Amherst College Ultimate - Sparkle Motion
From NOTE Wiki
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| Website | http://www.amherst.edu/~frisbee |
| Contact | frisbee
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Founding of Amherst Women's Ultimate: Gaia
The Amherst Women's Ultimate team (then known as Gaia) was founded in the fall of 1994 by Darya Swingle and Alex Kinnebrew ('96). They were roommates of a bunch of frisbee boys (Dan Contreras, Sam Munger, Dave owen) and used to play with the boys regularly. But they didn't really get to play in games. At any rate, how much fun is it to always play with men who are taller no matter how well you can throw? The boys team started to get better an concomitantly snottier about playing with women, so . . .
They decided to start their own team. Founding members included Alex and Darya, Rosa Lee ('96), Sushama Mody ('96), Anne Penner ('97), Jen Gschwend ('97), Carolyn Sufrin ('97), Shannon Selden ('98), Allison Wexler ('98), and a few other women. Women's frisbee at that time was much smaller, with fewer college teams, which, however, didn't mean that they won any games for the first few seasons.
In the words of Shannon Selden ('98): "We used to practice in the endzone of the football field while the guys got the whole damn thing. We sucked. The only game - and I am not kidding about this - we won all year was a game against UMass at sectionals in spring 1995 at Williams. It was the last game of the day - we won by about 13 - 6. UMass was stoned out of their minds - no joke - the had a tendency to head toward the wrong endzone, they kept crashing into each other, and into us, but the tide really turned when halfway through some girl sprained her ankle due to her hazy wandering into a mud pit, and they went down to 6 players. Then we knew we could take them! We qualified for regionals and played at UMass - getting creamed by Brown, Columbia, and Dartmouth. Fall 1995, things began to look up. We won some games, though definitely not a ton. We played at regionals (I think - although maybe not) and even stayed for the second day at Purple Valley! (due only to the fact we had a place to stay, not any triumph on the field) We didn't have a lot of finesse, but we were pretty damn scrappy and stubborn and managed to win some games out of sheer desperation."
Spring 1996, more people joined and Allison Wexler ('98) and Shannon Selden ('98) took over as captains. The team won more games, but the captains still spent many many nights calling people and begging them to come to tournaments, begging them to play, to drive, etc. They could barely scrape together enough people for a lot of the tournaments they went to - but always managed to pull enough to have a team and some subs. Or at least a sub.
In the words of Brianna Avery ('98): "We started winning in the spring of '96. At that point, we actually had a decent number of players coming out to practice and play. Ying Yu ('99), Liz Duffy, and I had joined the team. We latter two couldn't throw a goddamn thing (I in particular was banned from throwing at all, as my forehands had a tendency to airbounce madly.) But Shannon and Sushama and Darya handled, and we ran to the endzone, and we started to win games. We even made it to regionals that spring, I think. And in the fall of '96, we went to club regionals and won a game against a team seeded way higher than us in a crazy hurricane."
Thanks to Brianna Avery ('98) and Shannon Selden ('98) for the story of the founding of Amherst Women's Ultimate
Inventing Barely Legal
[to be read with the theme song from Space Odyssey 2001…if I were there I would hum it for you…but alas]
Once upon a yesteryear an individual, who for our purposes will be known as Mama Rachael, was left with the task of continuing the waning female ultimate legacy at a wee place called Amherst College. Now this was no easy task since at that time the team, formally known as Gaia, consisted of about 4.5 women-strong women, but 4.5 women nonetheless. Well it being the year of the dragon, somehow, someway, young women heard the call of the frisbee from the four corners of amherst-north, south, james, the history of barely legal ... according to sil stearns-and magically congregated at the bottom of memorial hill not sure how they had arrived or why they were there. All they knew was they had a purpose, a destiny, if you will.
As Mama Rachael related the wonder that is ultimate frisbee a warmth kindled in the souls of these girls. It was clear that the name Gaia would not be sufficient to encompass all that this budding team would come to represent and so it was that a newly converted and exceedingly popular (I was forced to say that) player, who went by the name of "Nora", said, "From henceforth, I decree by the divine power of the Callahan vested in me that this team, nay, this Army, shall be known, henceforth, as BARELY LEGAL…henceforth". And it was so.
From that momentous day forth, Barely Legal went on to expand in numbers, skill and just general aweseomeness. From these humble beginnings came the indomitable force that is Amherst Women's Ultimate. From 4.5 to a gazillion players [and this is where sil wandered off to find food and failed to finish the history of barely legal] therefore, we'll just skip ahead to the part that I [Tejas] was around for. So I joined the team in the Spring of 2002 with another kid who will be henceforth known as Nasty [if you're confused see the bios, and it will all make sense], the average height of the team was something like 5'2.
Rumor has it that McKeon scored the winning goal in a game against Smith in the Fall, which turned out to be the first game that we had won in a real long time. Things improved in the Spring, we had regular practices, and we started running a lot. Everything else is irrelevant, except that we ordered our uniforms designed by the captains with our new team colors, blue essentially what happened - tejas and new blue (aka orange for all of us that aren't Nora).
In the Fall of 2003, things really started to come together. Despite the lack of presence in the deep deep position (because Nora G was frolicking in Spain with the rain that falls mainly on the plain), we still managed to place higher than we had before in most of our tournaments.
