ARIA Athlete - Madison from iFrisbeeShots: It’s not just your skills, it’s what you stand for.

It’s not just your skills, it’s what you stand for.

Meet Madison, a trick-shot boss from the USA. We caught up with her to chat about her goals, her inspiration, and some of her thoughts on the future of ultimate and disc sports. She brings a healthy variety in her targets, mixes it up a bit with her release angles and positions, and her video cutting is clean.  ARIA Ultimate is proud to sponsor her this year and excited to see what's on the horizon. 

All disc sports require a frisbee. However, the better the frisbee the more competitive disc sports get. To put this in perspective, I first started with a 2 dollar frisbee from Walmart and worked my way up to 12 dollar frisbee from a frisbee store online. The better I got the more I needed better quality frisbees. That goes with anything in life, the better you get at something the more you need to invest to make it possible to become better.

Discs inspire me because, without a frisbee it would not be possible for me to do what I enjoy doing! Furthermore, I love frisbees because they have changed me as a person. I say this because when I go and throw frisbee it takes stress off me and gives me something to look forward to everyday!

2. What would you like to see more of in the future of disc sports and in ultimate?  What values (like access, diversity, gender equity) are particularly important to you, and more importantly, why are they important?

Disc sports and Ultimate are full of excitement and never ending fun. Personally, this is what interested me to start frisbee trickshots. My journey began when I first saw Brodie Smith’s Youtube channel, I clicked on a video and noticed that I took an interest in what he was doing. From that day on, I made it my goal to start frisbee trickshots and enjoy doing them. With this in mind, this all started in 2014, it’s now 2018 and I am still passionate about frisbee! As funny as it sounds, I did not start to post my frisbee trickshots until 2015. The reasoning behind this was I was scared to see what people would think about them, would they think it was stupid? So many questions ran through my head and made me question if I should even post the trickshots. Regardless of my reasoning, I was still opene minded and listened to a friend that said, “You should start posting these trickshots, they are so cool!” In the hope that people would accept the shots, I made a Instagram account and posted my first shot on January 18th 2015. Thus started my love for frisbee trickshots and disc sports.

Throughout my time doing frisbee trickshots, I have noticed only a few girls in the community. I can count the number of girls on two hands, this really makes me sad seeing that there has only been a few girls courageous enough to try frisbee trickshots. To add on to this, many girls that did trickshots have quit. Leaving me as one of the only girl frisbee trickshooters in the community. In any disc sports, I would like to see some more female participation. It’s important to realize that females are not as common in disc sports so we can raise awareness of it. In conclusion, the value that’s important to me is female participation in Disc sports. Throughout the next few years I would like to see the numbers of women playing Disc sports triple, the only way this can happen is raising awareness of it. I am a strong believer in the saying, “Without awareness, some things may never change.” I hope this can help encourage other females to step up and try something new!

Do you have any recommendations or reviews about the ARIA discs? 

With the amount of time I have had with the discs, I have found ARIA discs to be quite durable plus, they are the best frisbees around, quality wise. I have thrown Ultra Stars for around 4 years now, and have never felt a frisbee like Aria’s. Aria’s frisbees are great for throwing backhands/forehands [...] the frisbee is well worth its money! How a disc is made can affect your ability to play any disc sport.