Senior Ethan Kahn, one of the four captains for Park’s ultimate team, Crush, said the team chose to join the Twin Cities’s ultimate fall league this year due to a yearning for success.

“The captains were talking one day, and we decided it was finally time to register for fall league because there’s a correlation between teams that play in fall league and spring season accomplishments, so I went ahead and signed the team up online,” Kahn said.

According to one of the three boys’ Ultimate coaches, Spencer Hagen, the seniors have done a great job assimilating the new players into the team.

“We’ve got a lot of young players and new players and everyone’s kind of coming together, and our new senior leadership is doing a nice job being good role models, as a senior should, and so we’re playing great and playing as a team,” Hagen said.

Another captain of Crush, senior Casey Kreie, said the league consists of tournaments that do not affect or relate to the regular spring season.

“It’s totally separate from the actual spring season that runs through Minnesota Ultimate,” Krie said. “It’s its own entity and anyone could just get a group together and join. It’s sort of a tournament style where in the end of it all there’s one big winner.”

According to Kahn, the ultimate fall league consists of competitive teams from all around the state.

“We played Maple Grove, we beat them 15-4 and (this weekend) we played Open World Learning Community and then we play Hopkins, and the week after that we play White Bear Lake,” Kahn said. “So we play teams from all over, it’s just smaller than in the spring.”

According to Kreie, practicing in the fall brings some challenges when it comes to coach availability.

“All the practices we’re having now in the fall have been captains’ practices because the coaches have pretty busy schedules nowadays, but they are able to coach during games,” Kreie said.

Hagen said, with the coaches being gone, the captain’s have really stepped up in order to create a well prepared team for the spring.

“The captains are doing a really great job,” Hagen said. “Ethan Kahn has worked very hard to get the team involved and signed up for the fall league, and Casey, Duncan and Brett have all been doing an equally good job at getting the team together and practicing, and recruiting new players. (They are) doing a great job relaying the same message as we’d be relaying if the coach’s were there, so they’ve been extensive coaches and it has been great for the team.”

Khan said with Crush competing in the fall, the team can really improve and be more prepared for the spring season.

“I think the team continually playing in the fall is going to benefit us a lot,” Kahn said. “The more we play, the more experience we get under our belt and the more comfortable we are running our offense and setting up on defense, so I really think this is the year Crush finally makes D1.”

According to Kahn, the fall schedule includes games every Saturday as well as weekly captains’ practices.

“In the fall we compete every Saturday with captains’ practices on Mondays and Wednesdays,” Kahn said. “Come winter, we’ll probably start conditioning indoors and then come springtime, it’s the season.”