Two decades of Ultimate at ARHS have produced some impressive results, including several national championships. The Hall of Champions of the Ultimate Players Association shows both the girls and boys ARHS teams in first or second place every year since 2005. Recently the boys team returned from Georgia with the coveted Paideia Cup in hand; the girls team came in second at the Paideia tournament. The teams play both high school and college opponents and travel to several tournaments over the season.
Coach Tiina Booth founded the Ultimate program at ARHS in the late 1980s and has coached the boys varsity team since then. Booth played Ultimate as an undergraduate at Cornell University and has maintained a lifelong connection with the sport. In 2008, she co-authored a book on the sport, Essential Ultimate: Teaching, Coaching, Playing, published by Human Kinetics. She will retire from teaching English at the high school at the end of the 2009-2010 school year, but will continue as the coach of the boys varsity squad.
ARHS alum Joshua Nugent coaches the girls varsity team. Nugent graduated from ARHS in 1998, and then played Ultimate at Brown University, where he majored in Urban Studies. He is currently a graduate student in the School of Education at UMass where he is studying to become a math teacher. He also does conflict resolution work in the Ombuds Office at UMass. Nugent says that coaching Ultimate at ARHS is great fun because "the players are very eager to learn and we make tangible progress every game."
Earlier this year, a contingent of ARHS Ultimate athletes joined players from across the country to compete for the honor of joining the team that will represent the United States at the 2010 World Junior Ultimate Championships to be held in Heilbronn, Germany in August. Tryouts for the national team were held in March over a period of two very intense days. Eighty boys and eighty girls survived the grueling series of drills and tests designed to evaluate their fitness, talent, athleticism, mental toughness, and sportsmanship.
Based on their performance at the tryout camp, ARHS students Amos Adams, Afra Danai, Spencer Diamond, Jonah Herscu, and Hannah Yee were selected to join the national team. In addition, ARHS alums Lauren Baecher (now at Simmons College) and Claudia Tajima (now at Tufts University) made the team, which includes athletes under 20 years of age.
Junior Hannah Yee is proud to represent ARHS and the United States at the international tournament this summer. "I am looking forward to playing against some of the most spirited and talented players in the world who all share a passion for the sport and its advancement," she says. Yee, shown in the photo at right, started preparing for the tryouts in November with a series of rigorous workouts and disciplined mental preparation. She relishes the challenges of athletic competition, while also enjoying the "instant camaraderie" that develops on an Ultimate team. For Yee, this distinguishes Ultimate from other sports. "I’ve always found ultimate players to be just all-around good people who really care about each other and their sport," she explains. "Ultimate is the only sport I know of where intense rival teams are brutally competitive on the field, but as soon as the game is over they’re congratulating each other on a well-played game or even trading jerseys."
Some of those intense rivals will face off at the ARHS Invitational Tournament to be held over the weekend of May 1 and 2. All members of the community are welcome to come see the action.
UPDATE: Both the boys and the girsl won the ARHS Invitational Tournament as well as the Eastern tournament.