Marist FoxU ultimate frisbee is making its mark, most recently posting a perfect 18-0 record during their co-ed fall slate.
The fall schedule serves as an informal co-ed prelude to the competitive USA Ultimate spring season, during which teams then become gender-specific. After a strong fall season, the men’s leaders for Marist FoxU feel confident about the direction of their team.
The co-ed group posted a 5-0 record at the Vassar Tournament in early October, then followed it up with a 6-0 showing at the Westfield Tournament a week later. Their run continued with a perfect 4-0 showing at their early November home tournament and a 3-0 performance at the Muhlenberg Tournament in mid-November.
Junior cutter Cooper Schoch attributed the group’s success to the positive atmosphere they have created this year, a contrast to previous years, which he claims was at times too focused on seniority and personal achievements.
“I think the energy itself on the sideline is persistent through all grades, all players, regardless of rank and stats on the team,” said Schoch.
Case in point: freshman handler Henry Donat. Donat is a product of Maplewood, N.J., where the sport itself was invented by a group of students at Columbia High School in the late 1960s. Donat has played the sport for eight years and immediately boosted Marist with his expertise, earning Marist FoxU Player of the Week honors in mid-October.
“Henry played throughout high school, so he knows a lot more about the rules than I do,” said senior handler Nico Esposito, who serves as team president. “If he starts to speak on something like that, I won’t challenge him.”
Donat originally took up soccer and tennis as a child; in sixth grade, he began to immerse himself in the frisbee culture of his hometown, playing in the Hometown Ultimate league. There, he learned all of the basics, from throwing techniques to team strategy.
For those unfamiliar with the basics of ultimate frisbee, here’s a quick primer: the sport features seven players on each side trying to score in each other’s end zone. Play begins and resets after scores with a “throw-off” akin to a football kickoff, and different lines of players rotate on and off the field.
The primary positions are “handlers,” who essentially play quarterback and make passes, along with “cutters,” who run downfield to make receptions. Turnovers occur when receptions are not completed. A scoring threshold is usually set to win the game – often set at 13 – and time limits also exist in case both teams struggle to reach the threshold – often set at a 75-minute hard cap.
After spending the entirety of high school playing the sport and mastering its rules, Donat has noticed some particular traits that have correlated with success for the current Marist FoxU roster.
“One of the things that I think was really helpful to us was we’re a lot more athletic than other teams and I’m not even really sure why, but we just are,” said Donat.
Part of the reason behind Marist FoxU’s athleticism can be attributed to their athletic backgrounds. Both Schoch and Esposito ran cross-country in high school and took part in pickup ultimate frisbee games with their team after practice. For many high school cross-country runners, playing a casual game or two after a workout is a common occurrence.
While the team benefits from the experience some of their players gained playing in high school, the structure of Marist FoxU is far more organized than the post-practice pickup gatherings typically found at that level. Marist FoxU has a president for each gender-specific side, with Esposito and junior Riley Murphy each currently serving in that role. Their primary responsibilities involve working with the Assistant Athletic Director for Intramural Sports, Club Sports and Camps Stephen D’Alessandro to do the grunt work, which includes scheduling busses, paying tournament fees and keeping team records.
The team’s leaders have not always enjoyed the smoothest relationship with the College, but Esposito feels the situation has improved.
“I feel like at times we felt like we weren’t taken seriously and weren’t treated equally, and [D’Alessandro] asked about how it used to be with [former AD for Intramural and Club Sports Julie Byron], and we’ve had long conversations about that kind of stuff and he’s very open and straight to the point,” said Esposito.
Aside from having leaders who deal with logistics, the team elects captains responsible for the on-field product, with senior Justin Geiger and sophomore Nico Blanco serving for the men’s side. Captain duties include running practices, calling out plays and determining the offensive and defensive line rotations.
Within these rotations, the offensive seven takes the field first and stays on until their unit scores, at which point the defensive line subs in and stays on until they concede a score. With Marist routinely winning games this fall by double-digit margins, there were numerous instances where the defensive line subbed in and played the remainder of the game without having to come back off the field since they never gave up a score.
“In an ideal world, if the offense scores and the defense comes on, the offense will never have to touch the field again because the defense will force a turnover, they will score and they will stay on the field,” said Esposito. “For some of the people on the offensive line, they were playing not as much as they would have hoped, but we were winning a lot.”
The team also has one spirit captain, sophomore handler Patrick Hannon, who fills a unique role not found in most other sports. Ultimate frisbee is the rare sport that does not have referees, with the players themselves instead responsible for promoting sportsmanship and resolving in-game disputes. The spirit captain leads this charge, making Hannon a somewhat odd choice for the position by his own admission.
“Practice finished up and we’re like, ‘Hey guys, someone has to be a spirit captain.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll be spirit captain. Like, why not?’” said Hannon. “And as soon as I said that, I got a lot of laughs from a lot of my peers, a lot of the teammates being like ‘Aren’t you the kid that cursed out another teammate one time?’ I was like, ‘Yup, that’s me.”
In his new role, Hannon has had to calm down his trash-talking antics and instead be a steadying presence for his team. Hannon grew up playing ultimate frisbee in Philadelphia and specifically chose Marist knowing they had an ultimate team. He joined the team already possessing a strong competitive nature, but with a new role and teammates who hold him accountable for trash-talking, he has learned to equally value sportsmanship.
“Why would I destroy the other team’s spirit when I can raise my team’s spirit?” said Hannon.
As for forming the actual roster, the team does hold tryouts, but with the vast majority of incoming players having never picked up a disc in their life, Esposito says a heavy emphasis is placed on a player’s coachability, athletic ability and finding roles for players.
This year’s group coalesced quickly, claiming their first trophy as a group after winning the Westfield tournament.
“That was kind of like the culmination of everything that we’ve been working for, in a piece of hardware that represents all the hard work we’ve done,” said Esposito.
Esposito, Schoch and Hannon all cited that championship game, an 11-9 nailbiter over Springfield College, as a notable highlight of their dominant fall season. Esposito noted that Springfield was a tough opponent due to their size, yet Marist managed to hold onto their narrow lead as the 60-minute hard cap expired.
“You had to win by two, and [Cora Flynn] caught the game-winner, and the emotions were high, obviously because everybody rushed the field. We don’t usually do that,” said Schoch. “I mean, we won’t rush the field but that one, everybody was sprinting because that was a hard-fought game.”
Now that FoxU’s flawless fall run has come to an end, the focus turns to playing in the USA Ultimate spring season. While the men’s side has more than enough participants to compete this spring, so much so that not everyone will make the cut, the same is not guaranteed for the women’s side.
“The girls haven’t had the numbers to play competitively for a while, which is frustrating, but that’s just how recruitment goes,” said Esposito. “If they choose not to play competitively in their season, we will still find tournaments for them to play mixed because mixed tournaments happen throughout the entire year since there are teams that either don’t want to play competitively or they only have enough for mixed.”
Regardless of what transpires this spring, Marist FoxU’s performance this fall leaves little doubt that Marist College is a place where ultimate frisbee thrives.
Edited by Sam Murphy and Danny Destler
Graphic by Cara Lacey; Photos from @maristfoxu on Instagram
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