More Than Just Fun Times and Winning Games
The Lost Boys, 15 years later
CHICAGO (July 9, 2015) — In the spring of 2001, a group of North Park University students would gather a few times per week on the Hump. That’s what the rolling green space behind Old Main is called. It has served many purposes over the years, including for these students as a makeshift Ultimate Frisbee field, with bushes and trees acting as end zones and out-of-bounds markers. The games were casual, something to do after class and to meet people.
That year, one of the team members got in touch with a rival college west of Chicago and asked if they wanted to come to North Park for a formal game.
“I remember them showing up with jerseys and cleats and thinking, ‘This is the sport I want to play,’” says Luke Johnson, who was a junior at the time. “At that point I went from a casual observer and casual player to spearheading a movement that year that we needed to form a club.”
The ragtag group of guys lost the match that day, but that summer Johnson, along with fellow student Jeff Keyser, approached the University’s student government association about turning their casual group into a formal school club. They eventually got their own set of jerseys and over the last decade have risen to become a regional power in the sport of Ultimate Frisbee. “I can tell you we haven’t lost to that team very often since that day on the Hump,” Johnson adds.
The Lost Boys, originally known as Extend, has three goals: brotherhood, fun times, and winning games. “The idea behind Extend was to use Ultimate Frisbee as a platform to talk about Jesus,” says Johnson. “Even though it’s not called that anymore, it instilled a value set that still exists today.”
Since the formal inception of Division-III Nationals in 2010, the North Park team has made it there every year except one, finishing as high as third. That is made even more impressive by the fact that only one team per year from the region earns a bid to nationals. At one point, the team was ranked as the 38th best collegiate Ultimate team, which includes teams from Division-I and Division-II universities.
And although leery of the name change at first, Johnson came to appreciate its purpose. “When they changed the name to Lost Boys I think it really captured well the spirit of the team,” he says. “There is this group of guys that really don’t belong in the sport. They are not the jocks or have much experience at all, but here they are competing at the highest level.”
Case in point, by 2009 the club had improved and was competing regularly with teams across all college divisions. Johnson tells the story of a young student at North Park, who was not particularly athletic, still working on his English, and trying to find his community on campus. One day that student was walking by the Hump and spotted the group of guys running around throwing a Frisbee. He asked them what they were doing, and quickly earned an invitation to play.
“He fell in love with the spirit of the team and the friends,” says Johnson. “He came to every tournament, played maybe two-to-three points in a whole weekend, but he’d warm up, be in huddles, and he didn’t care. I’m happy to be a part of a club that can have a guy like that on the team. That’s what makes this team so special.”
More than Frisbee
The Lost Boys is ultimately about something more than an official 175-gram disc and formal jerseys. Johnson knows this firsthand, as his journey with the club ventured far beyond his days as an undergraduate.
After graduating from North Park in 2003 with a double major in youth ministry and philosophy, Johnson moved to Oregon to serve in a church. By 2009, he was thinking about graduate education, and pursuing a master of divinity through North Park Theological Seminary.
“It might sound silly, but a huge factor in considering North Park Theological for seminary was knowing that I could come back and play college Ultimate,” Johnson says.
His eligibility had not expired—in college Ultimate the five-year clock starts ticking once you play your first game—so he decided to move back. And that decision paid off in more ways than one. At his first tournament in St. Louis he met a North Park undergraduate student, Kelly, who was an Ultimate standout in her own right and still the only female to ever play for the Lost Boys. She also starred for Allihopa, North Park’s women’s Ultimate Frisbee team.
It turned out a few years later the two would get married, and Kelly would go on to play for the Seattle Riot, a women’s professional Ultimate Frisbee team in Seattle, where she would help them to win the 2014 World Championship in Lecco, Italy.
What’s more, Luke Johnson turned his love for Ultimate Frisbee, born out of the Lost Boys, into a partnership with the American Ultimate Disc League. Johnson’s company, Fulcrum Media Group, works on video production for the men’s professional Ultimate Frisbee league, which has seen an incredible amount of expansion in recent years.
The fundamentals of Frisbee
On a warm sunny day in late June, a current member of the team, Adam McDowell, and coach and former player, Cameron Hodgkinson met us on the field at nearby Von Steuben High School to toss around a Frisbee. McDowell, sporting his Lost Boys jersey, was taking a break from a summer physics course on campus, while Hodgkinson, a 2011 alum, stopped over on his lunch break wearing work pants and black leather dress shoes.
At its most basic form, the point of Ultimate Frisbee is to pass the disc from one end of the field to the other without dropping it. It’s free flowing, relying on the integrity of the players, with no referees.
“The game itself fits right into the spirit of the Lost Boys, and becomes a perfect avenue for players to fully embody what it means to play with character,” says Luke Johnson.
There are two main positions, McDowell and Hodgkinson explained, cutters and handlers. They can be thought of as wide receivers and quarterbacks. There are a number of throws in Ultimate Frisbee, including some complicated ones like the hammer and the chicken wing. But the two basics are the forehand and the backhand.
“Other teams try to get fancy with their throws and it can look nice, but we rely on fundamentals,” Hodgkinson says.
Each fall, the Lost Boys bring in fresh recruits with little experience for basic training. The first thing is to teach them how to throw, and players line up across from one another for a simple game of catch. It can get tedious, but after the fundamentals, they then move on to the team’s signature on-field strategies.
On offense, a team usually plays what’s called a horizontal stack or a vertical stack, basically how they line up on the field and where the players run. The Lost Boys prefer the horizontal stack, though they will switch it up, and prefer deep throws to a collection of short ones. The team is mainly known for its defense, and its execution of a zone. Most teams play man-to-man. It’s simpler and requires less strategy. But the Lost Boys practice the zone, and take advantage of the windy conditions of the Great Lakes region. They count on the other team’s inability to successfully complete a series of passes, and more often than not, it works.
Yet despite all of the strategy, and practicing, and game plans, for Hodgkinson, like Johnson and everyone else who came before, the Lost Boys is about more than winning.
“Since we are not a varsity sport we don’t make any cuts,” he says. ”It doesn’t matter if you’re in shape, whether you were a star athlete in high school. We could care less if we win or lose. Obviously we want to win, but we just want to be with our friends.”
It’s a spirit born out of the North Park experience. “You are becoming an adult, figuring out life, and just spending so much time together,” Johnson adds. “That brotherhood is a natural thing.”
Setting the mark
In April 2014, the Lost Boys suffered a shocking defeat in the quarterfinals of the Great Lakes Regional to Indiana Wesleyan. It meant the first time the team wouldn’t get the one and only bid to nationals for D-III since its officially inception in 2010.
This past April, the team had an opportunity to earn back its place as the premier D-III Ultimate Frisbee power in the region with a return matchup against Indiana Wesleyan in Rockford. That Indiana Wesleyan team happened to feature the D-III national player of the year, yet the Lost Boys started fast and won 14-11, securing its place at Nationals.
They returned a few weeks later to Rockford for the national tournament, and would exceed expectations, finishing in a tie for 11th. After the tournament, the team posted on its Facebook page:
“Thanks and good luck to all of our seniors. It was a pleasure playing with you guys for the past 4 years! The team will take some time off and enjoy the summer, but are already gearing up for a trip to North Carolina next May for Nationals.”
On North Park University’s campus, you’ll still see a fair amount of Frisbees flung around the Hump, whether it’s a small game of Ultimate or a group of freshmen learning about the infamous secret disc golf course. The team now plays at a larger park down the street on Foster Avenue. In the fall, they will put up posters and recruit new students to join them for practice a few times per week. Nationals is the expectation now, and probably will be for some time. There is no shortage of belief. It’s a far cry from that day in 2001.
Still, the spirit of the club remains the same. “It’s the community that keeps me around,” says Hodgkinson. “I want to be a part of continuing this tradition however I can.”
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The last game of the day for the North Park Lost Boys was a tough one. There was one player though who stood out for the boys from Chicago. Check out his highlights and final words of the day to his teammates.
Posted by Fulcrum Media Group, LLC on Saturday, May 16, 2015
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