Overview:
Ultimate frisbee athlete Kaela Helton is part of a movement pushing to expand the sport's place on the national and international stage.
For some, becoming a professional athlete is a calling based on a childhood core memory – your first homerun in little league or your first goal in a soccer match.
Coronado resident Kaela Helton loved soccer: the team dynamic and competitive energy. She had every intention of continuing at UC Santa Barbara – until a fluke scheduling error sidetracked her career.
“My plan was to play soccer there,” Helton explained. “I ended up missing the tryout.”
Before heading off to college, a friend who also went to UCSB had told Helton about a very different sport being played on campus: ultimate frisbee. At UCSB, they had a competitive collegiate level ultimate frisbee team – and her friend told her it was a blast.
“He would come back in the summers while I was still in high school and tell me, ‘Hey, this is actually a real sport,’” Helton said.
With soccer no longer an option, Helton joined the UCSB women’s team known as the Burning Skirts.
“I went out for ultimate instead and never, ever, went back,” she said.
Her freshman team ended up going all the way to college nationals before losing in the finals. But she knew this was it.
And while representing the Burning Skirts, she became friends with a teammate, Carolyn Finney.
The two were roommates during Helton’s junior and senior year. They spent a lot of time together living together and traveling on the team together.
“I realized last year, we have played on a team together, whether that be college, club or country, every year except for 2011.”
From 2007 until now.
In their sophomore year, Finney and Helton’s team made it to nationals again, but lost in the finals.
Then, junior year, they were captains together.
“I feel like it’s hard to teach the winning mentality, but that class coming in had it already,” Helton said.
Helton and Finney were a force to be reckoned with on offense and defense.
“The fact that we were always together (in) freshman, sophomore year, and continuing to build chemistry across the field… I think (that) caused a lot of problems for other teams,” Finney said.
In 2009, the Burning Skirts went all the way and won nationals.
“Having someone you just trust and can rely on so much on the field — that has grown throughout all of our years together,” Finney said.
Little did Helton know then that she and Finney would emerge as leaders in promoting the relatively new sport.
After college, Helton tried out for an elite team in the Bay Area, the San Francisco Fury, and Finney played a fifth year for UCSB.
But they stayed in touch, especially when Fury won nationals in 2012. That win gave the Fury the right to represent the United States against Japan in the World Ultimate and Guts Championships (WUGC) in Osaka, Japan .
“She called me that night or that day, she’s like, ‘So are you ready to try out or what?’ Because if I would make the team, then I would get to go to Japan and be on team USA with her,” Finney said.
Finney went for it and they both represented the U.S.
From there, Helton played on Fury for 12 seasons. (She also competed for her country in the WUGC and World Beach Ultimate Championships multiple years.)
Helton credits her time on the Fury with inspiring her to add coaching to her ultimate frisbee repertoire.
“The coach of that team (Matty Tsang) is well known as the best ultimate coach in the game. I feel like I was just a sponge just soaking up everything he said,” Helton said. “That kind of led me to coaching or being in leadership roles on other teams. Because it’s a new sport, there aren’t a plethora of really good coaches.”
Helton eventually moved to Coronado and now plays for San Diego’s Super Bloom and Flipside. In 2022 she led Super Bloom to a second place finish in the first year of the Western Ultimate League. She won the League MVP title in both 2022 and 2023.
Today, she’s a head coach for the Growlers, the professional men’s ultimate frisbee team in San Diego.
“She is one of the first and one of the few female coaches in the men’s professional league…” Finney said. “I think she wanted to represent a group and wanted to be involved.”
Helton founded Flipside in Southern California, a team in the USA Ultimate Club Women’s division. She has also run Ultimate clinics in other countries such as the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Moscow, Russia.
Outside of club and professional teams, she leads a training camp for up-and-coming ultimate frisbee athletes called Cut Camp. She and her team coach entry-level players and athletes looking to make it to the next level (Cut Camp Elite).
Both Finney and Helton are going for spots on the 2025 World Games team, hopefully repeating their success in the last cycle.
“Just being able to grow through this sport over the last almost 20 years now and come up through the different levels together, I don’t know that I would have done that without her,” Finney said.
Both Helton and Finney won top recognition at the Ultiworld Club Awards last year, but Helton said the style of play she was taught focuses on teamwork and momentum – not the individual.
“When I started getting that recognition in the last five years, it’s kind of just funny to me,” Helton laughed. “I feel like I’m not doing anything different, per se. It’s just that I’m playing on different teams, and I’m making world games rosters and things like that. I don’t put a ton of stock in it, but it is cool to be recognized.”
Though they’re best friends, they do not hold back on competitiveness, especially at big tryouts.
“We will match up and I think we will support each other and try and destroy each other, at the same time,” Finney said. “We expect that (out) of each other and we appreciate that about each other.”
They both are chasing the same thing.
“Chasing down a frisbee, there’s no feeling like that in any other sport. It’s just this excitement,” Helton said.
Super Bloom is hosting an upcoming “Palentine’s Day” tournament for ultimate frisbee players of all levels on Feb. 15 at Coronado beach. For more information visit, https://sandiegosuperbloom.com/
