Lewis & Clark’s two ultimate frisbee teams, Bacchus and Artemis, are among the most popular club sports offerings on campus. The men’s and women’s teams respectively have between them a litany of high-profile wins in recent years, and are a beloved and vital facet of the LC athletics ecosystem.
Two seasoned LC ultimate frisbee players, James Fishman ’26 and Anika Alschuler ’28, described their experience playing ultimate for LC.
Fishman was no stranger to ultimate when arriving at LC, having casually played in high school. He managed to play two full seasons in high school despite COVID-19 shutdowns interrupting his opportunity, bookending his time with a freshman and senior season. At LC, Fishman has been playing competitively for Bacchus all three of his spring seasons and is excited to take on his last year with the team.
Anika Alschuler ’28 began their ultimate career in seventh grade, totalling six years of experience before coming to LC. Here, they are serving as a captain of Artemis in their second year on the team.
Joining the frisbee team at LC is a welcoming process and has been meticulously structured to best benefit the students in a way that allows for a healthy, competitive outlet while still curating a comfortable learning environment. The official competition season begins in the spring semester, so the fall is the time for prospective players to get acclimated to the sport and train their skills.
“The fall season is mostly focused on building people up, everyone learning together, focusing on fundamentals,” Alschuler said.
In the fall, the teams attend unsanctioned, regional tournaments, where players can get a taste of competing regardless of their experience and skills. These tournaments do not count toward the official competitive season in the spring, and are a great opportunity for players to prepare for higher stakes competitions without as much pressure.
Like many sports, an important part of ultimate is sideline spirit and uplifting teammates. With year-round practices and long hours on the field, players rely on one another’s support to perform their best.
“Ultimate can be very tiring. Points can go on for a long time, and you have to make sure you’re going hard for the entire point,” Alschuler said. “Having your teammates on the sideline lifting you up just gives you that extra boost of energy.”
Alschuler further emphasized the importance of team bonds within the team’s dynamic and strategy.
“Communication is really important, like any sport, but it’s also trust for each other … so being able to shake off mistakes, being able to forgive people for making mistakes, is really important,” Alschuler said.
By the time the official competitive season begins in the spring, the team will be much more comfortable with the game play and each other, equally important in securing a coveted spot at the USA Ultimate (USAU) National Championships.
USAU keeps track of each team’s performance via an algorithm and allocates bids for each region, designating the number of teams that will be invited to the Championships in May.
Bacchus and Artemis are in the Northwest Region, one of the ten regions in the country, and will be vying for one of the bids for the region, which historically is allocated between one and three spots.
Before the Championships, LC Frisbee will compete in the DIII Grand Prix, the first sanctioned tournament of the spring season. The event was established in recent years by Bacchus alumni Owen Heh ’22, who was an accomplished handler for the Defensive line, an offensive position in frisbee that passes to cutters downfield. Heh currently plays Club on Oregon Steel, and has played for Hive, another Portland Club team. They were also a 2023 nominee for the Donovan Award, which recognizes exemplary athletic skill, adherence to Spirit of the Game principles and demonstration of excellent leadership.
Recently, the ultimate team was a “learn-ament” that took place at Reed College. Similar to most tournaments held in the fall semester, this event was unsanctioned, meaning that the scores do not count towards power rankings. Instead, this event was intended to allow both teams to have the opportunity to play against each other, and hopefully connect as a team and learn from other players.
Although Bacchus and Artemis usually compete separately, this “learn-ament” was mixed-gender. The players were shuffled and divided into three teams for the tournament, one of which won three out of four games.
Both Fishman and Alschuler agreed that, competing in the Division III jurisdiction, LC has performed superbly. In 2025, Bacchus placed first and Artemis placed third, marking a historical best for their team at the National Championships. In 2024, both teams placed ninth. That year, Artemis also won the Team Spirit award, an honor given to the team that is most highly rated by its competitors in categories including “communication, rules knowledge and fair-mindedness,” according to the USAU website.
The weekend of Oct. 4-5, the team traveled to a tournament in Corvallis, Beaver Brawl, hosted by Oregon State University. Other Portland college teams traveled to this tournament, including University of Portland, Portland State University and Reed.
Because ultimate frisbee tournaments often take place at other campuses, anyone hoping to watch our team in action has limited opportunities to do so. The next on-campus event will be Mixed Fours on Dec. 5-6, a mixed-gender tournament that is also the only sanctioned fall tournament. However, games are often filmed in the spring, when teams will have the chance to compete in higher-level sanctioned events that fans are more likely to find posted online.
With sanctioned spring competitions spread across the country, fly-away tournaments present challenges to the team, especially with recent budget cuts making it more difficult to travel. As such, Alschuler emphasized the benefits of having local, sanctioned tournaments such as DIII Grand Prix and Mixed Fours.
“We were going to go to Tennessee last year. That didn’t happen for various reasons, but, this way, we can have teams that are far away come to us, so we can play against new people and prepare ourselves for nationals, and see what different competition looks like,” Alschuler said.
To show support for Bacchus and Artemis, the LC community can engage with the teams’ social media @bacchusultimate and @artemisultimate on Instagram. Currently, both teams are focused on strengthening their community amongst players within the school and city, gaining experience and maintaining their ever-expanding reputation of stellar spirit and striking success.
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