WAC and Detox, Occidental’s ultimate frisbee teams, have key matchups in the coming weeks that will determine who gets to represent Southern California at the 2024 Ultimate Frisbee DIII College Championships. On April 13, WAC will be hosting the Claremont Ultimate Frisbee team for a best-of-three series. On April 21, Detox will host University of San Diego, Caltech and Claremont.
When not playing Ultimate Frisbee for Detox, captain Theodore McGowan (junior) is a practice player for the professional LA Aviators team and spent last summer playing for the Minneapolis Mallard.
“We have conferences on April 21 which is going to be us, Claremont, Caltech and USD,” McGowan said. “We’re going to play everybody and whoever comes out with the best record goes to nationals. Basically, Oxy and Claremont are the two best teams, so what really determines who goes is who wins that game. It is going to be hosted at Occidental so come support and if nothing else, it’ll be a great vibe and hopefully we get some dubs.”
Lily Pesikoff (sophomore) said she serves as one of the social chairs for WAC Ultimate Frisbee, a role in which she organizes social events for the team.
“The Claremont games are definitely what we’ve been working for this whole season,” Pesikoff said, “Usually it’s just a one-off game winner takes all, but this year they reached out to see if we could do best of three, which is exciting. We’re a club sport so we don’t have games leading up to a final tournament, and nothing we’ve done so far matters as much as this game.”
Adeline (Addie) Fabel (sophomore) is a social chair for WAC and started playing Ultimate Frisbee during her first year at Occidental.
“I think our biggest strength right now is we have really strong handlers, which are the people that throw the disc, and we have really strong cutters,” Fabel said. “So, in our past tournaments, we’ve been able to make really strong continuations down the field. So once someone catches it, it just keeps going. It’s very exciting to see that type of play because it makes for really fast points.”
Lily Van Linder (sophomore) is one of the captains for WAC and has noticed the positivity of the Ultimate Frisbee community.
“One of the main ideas in ultimate frisbee is the spirit of the game, which is that even if you’re not on their team, you’re still nice, friendly, caring and welcoming,” Van Linder said. “So that being the baseline of the sport really influences the environment of the team, which is really great. It’s really nice to have people you can rely on, both on and off the field that deeply care about you, which is really amazing.”
Ian Terell (sophomore) serves as the social chair and fundraising chair for Detox.
“I like to think of my role in the team as about putting in the extra effort so that we all have something to look forward to,” Terell said. “We did a hike with WAC and Detox in the Hollywood Hills that was really fun. It was stunning and then just being able to go with both teams and mix up the cars. I had a blast and I know other people had a blast because we got to mix and talk and get to meet new people.”
According to Pesikoff, the WAC community motivates her to go to practice.
“If I’m tired one day, I may not want to go to practice, but I want to be there for my friends,” Pesikoff said. “It’s so great because even if you are sitting in your room and don’t want to go to practice, a part of you knows that you’ll be happy to see your friends once you’re there. Every time we show up to practice, you’d think we hadn’t seen each other in a year because everyone’s so excited to see each other.”
According to Terell, Detox practices help the team bond.
“We start practices out with focus throwing, and we switch up new partners each practice,” Terell said. “I think that’s another way we have a sense of community within our own team. Having a new partner every single time you’re throwing leads to talking and getting better as a team.”
According to McGowan, after Detox’s win against Claremont last spring, the team needed to quickly raise funds in order to travel to nationals.
“Last year we beat Claremont to go to nationals three weeks later, so we need to somehow raise $20,000 in a week for flights,” McGowan said. “Then I had to help buy all these flights from different places to all these people because nationals happen two weeks after the school year ends. It was very stressful, but I got out of my comfort zone, and which helped me get better at doing different, harder things.”
Van Linder cites the social chairs as part of the reason for the strong community WAC Ultimate Frisbee has created.
“We have wonderful social chairs who do a great job of making sure we have a lot of off-the-field opportunities to bond,” Van Linder said. “We’ve done jewelry making, game nights, we do our upper field throwing scrimmage every Friday. We do a lot of quad sitting, we’re quad sitting all the time and just chit-chatting. Yeah, it’s a joy.”
Contact Theo Wilton at Twilton@oxy.edu
