Donor Spotlight: Reed Colfax

What is your connection to the sport of ultimate now?

I play occasional pickup games and participate in our small city’s (Santa Fe, N.M.) summer league. One or two local tournaments a year is all my hamstrings can handle these days. Over the winter when days are short, we have an active indoor pickup schedule on local basketball courts.

What aspect about ultimate are you most passionate about? Why?

The game itself. I have no idea why, but I cannot help wanting to jump into any game I see going on anywhere. I want to see more people exposed to the sport. Some will pick it up and love it, and others will find it incredibly frustrating. But, I hope more people get the opportunity to try this game that has given me much entertainment and many memories.

How has ultimate impacted your life or the life of someone you know?

Ultimate has been one of the few team sports where I have been able to play alongside my kids as equals. It is a unique and gratifying experience to be on the same team with your kids where you legitimately make each other better contributors to the team. Ultimate enhances that experience by creating a “Spirit of the Game” atmosphere, where many of us want our kids existing all of the time.

What is the Ultimate Foundation doing that excites you the most?

My career has been dedicated to ensuring that historically underserved communities and people have equal and fair access to opportunities to live full and complete lives. As a civil rights lawyer I focus on discrimination in housing and lending, and seek to address systemic inequalities in those contexts. While sports and games may be on a different level from what I do on a day-to-day basis, having access to sport is critical to the well-being of kids, families and communities. I appreciate that the Ultimate Foundation is working to bring the opportunity to learn and play ultimate to a broad range of diverse communities.

If you could change one thing about the world what would that be?

The elimination of discrimination. Discrimination on the basis of gender, gender identity, disability, race, religion or any other important characteristic is simply destructive to a well-functioning society. We will continue to have massive inequalities and experience all of its resulting harms until we can eliminate the significance of difference. There are undoubtedly differences on the ultimate field, but there are fewer than many other contexts of life and on other fields of play. I am regularly taking the field with men, women, kids, struggling artists with few dollars to their name, well-heeled real estate developers, Sikhs, Catholics, Latinx people, African Americans and others from every walk of life you can imagine. When the pull goes off, that merry band of diversity is simply a team of seven ultimate players.

May 3, 2020