The NC State women’s club ultimate team has started its fall season with a number of new faces ready to contribute to the team’s success.

The team, JagaMonsta, graduated 11 seniors last season, creating a heavy focus on developing young talent to replace those missing pieces. Senior captains Rowan Jaynes and Alice Widman will be two of the returners leading that charge.

“Last year, our roles were pretty defined,” Jaynes said. “We’re hoping this year, since we have so much more time to focus on rookie development, which is such a big priority for us, we’ll have more versatility, so we’ll have a deeper roster.”

Both Jaynes and Widman have seen the program grow since coming to NC State as freshmen. Specifically this year, the team has gone through a lot of changes with the high player turnover, but there is still a lot of hope to continue to compete at the national level. 

“I think the team is very different,” Widman said. “I think we do still have the ability to compete at that level, but we got new coaches this year and we are running different systems and learning differently. It’s not the same. We don’t have the same roles and playmakers we did last year, but I think we’re still a capable team.”

Like the men’s ultimate team, the women made a recent appearance at nationals, but Jaynes was sure to add that they did it first.

“We went to nationals the year before the guys did, so we did it first,” Jaynes said. “May of 2018 we qualified for nationals, and out of our region, we went with UNC’s team up to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for a three-day tournament.”

As most sports teams do at some point, the women’s ultimate team is facing a cycle of developing a lot of freshmen and sophomores to fit its system. Jaynes and Widman went through a similar situation and are confident the young players will develop as they did.

“The year before our class, they only had 10 people, and you need seven to play, and they always had some that were injured, so they played what we call ‘savage,’” Jaynes said. “They played everyone that could play. Our rookie class was really big, and they developed us really well our freshman year, and that’s what really got us to nationals our sophomore year.”

Despite the need to develop, there is still a lot of experience returning to this team that can help, especially as nationals gets closer in the spring season.  

“Last year, we graduated 11 seniors, so this year we’re coming in with another fresh start,” Widman said. “But we have nine returners who have all been on the team since we went to nationals, and we have a lot of people with high school experience, so our rookies are looking really strong.” 

Next up for JagaMonsta is the Brickyard Brawl tournament, hosted by the men’s and women’s ultimate teams, held on Miller Fields Oct. 19-20.