Ashley Garcia, Sports Writer
At Wingate University there are many different clubs around campus. One of those clubs is the Ultimate Frisbee Club.
The club has two different teams: men and coed. The men’s team competes in USA-Ultimate tournaments in the D-III division, while the co-ed team plays against different schools in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.
The club allows students who are both experienced and inexperienced to play on the teams.
In ultimate frisbee, there are two teams of seven. Each team has their own endzone and the defense team pulls, or throws, the disc to the other end. The offense then starts throwing to their teammates to try to score in the defense’s endzone.
Ultimate Frisbee is a no-contact game, but blocking is allowed. The team with the most points wins the game.
On March 23 and 24, the club split into two teams, A and B, and participated in a tournament on campus against teams from Western Carolina University, Mars Hill University, Guilford College, North Greenville University, Campbell University, and a pick-up team.
Wingate’s A Team lost the championship game against North Greenville University 13-11. NGU won a gold spray-painted bottle as their trophy.
The club practiced a lot to prepare for this tournament by having practice twice a week.
“For practice, I had us run drills to work on our throwing and cutting,” said sophomore Kaleb Howarth. “We played a lot of pickup games… we stopped at points to teach certain aspects of the games.”
The players from Team B knew that the tournament would be a challenge since their strongest players were on Team A. However, this did not stop the team because each player had their own set of skills to bring to the tournament.
Some of the other players really wanted to do well at the home tournament, so they practiced even more than just meeting twice a week.
Freshman Matilda Silvestri said, “The team I was on wanted to do well in the tournament, so we had an extra practice outside of the already two existing for the week.”
Her team met a fourth time the week of the tournament, and had a classroom day where they watched film and looked at different offensive and defensive strategies. While Wingate did not win the tournament, some of the players reflected positively on the game.
“I enjoyed the tournament a lot, mainly how competitive it was,” freshman Isaiah Morales said. “I enjoyed being able to play a competitive sport with friendly people that all came just for the love of the game. I also liked that it was well organized and not too time consuming.”
The teams lived up to the expectations in terms of improving their skills and cohesion. “We had a really fun weekend!” Silvestri said.
Edited by Brendan Shriver
Wingate Triangle 