Both the boys and girls Ultimate Frisbee teams from H-B Woodlawn and Washington-Liberty High School are set to compete in the high school national tournament today and tomorrow (Saturday).
The High School National Invite tournament is set to be held in Richmond. This is the first time the organizers Ultiworld and Competitive Ultimate Training have held the tournament since the pandemic, according to a news release.
For this year’s tournament, 16 boys teams and 15 girls teams are set to attend, according to its website. Over the weekend, the four teams from Arlington are set to play against other high school teams from New Jersey, Utah and Oregon among other states.
Currently, Washington-Liberty Open and H-B Woodlawn Open — which were both formerly boys teams but are open to any players — were ranked 14th and 16th respectively by Ultiworld in the boys division, while H-B Woodlawn Gxrls and Washington-Liberty Gxrls were ranked 19th and 20th respectively in the girls division, according to the latest power ranking list published.
https://twitter.com/HBVarsityGirls/status/1525462695683796993
Among the four Arlington teams, only Washington-Liberty Gxrls has not been to previous national tournaments. MJ Muskovitz, a senior and the team’s captain, said the invite was “a huge surprise.”
Since almost half of her team was new, Muskovitz thought they were still “trying to build up the base of play and recruit more players” for this year, she told ARLnow.
“I got to read out the email [from the organizer] that we got to the rest of the team, it was a huge shock because we did not expect to be going to nationals,” Muskovitz said.
As her team was still focused on strengthening team bonds and developing the new players’ fundamental skills such as throwing, the members’ expectations weren’t “necessarily too high,” Muskovitz said.
“We hope to gain a new experience for our players,” she said. “We’re also looking to push our team more into a national spotlight.”
On the other hand, Coach Jay Boyle of H-B Woodlawn’s boys team hoped his squad could “make the upper bracket.” Although he was not the coach at the time, H-B Woodlawn Open participated in the national tournament in 2018.
In preparing for the tournament, Boyle’s team has been lifting weights, training three days a week over the winter, in addition to reviewing video footage of other teams, he added. Throughout the season, the team has held practices five days a week at times.
“It’s exciting, we think that we deserve the spot, we think of ourselves as a team that is competitive nationally,” Boyle said.