Head Coach Milo Yeates
Assistant Coach Joel Long

In the USA Ultimate official rulebook, the section immediately following the introduction is titled “Spirit of the Game.” It says, “Spirit of the Game is a set of principles which places the responsibility for fair play on the player. Highly competitive play is encouraged, but never at the expense of mutual respect among competitors, adherence to the agreed upon rules, or the basic joy of play.”

This focus on spirit is one of the things that makes Ultimate Frisbee such a special sport, and Rowland Hall’s Ultimate players were perfect representatives of the sport: putting in maximum effort and always playing competitively, while also learning to advocate for themselves under the self-officiating system; playing with the utmost respect, and even friendliness, with all other teams; and never forgetting to have a ton of fun all season long.

In only its third year of existence, and after losing key seniors last year, the Rowland Hall Ultimate team worked incredibly hard and improved immensely while competing well against teams with far more experience. Our team captains, MVP Evan Weinstein and Defensive Player of the Year River Yeates, led the team with an always positive attitude, utter dedication to the hard work required, remarkably consistent displays of skill on the field, and a sharp eye for how to educate and assist their fellow players. Our Spirit Captain, George Jensen, kept our energy high and interactions with other teams cordial, and we were super proud to have Nyioe Younten, our Offensive Player of the Year, chosen to be a member of Utah Ultimate’s first ever All-State Spirit Team.

The team’s incredible hard work is perhaps best exemplified by their willingness and enthusiasm to travel to an out-of-state tournament in Idaho with only about a week of notice, where they then proceeded to play five games in less than 24 hours, concluding with a win against a team so evenly matched with us that the game ended with a single point that lasted almost 20 minutes long. On top of that, the Winged Lions sure know how to finish strong, because the state championship tournament was even more of a success. At state, the Winged Lions exhibited the best play we’d seen from them all season. Assistant Coach Long described their penultimate game, for instance, as the most exciting game he’d ever seen Rowland Hall’s Ultimate team play (with games being played to 13 points, we were down 6-12 and managed to come all the way back to 11-12 before the opposing team finally scored their winning point). The Rowland Hall team then ended their season with a comfortable win against a team they’d only barely managed to beat earlier in the season—the perfect representation of these players’ hard work paying off.

We will greatly miss our three seniors, A. Cichos, Tenzin Sivukpa, and Evan Weinstein, both for their great play and for their good-natured presence at practices and games. We wish them the best wherever they go next and hope they’ll take Ultimate and the Spirit of the Game with them. And even as they go, we remain incredibly excited about the future of this team. For example, it’s been amazing to watch our three freshman this year, Gregory House, Andrew Miles, and our Most Improved Player of the Year Milo van Ispelen, go from never having played Ultimate competitively and having minimal experience with it in any capacity whatsoever, to knowledgeable and skilled members of the team. The future of Rowland Hall Ultimate is bright! We want to thank every single one of our players for their hard work and amazing spirit, and encourage them to keep it up over the summer. We look forward to building on this great season in 2026.

Members of Ultimate Frisbee
A. Cichos
Brady Eckrote
Gregory House
George Jensen
Andrew Miles
Enzo Rust
Tenzin Sivupka
Milo van Ispelen
Evan Weinstein
Rayne Weinstein
River Yeates
Nyioe Younten
Rodrigo Zendejas-Portugal