Kevin W. Leclaire
Anna Hrovat-Staedter (foreground) in action during the 2014 Chesapeake Invite.
Not many sports allow you to begin playing in your late teens and then earn a national team spot four years later. But that’s exactly what happened to ultimate disc player Anna Hrovat-Staedter. The 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism student and member of Heist — a competitive ultimate club team based in Madison — ran cross country and track at Madison West High School and then started playing ultimate in college.
“I went to my first practice, and I was completely amazed by what the girls could do,” she says. “I became totally obsessed with the sport.”
Madison is the epicenter of ultimate in Wisconsin, and three of the 71 players on four Team USA rosters for the World Flying Disc Federation’s World Under 23 Ultimate Championships this month in London have connections to the city. In addition to Hrovat-Staedter, who is on the Mixed National Team, they include UW’s Margaret Kennedy on the Women’s National Team and Madison Radicals member Kevin Brown on the Open National Team. (Milwaukee’s Logan Pruess also made the Open National Team.)
“Madison is pretty well represented on Team USA,” says Hrovat-Staedter, who with other select members of Heist was encouraged to try out for the national teams by Heist founder and captain Robyn Wiseman.
More than 500 ultimate players from across the country applied, and only 100 men and 104 women were selected to attend tryout camps in November 2014. Hrovat-Staedter and others from Wisconsin went to the camp in Orlando, Fla. “Those were two days of the hardest ultimate I’ve ever played — the sorest my body has ever been,” she says. “But it was worth it.”
“The best thing about ultimate is seeing how the game empowers young women,” Wiseman says, pointing out that players call their own fouls, little experience is required and prospects for advancement can be huge. “There are not those types of opportunities in other sports.”
This isn’t the first time female ultimate players from Madison have been in the global spotlight. Two members of Heist, Becky LeDonne and Liza Minor, were on U.S. teams that won gold at the World Championships of Beach Ultimate in Dubai in March. And Georgia Bosscher — a name that always comes up during discussions of the women’s ultimate game in Madison — played for gold-medal-winning Team USA at the 2013 World Games in Colombia.
Skyd Magazine (skydmagazine.com), an ultimate news site, is planning to stream many of the games. A complete schedule has not yet been announced.
