More Than a Game: How Maria Vargas Is Using Ultimate to Transform Communities in Mexico

 

^{This story is featured as part of SUCCEED Stories, through the SUCCEED Framework. SUCCEED (Supporting Communities Empowerment & Development through Sport for All) is a global framework dedicated to fostering community empowerment and development through capacity building in Sport for All. Led by TAFISA in collaboration with the IOC through its Olympism365 strategy, SUCCEED aims to provide a unified and synergistic approach towards building the capacity of Sport for All stakeholders.}

Maria Vargas grew up in Mexico City with something she now recognises as a privilege not everyone shares: the freedom to move. From football pitches at UNAM to the Ultimate fields where she competes today, sport has been her constant - a space to be herself, to grow, and to push against her own limits.

 

But Maria is under no illusion about how rare that freedom is. Mexico is a country rich in culture and warmth, she says, but also one where gender roles run deep, where girls frequently face barriers to sustained participation in sport, and where gender-based violence remains a serious and present reality. That awareness isn't background context for her. It's the engine behind everything she does.

As an organiser at JUF Activando Valores A.C. in Mexico City, Maria has spent years at the intersection of sport and social change - leading school and social programmes that use Ultimate as a tool for community empowerment and inclusion. When JUF was invited to contribute to the World Flying Disc Federation's implementation of the Girls Positive and Safe Coaching Pathway for the Latin American and Spanish-speaking community, Maria stepped in not as a participant but as a local trainer - leading modules on safeguarding, safe sport, and menstrual health.

What she took away from the experience goes beyond the content she delivered. Hearing from coaches and organisers working in very different contexts sharpened her understanding of how knowledge needs to be adapted to be genuinely useful. It also reinforced something she already believed but now carries with greater confidence: that sharing knowledge well - clearly, practically, and with real attentiveness to context - is its own form of leadership.

Her full story, published as part of the SUCCEED series, is available now. It's a story about what it means to stand in front of a room and share what you know - and what comes back to you when you do.

Read the full story here.