We had the pleasure of chatting with Alex who will be playing with Woodies at the WMUCC this summer. Alex has been passionate about Ultimate for the past 24 years of her life and continues to bring that passion to every game. Find out more about Alex below!

First tell me about yourself, who you are and how you found ultimate?

I’m Alex. I’m 45 years old currently based in Munich but have lived in Austria, Italy and in other parts of Germany before. For me, I think Ultimate is kind of the constant thing in my life, apart from my family, obviously. It was always great to find new friends in different countries and places through Ultimate. It’s always been a vital part of my life for 24 years now.

And are the friends you have now connections because of ultimate?

Yeah, absolutely. I met my partner at a frisbee party in 2002. Most of my friends are ultimate players. I haven’t done many things (yes, studying and working) apart from Ultimate since 1998. Obviously there’s some work friends and some university friends, but most of the friendships I have actually developed from Ultimate. 

And did you play any other sports before ultimate or was ultimate your first team sport?

Well I did play basketball before for a bit, but only casually. I didn’t really play any league or anything like that. And I did horseback riding at a decent level until I was 18/19. 

In the city that I come from, there was no ultimate team in my school. So the first I heard of Ultimate was in a TV show when I was 15 or 16 years old. The show would show people doing kind of crazy things, either professionally or as a hobby or sport. And there was one girl who played ultimate. I saw that show on a Saturday night before going out with my friends and said “wow – that looks really cool!”. And actually, as it so happened, I played on a team with that girl when I moved to Munich in 2007. I didn’t recognise her but my partner told me “hey that’s the girl who was on the show!”. It was really funny.  

Oh wow that’s amazing – what are the chances! When you started playing first did you just find a local club nearby since it wasn’t in your school? 

I had to move to the city to go to University and at a time where you still had printed sports programs. I saw they had Ultimate frisbee as a sports option and I just went to the gym one Wednesday afternoon. From the first training onwards, I really liked it! It actually took me two years to play my first tournament! But the ultimate community as I know it today, was already interesting.

And can you remember your first tournament? 

Yes, absolutely. It was an indoor tournament in Munster, in Westphalia, Germany. There was no minimum number of women needed to play. It was like, you can bring them but you don’t have to. You would regularly play against women or men, whoever’s there. There was no gender matchup given as a rule. If there was another woman on the other team’s line you mostly played her.

And what exactly was it that got you into playing competitively? 

It happened that there were very few women in my University team. But I was asked if I would like to go for nationals in the open division with them. Since there was no big women’s or mixed community, you would often see women at least in the lower leagues in the open divisions. 

But I didn’t really get into playing Ultimate competitively until I moved to Munich in 2007. There was a team called Woodchicas who were the top team in Germany for years so I started training with them. Once I stepped into a really competitive community with the training being much more intense, I even fell more in love with the sport. It was different playing with and against only women, because for the first 9 or 10 years of my ultimate life I played mostly with men. But I really liked playing with women because I felt that I could even bring more to the team. Even at that, playing mixed might even be the cooler option since it’s combining the best of all worlds for me – gender equity and the different ways of playing with different genders within one team.

I know you’ve met your partner and have friends and family to thank Ultimate frisbee for but how else would you say ultimate has changed you?

Wow, that’s a difficult question. I think it’s a lifestyle in general – an attitude towards life, what to expect from people or what to expect from myself. 

You need to consider honesty, a certain amount of empathy and also a positive attitude. I think this might have influenced my leadership style even in the workplace now. I started Ultimate when I was at University but now I do have a leadership position in my company. I always say, it’s not like I’m playing a role, neither the company nor the team, but it’s myself and it’s my whole self that I can bring into something. 

I think Ultimate made me happier in the different places I was living with my family. I know people who move around and are only connected with their colleagues whereas I always had a second outlet because of the frisbee community, which is a very rewarding community. Even when we were in Italy, we brought our three-year-old to tournaments and to training, which was not very common in Italy at the time. But everyone would be super kind and it was never a problem. 

It changed my attitude and how to lead people that is somehow connected between ultimate and my job in general. At work, I have always have my training marked in my Outlook calendar.

Oh no way!

Oh yeah, of course! There are times I must travel or have meetings or evening dinners but since it’s time for me I mark it in my calendar because I would like to spend these hours free. I ask my employees to do the same so they have their free time if they want to go to the gym or just meet friends because otherwise, you might skip that. And I don’t want to nor want them to do that since I think a good work life balance is also quite important to your physical and mental health.

Yeah, and it’s great that your outlet from work is to go play ultimate. 

Absolutely.

Let’s talk about the team that you’re coming to Limerick with – who they are, how they became what they are, and everything else.

My team is Woodies playing in the Grandmaster Mixed division. I think nearly half of the team could also play great grandmasters mixed if there was a division for that! If that happened though we would miss some really cool players. But in two or three years, all of us are Great Grandmasters Mixed! The team started from an old Munich based team. 

Back in early October, two other teammates, Inga and Dima and myself were at Oktoberfest venue. It didn’t happen as it normally would last year so there was a huge space where people played beach volleyball. After a while, they took away the volleyball poles so it was a huge sand area that wasn’t being used for a couple of days. So on Thursday night, one of the Munich frisbee players came along, saw the people who were deconstructing the site and asked when they were taking away the sand and they said Monday. By on Sunday, we had a little hat tournament at that very beach where the Oktoberfest took place which was super cool. I was standing chatting with friends about WMUCC in Limerick the following summer and one said why don’t we send a team. On the back of a receipt, which I’m sure Inga still has, we wrote names of male and female players we could think of that might want to play. We had only 10 days until we would have to apply and have the first payment in so we had to move quickly. There’s only 2 players on our team that have not played with the Woodies before or train in Munich which is really cool. We’ve played warm up tournaments and have had a training weekend. That weekend it was incredibly snowy where we had two days of 15-20 centimeters of snow each morning. We’re really focusing on having a good time and having as few injuries as possible during the tournament. 

Wow you really got organised quickly from what started as a hat tournament to creating a team to travel to WMUCC with! If you had to describe the team, in a few words, how would you describe them?

Experienced – definitely! And probably not always easy to stick to tactics. So if the coach says A on the field, it might sometimes become B, or even C, but everyone’s trying really hard. And we’re always having fun, we’re trying to be there for each other, helping from the sideline. We want to have a good time together. We actually haven’t had a single training or game on any turnaround for the whole team together, there was always at least one person missing on the field!

Sounds like you’re all very adaptable. If I met anybody in your team, and I asked them how would they describe you – what do you think they would say?

The one who’s trying to organize everything and tells people to have their documents ready which I was just doing before this chat! But I’m very lucky, I’m not doing everything on my own – everyone has their piece of work to do. On the field maybe they would say I’m a good handler.

Thinking back now, when you were 20 years old before you started playing Ultimate – What would you say to yourself or to anybody to join the sport?

You absolutely have to do it.  If you like sports, like to run and like to learn it’s great. I would not ever ask anyone to stay if he or she doesn’t feel comfortable within either the team itself or Ultimate in general. I mean, if you’re not used to it or struggle to adapt to playing without a referee, that might become difficult for you. But I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who did not like the community at all, if I’m being honest. I wouldn’t try to convince anyone my age to start playing now because I’m sure it’s not so good for any muscles, ligaments or whatsoever anymore but it’s still fun.

Do you have any good memories of tournaments you played together with Woodies? 

There’s really been a lot of good memories already during the preparation phase – and WMUCC is only to come! 

Say you’re coming out an offense, and it’s universe point in the game now, what do you say to yourself?

I’m always so excited to be honest. But I wouldn’t tell anyone because I don’t want others to be even more excited than I am. But yeah, you can do it. You know, you can do it. We’ve done that before. Yeah, just play the best you can and have fun out there.

So I try to be as calm as I can. I come from the airline industry where we have pilot or cabin crew training and this helps me remember that for the very most part, everything is routine. And I think routine wise, Grand Masters can definitely cope with many situations! I mean, I’m still excited but we know all this is routine – all the ways we run, catch and throw. It’s nothing but routine. And still you would sometimes turnover but would try to be as calm as possible since I know I can throw. I know I can catch it. And I know my teammates can run, catch and throw.