“Sophie, I’m open,” senior Kasey Harris thought as she ran down the field. “Why aren’t you throwing it to me?”
Sophie Darch contemplated her next move carefully, glancing at Harris before hucking the disk another direction.
“Oh,” Harris realized. “There is someone there.”
Senior women’s ultimate handler Sophie Darch, nicknamed “The Darch Knight,” has an uncanny ability to see the unseen and might just be the best pure thrower in ultimate.
The Atlanta native, who plays for the University of Oregon’s women’s ultimate team Fugue, has piled up the accolades throughout her career. Darch has made Team USA three times and has been all-region and an all-American in each of her four seasons at Oregon.
In 2013, Darch led her team to a national title. But this season she earned her biggest honor: a nomination for the Callahan award — ultimate’s Heisman trophy — from her teammates.
“It’s a really big honor to be nominated by the team,” Darch said. “The team gets together and votes who they want their Callahan nominee to be, so that meant a lot to me.”
Darch started playing ultimate on the playground in sixth grade while playing basketball and soccer.
“I had to decide between soccer and frisbee because sadly they were both at the same time,” Darch said. “It just came down to every time that soccer practice came up I didn’t want to go, but when I got to go to frisbee practice I really wanted to go.”
In ultimate, Darch quickly became a star — she was named to team USA’s under-20 team in 2008. Darch first got the idea to come to Oregon when on the under-20 team, after an assistant coach, a UO alum and two future teammates had persuaded her.
“Apply here! Apply here!” they told her.
“I’m going to go to the (University of Georgia) for sure,” Darch thought at the time. “But I’ll apply there just for fun.”
When Darch was accepted to both universities, her parents implored her to at least visit Oregon.
“I came out here and fell in love with it,” Darch said. “It wouldn’t have been on my radar without frisbee.”
Ever since, Darch has been proud to be under Fugue’s “clown tent.”
“The philosophy of the clown tent is that everyone comes from their own area, and everyone has their own way of doing things like a clown tent,” team President Angela Tocchi said. “We don’t ask people to change to fit into the team motto, we form based on the people that are in it.”
This season, clown tent culture earned a 38-3 record, putting the team in prime position to defend its title at nationals from May 25-26 in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Oregon dropped games to British Columbia and UC Santa Barbara earlier this season, but Fugue quickly returned the favor later for each. Top-ranked Ohio State, which handed Oregon its third loss, is still on Fugue’s to-do list.
“Ohio State showed us what some of our weaknesses were and what we needed to work on,” Darch said. “I’m really hoping we get to play them again at nationals.”
Follow Josh Schlichter on Twitter @joshschlichter