The Perfect Pair: Ultimate and Triathlon
Winter is coming, but it still feels so far away. Who doesn't need a little diversion right now? Here is a fun look back at Carleton history and the early days of triathlons and ultimate frisbee from Carl alumnus and hardcore triathlete David Evans:
The email came out of the blue last year. After more than 40 years of no contact, Ken Potts ’83 was asking if I remembered him (I did) and did I know that the Carleton Triathlon, née The Carleton Iron Person Competition in 1981 (which Ken started), was about to occur for the 43rd spring in a row? And, perhaps more importantly, was I still in some semblance of triathlon shape — and if so, did I want to return to campus to compete with him and current Carls, all now not even one third of our age?
I was impressed that Twin Cities Ken had tracked down Seattle David, excited to be back in touch with such a revered member of the ’80 swimming and diving team (Ken being by far our best diver and myself being by even farther our worst swimmer). I was especially amazed to suddenly learn that our baby triathlon had not only survived but thrived all these many years later, to become today, as I would soon find out, the oldest continuous triathlon in Minnesota!
An especially busy Spring 2024 prevented my attendance at the 2024 Carleton Triathlon, which turned out to be just as well since Andy Clark — for decades Carleton’s revered swimming and diving coach, long-time caretaker and many-times winner of the Carleton Triathlon, and teacher of the fabled one-credit triathlon class (final: doing the race) — was on sabbatical. That meant there would be no triathlon class that year, perhaps less interest in the 2024 triathlon, and I wouldn’t be able to meet the one guy (arguably more than any other) whose TLC and devoted labor allowed our humble triathlon to blossom into what is now seemingly a mainstay of the Carleton spring term experience, a bucket list calendar event for many a fitness-focused Carl.
And how do I know this? As fortune would have it, Ken kept plugging away at me, Andy returned from his sabbatical, the grizzled triathlete in me revived with the smelling salts of another race on the calendar (June 6, 2025), and before long I was heading to SeaTac airport and flying to MSP to compete in the 44th iteration of this amazing Carleton event.
Except that’s not quite the order of events. Turns out that not even two weeks earlier, I was already attending another amazing Carleton event — this one in Burlington, Washington, just north of Seattle, proudly watching Carleton’s D-I Ultimate teams, Syzygy and CUT, deftly work their way through the prelims en route to their final appearances in their respective divisions. Not only was Carleton the only school to have two teams in the D-I finals, we were also the only school to have four teams at Nationals, with two at the D-III level and two at D-I!
I can still distinctly remember eating at Evans (no relation) dining hall in ’79, looking out toward Bell Field and watching a group of students throwing what appeared to be a flying disc around. I asked my tablemates what the heck those folks were doing — I can’t remember the answer, and it may have been dismissive, but I do recall the lifetime runner in me being a bit intrigued by a sport that clearly involved an awful lot of running. I went on to play a fair bit of Ultimate after college and in my grad school years; I even had the pleasure of coaching some youth Ultimate in Seattle, and had the added pleasure of sending a few of my former math students and Ultimate athletes on to that magnet of an Ultimate school in Northfield! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told people that I went to Carleton, though, only to have them immediately ask, “Well, did you play Ultimate there?” Sigh.
Carleton played its first Ultimate game against the University of Minnesota in the fall of 1977 and began playing other schools the following spring — the same spring I was a prospective student visiting campus. Incredibly enough, the first intercollegiate Ultimate game occurred in 1972 between Rutgers and Princeton, with Rutgers winning by two points exactly 103 years after the first intercollegiate football game — at the same location, between the same two teams, and with the same point differential and the same victor! Who knew?
In the late 1970s, I was about to fall in love with what was then also a fringe sport (it just wasn’t Ultimate). As fate would have it, the 1970s brought the equally quiet and quick evolution of the sport of triathlon. The first modern triathlon occurred in San Diego in 1974 and quickly spawned many imitators, including a ridiculously long and grueling variant on the swim/bike/run theme that began in February 1978 in Oahu, Hawaii, which all of us have come to know as the Hawaii Ironman (Triathlon World Championship) in Kona.
Ken and I were undoubtedly both procrastinating in Gould Library at some point, and we each read the May 14, 1979, Sports Illustrated article about this newfangled sport of triathlon. That article may not have been the sole reason that I — possessing no swim team background, unable to do the four strokes, and completely unclear of what a flip turn was — still threw caution to the wind and went out for that winter’s swim team… but the subconscious is a powerful thing.
More significantly, Ken proved the consummate Carl, and figured that if California and Hawaii could have triathlons, why not Minnesota? Soon enough, Ken was concocting a plan, scribing a proposal, and making a pitch to the administration. In short order, in the spring of 1981, there appeared a small advertisement in The Carletonian, announcing an upcoming swim/bike/run competition. And so was born Carleton’s triathlon.
Except Ken (although he remembers differently) left me out of the planning stages, which means that one day my junior year, likely in April of 1981, I returned from classes to my room in Parish House and suddenly found myself in a 3-on-1 fastbreak, my three scheming roommates facing a clueless me, with the Carletonian issue in question clearly showing from the coffee table. My roommates informed me I would be doing this new campus race in a few weeks hence, and I’d better get training! There may have even been some side betting. No matter, those first two triathlons in ’81 and ’82 at Carleton cemented a lifetime association with the sport, leading inextricably to this past spring.
Within a fortnight this year, I had the rare privilege of seeing Carleton’s finest compete in Ultimate and then mixing it up with Carleton’s current crop of up-and-coming triathletes. After CUT beat Colorado in the final to take the championship, I even went up to a few of the CUT players and invited them to compete in the triathlon with Ken and me 11 days hence. I think at least one or two of them actually did!
Although the sports are quite different in practice, their origins and the timing of their beginnings bear many parallels. Like triathlon, Ultimate was created on a lark, a counter-culture rejoinder to a staid sporting world. Each sport early on was filled with outcasts and iconoclasts, those who never quite fit into more traditional athletic roles but who knew they wanted to be strong and active and have fun along the way. Heck, even one of the original Carleton men’s teams was dubbed the Frisbee Union of Carleton Knights (I won’t spell that acronym out for you). I’m sure more than a few folks breathed a sigh of relief when the name changed to CUT (Carleton Ultimate Team) in 1984, just a few years after that 175 grams of Discraft bliss came into existence in 1981.
By the late ’70s, long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine had died, the running boom had boomed, and for many a runner, another 10K or marathon just didn’t quite fit the bill anymore. More than a few runners therefore began learning how to suit up and swim, kit up and bike, and embrace this newfangled multi-sport variation on an endurance theme. It was the same with Ultimate in the late ’70s and early ’80s, as the round holes that were many traditional college sports proved not the right fit for the square pegs that were the active, intelligent, and independently minded types Carleton typically attracts.
Soon enough, top athletes from all sports began making their way to Carleton Ultimate teams, just as I saw many a serious athlete from the likes of Carleton’s baseball and volleyball teams cross the triathlon finish line in 2025, exhausted and elated. More globally, the similarities are also stark — triathlon became an Olympic sport in 2000 at Sydney, Australia, and Ultimate became a medal sport at the World Games in 2001 at Akita, Japan.
While Carleton remains a top liberal arts institution, and deservedly so, what is remarkable to me is that it is through two sports — both of similar vintage, both originally unorthodox and fringe, both now immensely popular on campus and off — that Carleton may get to stamp its finest imprimatur. Through its love of Ultimate and its devotion to an annual triathlon, with a spring term triathlon course to match, Carleton has inspired and continues to inspire many an athlete, and that is a gift to any student.
David Evans ’82, math major, has competed in 50 triathlons worldwide, winning 20 of them, the first two at Carleton in ’81 and ’82. In ’84, he placed 7th in the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon World Championship, has now competed in Kona four times, and will soon be coming out with a book on how the ’84 race changed and defined the sport of triathlon — and himself. This June, at the Carleton Triathlon, Evans was the top community triathlon finisher, with a time of 1:27. The top student finisher posted 1:23. Now empty nesters with their two sons living out of state, Evans and his wife, Jennifer, and their dog, Zeus, live in Seattle, Washington.
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