The Current

In this week's edition:

• Elevate takes down Spiral Jetty in The Battle of Salt Lake City
• The Crosswind Tour Updates
• Oh Yes She Did! Weekly Highlight Clip

Utah Elevate takes down the University of Utah Spiral Jetty in The Battle of Salt Lake City

This past Sunday, Upwind hosted our first showcase game between the local club team, Elevate Ultimate, and the local college team, University of Utah Spiral Jetty, in the Battle of Salt Lake City! In a game full of excitement, energy, and skill, Elevate won 15-4.

Spiral Jetty comes off a strong season in 2017, going to their first Northwest Regionals, where they finished 5th with big wins over the University of Victoria Vixens, the Oregon State Beavers and the Portland State Vikings. They compete in the Big Sky Section, where they have yet to beat the top seeded Whitman Sweets, although with both Stanford Open and Centex on their tournament schedule this year, Spiral Jetty will look to develop the depth and consistency to beat top teams. “Our goal is to win the Open and win the bid to play in Stanford Invite,” explained coach Anna Thorn, former Elevate player who competed this past year with Chicago Nemesis.  

Thorn is joined by former Denver Molly Brown star, Tania Reitz, and Chrissy Maruyama, who competed with Colorado College Strata and Elevate. “I thought [the game] went really well and it was a great chance for the girls to get into a competitive head space post-winter break,” said Reitz. “Strategy wise, we had good success with our pull play timing, but had some trouble sticking with our dump sequence which resulted in turnovers or less ideal looks. We [also] like to defend the under and we weren’t prepared for the creative deep game [Elevate] brought.”

Spiral Jetty’s roster might be the most stacked it’s ever been. They only lost two players from last year’s team, have players that competed with Utah Swarm, the local Youth Club Championships Under 20 girl’s team, and have just a couple rookies who have never played before. Kyra Khoroujnikova, a member of that Swarm team, will look to make waves after getting featured on ESPNW Top 10, and Lisa Palomaki, Elevate player and former 400 hurdle track star for the University of Utah, will return for her fifth year while she works on her doctorate in Physical Therapy.

Elevate will also have their work cut out for them in 2018. The Northwest is just as talented in college as they are in club, in a region that the double trouble of both Seattle and Vancouver, Riot and Underground, and Traffic and the Sneaky House Hippos, respectively. Elevate came close to pulling off an underdog win against Thorn’s Nemesis early in the season, and finished 6th overall in the Northwest Region. They’ve also benefitted from the influx of talent due to the transplant nature of Salt Lake City, including Reitz from Molly Brown, and Brooke Stanislawski of Raleigh Phoenix, who will look to bring Elevate to Nationals contention in the next few years. The team does struggle though deep into tournaments, as many Mormon players don’t play on Sundays for religious obligations.  

“I would attribute our [growing] success to Elevate because a lot of Elevate women have stepped out into the community and have built local high school programs, which explains our influx of YCC players,” explains Thorn, a former Spiral Jetty herself. “People come into our games and don’t really expect anything from [Spiral Jetty], and so I’m looking forward to upset some teams.”

Written by Laurel Oldershaw. Pictures taken by Rayna Wachs. For more pictures, head over to our Facebook page. 

The Crosswind Tour Updates

• We have lots of new updates and events on our Facebook, from which we are building up archives as we go along.
• Our #HUCKYES campaign is in full swing - what does consent mean to you?
• Thank you again to our sponsors, iSplack, Five Ultimate, Guayaki, and Clif Bar for keeping us fired up and ready to go! 

OH YES SHE DID!
Highlight of the Week

Check out this video recap of our second week on the tour, made by our video producer, Rayna Wachs! #XWTour

Last week's: Report back from Throwback and #HUCKYES

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