Windmill 2022

Windmill is one of a kind. One part tournament, one part music festival - it rightly has a spot on any ultimate players’ tournament bucket list.

There’s so much going for it: applications from teams always outnumber the amount of spots available and so the quality of ultimate is always excellent, the organisers enrich the experience with entertainment and talks, and it happens to be in one of the best cities in Europe! Windmill’s ongoing commitment to sustainability and limiting the environmental impact of both the event and of the teams attending.

This was Lookfly’s second Windmill since being part of VC Ultimate. Although technically, our second was supposed to be in 2020…then 2021… both times we were proud of the Windmill organisation for taking the tough decision of postponing the event, but it was so nice to be back.

The theme of the 2022 edition was “Pride” and we couldn’t think of a more fitting theme for us in 2022!

The theme and brief always come from the amazing Windmill Tournament Directors. We take their ideas and concepts and run with them, as some ideas that look great on the page don’t translate so well to a garment. VC’s designer Marijo came up with the gorgeous pride/marbled effect which was a brilliant complement to the Herbie Balloon Heart design that came from the team in Amsterdam.

A word about player gifts from VC Lookfly’s leader, Adriana Withers: 

I love that Windmill is all about player experience, and that this year’s Pride theme would hopefully make players from the LGBTQ+ community feel supported and seen. For the player gift, I wanted to go a step further and show support for trans community members at the event by having 1600+ players walk around with the trans flag on their wrists. Small steps towards inclusion can make a big impact.

We had a new member of the team accompanying Pugh from Lookfly and Daniel from VC (at his first Windmill) and that was Jake! Jake stepped in late to help as he was likely travelling over to Amsterdam anyway as he’s coaching the British team, Spice, in the Women’s division in preparation for their WUCC campaign.

A major part of Windmill comes from the positivity and dedication of the organisers and volunteers. We love that the Lookfly jerseys that the volunteers get are colour coded so you can always work out whether you’re speaking to a media, catering or scoring specialist. There are so many smart ideas that are interwoven into the running of the event that players might not notice, but they all add up to a brilliantly run event.

Each year you come away thinking “they can’t top this next year” and every year, they do… Roll on 2023!