It doesn’t get much better than the season the Northampton girls ultimate team had in 2024. A year ago, the Blue Devils won the Division 1 state tournament, earned the right to travel to Rockford, Ill. last June and turned in an impressive fifth-place finish at the national tournament. They also captured first place at the Amherst Invitational – the longest annual ultimate tournament in the United States – for the first time in program history.
So, how do you follow up the best season in Northampton girls ultimate’s existence? Perhaps by doing it all over again.
Under new head coaches Jess Cofrin and Ted Munter, the 2025 Blue Devils team is “defined by hustle and heart,” according to Cofrin. Eight seniors from last spring’s group have graduated, which means Northampton is certainly going to need others to step up into larger roles. Cofrin and Munter are veterans in the sport, and they’re looking to bring a different perspective to what is a younger Blue Devils team this season.
In Northampton’s first game of 2025, one of its captains, junior Clare Kurtzman, went down with an injury and will miss the remainder of the spring – Cofrin said. But the combination of six seniors and up-and-coming underclassmen still has the Blue Devils eager and excited to make another deep tournament run this time around.
Sophomores Zivia Parikh and Alysha Parshall-Matylas are a young tandem the ‘Hamp coaching staff expects to have a strong year, and seniors Ava Keller and Lucy Grossman bring a mix of veteran leadership and a sharp skill set to be rocks in the Blue Devils’ lineup. Ada Bellemare and Abby Xu, two freshmen, will also be thrown in the mix right away.
Placing top five in the country doesn’t happen on accident, and despite Northampton’s roster looking a bit different than it did last season, expectations remain just as high.
On the boys side, co-head coaches Jeff Kelly (eighth season) and Joey Dwork (third season) lead a “talented and deep roster,” Kelly said. Those two words absolutely ring true for the 2025 Blue Devils boys varsity team, which turned in a fifth-place finish at the D1 state tournament a year ago.
Per usual, Northampton will be playing in multiple big tournaments throughout the regular season, including the Four Rivers Tournament, the Amherst Invitational, the Pioneer Valley Invite and, of course, the Massachusetts State Championships. Kelly sees the 2025 Blue Devils building on last year’s success and taking it to new heights behind captains Calvin Guswam (senior), Max Keller (senior) and Julian Remick (junior).
Offensively, returners Nathan Thompson and Elliot Wyman, both sophomores, are offensive stars for Northampton, while Dashiel Kruckemeyer and Noah Tejirian, both juniors, have been holding down the defensive side of the disc.
Both Northampton ultimate teams have the tools to make some noise this spring.
Since the COVID pandemic, the ‘Canes girls varsity team has struggled to garner the same amount of participation as it did prior to 2020. However this spring, head coach Dan Kaplan (fourth season) has 10 returners coming back from last year’s team – the most he’s had since 2019. In 2024, Amherst finished third in the Division 1 state tournament, its best finish of the decade.
The team has continued to steadily improve year after year under Kaplan, and he knows there’s a certain standard to abide by in Amherst. With five seniors leading the charge, there’s a hope the Hurricanes can live up to it in 2025.
“Reaching back to a long championship legacy has been both a well of strength and a difficult storyline to live up to during these past three years,” Kaplan said. “We are eager to see how this experience helps us achieve our team goals for excellence in this sport we love.”
Seniors Isla Cusick, Addie Mager and Felix Goeckel all enter their third seasons on varsity, and Kaplan believes the trio will all shine on the field this year. Cusick can make seemingly every throw, and her tenacious competitiveness has earned her a tryout for the U24 national team last year. Mager is described as a “lights-out receiver,” according to Kaplan, and she uses her wide sports background to her advantage on the ultimate turf. “Fearless, fast and hungry” were the three simple words Kaplan used to describe Goeckel, and those traits are going to help this year’s relatively young Amherst squad.
For the Hurricanes boys team, they finished seventh in the Division 1 state tournament in 2024. Back for more in 2025, co-coaches Joe Costello and Leila Tunnell enter season No. 12 together. The ‘Canes were extremely young last spring, and they return a chunk of 13 talented players from that group. That should bode well for Amherst.
“[We] are still a young roster overall, but now with experience together at this level the sky is the limit,” Costello said.
Nolan Ross, Quinn Strehorn and Alden Pope return from last year’s team, and those three of Amherst’s seven seniors are captains this year. The trio are going to be looked at to make the big plays for the ‘Canes.
