More than a dozen years later, Wang is a captain of D.C. Shadow, one of 12 teams in the Premier Ultimate League, a community-supported professional ultimate disc league for women and gender-expansive people.
“The idea that I’m playing professional ultimate is kind of wild,” Wang, who is in her third year with Shadow, said in a recent video interview. “My parents are like, ‘Wait, you?’ ”
With two weeks remaining in the PUL’s 2024 regular season, Shadow is 4-0 and boasts a league-best plus-42 point differential. As D.C. eyes its first championship and many of its players begin preparations for the club season that follows, Wang and Shadow officials are seeking ways to grow awareness of the team and strengthen the league going forward.
Professional ultimate arrived in 2012 with the inaugural season of the American Ultimate Disc League. The District was awarded an expansion team, the D.C. Breeze, in 2013, and while the league was officially open to anyone, it wasn’t until 2017 that Jesse Shofner became the first woman to start an AUDL game.
After the season, Shofner and more than 150 others, including dozens of male AUDL players, pledged to boycott the league, which rebranded as the Ultimate Frisbee Association this year, if it did not ensure that men and women had equal representation in 2018.
Kelly Ross, who had played high-level club ultimate in D.C. since she was introduced to the sport through the friend of a roommate at the University of Virginia, joined the D.C. Breeze’s newly formed Gender Equity Committee and volunteered with the unaffiliated Club Players Coalition, which was dedicated to increasing playing opportunities, supporting college programs and putting on youth clinics in the region.
Out of the boycott, the PUL was founded in 2018. The league debuted in 2019 with eight teams, including one from Medellín, Colombia. When PUL officials announced plans to expand in 2020, Ross helped lead the charge to bring a team to D.C.
Ross found an important ally in David Tornquist, who got involved with the youth ultimate scene in Arlington, Va., after his daughter, Caroline, picked up the sport as an eighth-grader at HB-Woodlawn Secondary Program and went on to play at Dartmouth.
“I was retired, and I thought this was a great chance to give people I was exposed to an opportunity to play and highlight how good they were,” said Tornquist, who covered Shadow’s $5,000 buy-in fee and remains the team’s president and treasurer.
Ross tore her ACL in 2019 but planned to serve as an assistant coach for Shadow in its inaugural campaign before the season was canceled because of the coronavirus. The 2021 season was reduced to a postseason tournament, delaying D.C.’s first home game at Catholic University’s Carlini Field until 2022.
“I cried at the end of that game,” Ross said. “It was so cool to look up and see this huge stadium full of all these people that I care about cheering us on. It was four years of work to get to that moment.”
The club ultimate regular season runs 14 weeks from June to September, followed by sectionals, regionals and nationals. Whereas club teams travel to smaller cities across the country, such as Olathe, Kan., and Essex Junction, Vt., to play multiple games over a weekend, each team in the PUL plays five or six regular season games over 10 weeks.
Pro ultimate is more spectator-friendly than club is. Games are played in stadiums in major cities, including Philadelphia, Indianapolis and Nashville, and players don’t have to worry about preserving their energy to survive the rigors of a multiday tournament. General admission tickets to Shadow games, which are streamed on YouTube, start at $16, while children 11 and under get in free.
Beyond increased visibility, the biggest perk for the pro players, who sign contracts and receive a nominal stipend for each game, is that the PUL covers the cost of uniforms, travel and lodging. Playing high-level club ultimate can cost thousands of dollars per season.
“We spend so much money out of our own pockets to play club, and we do it happily because we love it,” said Shadow’s Kami Groom, a U.S. national team veteran who discovered the sport at Washington University in St. Louis. “But getting the opportunity to have more structure, play in front of fans, play a different format and not have to pay for travel expenses or gear is really exciting.”
PUL squads typically draw from the best club teams in their geographic area, and Shadow is no exception. While D.C.’s PUL team has players who commute from Pittsburgh and Kansas City, roughly half the roster is composed of players who play for D.C. Scandal, the top women’s club team in the region. The DMV has become a hotbed for ultimate after sending five club teams to nationals last year.
The PUL’s top teams, including Shadow, tend to be the ones that have the least turnover from year to year and a core group of players who have developed chemistry playing club together over multiple seasons.
There are positive signs for the PUL both on the field and in the stands. When Groom started playing competitive ultimate, she said, it wasn’t uncommon for a couple of elite players to carry entire teams. These days, rosters are more skilled top to bottom, which makes earning a spot in the PUL more difficult than ever.
Shadow, which plays its final home game Saturday at 7 p.m. against the Austin Torch and can clinch a spot in the four-team PUL championship with a win, has averaged roughly 500 fans per game. A 2022 partnership forged with the Washington Spirit, Washington Mystics and D.C. Divas to connect and support the region’s women’s sports teams has helped increase interest in Shadow since its inception. A larger than expected crowd braved rainy and windy conditions May 4 to see D.C.’s 13-7 win over the Raleigh Radiance, which downed Shadow in last year’s PUL championship semifinals.
Tornquist has no plans to stop supporting the team, but he’s hopeful the nonprofit league becomes less dependent on the donations of generous individuals to survive, perhaps through the signing of additional sponsors.
“I’d like us to develop a more business-oriented outlook to strengthen all the teams in the league and the league itself,” Tornquist said. “We’re starting to do that. If there was ever a time to try and capitalize on being in women’s sports, this is the moment.”
Meanwhile, Shadow is looking for ways to grow interest in the sport, which has seen an increase in participation locally at the youth and high school levels. In D.C., a record seven high schools competed at last year’s DCSAA tournament. Shadow hosts youth clinics and regularly spotlights youth teams during halftime at home games.
One of Wang’s favorite aspects of ultimate is the community. After transferring to Penn and graduating in 2013, she met friends by playing club in New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco before moving to D.C. She loves the accessibility and inclusivity of the PUL and representing the District and would like to expose more people to the sport she stumbled upon by accident.
“We can either continue to market to the existing fan base, or, if we really want to take it to the next level, I think it’s important to bring in non-ultimate players into the stadium,” she said. “ … I never imagined myself as a professional athlete. I want others to think that this is something they can be.”
