Jennifer “JD” Donnelly was one of the early coaches who provided a template for college coaching that would become ubiquitous by the time she stepped down. Jen was the coach of the Stanford Women’s team, Superfly, from 1995 to 2001, with her team qualifying for College Nationals in 6 of 7 years and winning in a three peat in 1997-99. In those championship years, her team was undefeated with a 106-game win streak and produced two Callahan Award winners. JD had been an NCAA basketball player and brought the team mindset, focus on technique, and athletic commitment to her teams. After stepping down as the Stanford coach, JD continued to assist various teams with clinics from 2002-05 and was called back to coach the gold medal winning USA Women’s Masters team for WUGC 2012 in Japan. Jen also served as a UPA board member from 2000-02. In her competitive playing career, JD was a member of the national and WUCC world champion Maine-iacs in 1993 and helped found Fury in 1997 and won two more national championships in 1999 and 2003.

Mary Louise “Louie” Mahoney Cohn was one of the driving forces behind the introduction of the women’s division of ultimate. As most did in the early days, Louie began playing ultimate with men. She loved all forms of disc games but as a talented field sport athlete, she was drawn to ultimate. Boston was an early hotbed of ultimate activity and Louie was a founding mom of the long tradition of successful Boston women’s division teams. Before there were critical numbers of women playing, she recruited and taught many of the early women’s players while advocating for a separate women’s division. Louie was one of the top athletes playing in the first women’s division at Club Nationals in 1981 and a huge part of Boston Ladies Ultimate (BLU) championship title that year. The women’s division wouldn’t be what it is today without Louie’s early years of planting the seeds and showing those to follow the potential in the sport and in themselves.

Frank Revi was the long-time UPA College Director from 1986 to 1994, assuming the role after the formalization of the division by the first college director. Frank figured out what colleges required to treat ultimate as a recognized club sport, including requiring team rosters be composed solely of athletes formally registered with the college and meet reasonable limitations on playing eligibility. The decision to do away with “ringers” was initially quite unpopular and the administration of roster collection was challenging but Frank managed it all in good spirit and with quiet efficiency. He had the staying power to sort out and nurture the college division to become the largest division in the UPA, and it remains so with USAU today. Frank also chaired the Rules Committee in its early years, where he championed efforts to improve the precision of language and introduced the concept of “state of play.” Frank began playing ultimate in high school in the late 1970s, captained his MIT teams to College Nationals in 1985 and 1986, and played with Windy City into the late 1990s, playing 3 Club Nationals and at the first WUCC in 1989, before moving to the West Coast and finishing his competitive career in the late 1990s.

The Special Merit category recognizes there are stories that need to be told to fully describe Ultimate and its history that don’t get captured in an individual award. When considering whether an individual, group, or piece of equipment should be recognized, we ask:

• Can the history of Ultimate be written without including this candidate?
• Was the Special Merit candidate recognized in their day as being “special?”
• Can future generations understand the significance of this Special Merit candidate?

Prior to the mid 2000’s, the only reason there is a visual record of ultimate is due to the efforts of individuals who took it upon themselves to attend tournaments with their personal equipment and shoot the game they loved in expectation of little or no compensation. While there are many individuals who did this throughout the early days of ultimate competition, there are several individuals deserving of particular recognition for documenting the sport in its formative years and in showcase games. As was done in 2014 with the recognition of The Johnny Appleseeds, we propose that the following group of photographers and videographers be considered in the Special Merit category:

• Stu Beringer: Club Nationals 1980‐1985  
• Rick Collins: Club Nationals 1995‐2004  
• Karl Cook: Club Nationals 1980‐86, ‘89‐91, College Nationals 1989 & ‘91, Easterns 1981‐91  
• Dan Hyslop: Club Nationals 1983‐2002, Midwest ’82‐’85, West ‘85‐’92, top teams ‘83‐92  
• Chris Perry: Regionals and other West Coast events 1980-1987
• Scobel Wiggins: College Nationals 1999‐2004, WUCC 2002 
• Lee Flynn: hundreds of ultimate games and tournaments videotaped throughout the 1980’s
• J.R. Reynolds: Club Nationals video producer ’90, ’91, ’93, ’94, UPA training videos and media guides, and WFDF documentaries in ’92 & ’94.