Christian Olsen is a seasoned player for one of the city’s pro sports teams, but it’s not even his day job!
Christian Olsen, a project manager at tech unicorn Salesloft, has an interesting side gig. In his off-time, the 32-year-old Buckhead resident is on the city’s professional ultimate frisbee team, the Atlanta Hustle, that plays home games on the main soccer field at Silverbacks Park. If you’ve never been to a game, or even heard of ultimate frisbee, you’re missing out on an exciting combination of football and frisbee played with seven players per team throwing a disc to the opposite end zone while the opposing team tries to intercept it. It generates as much action and fan enthusiasm as you’d see at any Falcons, Braves or Hawks game.
Olsen has played for the Hustle for 10 years, and he’s seen the team and the sport in general grow in popularity. Here’s more about how this dedicated athlete is helping to put an unsung local sports franchise on the map.
How do you explain ultimate frisbee?
People most often confuse it with frisbee golf, but it’s a combination of soccer, basketball and football.
When did you start playing?
I was always a basketball kid, but when I moved from Minneapolis to Atlanta and [started school] at Paideia, I was introduced to ultimate, which wasn’t a thing in Minnesota. There, I was coached by Michael Baccarini, who’s one of the godfathers of frisbee.
Did you play in college?
Yes, I went to Emory, and played for the team, The Juice. We were in the Division I circuit, so we played against big schools in the Southeast like Florida, Alabama and Georgia Tech. Emory is where I started to take frisbee seriously.
There’s a lot of running, diving and jumping in ultimate. How do you stay in shape?
The short answer is that we just work out all the time. It’s a demanding sport, and if you don’t keep up with it all season, you’re gonna be cut. It’s similar to the demands of any other pro sport, but we just happen to have full-time jobs on top of it.
What special skills does it take to play at the pro level?
There’s obviously the baseline of athleticism, but you also need the ability to throw the frisbee in different ways and to be creative and get out of tough situations. The regular season runs April through July.
How many games do you play?
Six home games and six away games. Ten years ago, we only played in the Southeast, and now every year we’re going to San Diego, New York, Minnesota or Chicago.
What’s been the most memorable experience during your Hustle career?
I’d love to tell you it was the game where we made it out of the playoffs and went to the championship weekend, but we’ve yet to do that. [At press time, The Hustle advanced to the championship weekend.] So I would say any game where we got to show up against another championship- caliber team. Or when we got to play a new team we haven’t played before, like Salt Lake this year. [Basically anytime] it feels like a certifiably professional sport.
How much longer do you see yourself playing?
My wife and I have a deal where I can only play if I don’t suck. I think I can probably play at this level for a few more years, though. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t get harder and harder each year.
ATLANTA HUSTLE
watchufa.com/hustle
@atlantahustle
