Kurtis Mundell owns about 20 Frisbees, some of which he keeps in his car for “emergencies.” His favorite is one he swiped from a competitor in Seattle, Washington. It’s white with black print and a submarine graphic. For an ultimate Frisbee player, stealing Frisbees from other teams is common practice.
Cal Poly’s ultimate Frisbee team, called SLO CORE, was started in 1978, 10 years after Joel Silver, the film director, started the first ultimate Frisbee team in New Jersey. Originally the game reflected football rules, but after awhile, Silver and cofounders Bernard Hellring and Jonny Hines changed the rules to include other sports like hockey and soccer. Other schools became interested as the rules got out, and on Nov. 7, 1970, the first interscholastic game was played. Two years later, the first intercollegiate match took place in 1972 between Rutgers and Princeton, according to UltimateFrisbee.com.
“When you get a brand new Frisbee, before it gets kicked or scuffed up, it’s just great,” Mundell said.
Although it is one of Cal Poly’s more obscure teams, the sport is played in more than 50 countries worldwide and regularly by nearly one million people in the US. There are also scholarships for ultimate Frisbee players from colleges like Carleton College and from the Pittsburgh Foundation.
Currently there are about 60 players on the Cal Poly men’s team, and though nearly half are rookies, all of them are apt to steal a Frisbee, Dominic Sheehy said.
“There’s a circulation,” he said. “If you buy one and bring it to a tournament, there’s a good chance it will get stolen.”
He added that players do have to be sneaky about it.
“The rule is if there’s a lone Frisbee, you can walk over, play catch and sneak it under your shirt,” he said.
SLO CORE currently competes in the open collegiate division of the Southern California section and Southwest region of the Ultimate Players Association (UPA). They will play three tournaments in this quarter. The name stands for San Luis Obispo Comrades Of Radical Energy, which Mundell said comes from the nearby power plant. Teams formed in the 1970s took names describing something controversial in their region, he said. UC Santa Barbara’s team is called Black Tide because of the offshore oil spills located there.
A common misconception Sheehy wanted to dispel is that the game is for benchwarmers from other sports.
“It’s not just a bunch of hippies,” he said. “At the highest level, the athletes could easily compete at any sport.”
About half of the players on the men’s team are engineering students, but all colleges are represented.
Co-captains Mundell and Sheehy have both been playing since they were about 15 and attending Vacaville High School.
Mundell, a mechanical engineering senior, said the sport requires a lot of sprinting, endurance and, most importantly, hand-eye coordination.
“You can make the sport as complicated as you want,” Mundell said, “but ultimately you have to be able to catch.”
What really makes it unique is that it’s not solely a sprinting sport but also not only an endurance sport. It’s a hybrid, he said.
Mundell said one of the best parts about the team is the camaraderie.
“The thing with a frat is you have to pay all this money or go to mandatory meetings to be involved. With this, you just have to run around and play ultimate,” he said. “A lot of the guys on the team are my best friends.”
Not only do players stay fit and meet people, but they also have fun. Sheehy, a computer engineering senior, said the ultimate Frisbee lifestyle is his favorite part about the sport.
“It’s not a cutthroat thing,” he said. “The best teams are having a lot of fun.”
Paul Van Bloemen Waanders, women’s ultimate Frisbee coach and mechanical engineering graduate student, played on Cal Poly’s team for five years, at which point a player’s eligibility expires. He loves the sport so much that he is now coaching the women’s ultimate Frisbee team, which was formed in 2004.
“It’s not because of the game, although the game is fantastic. It’s because of the people,” he said.
Van Bloemen Waanders said that while most people think of ultimate Frisbee as a college sport, it’s actually universal.
“People think it’s a local, beach, like college sport. When in fact, you can’t go anywhere without seeing one. It’s literally everywhere,” he said.
Both Mundell and Sheehy play on club teams, the level above collegiate teams, and Sheehy hopes to play on an elite team in the Bay Area after graduation. The teams there are some of the most competitive worldwide.
Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., players will throw Frisbees on Dexter Lawn, but in practice and competition the game isn’t just people tossing a Frisbee around; there are rules. Seven players from each team complete on a 70 by 40 yard field; a normal game lasts about one and a half hours. It’s similar to football in that the defense throws the Frisbee, called a disc, to the offense, with both sides starting on their respective end zone lines across the field. If the offense completes a pass to a team member inside the defense’s end zone, they score one point; the game ends when one team reaches 15 points. It is a no-contact sport. Handlers are usually the two or three players who throw the best. The rest of the players are called cutters; they catch the Frisbee. The official disc is a 175g Discraft Ultra-Star, which is heavier than a standard Frisbee. For more information about the game and rules, go to UPA.org.
Mustang Daily’s “For the love of the Game” highlights Cal Poly club sports. For information on coverage, contact Brian De Los Santos at mustangdailysports@gmail.com.