As the last few weeks of school loom over students, many find their own unique ways of celebrating the approaching summer. Some bare it all and streak across the quad. Others lounge around on the senior deck. But what about those Frisbee™ players always seen running around near the tower building?
While it may seem as though the students are casually playing on the quad, there is actually a competitive Ultimate club at Palo Alto High School. Ultimate is not you’re average sport. It doesn’t use balls. You can’t move while you have the Frisbee™ and there are no referees. It’s not necessarily the most popular sport in America. So how did it come to Paly?
“Frisbee™ basically started as a debate activity,” co-founder of the Ultimate club at Paly Nassim Fedel (‘12) said. “Freshman year me and a few others would play Ultimate Frisbee™ during and after debate. We kind of became that core group of guys who still play ultimate now, I guess debate and Frisbee™ have a lot of connection to each other.”
Although it’s currently unknown who originally brought Ultimate to Paly, Fedel and Xavier Mignot (‘12) were the two who truly made the sport mainstream.
“We wanted to make it an official Paly club because a lot of the people who play ultimate at the school are seniors,” Mignot said. “We wanted to get younger people involved and make it into a Paly tradition.”
The club’s goals are being accomplished as more and more people across campus are noticing an increase in the number of Ultimate players at Paly.
“Everyone knows what a Frisbee™ is, but not many people know what the sport of ultimate is,” casual Frisbee™ player Ben May (‘11) said. “There’s a lot more people who are aware of what the sport is since the club came along.”
Part of what makes Ultimate so fun is how easy it is to get started. While many other sports require gym space or expensive equipment, Ultimate is very low maintenance. Sam Asin (‘12) thinks this may be its most attractive feature.
“It’s basically my favorite team sport because it’s something you can just pick up and play,” Asin said. “It’s very free flowing, you don’t really need to organize anything. You just make two teams and then run around.”
Although currently there is only a club for Ultimate, the club hopes to expand into a team by the spring season. Hopes to expand in the future. Mignot and Fedel are working with the Ultimate club’s advisor Chris Farina, a psychology teacher at Paly, into making an Ultimate team.
“We have so many people interested in Frisbee™ at Paly it would be cool to compete against Ultimate players from other schools,” Fedel said, “With the addition of Mr. Farina at Paly we can now compete more successfully. He has a lot of experience.”
Farina certainly has his share of Ultimate experience, having played competitively his senior year of high school, four years in college at Middleberry and club Ultimate after college.
“Mr. Farina attends every other practice,” Fedel said. “Our practices mostly consist of games, and when he’s there clearly he is a big factor in the games. But beyond that he makes everyone play at a higher level.”
Aside from teaching psychology and participating in the Ultimate club, Farina’s uses his experience to teach the fundamentals of the sport.
“He taught me how to throw a forehand, and he taught us how to throw around defenders,” Fedel said.
Undoubtedly Farina’s teaching will be critical when the team begins to play more competitively. People don’t often think of ultimate as a competitive sport, but the truth is every aspect of the sport indicates competition. Like any competitive sport, there are both serious mental and physical aspects.
“Ultimate isn’t just leisurely tossing a Frisbee™ around in a park,” regular ultimate player Maxwell Siegelman said. “It’s a physically and mentally demanding sport.”
Ultimate isn’t just competitive in small unknown leagues, the level of Ultimate play extends all the way from high school to the national level.
“They don’t have varsity Frisbee™ in college, but club Frisbee™ is very competitive,” Asin said. “Most colleges have intramurals at least.”
You may think that those student playing ultimate on the quad are just a bunch of kids trying to blow of steam after class, but the truth is that they are competing, competing in a real and unique sport, just like any other team at Paly.
