Raleigh Radiance 2025 Project, Season Preview, Dawn Culton
Dawn Culton on last season, new coaches, and the season ahead
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2025 Raleigh Radiance Project!
Here in the Triangle area, we have two professional ultimate teams. The Carolina Flyers of the Ultimate Frisbee Association (UFA) and the Raleigh Radiance of the Premier Ultimate League (PUL). I am happy to share that this year, I will be a beat reporter for the Radiance and will work to give everyone an inside look at their 2025 season and a peek behind the curtains at pro ultimate.
The Radiance were the first team other than Medellín Revolution to win the PUL back in 2023. However, in 2024, they missed championship weekend entirely, falling to the Austin Torch in a must-win final game of the regular season to seal their fate. This year, they're bringing in a new coaching staff, led by head coach Jenna Dahl, who was on the 2023 championship-winning team. Tryouts begin this weekend, and the PUL regular season kicks off on April 5th and concludes on June 8th, with Championship Weekend taking place the following weekend.
Stay tuned for the thoughts of this brand new coaching staff, as well as a peek behind the scenes at what running a pro team looks like coming soon! And, of course, more conversations with players and game coverage once the season gets going.
Looking Ahead to the 2025 PUL Season With Dawn Culton
Expectations for what will surely be another very talented Radiance roster in 2025 remain high. The journey begins this weekend for Radiance hopefuls, with open tryouts on January 18th and 19th. Ahead of tryouts, I got to sit down with Radiance veteran, four-time College National Champion with UNC Pleiades, 2022 Callahan Award Winner, and 2023 PUL Champion, Dawn Culton, and talk about her expectations for this year on the Radiance, a new coaching staff, and what went wrong last year during an underwhelming championship defense season.
During our conversation, Culton expressed optimism and excitement about the 2025 PUL season. She is especially excited to work with the new Radiance coaching staff, led by head coach Jenna Dahl, who was her Radiance teammate in 2023.
“I'm really excited to see what she has in store for Radiance,” Culton said. She added, “I know that she's been thinking about it for a long time and has a lot of different ideas, and I'm excited to see how those pan out.”
Dahl brings more organizational and coaching experience to the Radiance than just about anyone else could. She’s coached at youth, college, club, and masters levels, spent 2021-2023 on the Radiance Steering Committee1, and was a player on the 2023 PUL Championship-winning team. So it’s easy to see why Culton is excited for the opportunity to play for her.
When asked about what she was looking for the most from the new coaching staff, Culton said,
“ I'm looking for a coaching staff that increases buy-in for the team and makes people feel like practice and games are a safe, supportive, enthusiastic space for them to be in. I want a coaching staff that is thoughtful and communicates well with each other and the team.”
She continued, “That’s the most important thing. Caring about the team and communicating well about it. That's something that I think Jenna, Brett [Matzuka], and Marc [Rovner] are going to do a great job at.”
It won’t just be a new coaching staff for Radiance fans to look out for this year. Culton is expecting a fair amount of roster turnover, even before tryouts start. She estimated that between one-third and half of last year’s Radiance players will no longer be on the team in 2025 due to the roster churn that often happens when people’s lives intersect with their ultimate priorities. In addition, she’s also expecting a different roster-building approach from the large 38-player team last year.
“It was worth trying,” she said of the roster size. “One thing about Radiance is that it's a very community-oriented organization. One of the biggest things that Radiance can do is bring coaching and high-level strategy and structured ultimate to people who haven't been able to experience that before or who aren't able to afford it in the club scene.”
A big roster meant Raleigh could bring more people into the fold and, in theory, plan for the volatility of injury and availability of a two-month season right in the middle of the busiest time in the college ultimate season. And thanks to the dominance and depth of local college team North Carolina Pleiades filling out many key Raidance roster spots, they were especially impacted by the timing of these seasons. But ultimately, it didn’t work out last year.
“It was worth trying to have this really big roster because it is a very busy season, and especially on a roster with a lot of college players who were often unavailable.”
Culton and other teammates struggled to balance the professional season with their other ultimate commitments. Culton had to balance her final year of college ultimate and vying for a fourth straight national championship with UNC, not to mention all her other personal goals and ambitions as a player.
“ It was just a really big year. UNC ended up going to an additional spring tournament, which was difficult for availability. Many of us [on the Radiance] went to WUC tryouts, so we were gone that weekend. The stress on my body from doing that made me really sick for the next week, so I couldn't play that weekend either. I also got sick after the extra season tournament Pleadies went to.”
Playing college, club, pro, and trying out for national-level teams is an unbelievable grind. It’s impossible to be at your best every weekend from February to June. Something had to give. Additionally, the two-month season can make it challenging for pro teams to hit the same strides club ones do regarding team chemistry and tactical depth.
“You get that full-season arc playing club, and it doesn't always feel like you get that in pro,” Culton said about some of the extra challenges pro teams work to overcome.
However, she quickly added that it doesn’t mean she thinks the PUL model should change or that it’s necessarily bad.
“That's not to say I want the pro season to be longer. I absolutely do not want the PUL to model the UFA where it's really eating into the club season.”
The little things that had been hard all season came together for the final loss in the last game of the year, in a do-or-die setting in Austin against the Torch just under two weeks after the final game of college nationals.
“I was not in great shape right after college nationals. I had sprained my MCL, and I didn't know that. My shoulder was still f***ed up. A lot of other people were really beaten up like that, too. Erica [Birdsong] went to the game, but she couldn't play.”
But despite all the adversity and challenges of playing the pro season that made life difficult, every team dealt with that, and at the most basic level, Culton doesn’t mince words about what happened.
“We should have been fine anyway. We didn't play very well.”
But last year is very much last year. There’s a new season ahead, full of new challenges both internal and external to the pro season. Beyond anything else, Culton is excited.
“ I'm excited to get those days of practice. It's close to World Games trials, and I haven't played as much organized ultimate as I would like to in the off-season. But I'm really excited to get in a lot of hours over the weekend in a structured environment.”
She added, “ I love playing. I love growing as a team. I like being part of a community, and I like learning new things. I like working with my teammates to accomplish things. I really want to win the PUL. I love winning. I want to be the best player and have all these goals that I'm working toward. Radiance helps get me there.”
An excited Dawn Culton can take any team far.2 And regardless of whether they’re coming off a PUL Championship or missing Championship Weekend entirely, the Radiance program is so full of talented women’s and nonbinary players that they will be one of the preseason favorites. And it all starts this weekend.
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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/@breaksideulti now too!) or email (noamgumerman@gmail.com).
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