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Huck and Hope

Huck and Hope

Written by: Ultiworld
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About this listen

 How do you explain the inexplicable? How do you make sense of the nonsensical? How do you end up with a professional ultimate frisbee franchise in Rochester, New York?

In 2013, the Rochester Dragons launched their inaugural season in the AUDL. The team's sheer existence defying most notions of competitive and business sense. Yet for three years the often hapless franchise rode the wave of a sport and community trying to become something bigger and grander than it had ever been before. Ultiworld's Patrick Stegemoeller and Brian Kibler look back on one of the strangest chapters in the sport's history and discover that the key to understanding the Rochester Dragons reveals something much larger about ultimate, the AUDL, and America itself.

This 6 episode series features appearances from some of the most important figures in the sport's past decade including Grant Lindsley, Evan Lepler, Jesse Shofner and more! Huck and Hope draws on firsthand accounts of the chaotic history of an era defined by boomtown optimism, and explores how culture, technology, and the American dream explain one of the least explicable episodes in the history of an already enigmatic sport.

Huck and Hope is an Ultiworld Podcast, hosted by Patrick Stegemoeller and Brian Kibler, produced by Lindsay Soo.Copyright Ultiworld Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Mailbag Episode

    Mailbag Episode
    Jul 5 2024
    Pat and Brian come back together to dive into the Huck and Hope mailbag to celebrate the show being released in it's entirety for free! They reflect on the series and discuss a few anecdotes that didn't make it into the original show.

    If you have questions or comments about the show, please email us at HuckandHope@ultiworld.com, or send a message in the Ultiworld Discord.
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    36 mins
  • Episode 6 - Chasing the Dragon

    Episode 6 - Chasing the Dragon
    Jul 5 2024
    On the finale of Huck and Hope, Pat and Brian look at the end of an era - for the Rochester Dragons, for ultimate, and for the internet culture and economy of the early 2010s. As financial realities and larger cultural forces push out all the good blogs and bad frisbee teams, boomtown optimism turns into something more cynical, and perhaps more sustainable. What lessons can we take from the existence of the Dragons? From participating in ultimate frisbee itself? Was it all worth it? They guys talk to several players, media figures, including the former owner of the Dragons Lee Semrau, to find out.

    If you have questions or comments about the show, please email us at HuckandHope@ultiworld.com, or send a message in the Ultiworld Discord.
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    35 mins
  • Episode 5 - Let's Go

    Episode 5 - Let's Go
    Jul 5 2024
    On the penultimate episode of Huck and Hope, Pat and Brian look at the large cultural forces at play that have transitioned the ultimate community from where it was before the AUDL and the Dragons existed to where we are now. In particular, they look at how one controversial figure represented what the sport became, what it rejected, and what value it really had to the rest of the world. It's time to talk about Brodie Smith.
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    50 mins
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