World Ultimate Championships 2024 | Andrew Dick

Andrew, known by most as ‘Dickers’, will be playing with the GBX squad at WUC this year. Dickers is a University of Dundee alumnus and, despite currently living in Leeds, is part of the Alba squad. In the run-up to WUC, Dickers spoke with Mihael ‘Jimmy’ Dimitrov about his experiences playing ultimate so far, including his university career at Dundee, his brief stint in Canada and his previous GB experience.

(Featured photo by Showgame)

When did you first start playing ultimate?

I learned about ultimate in 2010 when I started uni. A few friends (shout out to Calum and Neil) had been throwing a disc around just for fun and then we discovered that there was a sport, so we gave it a little bit of a go. We still lived at home in Arbroath and were commuting through to Dundee so we only made it to a handful of training sessions. Then in 2011 we started playing…all the time.

Did you have much of a sporting background before then?

Basketball was my main sport, I played for my school and for a club. Arbroath had a pretty good basketball program and I played organised basketball since I was 12 basically. Once I started playing ultimate, everything else went out of the window.

You mentioned starting your Frisbee career with Calum and Neil back in the day. How well established was Dundee at the time, and which players did you look up to?

Dundee was coming up to peak power, with a bunch of players who played for Fusion at the time (a Scottish team from the late 2000s and early 2010s). Graeme McDowell, Jared Cordiner, Ciaran Delaney, amongst others I am forgetting – there was definitely 15-20 guys who in my eyes at the time were exceptionally good players. In 2011, Dundee started to win Regionals over Edinburgh, finishing 3^rd in the UK as well.

What is your fondest memory from uni days?

It has to be when we won indoor nationals. It’s tough to beat that. At my first indoor nationals, I was vice-captain. I don’t remember a single game of that tournament but I remember the final and I remember partying in the showers afterwards. I went back for the first time to that venue in Coventry recently and all the memories came back.

You were once renounced for bringing 20+ pairs of socks to an indoors tournament. Do you still do that?

I still have a little cupboard dedicated only for socks. I don’t purchase as many these days because I have such a back-catalogue, but the sock game is still strong. There is a lot of white in there these days; white socks just look good.

You have played a lot of ultimate throughout your life, at university and club level in Scotland, plus a few years in Canada. How do all of these experiences compare, especially coming back to Scotland after the intense ultimate life in Canada?

My life was pretty much only ultimate-oriented in Canada. It didn’t exactly suck to live in Vancouver, it’s a pretty amazing place, but it has a lot of Frisbee happening. I went over with the goal of making Furious [George], and Alistair [Robb] who I played with at uni, had gone over the year before as he got a visa and I didn’t. He made the team and played a season [with Furious]. I got a visa the following season and was hoping to move over and do the same; luckily, I did! I played 2 years with Furious on the North American tour, along with playing club, and we trained 2-3 times a week. There is so much Frisbee there: summer leagues, winter leagues, club trainings; sometimes we were playing Frisbee 5 times a week at the peak of things and it just consumed any free time.

We made USAU Nationals both years, and both years finished 8^th or 9^th. We won our Regionals in 2018 which doesn’t sound like much in the UK, but when your opposition is Rhino and Sockeye, winning Regionals was huge. This was the first time Furious had won regionals in a long, long time.

So how did this compare to playing with Black Eagles¹ before you left and Alba once you came back?

In the last year of Black Eagles, we took it a bit more seriously in the lead up to WUCC and trained, but not as much as you would expect of today’s clubs. We won Nationals in 2017, qualifying for WUCC, and as Furious did not bid for WUCC I was able to play for Black Eagles in 2018, even though I had been playing with Furious. Black Eagles won Nationals in 2018 as well.

Coming back was weird because it was straight into a Covid year. I was off the back of a strong year and was very excited to play Alba. We had trials and then Covid happened. I went from playing 3-5 times a week to basically nothing for a year. It was very weird and I felt like I lost a lot of momentum.

What players did you look up to later in your career?

So in 2016, Chris [Knudsen], Dundee alumnus, ran for captain of Glasgow Ultimate with the idea to run a really strong team with all the best talent from Scotland. We qualified for Euros which was the first time a lot of the younger folk were exposed to that level of competitiveness. I am very thankful to Chris for pushing that, as the scene was pretty divided until then.

In Canada, it was pretty surreal; all of these players I’d been following for years and now I was matching up against them. Kevin Underhill, Tim Sang, Malcolm Bryson; all incredible players and now I was playing against them week in, week out. You just had to be on your A-game or you would be made to look silly. All of them made us feel very welcome at the time.  

Now, it’s a bit different. It feels a lot more like just peers rather than looking up to people. Everyone is just a Frisbee player, the same way you are. It is definitely fun to match up against them. For example, someone like Conrad Wilson, I remember playing him at uni Nationals during our bad haircut year (context: Dundee did saladbowl haircuts as a way of team bonding), and he basically single handedly beat us. I was thinking, “wow, this guy is pretty good”, and now he is one of the best players in Europe. It’s like that, especially when you leave and come back, recognising the faces and thinking “I have this match up”, but in reality everyone has improved.

How did you feel when you first made GB with the under 23s back in the day?

I played GB u23s in 2015. I applied to trial in 2013 but didn’t get a trial. In 2015, I would have been disappointed if I hadn’t made the team. I had matched up against a lot of the players on the scene. There was maybe 15 guaranteed spots after the first trial and a bunch of us retrialing at the Siege of Limerick tournament over in Ireland. We sent 2 teams and the team I was on ended up winning, which definitely helped us look good.

That GB u23s tournament produced a great photo of you which is still the UKU JustGo login background. You’ve been the face of UKU for so many years!

Yep, that photo has definitely done well for UKU. I got no royalties from it but I guess that’s what I get for signing those WFDF waivers…! It’s funny, sometimes when I’ve been to a session and speak to a brand new player who has just bought their first UKU membership and they ask “did I just see you on the UKU website?”. Yep, that is me, but several years ago now.

You are now an established GB player, especially having made the senior mixed squad this year and last. How do your experiences all compare?

I think I am a lot more of a veteran now compared to my u23 days. It is interesting to play with all of these players you have matched up against. Sometimes you have prejudice against people and then they are just really nice; you would end up making friends with someone who you have played against for years which is always one of the highlights. Having Camy [Agnew] running it has been good, probably one of the main reasons for me to play mixed rather than open, as I have a bit more of an opportunity to play a bigger role when someone who knows my game is in charge. Last year, it also ended up being a pretty good Scottish contingent with me, Camy [Agnew], [Andrew] Boxall, Marky [Simpson] and Ross [Nugent], all of whom played Alba.

Was playing for Great Britain always the goal after coming back from Canada?

I was away in 2018 and 2019 and Euros happened in 2018. I spoke to the organisers of the GB team saying I wouldn’t be able to trial but would be interested to get a trial for Worlds in 2020, so I hoped to trial when I got home. Then I ended up trialling for Canada while I was there in 2019, and was in talks of making the team if I could make it back for training camps and iron out a few other things, but it ended up being too difficult to travel back and forth when I didn’t even have a job at the time. In the end, I decided to come back and trial for GB and go from there. Whilst I didn’t get a trial for the open team, I did for the mixed team. I think it was 5 of us trialing for 2 spots; I didn’t end up getting a spot offered there either but I guess the plan was always to ramp up and play senior GB eventually.

So moving to Worlds chat. First of all, are you excited about it?

Yep, definitely excited. This is the last tournament to tick off the bucket list. I have been to Worlds before as a spectator in 2016 when it was in London, but this is the first time I will be there as a player. It’s just a shame it’s so far away. I’m definitely looking forward to it; there’s always a lot of buzz around an international tournament and the team is looking better and better, so we are excited to see what we can do.

How is the preparation for Worlds different compared to your standard club nationals?

It has been a bit weird with tournaments moving around to make time for Worlds. With that, the way you train changes too. Obviously, having a child definitely changes things as well, and it’s hard to fit everything in but I’m definitely trying to do as much as I can, when I can. It sounds a bit wishy washy kinda just fitting things in when I can, but I have done these things for long enough to know what I should be doing. I would probably benefit more if I could plan more but it has been hard with a newborn.

Is anyone going to Australia to support you?

Yes, my parents are gonna be there – they booked their flights before I did. My Dad will have his bagpipes ready to go. Unfortunately, we couldn’t commit to getting Tiff and Sullivan (wife and baby) over; with how young he is, it just wasn’t feasible. This being my last Alba season, my Dad will arguably miss the team more than I will, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow end up at an Alba tournament.

What advice would you give to young players these days?

Just throw yourself into the sport as a whole. The only reason I got to this level is because there was barely any day without some sort of Frisbee activity happening, whether that was mini, throwing or just watching; it was very rare that a day went by without Frisbee on my mind. If you want to get better, make it your priority. Obviously don’t fail uni, but the best way to get good at Frisbee is to do a lot of it.

And finally, you mentioned this will be your last season with Alba – where do you see yourself in few years’ time? Will you aim for more GB squads or focus on club ultimate?

I don’t really know. It isn’t a super fun answer for an interview setting but I don’t know how life as a father will be. I obviously would like to play but at the moment I don’t know if that means taking a break from club and pushing for GB, whether it’s Masters or Seniors, or take a break and come back to it. I think I’m yet to be at a tournament and feel like I have given it all. Maybe it will be in a few years’ time when it will be more feasible but that is a long way away. I may not play club next season only to find out I have too much time on my hands and playing just disc golf doesn’t quite cut it. I can’t imagine quitting cold turkey, so I’ll just have to see how things are locally next year.

Good luck for the tournament, Dickers! We’ll be cheering you on from home! Next up, is Hayley Dalmon!

Footnotes:

¹Black Eagles was a competitive ultimate team based in Scotland which won several UK National titles and placed 11th at the World Ultimate Club Championships in 2018.