GC&SU Ultimate Frisbee Club soars to the top
The GC&SU Ultimate Frisbee Team has asserted itself as a dominant force within its section early in the 2006 season.
“It’s pretty exciting,” faculty advisor and team member Doug Oetter said. “We’ve put a lot of hard work in and some of it has been paying off. We’ve been winning some games.we’re getting a lot better at playing together as a team and we hope to do some good things this spring.”
The team recently competed in the Florida Winter Classic, a tournament hosted by the University of Florida, where they defeated several of their biggest rivals, including The College of Charleston, Florida State University and Emory University. One of the biggest upsets of the weekend came when they defeated The University of Oklahoma, which finished the 2005 season ranked eighteenth in the nation.
“GC&SU went to that tournament barely known by the college Ultimate community but left with a six and two record and lots of heads turning,” said Bennett Williams, a senior outdoor education major.
Oetter attributes the team’s recent success-which includes a sixteenth place national ranking- to many hours of practice.
“(The team has) been studying the game. They’ve got equipment and they bought DVDs of championship games and studied how the best teams played. We’ve been practicing 3 to 4 times a week- the guys are practicing their throws and running before and after (practice),” Oetter said. ” The guys are really smart and they want to do better. You know, some of it you can contribute to (the fact that) we got tired of losing. You look for ‘why did we lose?’ and then you work on that.”
The team’s practice, which is held on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Bobcat Village, rivals the intensity of any other college level sport.
“We’re out there to have a good time, but we’re extremely competitive. We’re not just out there tossing the Frisbee. We actually go and practice and try to do drills and try to scrimmage to elevate our level of play,” said Mark Poole, senior international business major.
GC&SU’s club team competes against other colleges from Georgia, Florida and South Carolina. Tournaments are sanctioned by the Ultimate Players Association and are either part of a college tournament series or open tournaments. Players on college teams must either be enrolled in a college or university or be a faculty member in order to participate.
Many tournaments are “open” tournaments, meaning that non-colligate teams are allowed to compete as well.
“Usually the open teams are better than college teams because they are older and more experienced players. That’s not always the case, though; some college teams are really good,” Oetter said.
A college tournament will be held Feb. 18-19 in Charleston. Oetter is optimistic about how the team will perform, calling it “a chance to show off how good we are.”
“We just want to encourage people to come out; we practice on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon out at Bobcat Village. Even if you just want to come out and watch, just come on out and see if it’s the right sport for you,” Oetter said.
Any GC&SU student or faculty member is eligible to play, and the team holds pick up games open to anyone on Sunday afternoons. For more information, visit http://www.gcsu.edu/orgs/student/bfc/index.htm.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Feb 10 2006. Filed under Sports.
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