Who are the best players in the Ohio Valley region? This is an open thread to discuss All-Region nominations, All-Freshman nominations, coaching awards, and more. Stay positive and keep it civil.
2024 Ohio Valley Coach of The Year should be none other than Penn State’s Luke Smith. The pure dedication and passion that he puts towards this team is nothing like this program has ever seen before. Since taking over the program about 2 years ago, he has turned Penn State Spank into a nationals bid-earning team that has been able knock off some of the top teams in the country. A large majority of this success is contributed to Luke’s knowledge of the game, and the amount of time and effort he puts into our strategy and preparation. He is also a guy that will always stick up for his players, and cares more about this team than anything. Coach Luke has been the catalyst to Penn State’s recent success, which this program has been waiting to see for decades.
Not sure of his real name, but “Wet Willy” number 11 the tall guy on Cincinnati was pretty good. I think he lives up to the name because he kinda runs like a wet noodle but boy he plays like a hard one.
When we played them, he roofed one of our guys and someone on the sideline yelled “You feel that? You just got Wet Willy’d!” And honestly it was pretty sick.
2 Likes
Player from Cincy here. I want to second the nomination for William Wettengel “WET WILLY” for the All-Freshman team. Not only is he a tough noodle on defense, but he is just a really great guy off the field. While we don’t call him this nickname yet at Cincy we sure Willy in the future.
Agreed, Luke Smith is that guy
Nick Alexander all-region cake, no doubt about it in my life. Dude is unreal
2 Likes
Willy Wetty is an easy person to spot on the field, but the other star freshmen on UC is Jake Wahl being the center handler on their OLine. Super confident with the disc in his hand and a freak athlete otherwise. The bearcats are a team to watch out for in the future
I would watch out for Gunnar DeRoss from the Miami Boogiemen, hes been a real glue guy for the team from what I’ve heard. I hear they wouldnt have made their miraculous run to regionals if it wasnt for the heart, effort and grind of DeRoss. I hear that he clocks in, clocks out and brings a real lunch pail attitude to the frisbee field.
Limited perspective of the Teams we played.
CMU - Mahith Edula obviously, great player. Guy with visor, and lanky downfield receiver (I’ll edit if I figure out their names) also super impactful. I couldn’t see the numbers b/c the neon, it burned my eyes.
Case: Bit of a rebuilding year for them; but always prepared. Anil Driehuys is sick. And special mention of ‘that red headed dude’ who has really developed over the last couple years. It’s cool to see.
Pitt: Their core gets a lot of press and deservedly so; UltiWorld will get them covered, but a special shout out to Aiden Landis, for sure one of my top 6 favorite Landis’ (Landii?) (love those dueling Dachsunds, who were sadly not in attendance for regionals). (I may have used this joke last year).
Penn: Max Tran was pretty fun. But I just don’t know their team well.
OSU: Charlie Vukovic. and Max Devine. stood out both for their play, and for motor (I’m not sure Charlie came off the field); Always enjoy playing OSU. They fight until the end, good clean fun. They have several great players, I’m just not particularly good w/ names.
For us (Penn State), kind of hard to only name only a few and we aim to play ‘total football’ rather than featuring certain players but i’ll highlight some of the key 2-way players who had a high impact/ have statistical impact / eye test in the vein of what the sporting press might call ‘All-Region’.
Zander Lutz bringing a relentless focus and determination, jaw dropping plays, super clean w/ the disc. “Look, how hard can it be, if your guy is cutting you just go run by him and get the frisbee”
Doug Hoyer - Moving from a primarily downfield player into a multi-layer threat providing a steady hand w/ the disc on the goal line, or gaining big chunks downfield.
Ethan Pigeon - amazing big play potential on both sides of the ball, lockdown skills and elite field sense; a threat with or w/o the disc. Plus points for having read the rule book.
Alex Mullen - Mr. Clean, All-World. Consistently leads the team in many categories, always open for a reset, going deep, or working the cone for a small ball goal scoring threat, a zone breaker, skilled yeeter, great defender and seems to get faster over the weekend.
Logan Piercy- His stat line this year is as loud as he his quiet. Big red guards the northern wall, tilts the pitch, and makes the impossible seem probable. In his second year of play.
Special shout out to Jeremy Long and Evan Medrow who agreed to move from the 2-way spots to ride or die as the D core and were critical to marshaling breaks all spring. The lefty righty pairing dealing on the turn is… nice.
Coaches, lots of well coached teams. All the teams we played were fair and good spirited - it’s not that people don’t make mistakes but in an ideal setting the errors follow a stochastic process and don’t determine outcomes - and i think that was mostly the case in most of the games I saw. Certainly in all of ours.
- pitt obviously the most meticulously prepared, deepest, fittest bunch. i appreciate the respect they showed in preparing for their game against us i guess
- special note for Penn, tons of heart, kind of gained steam all weekend. good stuff.
re: Top Freshmen? I literally know zero freshmen not on our team. Sry. It’s so amazing to see how fast they improve; and every freshman on our team was contributing by the end of the year both in sort of plug and play ways through execution of systems, and defensive contribution, but starting to bring their own unique talents in the way that you start to find the pieces to make a team more than the sum of its parts. But def special note for Evan Lutz who made an immediate impact with a solid bag of throws, but more importantly a real knack for generating D’s in the zone from Jump, and Hayes ‘Hayes’ Hayes from Hayestown, HA who very quickly demonstrated the ability to guard all positions, and stretch the field, with a determination to catch touchdowns.
I’m one of the coaches for Temple - wanted to shout out some of the top players we saw at regionals. Won’t include Pitt and PSU since they have gotten plenty of coverage already and were clearly the top 2 teams in the region
Nova - Colby did a ton for them especially in their win against us at conferences. Very offensively disciplined team, stuck around longer than i hoped for in our regionals game
Cincinnati - Will Wettengel and Jake Wahl stood out especially knowing that they are both freshman, Will as a dowfield cutter and jake as center handler. Really fun game against them and cool to see both teams pullers making points start on the back line all game.
Penn - Ryan Lee was probably their most important player but Max Tran is already a problem as a freshman, he made big plays in both games we played against them.
Lehigh - didn’t play them at regionals but played them a bunch this year, Ari Carp was their most consistent player and did pretty much everything for them. Had a few other guys but not sure of their actual names
OSU - Charlie Vukovic was very impressive, played nearly every point, hit big hucks and always looked comfortable. Not sure of names but #13 (handler) and #27? also had big games against us. We played OSU three times this year and couldn’t quite pull off an upset this year, our game on sunday was extremely fun to be a part of.
Now for Temple
Nate Little is an all region lock and would easily be on top 25 lists if Temple was more nationally relevant, he was the best player in every game we played at regionals.
Cole Salomon was injured for regionals but was our most important player and leader for this season. Lead our o line as a hybrid and always came up with big plays when we needed them, bummer that he couldn’t play at regionals for his senior year. All region pick
Jacob Prunes - JP had the game of his life against OSU, felt like he scored or assisted every goal we had and was open upline every time. Excited to see him next year for his senior season.
Nicky Railey was our center handler all season as a freshman - creative thrower who made all the tough throws for our o line, sad to see him injured for sunday of regionals.
Milo Friedman - another freshman and will be on the USA u20 mixed team this summer, extremely skilled seattle product and anchored our d line most of the season before moving to o due to injuries. Really stood out in our games against pitt and OSU
We had a very strong freshman class this season, starting 4 on our o line. Would also like to shout out some of our d line guys (Jajuan Sanders, Carlos Eckert, Joseph Meixler) and our puller (lucas) for making defense our strength and being extremely fun to coach
One of the CMU coaches here. Some thoughts without trying to repeat too much.
Luke definitely deserves his flowers this year. Not just for strategic excellence but for helping reshape the Spank culture. Every game we played against them when I was on CMU was extremely chippy. Obviously it takes two to tango but in recent years playing Spank has been a great experience. Their roster is full of skilled players who respect the spirit of the game, and we have enjoyed our matchups at sectionals and regionals the past two years (even if it hurts our all-time record against them).
Pitt has all the talent in the world but I want to make sure Reid Duncan and Micah Davis get some credit here. Reid has taken a huge jump from last year and is one of the most valuable defenders on their squad. Micah shows ridiculous poise for a rookie - definitely deserves to be in the national conversation for rookie of the year. And then you have Henry, Tristan, Scott, Aidan, etc. etc.
Penn state is super deep but Zander, Mullen, and Doug are their most important contributors imo. If those guys are at the top of their game at nationals I would not be surprised to see Spank in quarters. Agree with all of what Luke said about their other guys (and I hear a certain Philadelphia high schooler might be on the way to Happy Valley in the fall).
Charlie and Max on OSU were obviously two of the best players at the tournament. Peter and Jacob also made huge contributions since their squad was dealing with some injuries.
UPenn had a lot of grit, shout out to them for sticking to their guns. I’ll echo Max Tran and Ryan Lee as key players. Don’t know the rest of their guys but they surprised us with athletic downfield defense and seem like a young team. They could make some waves in the next few years.
Anil is still one of the best throwers in the region - there’s a kind of inevitability to his playstyle. He’s going to march the disc downfield unless you get a block on someone else on the line. Case’s lefty handler (Eli?) also gave us plenty of problems. Shout out to the blond kid (#33, Mace Korytko?) for being all time rabbit to anchor a pretty nasty zone.
Played Temple in the regular season and our entire team was shocked that Nate Little wasn’t going every other and scoring every point. That’s not a knock on their depth, it’s just that Nate is one of one. Expect to see him on the club BPOTY podium soon.
On to CMU.
Mahith Edula is maybe the best player out of our program since Jasper Tom. He could have very easily been a freshman of the region winner in spring 2021 if not for the pandemic. He’s had to battle through injury but whenever he takes the field he’s our best offensive player and takes the hardest defensive matchup. There is no mark that exists that he won’t utterly shred.
Jackson Trone (visor guy) is our O line anchor. He’s got 70+ yard throws on either side, great over the tops, and nasty half-pivot arounds.
Lucas Storm (lanky guy) was our top cutter all season. He’d always absorb the toughest matchup and still win essentially every sky ball.
Brandon (RJ) Rishi was injured for the last part of the season but if you saw him play then you saw him get a layout D. Genuinely the best player in the region at generating blocks in the handler space.
Our jerseys certainly deserve a shout out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suEbSDiY4zM
Here’s where I stop giving away free scouting for next year.
Was going to try to make an all-region 1st and 2nd team but each team within the top half of regionals has at least one player I would consider deserving of 1st team, and Pitt and Penn State have at least 3 each who are in that conversation. So good luck making that list Ultiworld.
Head coach of UPenn here to shout out some teams but I have to start with my own:
UPenn
Ryan “Calves” Lee - Calves is our rock, Mr. Do-It-All, someone that I can put anywhere on the field knowing he will do everything that needs to be done (our highest percentage block Deep Deep standing at 5’06”) He is a leader that that holds his teammates and himself equally accountable. His primary role as our main handler gives our team so many options when attacking downfield and his smooth O makes the game feel effortless.
Max “Mummy” Tran - this kid made of rubber is a clear Freshman of the Year candidate. Always taking the biggest threat on the other team, our deep thrower, our deep receiver, our make-a-play defender. We are near 100% confident that he will come down with whatever is thrown and if you have played against this kid, you know that’s a fact. Enjoy the next three years!
Penn State
Luke Smith - my first time coaching against Luke and after hearing about a lot of the things he’s done for the program, I was impressed. An area where he and his team earned a lot of respect was the importance they placed on playing well and doing the right thing, even when beating up on us. Luke and PSU leadership were on players for getting beat or not executing on O, which means to me they are disciplined and clearly focused on the long term of Regionals weekend. It paid off with their weekend success and wish them the best of luck at Nationals.
A couple players I want to shout out and I have some bias from playing club with/against all of these guys, but they were standouts in our game. And as Luke previously mentioned, this team has a lot of two way players that gives them so much depth and trust in their teammates
Zander - one of the top players in the region with an arsenal of throws, athleticism, discipline, speed, and field awareness
Pigeon - very consistent player that is capable of roofing you then throwing the break throw dagger. He is a tenacious defender that plays well in all areas of the field
Logan - very talented cutter that finds all the right spaces/lanes. Huge deep threat but very capable of attacking unders coupled with crisp throws downfield
Jeremy Long - carved our team up with a multitude of break throws and when he wasn’t threatening the breakside, he was throwing deep to one of the many downfield receivers the team had
CMU
Jackson Trone (Visor) - biggest impact player for our game. Very capable of throwing whatever throw he wants and a quick first step gets him the separation to get open right away, threatening areas once again. We shifted our D scheme to be a more flat on him than others, hoping our down field defender could make a play more than us stopping a throw on the mark
Temple
Nate Little - easy all region and we have been game planning against him for 3 years now. His athleticism is unmatched and his ability to impact play on the field just with his presence makes our life difficult. Tenacious defender, great in the air, and ability to threaten areas with his throws make him a total threat
Cole - He has been an impact player all year, taking difficult matchups on D and being THE guy on offense as a hybrid. Crushed me to not see him play regionals weekend, but he was in each game mentally and played a crucial in Temple’s success
Avery - He is a very solid 2 way player that had some INCREDIBLE plays to generate early game hype. His consistency on O provides a great base for offensive flow
Cesco - put on an athletic showing in our game that isn’t much of a surprise. He’s always someone that we have to consider, particularly when he’s on offense with his ability to effectively attack deep
Milo - Freshman of the Year candidate - incredibly talented handler that was able to threaten every spot on the field with his throws. Has a nice quick step that helps him get open quickly
JaJuan - shoutout to him for his impressive defense against us and his huge sky
CWRU
Anil Driehuys - the best thrower in the region. Everytime we have played CWRU, we have to gameplan for his ability to dissect our defense and often have to run person when he is on because our zones are nearily ineffective.