According to girls’ ultimate assistant coach Callyssa Ozzello, the girls’ ultimate team kicked off the first weekend of the spring season by participating in the Edina Mixer tournament April 7.

Ozzello said the tournament is composed of two parts—a series of 30 minute mixer games followed by a clinic put on by a women’s masters team. She said Park has participated in the tournament for the last four years.

“It’s a really sweet opportunity for them to get to learn new things, to get to meet new girls who they are going to playing against in the season and then to see really elite women play the game as well,” Ozzello said.

According to Ozzello, the team played three games. Park won 8-2 against Prior Lake and 6-4 against Armstrong, then tied 4-4 against Cooper.

According to senior girls’ ultimate captain Esther Gendler, the tournament allowed the team to come together at the start of the season after struggling to mesh as a team during practices.

“It’s been hard in practices to just really find our flow, especially in the gym where we don’t have a lot of space. It was good to get into a real game situation and I feel like it really helped to get our team flow together,” Gendler said.

According to Ozzello, the team has many new players this year, which creates uncertainty at the start of a season.

“When you start a season, you never really know what the team is going to be like, and we have a lot of new girls this year which is really exciting, but you never really know how they’re going to adjust once they are actually in a game setting,” Ozzello said.

According to Gendler, having new players is beneficial for enlarging the program but creates difficulties during gameplay when players don’t know the rules well.

“The majority of our team is new, so that’s really good for the program because it’s building, but also it’s definitely been challenging because it’s hard to get into the game when a lot of people don’t know how to play,” Gendler said.

Ozzello said the team showed good communication and enthusiasm during the tournament.

“We saw a lot of awesome things — lot’s of good communication on the field and on the sidelines, girls encouraging one another, high fives, smiles — all that good stuff,” Ozzello said.

Gendler said team’s performance during the tournament indicated it needs to improve its organization on offence and its positioning on defence.

“We need to work on our offence because it’s a little messy, knowing the game and knowing who to be on on defence and just figuring out where to be, because things can get messy when you don’t really know where to be,” Gendler said.

According to Ozzello, the team members need to improve their confidence, especially for new and inexperienced players.

“What we continue to work on is being really confidant in our abilities,” Ozzello said. “I think when we have new players there’s a tendency to freak out a little bit, get frazzled or rushed and just helping to reinstall in them that you can do this really well, you don’t have to freak out, you don’t have to worry and that you’re teammates will help you out.”

Looking into the rest of the season, Gendler said she hopes the team becomes more unified and enjoys the season.

“I hope that we just improve as a team and that we find our flow and I hope that we do well in our games and our tournaments and that we have a fun year,” Gendler said.

According to Gendler, the next girls’ ultimate tournament is the Madison Mudbath in Madison, Wisconsin April 27 to April 29.