LASA junior, Bodhi Weston, has been selected to play on the U.S. Under-20 Ultimate team. Starting only in middle school, Weston has climbed the ranks as an ultimate player and now joins the nation’s best under-20 players to compete in the World Junior Ultimate Championships. While Weston prepares to represent the United States, he attributes his growth to the LASA Vertikills ultimate community.
LASA Liberator: When did you start playing ultimate?
Bodhi Weston: I picked it up in middle school. My English teacher was the coach. I went to this little private school named St. Francis. I started in seventh grade and kind of played throughout eighth grade and then into the summer, and then that summer I played with the U17 Texas team. That was what really kind of got me into the sport, because my coach was awesome. The people were awesome. It was fantastic.
LL: How did you go from playing with the school to trying out for the U-17 Team?
Weston: I got a push from this lady. Her name is Colleen Kepner, who runs the spring league around here for the high school people, and she was kind of just like, ‘Hey, you should go try out. You might as well. It’ll be fun.’ And I had been enjoying it so much in middle school. I was like, ‘I don’t have anything to do this summer.’ So I went, and I tried out. I became really good friends with the coach’s son, which was pretty helpful, but it was really all Miss Kepner. She was super helpful.
LL: How was the switch from soccer to ultimate?
Weston: The actual decision itself was pretty rough because I had been playing soccer for much longer, and I was super committed. But Frisbee had been so much more enjoyable. The actual kids on my team, I wanted to spend time around outside of practice, while in soccer, I wasn’t the biggest fan of their personal lives. The decision was hard but definitely the right choice.
LL: Do you think being a relatively smaller sport makes ultimate have a better community?
Weston: Yeah, I think that’s a part of it. Being niche is super helpful for having those nicer people. It’s also very open. The U-20 team I’m playing on is a mixed team. It’s co-ed. I’m playing with men and women, and they’re very supportive of all gender neutral and non-binary people. Including those people makes it a much kinder and safer community.
LL: How did you feel getting invited to the trials for the USA World Junior Ultimate Championship?
Weston: I was super excited. Leading up to it was pretty nerve-wracking. It’s almost like a college app. You fill out forms, you write like small essays, and you have to get recs from previous coaches. A bunch of my friends and I outside of LASA signed up together. Just kind of waiting for the email was nerve-racking, but once I got it, I was super excited and just ready to go play some high-level ultimate.
LL: Did you do anything differently when practicing leading up to the team tryouts?
Weston: I was nursing an injury, so I was doing a lot of PT [Physical Therapy], and then I was trying to build the base level a lot higher. I was in the gym twice a week. I was doing normal practices. And then about two weeks before, I tapered down, which is pretty much just doing less and less. Then, the week straight before trials, I was off my feet, trying to eat healthy, trying to get a lot of good sleep, and hydrating.
LL: Did you expect to be invited to tryouts?
Weston: Yeah, I was fairly confident I was going to get invited. I went to an ID camp in the summer that was pretty much just pay to go have some of the coaches, who are coaching that team, see you earlier in the season, get your name out there, and show off a little bit. I also performed fairly well at the youth club championship with the U-20 Texas team, and there were scouts there that I think saw me, so I was feeling confident, but you never know.
LL: Were the U-20 tryouts hard?
Weston: I talked to a lot of my adult friend players that had been to stuff like this before, and they were saying I should expect the highest level of physical activity I’ve ever performed before. I had been playing adult club that entire summer, so I had just been constantly on the grind in the gym, playing high-level tournaments, cardio, all the things. When I got there, I felt great throughout all of day one, both technically and physically. And on day two, people started falling out, and I was still feeling strong. Then, at the end of the day, muscles were giving out, but it wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But definitely pushing my body to some limits there.
LL: What do you mean by people were “falling out”?
Weston: People were trying to show off at tryouts. That’s what tryouts are. And so it was a lot of full send, a hundred percent on everything. And so we were seeing people getting injured pretty frequently. And I mean, fingers crossed it doesn’t happen to me, but the ACL tear in Frisbee is the number one thing that happens because of all the horizontal movement you put on your knees. I saw a lot of that happening, which was rough.
LL: After the tryouts, did you know what you were getting on?
Weston: No, I actually had no idea. So there were two tryouts, East and West Coast, and I was at the West Coast tryout. And from what I heard from a friend who went to the East Coast tryout, the West Coast one was definitely more competitive. I know they pulled a bunch more people from the West Coast tryout to put on the team. I felt pretty good about my performance at the tryouts. I felt like I gave the best I could, but I was not sure if I was going to make the team because there were a lot of high-level players there.
LL: Do you think you could have gone there without Vertikills?
Weston: Oh, 100% not. My introduction to the high school scene was so important. I mean, it was the reason I dropped soccer. My freshman year, meeting all these people that I had looked up to in middle school and getting to play with them was such a big inspiration. The Vertikills are the reason that I am here right now.
LL: How has being on the U.S. team changed your relationship with the Vertikills?
Weston: I guess personally, I feel like it puts more pressure on me. I feel like I have to outperform more than usual because ‘this guy’s on team U.S.A.’ So I feel like I have to be doing more. And really I need to back off a little bit and let the team be a team and not try to do it all. It’s kind of expected to perform higher while also letting the team be a team.
LL: What’s your favorite part about being a part of Vertikills?
Weston: Oh man. I mean, the people are great. Obviously, we formed our own little niche out here [Referring to his group of friends playing ultimate in the courtyard adjacent to the cafeteria on the 700s room side]. I really think it’s the relationships that I’ve made because coming into LASA, I wasn’t really sure where I was going to fit in. And obviously, Frisbee was a great start, and meeting all of these people that shared this same passion, the same drive, was fantastic: Probably my favorite part about our LASA team.
LL: What’s your favorite part about ultimate?
Weston: The cliche answer, which is the answer I’m going to give, is the spirit of the game. It’s a self-reffed sport if you didn’t know. So we don’t have refs. Calls are made on the field by the players. And they are talked out by the players. And so if a call is made, the two players involved in the call we’ll talk about it and attempt to resolve it in a fair way. In the higher competitive games, there are people called observers who can give their opinion to those players. But the way this sport kind of integrates integrity is amazing.
If you want to try out a fun and unique sport that, to be honest, we’re pretty good at here. Play Frisbee. You don’t really need much, just coming out to fall practices. We’ll put stuff in the announcements early on, coming out to the fall practices just to get a super, they’re super unserious, just kind of bringing people into the sport. So come join us out there. It’s a great time.
