Future Stars from D-III College Nationals
This series highlights some of the future stars of the D-III division. We look forward to all of their success to come in the college and club divisions!
Haley Challgren
#8, St. Olaf College Vortex
What year are you in school?
First Year
What did you have for breakfast?
Oatmeal and an apple.
How and when did you start playing ultimate?
I used to play soccer in high school, so I was looking for a replacement sport where I could get exercise and have fun with the team, but I wasn’t looking for the level of commitment that varsity athletes have to put in. Practices are only three of four days a week so I can still focus on school.
What are your personal and team goals for this tournament?
I know that if we focus we can go really far as a team. And if we don’t go far I think being able to play as a team one last time, because we have a really great chemistry.
For me, I really want to work on my defense in this tournament, because I know that I can give 100%, but it is a mental switch that you have to make, especially when I am tired.
What kind of support do you get from your school?
We don’t really get much support from the college. It is pretty frustrating that we don’t have a trainer and we are not allowed to see the other sports’ trainer. We don’t really get any funding from the school but we do a lot of fundraising to make up for it. A lot of our peers don’t know what the sport is, but a lot of my friends know now and come to watch games.
Have you ever felt unwelcome in the ultimate community?
I have only played on the women’s team, so I have never had a problem. We have a lot of events (about gender equity) with our team and the guys team at our school and at Carleton. I think that those are really helpful because they get us talking about gender equity. Otherwise it is a topic that no one wants to talk about, because there are disparities between the men’s teams and the women’s teams. We talk a lot about how we can promote gender equity as a school and in the national sense, which is cool because it is something that has to be talked about before anything can change.
Playing ultimate is very different than playing soccer. I think that the ultimate community is so much more supportive. The support you get from your teammates and coaches is not about your mistakes, it is about growing as a player. In soccer if you made a mistake, they would yell at you, pull you off the field, and you would sit on the bench for ten minutes. Here it is “Great job, you made a mistake but now you can do better next time”. I think that it is really cool. In soccer I feared to play in every single game because of how hurtful my coaches were. From that I am desensitized to being yelled at, which I guess in a sense is good. Ultimate is a very different community, a very different mindset, less about winning and more about growing as a team.
What kind of changes would you like to see in DIII or the larger ultimate community?
I would like to see Ultimate become more well known. I say that I play ultimate and people think that I am talking about Frisbee Golf or I just toss around a disc with my friends. But it is actually a real sport and people need to realize that and put more support behind it. I don’t really know how we are going to do it but it comes from us communicating and our schools backing us up. As a team we can recruit people to play on our team and tell all of our friends and family.
What do you do mentally to prepare to play 100%?
I think that the breathing exercises and the mental focus exercises that we do as a team are really helpful. Before every game I listen to a specific playlist, and I think that that is really helpful to get me hyped up. Also remembering to be in the moment and enjoy every second of when you are playing rather than focusing on the team that you are playing.
Zoe Hecht
#83, Oberlin Preying Manti
What year are you in school?
First Year
What did you have for breakfast?
I didn’t eat breakfast. I get nauseous before playing Frisbee, but the hotel didn’t have toast so I didn’t eat anything.
How and when did you start playing ultimate?
My whole family plays ultimate. My parents played ultimate, my older brother plays ultimate, and my younger sister plays ultimate, so peer pressure I guess. I finally cracked my sophomore year of high school. I haven’t stopped since.
What are your personal and team goals for this tournament?
We just finished finals Friday night, so we haven’t be practicing for a couple of weeks because finals. My goal for this tournament was to remember my fundamentals, and make sure that I throw good throws.
For the team, it was unclear coming into the tournament what our goals were, which is reflective of where we are now. We had a meeting with the whole team to ask about playing time vs playing to win. It was inconclusive, but we generally decided that we want even playing time, which is hard because about a third of our team is very competitive and really wanted to win. Our goals were to try to play as well and competitively as possible while everybody was having fun.
What do you think got your team to Nationals?
We are really, really deep. Our whole roster, top to bottom is filled with competent players. No one on our team is a liability. When we find our systems and our flow we are really good. We are athletic and know how to run and know how to work. We have about four or five of us who know how to throw upwind. So far that is what I have noticed in DIII ultimate, you need a bunch of athletes and some people who can throw upwind.
What kind of support do you get from your school?
We get a ton of support. Our program is fully funded, none of us have to pay to play. We flew to a tournament, that was covered. All of our cars our covered, our tolls, things like that. It is incredibly accessible, and our school is psyched that both of our teams made it to Nationals. Moneywise we are really well covered. We have a field that is ours whenever it is dry outside. In the winter we get indoor turf space, at bad time slots, but not horrible. We even get a budget for snacks.
Have you ever felt unwelcome in the ultimate community?
Freshest in my mind was playing winter league this winter in Cleveland with a bunch of male club players. Very male dominated and the amount of blatant misogyny was unbelievable. There were four of us from Oberlin who played. All four of us are experienced players, Abby Chang was the league MVP and basically won the league for her team, but was completely disrespected by all the men on her team. On my team, we would get on the line, playing HO stack, and one of the men would say “Rick, James, and Alex will handle, and the Johnny and the ladies can cut”. I tried to prompt a few times by saying “Can we learn everybody’s names?”, but we were always reduced to the ladies. At the end of one of the games, when of the men said “Our women really carried the game for us, we should use them more”, and one of the other guys said “That has never been said before”. And I thought “I am standing here, and hearing you say this, and it is making me feel like trash.” All four of us (women) would come off and squeeze each other’s hand and say “This sucks, so much”.
Has your team or school had any discussions about equity?
We haven’t had any explicit conversations but as a culture, our teams are really equitable. Our men’s team is filled with really incredible, caring guys who respect us and treat us well in a way that I haven’t experienced with men’s teams before. I think that we are really lucky, but I have heard that it has gotten a lot better of the past couple of years. We have all the same practices and funding and equipment, so it is very even. We are also getting better about including genders other than male and female. Our team is the Women’s and Trans team, we do have a few trans players who had horrible experiences their first year, but I think it has gotten way better.
Just like with gender equity, the idea that we have the opportunity because of the nature of the sport and how new the sport is, the fact that we would just ignore that there is so much more to do is crazy. It is so messed up that anybody wouldn’t want to be as inclusive as we can at this time. There are all kinds of equity problems in ultimate, it is a very white sport, and a very wealthy sport and they all build on each other. Even at a school where our whole team is funded, it is still built into the culture that this is a rich sport. We come to tournaments and my teammates like 12 discs, and four pairs of shorts, and a water bottle. It is not intentional, but it is very ingrained. I think about this a lot.
What kind of changes would you like to see in DIII or the larger ultimate community?
I am simultaneously impressed and underwhelmed by this tournament. I didn’t expect all the media coverage, live tweeting and concessions. I wasn’t expecting it to be anything like club nationals, but it kind of is. But also we got the crappy weekend, we got the two day tournament with four games per day. DI only has to play two games per day. I am realizing that DIII and DI are almost fundamentally different sports. The downside of DIII is that it is hard to grow past a certain point as a player, because you don’t have better players to look up to, and at the same time you are trying to help all the other players grow and grow your team.
Where do you see ultimate in your life in the future?
Ultimate is my whole life, in kind of a bad way. It is most of my relationship with my brother. It is the reason that I see my parents in the spring, because they come to my regionals. As a family we will go and throw every day over the summer. All of my friends in high school were ultimate players. Coming into college, I just assumed that all of my friends were going to be ultimate players and it has happened that way. I think that it is going to change and I will make other friends hopefully, but it is a huge part of my life, of who I am. It is the reason that I have developed as a leader. I never thought of myself as a leader, but I have been a captain of four teams. Now leadership is one of my favorite things to think about and work on, but I would have never found that out without ultimate.
Jennica Kelm
#19, Pacific Lutheran University Reign
What year are you in school?
Sophomore
What did you have for breakfast?
An apple and a lemon bar that my grandmother made.
How and when did you start playing ultimate?
I started playing my freshman year of highschool. One of my really good friends had a sister in the ultimate community. My friend begged me to play and it didn’t take much convincing. I don’t regret it.
What are your personal and team goals for this tournament?
I want to cherish playing this last tournament with the seniors. As a team, we want to break seed and make it to quarterfinals.
What do you think got your team to Nationals?
We knew from the begging of the year that nationals was our goal. Every time we were practicing or doing pods nationals was in the back of our minds, so that motivation and shared goal pushed everybody to their best. Our moto is show the world, because we are the underdog and we want to prove them wrong.
What kind of support do you get from your school?
We get a ton actually, we have a really good club program and a manger who supports us. The school is really excited for us, it is fun seeing on social media the PLU School cheering us on, and random people knowing who we are from seeing us on social media. We get a lot of fundraising support from our alumni, and we get a budget from the school.
Have you ever felt unwelcome in the ultimate community?
In high school, I played mixed and there is definitely a different mentality where you have to earn your respect, but I appreciate that it made me step up and play a better game. College is an improvement, partially because I only play women’s. I am going to try to do some mixed hat tournaments. Our school in general and the Seattle community seems to be very welcoming compared to other locations, so I think we are at the forefront of this revolution.
What kind of changes would you like to see in DIII or the larger ultimate community?
I want DIII to have more representation, because it seems like DI gets all the attention. I want everyone to realize that DIII is this huge group of amazing athletes. I feel like we are a bit under-represented.
Where do you see ultimate in your life in the future?
I hope it never ends. Our coach’s goal for every single player is that they continue to play after they graduate. This team and ultimate has made me love the community, so I see myself hopefully playing some club.
Emma Piorier
#53, University of Puget Sound Clearcut
What year are you in school?
First Year
What did you have for breakfast?
Coffee.
How and when did you start playing ultimate?
I started playing ultimate in high school. I went to a small charter school and it was the only varsity sport offered. I played all through high school and now in college.
What are your personal and team goals for this tournament?
It is my first year on Clearcut, it has been difficult adjusting to a new program, being one of only three first years coming into an established team dynamic. My personal goal for this tournament is to focus on building trust with my teammates and creating and atmosphere for the ten seniors that is fulfilling. As a team we are trying to come away with gold.
What do you think got your team to Nationals?
We went to a lot of tournaments throughout the season. Each tournament we had specific focuses, trying to tune in our defenses and get ready for this weekend. I think that we had a defense focus coming into nationals, trying to develop that gritty mentality so no matter what happens we can get it back.
What kind of support do you get from your school?
We get minimal support from the university since we are a club program, but because Puget Sound Ultimate had been a successful program and has a good relationship with students on campus, we have a fair amount of support from other athletes and student government. Our men’s program and coed program* is so supportive. We are lucky to have a student government that values financial equity, and we do a lot of fundraising, so we can assist players who need financial help to play. We fundraise about $7000 per year by running catering events.
*We are trying out having a mixed B program to make sure we have numbers so that new players can have plenty of people to play with.
Have you ever felt unwelcome in the ultimate community? What led you to start GUPI?
My senior year in high school, because of the 28 Days of Food, Frisbee and Feminism, I hosted a discussion with one of my friends because a lot of those discussions are inaccessible to you people (because they are at a bar). As we were talking we realized we had a lot of shared experiences that weren’t common narratives being addressed by MN Ultimate, or by our teammates or coaches. The experience women have on mixed YCC teams, being unheard by coaches, not thrown to. Similar dynamics that we often hear of in mixed play, but being perpetuated at the YCC level is obviously a problem since YCC’s are supposed to be building players for the future. Other experiences were that girls weren’t feeling respected by peer boys team or the program director, the distribution of resources, sexist language that was ingrained in the culture, a sense that their women’s team wasn’t considered as competitive as the men’s team.
So that year I wrote an open letter in collaboration with 28 other girls from around the state to MN Ultimate about the issues on our high school and YCC teams. There was a lot of backlash from the community, from the boys YCC programs. So we realized that we didn’t have the advocates we needed, and we needed to create a way to advocate for ourselves and also empower ourselves. We (GUPI) are entirely youth run with a youth board of directors. We do advocacy promotion and last year we worked with all the club teams to help them draft gender equity statements with action steps.
I think that the steps we have taken have been incredible so far. We hosted an equity training for YCC coaches and players. The feedback we got from the mixed team was incredible, the coaches had a lot more tools, the players had a lot more tools, and the boys on the team were having conversations about what it meant to hold each other accountable. MN Ultimate also included a gender equity objective for their strategic plan. Additionally all those club teams that drafted gender equity statements were involved in the (high school) season specifically promoting girls and volunteering at events.
What kind of changes would you like to see in DIII or the larger ultimate community?
I think it is hard for DIII athletes, because ultimate is a club sport there is already this struggle to feel like a credible athlete, because the funding and field space isn’t there. In addition, because you are a DIII athlete and not a DI athlete, it is taken even less seriously. It is unfortunate and I think it can be a hard mindset to be in when you are training four days a week and have this serious team you are invested in. I would like to see some uplift of the DIII women’s programs from the men’s programs and USA Ultimate to appreciate the work that these athletes are putting in. For a lot of people, these small DIII schools with good financial aid are the only way people can afford to go to college.
Where do you see ultimate in your life in the future?
I am very interested in pursuing the path that GUPI is going down, thinking about questions around sports and gender and athletics and equity and justice and intersectionality. That is definitely what I am trying to create my degree around, so I definitely see ultimate as a potential career path and as social justice work. I am trying out for Pop and Drag’n Thrust this year, I played Pop last year, and am planning to play three more years of college ultimate.
Grace Warder
#3, Bates Cold Front
What is your year in school?
Sophomore
What did you have for breakfast?
An English muffin with peanut butter and honey, a hotel room special.
How and when did you start playing ultimate?
I started playing last year, my first year at Bates. I played varsity sports in high school but never ultimate. The team culture at Bates was so exciting and welcoming that I couldn’t stay away.
What are your personal and team goals for this tournament?
We have been working on our sideline presence, so I am working on giving teammates active feedback on their play. As a team we have been working on focusing on playing the game, not worrying about the future, so working on our mental space.
What do you think got your team to Nationals?
I think we have two amazing coaches, Mo and Chase, so much fun to be around and amazing role models, so we could not have been here without them.
What kind of support do you get from your school?
We did a lot of our own fundraising, they gave us some money, but most of getting us here was support from parents and other students.
Have you ever felt unwelcome in the ultimate community?
I have only played ultimate at Bates. It is hard sometimes because there isn’t a lot of awareness of the sport. We have been working really hard as a team and doing really well, so it is tough not getting that recognition, but people are becoming more aware. Our men’s team is really supportive, which is great.
What kind of changes would you like to see in DIII or the larger ultimate community?
It is only my second season, but I am having fun at this tournament, no complaints!
Where do you see ultimate in your life in the future?
I want to finish out my time at Bates, and definitely play club after.
Caroline Weinberg
#12, Williams La Wufa
What year are you in school?
Junior
What did you have for breakfast?
A Panera Bread baguette from the day before with peanut butter, and some Cheerios, and a coffee.
How and when did you start playing ultimate?
I had never heard of ultimate until I came to Williams. There was a backpacking orientation trip, and both of my leaders played ultimate and they said I had to come out. Then I just liked the people so much and the sport.
What are your personal and team goals for this tournament?
My personal goal for this tournament is to get a layout D, but I don’t know if that is going to happen. This year has been a growing experience for me figuring out how to balance being a captain and player. We don’t have a coach so our captains act as coaches. I have been master that balance this season, and I would really like to execute that this tournament.
For the team, I would really like to win. As a team we have worked really really hard this year and set ourselves up well. And I want us to be proud of the games we are playing.
What do you think got your team to Nationals?
Fun fact, all three years I have been on La Wufa we have been the one seed. But I think this year we really deserve it. The past few years we have only had a HO stack offense, this year we have HO and vert, and are comfortable in two different zones. I think we have gotten better at working our reset movement, just fundamentals of ultimate. In the past years we have relied on the athleticism of 10 people, so when we get to nationals and have to play seven hard games it hits us hard. We are just so deep this year, with two starting lines with no crossover between them.
What kind of support do you get from your school?
All of our funding from the school comes through the college council, which funds every club on campus. Which is hard because we are an athletic team and demand a lot more money than other clubs. They pay for our gas when we go to tournaments and for our hotel and the bid fees, which is pretty good! We are working really hard to minimize out of pocket expenses for our team, it is really important for us to be a team that can have everyone on it. This year flying was cheaper than the bus, so we flew at 5am on Friday.
Have you ever felt unwelcome in the ultimate community?
Most of my ultimate experience has been at Williams, but this past fall I was in France and I played on a team there (Sesquidistus). Mixed is the default division there. Those were some of the best men and women that I have ever played with. It’s funny though because it is a totally different frame of mind, the women are just as good as the men, we need the women because we go to mixed tournaments and couldn’t play without them.
At Williams this year with our fun fall league we have been really intentional about making sure the men don’t just throw to the men. We have to throw to new players because this is supposed to get new players into the game. We have been working to do a much better job making women, especially women that don’t have a lot of experience, be welcomed into mixed ultimate environments. Its something that we are working on and will continue to work on.
What kind of changes would you like to see in DIII or the larger ultimate community?
This year I am really proud of the discussions and workshops La Wufa has held. In the past we have been on team trips to tournaments over spring break that the college won’t pay for. So we all paid out of pocket for flights and food for three days. And then we asked players to pay for uniforms, etc. So we were asking people to pay $400 to be on our team, which is absurd. If that’s what we are doing, we need to tell people that at the beginning of the year, and we need to have clear ways to give financial aid. We host a lot of tournaments because we have good field space, so we usually end the year with a pretty good profit in our account. So next year we will be rethinking our finances, seeing if the school will pay for our uniforms and food. I think these things take time, and I am proud that we are starting to work on them.
We are also rethinking the beginning of the year and how we present ourselves. We are a group of largely white women, so we are thinking through ways that we can present ourselves as an anti-racist group. We have had some workshops to figure out how we can do that. Our team and the men’s team have very different vibes socially and we think that sometimes we get meshed into the same thing, so we are working to create a distinct identity. I am excited that we are starting to have these conversations because they weren’t happening freshman and sophomore year.
Where do you see ultimate in your life in the future?
Going to France made me so excited because I had no friends there, but all of a sudden I was part of this team and they all wanted to be my friend. I am planning on going to grad school, and am so excited that no matter where I am I can join and ultimate team and meet some cool people. I don’t think I will be on Fury or Riot or Brute, but it is exciting to know that I could be on a lower level women’s or mixed team.
Candy Zhang
#73, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Strut
What year are you in school?
Junior
What did you have for breakfast?
A muffin, yogurt, and apple juice.
How and when did you start playing ultimate?
I started playing in the spring of my freshman year. My best friend played on a team at her school and said “Ultimate is a really fun community, you should show up to your team’s practices and see what it’s like.” I showed up to the first couple practices and the people were a lot of fun.
What are your personal and team goals for this tournament?
As a team, we tend to play down to teams, so our goal is to play at the level we know we can play. For a personal goal, I would like to be more active on defense, and for offense I would like to have more consistency and less questionable throws.
What do you think got your team to Nationals?
We work really well together, and have good communication. Everyone wanted it so badly this year, we have a couple of seniors who started the team, so this was the year to come to nationals. We worked really hard in the fall and early spring preparing to get here. My freshman year we were playing savage at regionals, but now we have almost two full lines, which is awesome.
What kind of support do you get from your school?
We get field space and funding from the school for our season, and for nationals they took a chance on us and gave us some more funding, plus we got support from alumni so we didn’t really have to fundraise to get here.
Have you ever felt unwelcome in the ultimate community?
I have never felt unwelcome, the community is pretty welcoming and fun. There have been games during summer league where the men are more hesitant to throw to the women on the team, but on the whole I haven’t felt unwelcome. There have been isolated incidents.
What kind of changes would you like to see in DIII or the larger ultimate community?
In the metro east, there aren’t that many tournaments, so we have to travel pretty far. I would like to see more of a woman’s ultimate presence. We have woman’s teams in the area, but there is no organization that runs woman’s clinics or developmental woman’s programs in my area.
Where do you see ultimate in your life in the future?
I would like to play club, and keep on meeting a lot of cool people and playing this awesome sport!
This article was written by Satchel Douglas, a contributing writer to Upwind Ultimate.