The Garfield Frisbee program began long before I arrived at Garfield as a student in the Fall of ’96. Upon entering high school there was a coed team already in existence that was player run and player coached. Throughout my time at GHS this did not change and it was not until after I graduated from GHS in 2000 that the team began to get some coaching from local club/college players. These early coaches, including Sean Rohan, D’Arcy Gholston, and others were influential in keeping the love of frisbee going in a tumultuous atmosphere of the inner city school.

In the summer of 2008, I met the captain of GHS Ultimate (Diane Simunek) at a DiscNW Youth Summer Camp, and we began to talk of the future of the program. Shortly there after I ended a 3 year tenure at the Northwest School as a Varsity then JV boys coach. Upon my termination I was encouraged to go back and help the program that began my love of the sport. I got in contact with Diane, met Travis Burgstahler and Matt Bricker-Mounts (other captains) and began to foster a growing program at Garfield.

In ’09 we had a coed team and I added a boys team which competed in league and states. In ’10 the coed program grew to include a JV team in addition to the Varsity squad and the boys team. In 2011, we kept the same 2 coed teams and our boys team took off competing in league, states, and Westerns. Since then we have grown to include 3 boys teams (a Varsity and 2 JV squads), a coed squad, and a girls program.

Our program is still student run, and as a club sport receives no support directly from Garfield High School. However, in the past three years our parental support has increased exponentially including donating over $3000 in scholarship dollars for those who come from lower-income families. Our coaching staff has grown too, from the original 1 coach (Rusty Brown) to include 5 boys assistant coaches (Kavik Frol, Khalif El-Salaam, Bryan Lee (GHS ’13), Homer Aalfs (GHS ’13), Alex Strong (GHS ’14) and Jason Peacher-Ton (GHS ’14)), a head coed coach (Peter Kapostasy), and a head girls coach (Sophie Scofield-Selby (GHS ’09)). Coach brown has since moved to a more program coordinator role in addition to his coaching duties as the Boys Varsity Head Coach for the program.

Our team now serves over 100 kids from varying backgrounds and I hope to continue the growth this year. We play a schedule with boys ultimate in the fall, coed and girls in the spring. For information on joining the Garfield Team please contact ghsultimate@gmail.com.

Cheers,

Rusty Brown (Program Coordinator)