By: Eva Luo
One of the best defensive players and counter-attackers, AJ Merriman, 23, plays for the DC Breeze, an ultimate frisbee team. This sport helped him with his mental health struggles. Now he is trying to turn it into his career.
He started his own team at Heritage High in Leesburg, was a rookie in the American Ultimate Disc League(AUDL), and was awarded defensive player of the year. Merriman is one of the few players who chose to make ultimate frisbee his career. “He’s got, like, Kobe Bryant’s mamba mentality,” said Andrew Nguyen, a former coach of Merriman’s. “He’ll bark at his opponents. There’s a persona. He approaches the game differently.”
Some, like Shanye Crawford, Crawford sees Merriman as a turning point. He is an African American star with talent and enthusiasm, who may possibly guide ultimate frisbee to be more inclusive and popular.
Even so, Merriman still has his troubles. In order to make ultimate frisbee his profession, he must constantly prove that his talent is worth paying for, and also needs to get the sport noticed. Merriman is also trying to make ultimate frisbee welcoming for athletes like him, who weren’t from the Caucasian, upper-class roots of the sport.
When on the road, Merriman and his teammates would eat together, play games, and watch live streams of other people playing ultimate frisbee. Such is the life of a full-time player, and Rowan McDonnell, the Breeze team Captain knows it well.
McDonnel was the first star in the AUDL, but that kept him from choosing other jobs in order to follow his dream of becoming a professional ultimate frisbee player, a fate he worries Merriman will also experience.“It’s cool. It’s also a little scary,” McDonnell said. “I know how hard it was for me and how much time I spent on it. And I don’t know, I never look back and go like, ‘Oh, I wasted five years of life trying to make this my career.’ But it’s tough. It’s a little isolating. Maybe it won’t be as tough for him because the league’s a little bit more advanced. There’s a little bit more money in the sport. If I look back, it was a pretty tough grind for me for so long. I just wouldn’t want him to go through that same grind.”
McDonnell and Merriman both train, coach teams, play for the Breeze and expand their merchandising brands, and with the popularity of the game, people are seeking their counsel. However, they still have financial support. Merriman’s mother, Nancy, helps him, and the team shares a row home, but neither Merriman or McDonnell have financial burdens. “He has learned to live without making a lot of money,” Nancy said.
Financial burdens actually almost kept Merriman out of the sport. Higher-level club teams charge athletes thousands of dollars to join. Merriman didn’t have that when he first started. Even though some will offer scholarships to lower admission costs, people had to be in the inner circle of ultimate frisbee players.
Merriman wasn’t part of that inner circle, which is a reason to emphasize letting professional leagues grow. “The better the pro leagues are, the more opportunities there are for kids who don’t have the money to pay for club seasons every summer,” Merriman said.
He also doesn’t fit the stereotype, being Caucasian and high born, which he knows. Merriman found his way to playing ultimate frisbee ever since he found it was a real sport. As a result, he is often under inspection for his style of play, which is legal by written rules, but breaks the unwritten customs. While the Breeze is a diverse team, most of the league is Caucasian, but Merriman is African American.
Merriman tries to diversify the sport, and also supports mixed-gender leagues. He also played in tournaments in Columbia and England, to bring in an international audience.
Recently, he has brought the Con10ent tour to D.C. It promotes African American players to share the field.“ We play in a way that I have yet to play in any other environment,” said Shanye Crawford, the architect of the tour. “We are free. Sports are supposed to be about celebration, about power, about dunking on people but not being in trouble, running super fast but not having it be because of your biology — that still isn’t our day-to-day [reality] in a sport we can’t help but love.”
“He is larger than life in every way,” she said. “He wants to give a blueprint to other players who want to grow like he has. He is young. But he is such a bright light for this sport.
Source:
https://viiapparel.co/blogs/news/6-questions-with-d-c-breezes-a-j-merriman
https://theaudl.com/league/power-rankings/2023-most-interesting-defenders