 8 days, 13 games, and 2 friendly scrimmages. This is what world championship team culture looked like for Team Canada Women’s Masters 2025.

1. I’ve been dreaming of a national and provincial beach circuit for years, and I’m finally finding bandwidth to make it happen. See Ontario Beach Circuit ↩︎