The Founding

“I started playing with the men in the fall of 1980, and at that time there was no women’s team. in fact, i’m fairly sure that there was no women’s team at all in boston. there were two women who played with the men, heather morris and liz quellar. if you look on the men’s website at the rosters from the men’s teams in the 70’s, you will see that in many years one or more women played with the men. i believe in the spring of 1981 is when Boston Ladies Ultimate formed. heather can tell you for sure, or maybe if you have a copy of the new ultimate history book that just came out. at any rate, by the fall of 1981, liz and heather were playing for BLU, so there were no women on the men’s team. unfortunately i’m not exactly sure when the tufts women’s team started, but it might have been some time in the fall of 1981 or spring of 1982. the team was started by gardiner powell, and some of the team members were parke baker, isabelle turcci, gigi van slyk, jennifer crowe, trish lee, carla fenton. they took on the name of “rollicking ultimate disc”, or “RUD”. the men’s and women’s teams got along very well, though. usually, they travelled with the men and played at the same tournements as us. at that time, the good women’s teams in the northeast were UMass, BLU and the Cornell Wild Roses, and eventually there were enough teams in 1984 to have a women’s college easterns at the same time as the first men’s college nationals, which i hope you know was hosted by tufts. i sort of lost track of what happened to them after i left. i know they went to college nationals in 1991, but i don’t know how they did. they went again in 1994, while i was coaching the men. i started coaching the women in 1997, i think, and we went to nationals in 2000 and 2001, after which i retired. in 2000, we won the division over brown, led by callahan winner johanna neuman. we had high hopes in 2001, but injuries really affected us. we came in second in the region to brown that year. in 1999, and especially in 2000 and 2001, we had lots of success at the yale cup, college easterns and other big tournaments, but the details all escape me. we won terminus one year, we won two yale cups i think, and lost a tough final, in the snow, to brown after they drew a bye [!] in the semis. our big rivals were brown and mit. brown was always good [and still is, it seems]. we were always a rag-tag bunch, but eventually in 2000 and 2001 we had a winning record against them. we always had sort of a sloppy offense, with lots of athletic abilty but not many throwers, but we had a great defense. a couple of different zones, maybe the first ‘clam’ in the college women’s game, a reverse clam, a few other hybrid and matchup junk defenses, zone to person, person to zone, clam to zone, all sots of of hybrids and permutaions. everything. it was a lot of fun to coach.”
-coach paul

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