As the breeze gets softer and nature shows signs of spring, the grass fields around campus are populated by students outside enjoying the weather. As if a reaction to this great spring weather, Frisbees hurled around Mem Field and wherever it’s green. The best of those throwers play Ultimate Frisbee, which just kicked off a new season.
Ultimate Frisbee is a field sport with end points. It shares similarities with football, but without the contact, in the sense that the objective is to get past those end points. Any time the Frisbee is dropped, or of course, intercepted, the other team takes the Frisbee and starts again.
Directed by three coaches, Craig Warren, John Cobb and Trevor Peard, Ultimate Frisbee is an intramural sport that is more “like a college club sport,” notes Cobb. People who love this sport just gather to play it, in a club setting but often with the competitive intensity of a varsity sport. Ultimate Frisbee has been at Choate for quite some time. With 20 years of coaching experience, Mr. Peard has been coaching Ultimate Frisbee the longest of the three coaches.
For the club’s practices, Mr. Cobb noted that there are no referees. The players honor each others’ calls, as they would want to be honored. Players call their own fouls, and accept fouls called against them. The players have shown good sportsmanship, according to Mr. Cobb, without serious clashes of opinions or showing of dishonesty, while keeping the competitive spirit alive.
Though it is known as an intramural sport, the Ultimate Frisbee program typically has between four and eight interscholastic games in a season, playing against schools including Cheshire Academy, Chase Academy, the Hotchkiss School and Northfield Mount Hermon. Some of these schools have very intense Ultimate Frisbee programs. Mr. Cobb noted that Chase Academy actually has pre-season training for Ultimate Frisbee!
The Frisbee players practice four days a week, one hour each day, just like any other intramural sport. However, just the same, the games are serious and intense, but fun too. With about 36 students this season, there are enough players to have two simultaneous games each day. The Ultimate Frisbee games take place behind the Winter X.
At the end of the term, there is an intra-team tournament. Smaller teams are grouped and captains are then selected. Being a wrap-up tournament of the season, it is played apart from the interscholastic games.
Mr. Cobb, one of the three coaches, remarked that he coaches this sport because he always liked playing Frisbee and interacting with the students. Coaching in his 10th year, he says that the great part of Ultimate Frisbee is that it is a fun sport.
“I always liked playing the sport, playing with the students,” says Mr. Cobb, “and it’s fun. I think it has the right blend of seriousness and silliness, which is great. There are also many seniors, spending their final term out in the weather…and it really gets nice at the end of the term!”
Practice on the Ultimate Frisbee grounds. Sean Carey ’09
