What do you want to be when you grow up?
It’s the classic question posed on worksheets for elementary school students in an attempt to have them document their ambitions long before they set out for the real world.
Recent University of Virginia graduate Kira Flores wishes she could dig up the paper that featured her answer to that question. Now 22, Flores has a good feeling about the dreams that once danced in her head.
“If I found it,” Flores said, “it would say, ‘Play on the U.S. women’s national soccer team.’”
A chance to compete on the international stage in a sport she loves drove a young Flores back then as much as it does today, but with a slight change. Flores – unlike fellow UVA alumna Emily Sonnett – did not make the American roster for this summer’s FIFA Women’s World Cup.
Instead, she’s representing her country in a way she didn’t think was possible four years ago.
Beginning Sunday in Nottingham, England, Flores will be part of the U.S. women’s team competing against 13 other countries for a gold medal in the World Flying Disc Federation World Under-24 Ultimate Championships.
It seems Flores traded her soccer ball for a flying disc a while back and is now fulfilling her childhood dreams, albeit slightly modified.
“It'll look different,” she said, “but I have my USA jersey and it’s amazing to see.”
Flores, who attended Maggie Walker Governor’s School in Richmond, was the Class 2 state soccer player of the year as a high school senior and a member of the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s All-Metro team.
Though she was worthy of a college soccer opportunity, Flores decided against it and sought new outlets when she arrived on Grounds as a first-year student in fall of 2019.
Her sister, Erin, was a fourth-year student at the time, as well as the captain of Hydra, the UVA women’s club Ultimate Frisbee team. Kira followed Erin’s suggestion to try out for the team and, suddenly, the soccer lifer was hooked on something else.
“Ultimate Frisbee just had this really competitive nature that I didn’t know it involved,” Flores said. “I really enjoyed it and found out that it was actually a very competitive sport that involved a lot of things that I love about sports. I love traveling to competitions and having intense training.”
Ultimate, created in 1968 by a group of high school students in New Jersey, is a non-contact, self-refereed sport played on a field about the length of a football field. Each seven-player team tries to score by passing a flying disc into its designated attacking end zone. No player can run with the disc.
It wasn’t that long ago that she knew nearly nothing about the sport, but Flores has since gained enough expertise to break it down for a curious reporter. That’s a testament to a dedicated approach to the game that involves video study and extra practice.
There are two main positions – handlers and cutters. Flores has developed into a talented handler, a spot she describes as “like a quarterback on the field who’s going to stay a little bit back, touch the disc more and look to throw deep.”
“The cutters,” she said, “are like your wide receivers running routes, but in a more continuous motion because play doesn’t stop like football.”
Flores said, outside of Hydra games and practices over the past four years, she’s gone to Carr’s Hill Field to throw on her own.
“I also love when a teammate goes and throws with me,” she said, “but especially during COVID when there wasn’t as much that you could do with other people, I learned that if you want to go focus on something yourself, it’s easy to just go do it with a couple of discs and a soccer net.
“I’ll throw 10 in the net, go retrieve them and get them back. Or if I’m working on longer throws, I’ll set up, throw them, mark out the yardage, see how far I was throwing them, and then walk down and throw them back the other way down the field.”
Hydra qualified for the 20-team college club national tournament three times in Flores’s UVA career, including this past spring when it finished in a tie for 13th place.
Flores, a team co-captain in 2023, was a candidate for the Callahan Award, Ultimate’s version of college football’s Heisman Trophy that’s given annually to the best player in the county.
KIRA FLORES FOR CALLAHAN 2023!!!
— Hydra Ultimate (@HydraNFriends) April 29, 2023
if you have played against hydra this year, you know how vital kira is to our success! hope you give it a watch and she gets your vote! https://t.co/AKoGnKvqkE
“I think I benefit from being naturally athletic,” she said. “Soccer was always what I was really good at growing up, but I could typically pick up other sports pretty quickly. And I think my skill set from soccer translated well into Frisbee.”
An elite sense of field vision is what the U.S. coaches told Flores they liked about her game during the 200-person tryout for the mixed, open and women’s national teams in November. A month later, she was told she had made the 24-member women’s team.
Flores, who graduated with an economics degree in May, departed for England last week. The U.S. is the No. 1 seed for the world championships, which conclude with a gold medal game on July 8.
It’s not the World Cup, but Flores feels just as accomplished.
“It’s kind of surreal,” she said. “My journey through the sport has been so fast. To now even have the opportunity to go and compete for a gold medal is beyond amazing.”
Media Contact
University News Associate University Communications
fpa5up@virginia.edu (434) 924-6856
Article Information
December 22, 2024
