Interview: Toronto 6ixers' Molly Lewis Talks WUCC
If you don’t know who the Toronto 6ixers are, you’re missing out. This squad straight out of Toronto rose to the top of the Canadian ultimate scene, winning Canadian Ultimate Championships in 2017. Let me rephrase that: 6ixers, a team who entered 2017 with only one year of experience under its belt, beat Vancouver Traffic, a top-tier women’s team who has competed in at least 8 USAU Club Nationals, and represented Canada in 2008 at WUGC—a team who had been sitting at the top for a long time. No small feat for the Toronto team.
The 6ixers are a strong team top-to-bottom, boasting some of the best veterans’ Canadian ultimate has to offer, and continuously adding rookies who are hungry for glory. In efforts to get some behind-the-scenes information, we asked Molly Lewis, a core-member of the 6ixers’ defensive unit, a few questions about this coming up season.
VC: The 6ixers are coming off a pretty successful 2017 season as a relatively new team last year. Do you feel any pressure going into WUCC? Do you think you are maybe under- or over-seeded?
Molly Lewis: I don’t think pressure is the right word, because ultimately our priority at Worlds is to learn and grow regardless of outside expectations, but we definitely have high hopes for ourselves. WUCC will give us an unparalleled opportunity to compete against elite international competition and given the variance in styles of play between countries, it’ll really take us out of our comfort zone. That being said, we have a ton of young rookies and are still a pretty young team overall, so we’re there [WUCC] to develop, but also have fun, get rowdy and make some waves.
If you had to pick one thing the team does well and one thing you need to work on, what would they be?
I think our team’s ability to grind is really unique, both on O and D. Last year our team really gelled and got super tight, and that’s carried on into this year. That love has translated onto the field in our ability to work for each other, and to keep grinding when there’s nothing left in the tank. So far this season, that’s shown up really well in games where we need that huge D to boost our energy, or in games that are super tight.
One thing our team needs to work on (and I’m the worst culprit of this) is our elite-level throwing. We certainly have a couple world-class throwers on our team, but I think given our youth, our strengths so far have been weighted more towards our athleticism rather than our skill. That’s something a lot of us have been working on, and I think that is kind of the next step we need to take to get us to the level we want to be at: competing with the top women’s teams in North America.
What is the overarching goal of this season, specifically WUCC?
The goal of this season is growth growth growth. The creation of this team has always been to contend at next year’s CUC’s and to hopefully get a chance to represent Canada at WUGC in 2019. As I said before, WUCC is going to be an awesome opportunity to really push ourselves and see how far we’ve come, as well as showing us the areas where we still need to improve most. Another goal of ours this year was to really accelerate and expend on gender equity discussions happening in Toronto. It’s something that’s easy to neglect as our season ramps up, and we haven’t been publicly consistent as we would have liked, but it’s still a constant dialogue happening within our team. It’s something we’re working on and will keep working on.
Molly skying 6ixers' teammate Cindy in the college series
Anything else you want to say?
Last year’s win against Traffic was great for us mentally and gave us an awesome experience to reflect back on in moments of hardship and doubt. That being said, we want to prove that we aren’t a one-hit wonder; we’re serious contenders and we can consistently perform on an elite level.
6ixers raising the trophy at the Canadian Ultimate Championships in 2017
VC will be following the 6ixers progress at WUCC 2018 next week - follow VC on Instagram to keep up with all of the action!