Everyone in Seattle has heard about the Mariners, the Sounders and, of course, the Seahawks. There are people who still wear Seattle SuperSonics t-shirts and jerseys, clinging to the NBA team we lost. But there’s another team in town worth paying attention to that is practicing hard, inspiring youth and bringing home trophies and championships.  

The Seattle Riot is an all-female Ultimate Frisbee team that competed in and won the World Ultimate Club Championships in Lecco, Italy, this past August. The team also won Worlds in 2002 and 2014, Nationals in 2004 and 2005 and the U.S. Open in 2012 and 2014.  

For those who don’t know: Ultimate Frisbee features seven players on each team with regular offensive and defensive line rotations. You can’t run with the Frisbee once it’s passed to you and your team loses possession if any pass is incomplete (dropped, intercepted, tipped or thrown-away). You score a point, much like football, if you pass the disc and catch it successfully in the end zone.  

The last game of the Riot’s current season ended in defeat. Its archrival, the San Francisco Fury (a team that the Riot beat in the finals of the Worlds competition 17-15 this year), won 12-10. San Francisco had an 8-7 lead at halftime and in the second half the Riot had some chances to tie the score, but fell just short. The game was actually shortened–usually the teams play to 15 points–but due to all the back-and-forth play, the game clock ran out and the goal was reset at 12 points.  

I met the Riot co-captain triumvirate, including Rohre Titcomb, Alyssa Weatherford and Gwen Ambler, at Street Bean Espresso on a rainy Thursday morning to learn more about the team, its tournaments, values and the interplay between Seattle culture and its philosophy. 

Riot was founded in 2000, and there are currently 26 women on the roster, plus team coach Andy Lovseth. The sports club competes in the Pro-Flight division, which is the top level of competition for Ultimate Frisbee. This past year, Riot played tournaments in Oregon, Minnesota, Washington, Texas and Italy. The group also had several games broadcast on ESPN3. 

“We’ve done a good job building the team into something more than the sport itself,” Titcomb says. “There’s this focus on growing teammates as people and group members. There’s a lot of work done on how to create a successful group dynamic.” 

Indeed, Riot has created three core values–excellence, trust and love–to help current, former and future players become better people. The veteran team members pass these on to the students they coach and the new team members that come in every year.  

Ambler, a five-year Riot captain who might retire from the team this year (though her teammates are trying to persuade her otherwise, dubbing her their Brett Favre, an NFL quarterback famous for retiring then un-retiring), says the sport meshes well with Seattle’s culture. 

“Ultimate speaks to people who like being active and outdoors,” she says, “but who don’t want to be antagonistic or overly aggressive.”

That much is clear, since I also learned that the game, on the whole, is self-officiated. 

“Players make their own calls,” Ambler says. “Players can decide to go to an observer if they want to, but for the most part the onus is on them to conduct themselves with sportsmanship and to take responsibility, which is a really cool tool for empowerment.”  

Can you imagine Kobe Bryant, Richard Sherman or Clint Dempsey making their own foul calls? Very hard to believe, yet this tenet is part of the fabric of Ultimate. 

The Seattle Riot team

Since 2000, Riot members have done a great deal in the community to teach Ultimate Frisbee to girls. Ambler even founded a woman’s winter league, one of the biggest and most well attended in the country with more than 150 women participating.  

Right now the team is beginning its off-season. The pressures of competition are over and the team members are enjoying hanging together and playing spin-off games to keep the camaraderie and community going. They will hold preliminary team meetings in February and begin to set the final roster in May. Thanks to its third place finish in Nationals this year, the team is guaranteed to play again in the Pro-Flight tier of competition, with the U.S. Open slated for fourth of July weekend in 2015.   

“Through Ultimate I’ve gained so many friends who are women my age,” co-captain Weatherford says. “There are people I stay in touch with who have moved across the country and teammates I see daily here in Seattle.” 

Weatherford noted that she’s wanted to be a Riot captain ever since joining the team eight years ago. This year was her first as a captain.  

“Learning from people on the team has helped me so much,” she says. “I feel so much more confident as a speaker and as a person. It’s incredible.” 

Check out some Riot highlight videos here.

Jacob Uitti is a co-founding editor of The Monarch Review and he plays in the band, The Great Um.