Ultimately, we played Frisbee - a trimester of the flying disk

Newly introduced to Stuart Hall by Mr. (or should I say Coach) Murray, the Ultimate team has grown a whole lot during the spring trimester. With the end of the season here, we look back at how it unfolded.

“Why don’t we have soccer?” was a cry that could be widely heard around STU as the spring co-curriculars were announced. As we kept growling about that, though, a lot of us proceeded to sign up for Ultimate Frisbee nonetheless. By the end of the season, this meant the team had as many as 20 players, most of them both on Wednesdays and Thursdays. After all, this was an unknown sport to many of us - and especially for internationals, something that we would otherwise not really play in our home countries -, so it had the pull of the unknown.

The beginning, accordingly, was rough. Starting with the absolute basics in the biology room, Coach Murray introduced us to the wonders of forehand, backhand, stall count, travel, the command “chilly,” and much else. This didn’t take a whole lot of time, as the building blocks of Ultimate are pretty simple. Without going into details about strategies and suchlike, two teams of seven are vying for a disk that they want to catch in their opponent’s endzone. This is achieved through the teammates passing said disk among each other, albeit importantly, the team member with the disk cannot move.

Since then, we have certainly come a long way, practicing at Fillmore Field and the soccer field on the edge of town, and occasionally in the gym. Those wobbly disks of the first training have morphed into white arrows slashing through the air with (more or less) precision. And the somewhat fearful flirtations with catching the disks turned into audacious leaps for a point – only occasionally did someone end up in a tree, or with a bloody nose (NOT me). We gave each other, as well as select members of the faculty, a tough time during scrimmages, as the team was divided into Red and White portions, independently of the Red and White teams of the wider school.

Head Coach Murray has been very excited about the progress of the team throughout the season, being a former college Ultimate player, as was Assistant Coach Roberson. This was reciprocated by the players. “I like the outdoorsy stuff,” said Lucy Gingerelli (8), “but I don’t like being run over by seniors. My favorite part is being passed to and making a catch, as well as warming up Kian by playing catch!” Of our upper school players, Tgo Sullivan (11) emphasized how “the best thing about Ultimate is that it builds a sense of a team that I really haven’t had before. I really hope we can develop to a point next year where we are playing other teams and eventually travelling between schools.”

Indeed, the development of the team suggests this isn’t an unreasonable goal at all. Until then, below are some pictures of this year for reminiscing a little and appreciating the strides we have made since February.

-Simon Rozsa

Source for cover image: Stuart Hall School Athletics Instagram page

Credits to pictures below to Assistant Coach Roberson and Evan Trauner-Coady