WASHINGTON — Even if you’re not a baseball fan, there’s another Opening Day that may pique your interest coming to the District next week. Both Washington-based professional Ultimate Frisbee teams, the D.C. Breeze and D.C. Current, open their 2016 seasons at home next weekend.
The Breeze play at Gallaudet University and will open their campaign at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, April 10 against the Ottawa Outlaws (General admission tickets are $10). The Current take on the Boston Whitecaps at 7 p.m. the night prior at Catholic University ($15 for adults, $10 for students, $5 for children).
Both teams are entering their fourth season and each has secured a growing foothold in the vast professional sports landscape in the District. The Breeze’s league — the American Ultimate Disc League — has taken a more aggressive angle at expansion, ballooning to 26 teams nationwide and in Canada this year. The team itself has also invested in areas commonly associated with more established sports leagues, entering agreements with Morill Performance and bringing on team doctors.
“Team resources have expanded both in terms of training opportunities as well as health care,” says Breeze head coach Alex Ghesquiere, who will also coach the U.S. World Championship team this summer.
On the field, the team has been aggressive in bringing in talent from outside the area, with players from as far as Chicago and Kansas City moving to Washington for the summer to play.
On the other side of town, the Major League Ultimate-affiliated Current have taken a longer view approach. The league is holding steady at eight teams, while they look to grow roots through a pseudo-minor league system of local players.
“We’re really trying to build a farm system of sorts,” says Current GM Matt Dewhurst, whose team now practices at Wilson High School. “The goal is to really build a community and a team around that practice squad.”
Two members of last year’s practice squad — Joe Freund and Andrew Ferraro, both area natives — are on the main roster this year. And two seniors on the Wilson team are on this year’s Current practice squad.
For their differences in approach, the two teams share an unlikely similarity. Each employs a member of the two-time women’s national title-winning D.C. Scandal as an assistant coach. Sarah Itoh returns for her second season with the Breeze, after becoming the first female coach in AUDL history to win a game last year, filling in for Ghesquiere. Meanwhile, Sam McClellan joins the Current staff this season.
“The Ultimate community in general is trying to promote equality as much as possible,” Ghesquiere says.
Dewhurst agrees, explaining that McClellan was a perfect fit for the role the team was looking to fill this offseason.
“Having Sam involved is great, because it gives us a different perspective,” he says. “We didn’t go out saying we wanted to hire a female coach. We went out saying we wanted to hire a very smart mind to help us coach this team this year. Sam happened to fit those requirements pretty much to a T.”
Both teams are also acutely aware that having competing interests in the same city in an emerging sport may ultimately prove to be unsustainable. But both teams seem pragmatic about the future of the sport.
“I think having two leagues is probably unsustainable,” Ghesquiere says. “It would be good to have the focus be squarely on one league.”
Dewhurst also acknowledges that eventual reality. He hopes his league’s funding, which has been renewed for three more seasons, will help them get to that point eventually.
“I think it’s pretty evident that at some point down the line there’s going to have to be a merger of some sort,” Dewhurst says. “We’re both working off the same fan bases and were splitting loyalties that don’t necessarily need to be split.
“It happened in the NBA, happened it football. At some point it’s going to happen in Ultimate as well.”
