Penny Wu, WUL Week 1
Interviews on the Breakside are back! Stats are back!
I’m very happy with this first edition of the Breakside since my recommitment to it. This week, I spoke with Penny Wu and chatted about her experiences playing and coaching the sport in the US and abroad. As a bonus, I included some WUL Week 1 analysis, too. If you enjoy it, please share it far and wide! Everything counts when trying to grow something like the Breakside. Thank you again for all your support.
Penny Wu on Semi-Pro Ultimate, International Ultimate Culture, and More!
This transcript was edited for brevity and clarity
Thank you so much for joining me. Can you introduce yourself to the audience?
Sure. I'm Penny Wu, Penelope Wu. I’m in my mid-thirties. I've been playing ultimate for 16 or 17 years. I live in Chicago, Illinois, where I’ve been for almost two years. Before that, I lived and played ultimate in several places, including LA, San Diego, Sydney, Australia, Seattle, and Detroit.
In the pro scene, I’m playing my first season for the Milwaukee Monarchs (in the PUL). Last year, I did a season with San Diego Super Bloom (in the WUL), which was wonderful. I have nothing but good things to say about that. Before that, I played for two years with Columbus Pride, and that was also a great experience that I look back on very fondly.
As for club, I have generally alternated between mixed and single-gender divisions throughout my career. I started playing in college as a freshman. Because of my flip-flopping between mixed and single genders and traveling around the world, I've made a ton of friends and had a really good time. I built some good relationships out there and feel lucky to have that.
What are some of the things you're most passionate about in the community and within the sport?
I guess I would say I either have many or no passions. There are things that I do more loudly than other people because I think it's the right thing to do, or it's my job to do as an out-front trans person or somebody who's played internationally.
I'm super passionate about getting better, playing good ultimate, and playing at the highest level I can. I would say that I am most in love with ultimate because it has a balance between fun tournaments and competitive tournaments. I think it's great that you can play at a fun tournament and see one of the world's best athletes playing next to you or playing against you on the field.
And that is a special thing about ultimate that you don't see in other sports.
You mentioned some of your experience playing internationally and on an international stage. I’m curious: What do you see as some of the biggest differences between the scene here in the U.S. and abroad, where you've played?
I played primarily in Australia, in Sydney and Melbourne. This was ten years ago, but the Australian scene is understandably a lot smaller than the U.S. It's right up there in top-end competition or nipping at the heels of the U.S. But from what I understood, the talent compresses on the scale of players. The top end is just as good, the bottom just as novice, but there's a much smaller middle core of players.
So, in some ways, that's great. The sense of community in the Australian ultimate community is incredible. There are a lot of factors that go into it. You play, let's say, 12 tournaments a year, and they split their mixed and single-gender divisions seasons. You'll play mixed through the fall and winter or winter and spring, and then you'll play single-gender through the summer with fun tournaments sprinkled throughout.
You see the same people over and over again. There are only five or six major cities that have serious ultimate. You'll travel to a city, play a tournament, and see the same people who are all wonderful and have a great time. That also helps build a lot of community, and there's not a ton of animosity. There's definitely a competitive edge between Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth, for example. But, they know they're going to see each other again. They know they're going to play together on the national team. They're all mates. That camaraderie–I really miss that.
It's not that people in the U.S. are inherently less nice to each other. Just geographically or population-wise, it's harder to keep people together like that.
There are a lot of ultimate cities here.
Yeah. Even the university scene, which I could talk about for a long time, is super cool and lends itself to that.
Spirit of the Game is an interesting lens through which to talk about differences in ultimate culture. I had a great conversation with Levke [Walczak] about this–more so that the conversation I had with her helped me figure out this thought: The way Americans interpret Spirit of the Game, or rules in general, is very legal. It is very much the letter of the law. You can say that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think other countries–Europe, Australia, etc. interpret it as more of the spirit of the law.
Interesting.
A great example of this is the continuation rule.
Say I throw a pass to someone, and there's some call on that throw that the receiver isn’t aware of. Then, they unknowingly chuck a huck out the back of the end zone. The letter of the law says you get one continuation pass, so it goes back to the receiver of my throw.
In other places, they'll argue, ‘Look, you didn't know there was a call. It didn't affect the play. It should be a turnover.’ I'm a fan of that spirit of the law interpretation. If it's supposed to be a turnover, that's more what I think the original Spirit of the Game writers had intended.
Levke said that the second sentence in the rule book says to determine how the play was supposed to play out.
That is probably the most interesting difference between the two. I know that a long time ago, before I even started playing, someone who played ultimate internationally wrote something about it. His thesis was that Spirit of the Game is interpreted through the prism of the most popular sport in that region. That was 20 or 30 years ago. Things have changed, but there were some serious differences when you got to the international level between playing a team from Canada, Colombia, Great Britain, or Australia.
In my personal experience, again, from a long time ago, some of it holds up. I’m not trying to throw shade on anyone, of course, but you can see how communities that grew up on different sports will react differently. For example, in football/soccer communities, I've seen someone land completely out of bounds, and everyone on that team is pointing in bounds because that's what you do in that sport.
In Canadian hockey culture, you can be violent to your opponent, say some horrible things, get extremely heated on the bench, and then go for a beer afterward and appreciate the game. In my experience, that is also how playing Canadian teams and playing in Canada sometimes went. Again, these are dated understandings, and we've done nothing but globalize and intermingle the sport over the past 20 years. So this is not to throw stereotypes or disparage any one group of people.
Overall, my prevailing curiosities are Spirit of the Game with respect to the local sports culture and the litigious American “letter of the law” interpretation of Spirit of the Game. And again, maybe that’s the way to do it. These are sports. There are consequences, especially in bigger sports leagues. Money is on the line. You do have to follow the letter of the law.
That's fascinating. And I love the idea that people interpret ultimate or Spirit through the lens of the sport they grew up with. I've had similar conversations with my college coaches about a similar idea of calls that are maybe technically correct, but the offense did something poor either technically or tactically and didn’t deserve to be bailed out by something that is a foul only by the letter of the law but rarely in practice.
There's also an aspect of ultimate being a new sport, both in age and in that most players have not been playing their whole lives. So we're still figuring out our culture and how we play. And I think there are a lot of college or even recreational adult athletes who are getting into it who don't yet have the perspective of someone who's been playing or watching sports their whole life.
I saw that you’ve been coaching some college ultimate, and I also wanted to ask you a little about that. How did you decide to start coaching, and what has your experience been so far?
I've always been a teacher or an explainer, even to a fault. I can't help but say something or educate. I have a natural affinity for explaining things well. I’m very observant and can connect the little pieces to figure out what needs to be changed. Both times I've coached college, I've also coached some youth stuff—just unofficial PE classes or whatever. I've also coached tennis, I was a competitive tennis player, I've coached music lessons, I've coached plenty of other things.
Teams always need a coach. I coached a season in Sydney for college ultimate. At the time, it was still mixed. That was a very good experience. I learned a lot, we had a respectable season, and I didn't burn any bridges.
That's more than I can say about most of the coaches I've had, so well done.
And last year, I coached at Northwestern University. I landed in Chicago, which has a pretty good ultimate network. From the top down, there are calls that go out: a college team wants to scrimmage a bunch of club players, people want to play pickup, people want to send a mixed masters team nationals, etc. But every year, college teams are looking for coaches. I think Northwestern had a coach for a long time that took them to nationals once or twice, but they were looking for a new coach. I wasn't sure if I wanted to get back into coaching, so I said I would be interested in an assistant coaching position. But they needed a coach and convinced me to be the head coach.
They had some serious goals for that season. A lot of seniors and super seniors were trying to punch a ticket [to nationals]. We outlined expectations and goals for the team and myself. We had a good run. I think At [Great Lakes] regionals, you either have to beat Michigan once or you have to beat them twice. We ended up having to beat them twice, which we did not do. For the record, we didn't even beat them the first time. I think we lost in the quarters, and in retrospect, it was probably never going to happen because we were going to have to beat Michigan another time, and we’d already lost to them in pool play. But Northwestern liked me enough that they invited me back for a second season.
Shout out to my assistant coach, Tony Colucci. He signed on to be an assistant coach, having never met me, and it’s worked out beautifully. We get along super well. We work really well together as a team, and have lot of complementary energy and skills. I wouldn't do it a second season if he hadn't signed on, and I wouldn't do it a third season if he wasn't going to do it.
What do you like most about coaching college specifically? As a recent college player, this is biased, but I have a deep love for college ultimate as a player, writer, and hopefully coach in the future—more so than other levels of the game. But I’m curious what draws you to it and keeps you coming back.
I like the buy-in. I chose to coach college men's ultimate and I did that for a few reasons. The main reason is that women are already allies. Women are already generally decent forward-thinking people who are aware of the patriarchy, aware of various prejudices and biases, and, how to make the world a better place. I have an inherently bigger effect by coaching 25 young men, even just being around them. But adjacent to that is the buy-in. Outside of prioritizing their health, families, and classes, ultimate is way up there.
You don't get that in club ultimate, except at the highest levels. You don't even get that in a lot of college ultimate, but you do in a team trying to make it to nationals or win some tournaments. That buy-in is really cool. It's a lot of power and responsibility, and in that sense, it's a true reflection of a coach. I know part of coaching is getting that buy-in, but another part is showing what you can do with it–facilitating the players and the team to play at the highest level they can and work together.
It's been an incredibly rewarding experience to get to know these guys over the years, see them grow as players and human beings, and see them step up in cool situations that have nothing to do with ultimate.
For example, we had a new player of Japanese ethnicity. At one of our fall tournaments, we split XY. One of the teams was Barbie, and one of the teams was Oppenheimer–classic, I know. I wasn't there for this, but what happened in a huddle is that the Oppenheimer team was deciding on lines, or maybe play calls. It was floated to name them Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese player immediately spoke up and said, ‘Let's not do that.’
Immediately, that was received very well. The person who made the suggestion said, ‘You're right. I didn't realize that was so stupid. I'm sorry.’ And everything was fine. I think about when I was in college. If that had come up, there's no way I would have said anything. I would have played along with it. Or maybe even thought it was funny and a good idea. That is the kind of thing that I find most rewarding or most special about coaching college ultimate: getting to see and be around this next generation of players, earn their respect, push them, and have fun with them.
I love challenging myself as a strategist, a coach, a communicator, and a leader. It is a big challenge, and a lot of people don't appreciate how much time is involved. We calculated with the drive to and from campus and with all said and done it amounts to 15-20 hours a week of work. Be careful if you're trying to get into it. Make sure you've got the time.
For sure. I was involved in team leadership for three years and communicated almost constantly with my coaches. So, more than, at the very least, most people on my team, I was aware of how much time and energy they were pouring into us.
I would also say that one of the most valuable things I can do as a coach is to help them balance their competitive nature and testosterone with their sense of fairness and justice as they grow through the four years.
Unless you're going to coach at a place for ten years, the makeup of your team in terms of ultimate experience, height, athleticism, etc. is basically the luck of the draw. You get very lucky if you get someone who played YCCs. Excluding teams like Carleton or Oregon or whatever, it's the luck of the draw for most teams.
Because of the nature of that luck, as a coach, I am most proud of making sure that by the time the students graduate, they are good people off the field and good people on the field. Ensure they can have the on-field call discussions well, be fair to themselves and their opponents, and be respectful and positive to each other.
There's a great article about Caitlin Clark (This one I think!! Read it!), where they talk about how when she was in high school, she was miserable because her teammates weren't as competitive and didn't care as much. In high school and college, her coaches would show her footage of her body language when something didn't go her way, when the refs missed a call, or when her teammates were playing poorly and missed a shot. It was all about her body language and how that affected her teammates. If the best player on your team compliments you or glares at you, that makes or breaks your whole game. And there are players like that on every college team. So again, long term, the most impactful thing I think I can do as a coach is asshole reduction, just making sure that they grow up into decent people.
College buy-in is somewhat of a good transition point for this. I also want to ask you about your pro experiences because, especially for the WUL and PUL, much younger leagues, there's less information out there about how the teams work, what mindsets are going into seasons, and how a pro team in one of those leagues is approaching practices and games. Zooming out, I'd love to hear your general thoughts on your time in the PUL and WUL, as basic as similarities and differences, likes and dislikes for now, and we can work our way towards zooming in.
Sure. I've had overwhelmingly positive experiences throughout my whole semipro career. It's a cool thing that we do, and it has been a huge platform for me and a lot of people to feel seen, valued, and really cool about themselves.
My experience with the WUL and PUL has mostly been as a player. For some time, mostly during the height of COVID-19, I was on the board of directors for the PUL. That was an extremely tough time for the league, and I wouldn't say that I did a particularly good job of executing a competitive sports league to its fullest possibility. But I think the rest of the board and I did a good job keeping the league alive through the pandemic. I think that the WUL got, I wouldn't call it lucky, but they were not interrupted by the pandemic, in the sense that they weren't playing in 2019. That was a tough time in the league. But I'm very happy with what the PUL has been doing lately. Momentum is picking up again.
My perspective [now] has shrunk a lot. I'm just a player, and I'm happy to be that. Regarding differences or similarities, I love the shorter stall of the WUL. It makes for a faster game. I wouldn't be opposed to that becoming a thing in the PUL. The WUL has a considerable advantage regarding climate and when they can have their season and have teams practice and try out. That climate is an excellent thing for them.
To my oral history knowledge and to answer this question for a bunch of people that have it out there, the reason that the leagues don't combine is that it's expensive to fly players from one side of the country to the other.
The only way you'd be able to do it is if the championship team from the PUL played the championship team from the WUL. And we've talked about it. We've talked about doing that. We've talked about doing an all-star game where we get two or three players from every team so there's more visibility and inclusion from all the teams, not exclusively the winners. I don't know anyone who would be against it, except we couldn't find the money for it. That'll be coming.
Back to more of the oral history, though. The PUL started, and people wanted to join the league on the West Coast. They tried to find a team and join the PUL, but it was fiscally impossible. So the WUL was created, with an unspoken understanding that the goals are the same for both leagues: to empower women and non-binary players and put them on a bigger stage, and to promote ultimate and diversity. So it makes sense that they might eventually combine as opposed to the MLU and the AUDL, where the attitude was more, ‘We're competing leagues and we want to win out and consume the other league.’
But anyway, going all the way back to likes and dislikes: I like the short stall in the WUL. I really dislike the stadium that Seattle plays in. That stadium is terrible.
The same one from this weekend? That’s like a bowl?
Yes, it's very gusty. It's always windy, and the fans get quite cold in the shade. It is in a cool location. It looks cool as a stadium, and Seattle puts on a great production. It's no shade against Seattle. They put on a great production. Portland Rising puts on an outstanding production as well. I love playing over there–just to name others.
What I will say is that a player's experience in the league comes down to team ownership. They control most of it, and the league board has some oversight over how the teams run things.
The biggest things are how much the ownership groups put into finding sponsors, food trucks, vendors, staff, finding a location, getting people to the fields, and all that stuff. It's a tough job, and it comes down to money. It comes down to money and groups of people trying to do something special with their extra time. Both leagues have the same issues at the team level and at the league level with, again, money and individuals’s bandwidth. It's money and bandwidth in that you have people who are all on a good cause trying to create something great and who have day jobs, who have kids. Both leagues know exactly what they want it to look like, what they want the games to look like, and what the player's experiences to look like. You have to pick and choose [where the effort goes]. If you can't get enough fans for a game or run out of money, you tried your best. It's very much outside of a lot of people's control.
Just like starting a business in the middle of a depression is not a good idea, starting a league in a pandemic is also tough. It's a tall order. I appreciate everything that all of the owners, team owners, and league leadership have done. It's partly because I've done the league leadership thing, and it is a thankless job. I only wish the best that they both keep continuing and growing and find success, as we're seeing in the PWHL or in college women's basketball or any of these new sports frontiers that are finally getting the recognition they deserve.
For sure. Moving from an organizing perspective to a more competitive perspective, many people in the community have experienced a college season, what that looks like, how teams ramp up to their final form from the spring, the places at which different strategic elements are added in, when cuts are made, etc. Similarly, many people have experience with that kind of timeline at the club level. Very few people have that experience at the semi-pro level. I'd love to hear about your past experiences. What does a season in the WUL or the PUL look like? From tryouts to finalizing a roster, setting goals for a season, and then implementing that across the season?
Again, the biggest factors in that are the climate and the time of the season. It's very similar to club ultimate. It's just very condensed. There are semi-pro teams that have maybe three or four practices before the season starts, and then that's it. They don't have any more practices. You just show up and play your games. A lot of stuff gets done over Zoom or digitally, in terms of team alignment, goals, talking strategy, the playbook, and tryouts.
One weekend, maybe two weekends, very early, in terrible weather, there are tryouts. I don't know what happens at the admin level, but there are tryouts. You go, you make the team. I think a big difference that stands out to me from semi-pro to club is that, because there is an amount of money involved or maybe because it's being run by ownership and a team of administrators, I would say it can be more cutthroat, ‘We're here to do a job,’ basically. Not necessarily in a better or worse way.
As a player, you don't have to worry about a ton of stuff. You don't have to vote on jersey designs. You don't have to figure out your flights. It’s more, ‘You made the team. These are the lines you're going to play.’ I think at this point in the season or in the leagues' history, it comes down to, because of how few practices you have, what's the best team you can assemble that will mesh together really quickly. Maybe even as quick as mid-game, maybe throughout the first game. You're pulling from a bunch of different club teams, and it is once again a little bit of luck of the draw. Because you have the shorter season, maybe we learn one zone and maybe it's the easiest zone that everyone can learn.
The season feels kind of long, but you're not usually practicing between games, so it’s mostly a weekend commitment. I think you get so much value even if it is for not very much money. The uniform, the kits, the travel, the lack of dues, all that stuff that's taken care of. It feels really special to walk into a locker room and see your jersey hanging on one of the stalls.
I would say, just in my experience, there is not as big of a sense of community. That's a weird thing to say, but with club teams, you're going to be spending a lot more time together. You're going to be hanging out after practices or in between practices, and the people doing the admin work are also playing on the team and a part of those decisions.
So if you get cut, or when you don't get playtime, that feels different for whatever reason. I think [semi-pro] is a much more distilled sports-based way to play ultimate as opposed to club being a community-based way to play ultimate.
That makes sense. And from my time on scholarship, I do agree, that little bit of extra stuff you get goes a long way.
Yeah. With the amount of money that they get, the owners really try to make the experience wonderful and special for the players. And that’s also true to the mission of these leagues, which is again, to promote women and non-binary athletes who would otherwise not get that experience and not see that stage. With the small amount of money they have, I think they do a great job.
Yeah. That's awesome. Another question about your pro experience: When you are approaching the business end of a season, you're looking for a championship like Super Bloom was last year, what kind of preparation is being done by the team and coaches? You see the same teams again, and again, and the talent is even more concentrated than in club. How in detail are coaching staffs going into, looking at the other team and, trying to plan around those specific matchups?
A lot, and a lot more than club too. Because [club] is a tournament format. You couldn't possibly plan around 15 teams. You get your pools, and you plan around, maybe the first seed or the second seed. For the pro leagues, you know who you're playing a long time in advance. A lot of coach energy and time goes into watching the film, picking individual matchups, noting individual players' tendencies, obviously memorizing their plays as well as our plays, and coming up with plays that counter their plays.
My experience with Super Bloom, which won the coaching staff of the year for that season I believe, was that they were meticulous. In their dissection of film, giving players notes on individual matchups, basically who they'd be playing against basically the whole game, in all of it. That's how Super Bloom played it. I knew exactly who I was going to guard every point, and if they weren't walking on, I probably wasn't going to play that point. We knew what that one throw, cut, or tendency was that wanted to shut down and make them choose a second option. We had very specific assignments. I was one of the players who had a little more freedom to help in the deep space or help elsewhere, but the assignments were very detailed. I hope that answers your question.
Oh, definitely! That's great. It also aligns with what you said about it being a more distilled sports experience.
That did mean that the strategy for the Seattle game basically went out the window for the first quarter and a half of that game because that stadium is so gusty.
I may be affiliated with the league now (extremely technically, I keep stats lol) but feel like it should be on a neutral field. You can’t get to host championship weekend where you practice and play most of the time!
Yeah, I don't think it's going to be in Seattle this season. That's an insider tip, not that I'm on the inside anymore. But yeah, that comes down to, again, money and bandwidth. You would need someone on the ground in some other area, and you would need fans to fill that stadium, so if you hold it in Seattle, you at least know that Seattle fans are going to be there.
It does make sense that it is in a home stadium. I just think it's funny to call Seattle wind merchants.
We talk about community organizers, and a lot of people want to get into coaching. And there's nothing wrong with that, but across the whole sport, not only the league, what we really, really need are more referees/observers. And it's hard to become those things. It could be easier to become an observer. We also need event organizers. I mean, there's a reason club world’s was held in Ohio twice. It's because they were the only ones who would do it—literally the only ones who would do it. And when you open up applications, bid applications to host the championship game of the WUL or the PUL or anything else, there are only so many people who apply. And of those people, there are only so many people who–
–will put on a good event.
Yeah. That are qualified. So once again, I think the community could use a lot of perspective on what they think the powers actually are of the powers that be.
This platform has a long history of complaining about the lack of observers and the lack of access to becoming an observer. So this is a good place to talk about that. This is super tangential, and it's something I want to write about later but, to me, one of the biggest failures of USAU and ultimate in general is not engaging all arms of the community when it comes to fundraising and access. To your point, there are only so many people who are willing and able to host these kinds of events or to fund these kinds of teams.
At the same time, I grew up in Jewish youth organizations with these storied histories as non-profits that are constantly engaging their alumni base and older members in a way that I don't ever see the USAU doing. I am wary that we're getting into world’s-adjacent discourse, but we’re expecting our player base to foot the bill for everything at the same time they're playing. They're supposed to be reaping the benefits of those who came before them. I feel like there's a huge missed opportunity to engage previous generations of ultimate players.
Yeah, I generally agree. Giving some grace again to the effects of the pandemic and how young the sport is–we are barely reaching our second generation of Frisbee nepo babies. I don't even know if there are any kids whose grandparents played ultimate. And if they did, it looked nothing like it does today. I think that being said, although I have not met or interacted with the powers that be, I do think there are some missed opportunities. I don't know what they can do or what is feasible with their budget and bandwidth, but I do think that there are a lot of, again, missed opportunities, for raising funds at the community level.
I will speak to some of my experiences which are that the queer community and Bay Area disc community do a lot when Rainbow Brigade fundraises. One thing Brigade does is host pickup or a hat tournament where you pay some amount of money to play. Which is silly because who pays $10 to play pickup? But there's a whole community of people who will do that for a good cause. There are players who have aged out of ultimate, who do make a lot of money in the Bay Area that didn't get their chance to do this, and are literally willing to send a young queer person to a tournament, pay for their flights and their bid, just because they think it's the right thing to do and they're generous with their money.
So it is out there. Shout out to the queer community as a whole, Rainbow Brigade and Proud Ultimate, and the way that the Bay Area queer community has organized themselves into non-profits or unofficial organizations.
To transition again, because I think you were going to ask this coming up, but there's only so much you can do from the top down, even with a budget, to change the course of how a community operates. It comes down to asking privileged individuals to do more, privileged individuals stepping up, either with their time or, their money. I think that ultimate is flush with people who just cannot find it in themselves to do more. And that's a harsh thing to say. There are well-intentioned people who, when put on the spot, would defend someone who needs defending, or wear the right item of clothing, or donate to the right cause. However, there's a weird invisible limit to how much, cishet Frisbee players will do with their time to help other people access the sport.
In ultimate and ultimate community organizing, I don't think we do a good job of making it clear when people enter the community that eventually it's going to be your turn to pay it back because that's the place that our sport is in. Obviously not every person is like this, but so many of the most successful ultimate hotspots have their most competitive and successful athletes also their most plugged into their communities.
We constantly want to compare ultimate to other growing sports or other grown sports, and there's a real balance to be struck between trying to make ultimate a “real sport,” getting it into the Olympics, having pro leagues, etc. It’s a very something-centric viewpoint on how sports should grow. I don't know if it's European, Western European-centric, or colonizer-centric.
We can just roll with it being annoying.
Yeah. There is some idea that should be questioned. What is supposed to happen, what needs to happen for growth? Keeping ultimate weird, the party tournaments, the costs, the community, the inclusivity–none of that is nearly as good as any other sport. All that stuff also affects how ultimate is funded and organized and should be taken into account in those conversations.
Yeah, we could try to be like “x” sport. Following the path of the big four or whatever. And that would maybe get us more funding. Which we have not been successful at by the way. I mean, the pro leagues are one thing, but we couldn't get into the Olympics. But if we could do that, that means we lose out on what makes ultimate special or what makes the sport: weird and different and all of these great qualities that it has, which I don't want to happen. And this kind of thing hasn't been done before. So it is an ongoing question of how do we stay true to the spirit of the sport while also staying alive financially.
It's not a single decision. We're such a big community of people that some people are trying to do one way, and some people are trying to do the other. I do think it should be a time of evaluation, especially for USAU. With the world’s selection criteria process and the failed Olympic push.
Regardless of whether this is the right thing to do or not the right thing to do, it didn't work. we didn't get into the Olympics.
And I think ultimate naturally draws weird people who don't fit into boxes like they might in other organizations. They’re not single-issue or, very straightforward to convince. Maybe you would be able to fundraise by bombarding people with flyers or leaflets, and at the same time, ultimate players are mostly college-educated, affluent adults by the time they age out, and think about their money and their community differently. So maybe that won’t work. That is just another factor in why ultimate is the way it is.
Well, thank you so much for speaking with me, I will let you go now. I love talking ultimate and it was a pleasure talking with you.
Thank you so much.
Amateur Stats for Professional Athletes: 2024 Season Week 1
Week one of the WUL is in the books, with three exciting, close games of inter-divisional play to kick off the season. And what’s the point of doing all that work last summer if I won’t keep using it this season? So, without further ado, here’s a quick roundup of your Week 1 action. (All games are free on the WUL YouTube channel, go watch if you haven’t!)
Seattle Tempest 15 - 17 San Diego Super Bloom
Utah Wild 19 - 17 Bay Area Falcons
Colorado Alpenglow 16 - 14 Arizona Sidewinders
Highlights: Home teams go 2-1 to open the season, with the sweep prevented by the Super Bloom, which got their long-awaited win over the Tempest after some championship weekend heartbreak. The Alpenglow got a break with six people playing on a point on their way to back-and-forth victory over the Sidewinders. The Wild went on an 8-2 run to storm back from a late four-goal deficit to the Falcons in an overtime thriller.
Numbers of the week:
4/16 - 10/17
It’s always windy in Seattle, which really impacted a historically high-powered offensive team in San Diego’s ability to push the disc down the field. They went just 4/16 on hucks all day. Meanwhile, the wind didn’t bother the Tempest that much (I'm sure there’s a name pun in there). Seattle pushed the disc downfield with ease, going 10/17 on deep looks. Where did San Diego make up that disparity? Well, Seattle completed 176 passes in the entire game. The Super Bloom completed 127 passes more than the Tempest, showing incredible patience and skill in possessing the disc.
45.7% - 32.3%
Red zone efficiency is the name of the game, and it is a bit of a theme for the week, if not a theme for the sport itself. In fact, all three teams that were more efficient in the red zone won their games. However, this disparity is especially interesting, as it shows the difference between San Diego's and Seattle’s red zone efficiency. Despite connecting on all those long plays, Seattle could not finish possessions with any sort of consistency, while San Diego posted one of the best marks of the weekend. That’s your two-point difference right there.
22-17
Another two-point game, another nail-biting finish, what separated the Utah Wild from the Bay Area Falcons during their comeback? Well, you need breaks to come back, and Utah generated five more opportunities to get those breaks than Bay Area did, 22-17 in favor of the Wild. They used those five extra opportunities to break two extra times than the Falcons and win by two.
47.1% - 37%
The other thing that fueled the comeback? Red Zone efficiency, again. I know it’s incredibly early in the season, but I’d be surprised if anyone wins a game this year if they cannot convert at least 40% of their red zone possessions into points. You cannot be that inefficient and expect to win in a league as talented as this, and you need your star players to put the disc in the end zone to shut down the other team’s momentum and finish games off. Bay Area Falcons could not do that.
7/18 - 4/17
So little separated Colorado from Arizona this week. Their stats are nearly identical, and the game was back-and-forth, featuring tie after tie and numerous lead changes. One aspect of the game where the Alpenglow really separated themselves is on hucks. Despite some incredible offensive talent on the Sidewinders, they went just 4/17 on hucks. This should change once the team gels more. And in fairness, the Alpenglow are more used to the Colorado air and were much more lethal going deep posting 7/18 on deep shots. Especially toward the end of the game, when it felt like Arizona really needed a stop, Colorado found an open runner almost every time.
7/17 - 3/14
Yes, this looks similar to the last set of numbers. But this is actually the Alpenglow’s breaks vs. the Sidewinders’ breaks. Arizona actually had more holds than Colorado, thanks to some funky end/beginning of quarter quirks about who pulls and how the last point ended. So perhaps Colorado’s performance was a little more dominant than it appeared due to their three extra breaks. Notably, they each had a ton of opportunities. If Arizona is a little more efficient, it’s a completely different ballgame. It was very gusty. Especially when moving upwind (right to left on the broadcast), the Sidewinders struggled to move the disc on defensive and offensive points.
Players of the week by game score:
Once we have more data and more games played, I’ll dedicate a whole edition to WUL stats and game score, but we’re back, and here are the best performances of the week by game score.
Utah Wild 02 Brooke Stanislawski - 19.233
Stanislawski put up what would have been the third-highest game score of last season on 4G/4A/3B/1.5T and 424 yards. This formula really rewards that kind of lethal efficiency.
San Diego Super Bloom 05 Kaela Helton - 13.921
Helton may be here every week. A 2G/6A/2B and 500+ yard stat line will take you far, even if you turn it over five times. Helton is the ultimate high-usage, high-value player.
San Diego Super Bloom 11 Avery Jones - 12.338
Avery Jones pips some other Player of the Week nominations onto this list this week with a 2G/2A/1B performance. She was 42/44, passing for 298 yards. Jones beats out some of the other top performances thanks to a lack of turnovers.
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About the Author
My name is Noam Gumerman (he/him). I am from Chapel Hill, NC, and studied Journalism and American Studies at Brandeis University. I am a journalist by trade and have been playing ultimate for over half my life. I love nothing more than combining those two interests. Contact me for discussions, feedback, story suggestions, and more on Twitter (@noamgum) or email (noamgumerman@gmail.com).