An elite team of women athletes are taking to fields across the country this summer to showcase their athletic prowess, but they’re not the U.S. women’s national soccer team. They’re all-star ultimate Frisbee players and one — 22-year-old Dori Franklin — is a native Oak Parker.
Franklin, an Oak Park and River Forest High School alumna, recently graduated from the University of Colorado, where she was captain of Kali Ultimate, the women’s ultimate Frisbee team, her junior and senior years. Franklin is also a member of Molly Brown, Denver’s elite women’s ultimate Frisbee team. In the world of competitive women’s ultimate Frisbee, the competition doesn’t get much better than that. If her sport had the equivalent of an NBA — Franklin might be diving and torqueing on a Derrick Rose contract.
“I can’t really play at a higher level than where I’m at now outside of the world games,” said the ecology major, who derives virtually no income from the sport. “People play because they love to play.”
What does she love about the still relatively unknown sport?
“It’s just a really fun sport. It combines a lot of different aspects of other sports like soccer; a lot of skill is involved. The sideline participation in ultimate is really huge because players on the sideline have to communicate with those in the field to help them out and let them know [where the disc is],” she said.
The game’s structure is similar to football. It involves limited physical contact between two on-field teams of between 5 and 7 players each (the number depends on the terrain) trying to pass a flying disc into the other team’s end zone for points. If the disc is intercepted, or if a pass is incomplete or out of bounds, the result is a turnover.
Franklin didn’t get involved with ultimate until the summer between graduating from OPRF and going to Colorado for college. She had played soccer throughout high school and in elementary school for the OPRF Strikers but had tired of the sport.
“A family friend was in competitive ultimate Frisbee in Chicago, and he asked if I wanted to play on a coed pickup team,” Franklin recalled. “I decided I would try it and I loved it.”
Franklin said she can feel how the sport has grown even since she was introduced to it several years ago.
According to USA Ultimate, the sport’s national governing body, roughly 7 million people in more than 80 countries now revel in the sport’s signature gesture, the layout, or the act of diving horizontally to catch the disc.
Starting July 27, Franklin will become one of the faces of the ultimate Frisbee phenomenon. She’ll embark on a nine-city tour — from Seattle to Denver to Boston to New York City — with a team of roughly 12 to 15 other elite women players who will compete against those cities’ elite women’s teams.
So far, the sport’s popularity is mostly contained to the East and West coasts, which may explain why no Midwestern city is on the list. They won’t be entirely inaccessible, though. Interested observers can catch the games live-streaming on the web for free.
CONTACT: michael@oakpark.com