Latest news with #UltimateFrisbee
CBS News
7 days ago
- Sport
- CBS News
Colorado's Ultimate Frisbee team gives blessing to naming of Denver Summit FC women' soccer
Colorado's National Women's Soccer team announced it will go by the name Denver Summit FC, but it had to get the name cleared with another professional team in town first. Enter the Colorado Summit -- the state's first professional Ultimate Frisbee Association team. "We're just starting the playoffs right now, and we're going to play in the playoffs as the Colorado Summit," team co-owner Sal Pace told CBS Colorado. Pace owns the team that's made the playoffs three out of the four seasons of its existence. For him, it's a family affair, even down to naming it. "The Colorado Summit actually came as a suggestion, originally from one of my kids," Pace explained. "We were just driving around thinking of names that are related to mountains." Pace believes the passing of the torch believes the rebrand comes with opportunities for his franchise. "It was pitched to me as a partnership and an ability to grow sports together in Colorado," Pace said. Although there was no monetary exchange, the newly named Denver Summit agreed to help the ultimate frisbee team in their search for a new name, as well as play some exhibition games during halftime throughout the season. This in exchange for the Summit name. "I'm so excited about our team playing halftime," Pace said. "I think we're going to have an opportunity to ultimately be in front of more eyeballs than we ever have." After the playoffs are over, the legacy of the Summit will climb from ultimate frisbee to women's soccer. "I'm going to have a connection with a soccer team name forever too," Pace said proudly. "This is our first pro women's sports team in Colorado history. That is a really special thing to be a part of."
Fox News
7 days ago
- Sport
- Fox News
Denver ultimate frisbee team hands over name to city's expansion NWSL franchise
Colorado's Ultimate Frisbee Association (UFA) team made a surprising gesture. The National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) awarded an expansion team to Denver. As the new team searched for its name, colors, and crest, the Colorado Summit decided to "pass the torch." Over 50,000 fans were surveyed during the search. The Summit proved to be the most popular name among supporters. The handover paved the way for the NWSL to become the Denver Summit FC. The new soccer club's inaugural season is scheduled to kick off in 2026. The soccer team's crest appears to be dark green mountains that are placed in front of a red-orange and golden sunset. The Summit said the reddish-orange color was chosen because it was intended to "capture the dramatic sunsets seen across Colorado." Colorado Summit co-owner Sal Pace highlighted the decision's collaborative nature and expressed excitement about the frisbee franchise's next chapter. "This is more than a handoff — it's a collaboration built on respect, teamwork, and growing our Colorado sports community for everyone," Pace said. "It's a huge honor to see the Summit name live on in professional women's soccer, and we're excited to take our fans with us into a new era for Colorado ultimate frisbee." The Colorado Summit released a statement calling the decision a "rare" moment "of sportsmanship." "The partnership represents a rare and refreshing show of sportsmanship in the Colorado sports world — where a team from the fast-growing sport of ultimate frisbee is enthusiastically supporting the rise of Denver's new professional women's soccer team — the globe's most popular sport," the statement read. The frisbee team will need a new name going forward. In light of that fact, the franchise launched a contest seeking fan feedback. Over the next few weeks, fans will have the opportunity to submit suggestions and also vote on names. Finalists are expected to be announced in the weeks ahead. The winning name is set to be unveiled before next season kicks off, the team confirmed. Colorado's playoff run continues on Saturday when they matchup with the Oakland Spiders professional frisbee club.
The Hindu
16-07-2025
- Sport
- The Hindu
Meet the Masters: An all-women team from India gears up for the World Championships
The sun is beating down on Besant Nagar beach on Saturday morning, and while people are carefully choosing to sit or stand under the scattering of trees nearby, a group of women is hard at work — deftly passing a frisbee, and sprinting across the sand. This all-women team, the Team India Masters Women, has players from different cities including Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, and Chennai, who have come together for their monthly camp in Chennai in the run-up to the World Beach Ultimate Championships (WBUC) in Portimão, Portugal, from November 16 to 22. 'This is the first time that India is sending an all-women team in the Masters category for an international tournament. In the Masters category, all players have to be above the age of 30, and we have players between the ages of 30 and 50 years,' says Smithi Manickam, the team's coach. A player with the Chennai-based Flywild club for ten years now, Smithi, says that in addition to monthly camps in Chennai and specific training plans, their focus is on creating a strong statement at the world championships. 'It is also important that the players have a great campaign overall. Many of our women players have a host of responsibilities, including their careers and families, and they are juggling all of this along with their love for the sport,' she says of her team. The players all have diverse careers and interesting stories of how they discovered the sport and have seen it evolve over the years. At 49 years old, Priya Thineshan — a player with Puyal, a Chennai-based club and the oldest member of the team — says she discovered Ultimate when she was 42 and has not looked back since. 'Growing up, I had always been interested in sports and was looking for a way to get back to it. My family, and my children in particular, have been most encouraging about this,' says Priya, who subtitles films. While Ultimate Frisbee is a rare mixed-gender sport, Nimisha Vasava, a 32-year-old showroom manager from Ahmedabad, says that this is something she cannot stop bragging about. Her teammate, actor Gayathrie Shankar — who first discovered the sport as a great way to use the beach when she moved to Chennai — says she has seen this aspect evolve for the better through the years. 'From being asked to join teams that simply needed to meet the minimum number of women required, to being a part of an all-women team that is now going international, has been amazing,' she says. A professor at IIM-Bengaluru, Sreelata Jonnalagedda first learnt the sport from her students, and later, as she began taking her daughter to practice sessions. 'Playing Ultimate Frisbee gave me a reason to be fit, and the best thing about the sport is truly the variety of things you can do. As an all-women team, we can take on a host of different roles, and of course, the bonding and sisterhood here are unparalleled,' she says. For Smithi, it has been inspiring as a coach to see the grit and determination of her team. Given that the team will be coming together for monthly camps till November in Chennai, there is a lot more intense training, practice games to be played, and team-building in store for them.
The Guardian
09-06-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
I vowed to never exercise again. Then along came Ultimate Frisbee
It all begins with a flick of the wrist. I hold my breath as I watch a disc wobble through the air. When it starts going sideways, I grimace. In that moment, I bear a striking resemblance to a cartoon hen in Chicken Run, but instead of staring down the barrel of my pie-shaped destiny, I'm playing Ultimate Frisbee – and I've just executed a deeply suboptimal 'pull'. These are all words I learned mere months ago, and I'm likely using them incorrectly. Either way, they're the language of a sport that has become my new favourite pastime – and the unexpected key to repairing my once-fractured relationship with exercise. I'd never heard of Ultimate Frisbee until I was added to a ragtag WhatsApp group of 60-odd adults intent on playing the game a few months ago. Every Wednesday, anywhere from eight to 18 thirtysomethings pull up to the park at sunset with 30 drill cones, a 175g disc and most crucially, a desire to have pure, unfettered fun. Put crudely, Ultimate Frisbee is a non-contact team sport that blends the passing rules of netball with the end zone chaos of American Football. Points are scored by passing the disc to a teammate in the opposing end zone. Players must not take steps while holding the disc, and interceptions, incomplete passes and passes out of bounds are turnovers. Rain, wind or other adversities such as a loose labradoodle on the pitch make for fast-paced, nail-biting matches. Perhaps the most interesting element of the competition is that Ultimate Frisbee is self-officiating. Even at the highest levels of competition, there is no referee. The sport relies on a principle called SOTG – 'spirit of the game'. This spirit is taken seriously – the World Flying Disc Federation outlines that 'highly competitive play is encouraged, but should never sacrifice the mutual respect between players, adherence to the agreed-upon rules of the game, or the basic joy of play'. These principles are felt on the grass. We are amateurs in every way which adds to the chaos and thus, the spirit. We switch up teams each week, we bring a boom box and we let newbies take a few steps when they catch their first disc. We have conspiratorial team huddles, oranges at half-time and the occasional mid-air collision that sends someone headlong into the turf like a rag doll. The basic joy of play is magnetic. Rare, too. I'm especially attracted to this sport because it's the first I've ever found that feels completely devoid of effort. We run, duck and dive, full pelt, for 45 minutes per game. It feels like five. This is astonishing to me. From my late teens right through to my late 20s, I was addicted to exercise in all its most joyless, soulless forms. I didn't feel as if I had 'worked out' unless I was drenched in sweat and gasping for air. If I wasn't in pain, I wasn't doing it right. For years, I thought that's just how exercise was meant to feel. It was something to be tracked, to be completed, to be painful or else it was pointless. What kept me hooked was the sense of smug self-satisfaction I felt immediately after a challenging exercise class. When I walked out on to a busy street, I'd see people my age drinking beer with their friends. I pitied them their lack of discipline. I was doing the right thing, but I was missing the point. While recovering from an eating disorder, I stopped 'driven exercise' completely. It was a necessary circuit breaker. I needed to prove to myself that I could step away from exercise classes forever and live to tell the tale. Live a meaningful life, full of beer and friends, even. A wild concept. It took years, but finally, the empty space was ready for a new tenant. Thankfully, it's a flying object that's a joy to identify. Lucinda Price is a writer, presenter and comedian who goes by the name Froomes
Wall Street Journal
17-05-2025
- Sport
- Wall Street Journal
A Christian College Wanted to Be Great at Ultimate Frisbee—and Made Everyone Mad
Ultimate Frisbee is not a typical sport. The game, which involves passing the disc down a 70-yard field, is officiated by the players and governed by a doctrine that prioritizes 'the basic joy of play' above winning. When things get too heated, teams sometimes call a 'spirit timeout' to defuse the situation. But something happened a few years ago that shook the sport to its hippy core. A tiny Christian college took over. Oklahoma Christian University, a private school north of Oklahoma City advertising a 'world-class education rooted in Christian values,' has built a Frisbee powerhouse by offering scholarships to lure top players, many of whom already had a college degree. OC's dominance—the Eagles have won two Division III national championships since their first full season in 2021 and are competing for another this weekend—has divided the world of competitive Frisbee. 'Are we going to have Russian oil tycoons owning Frisbee teams and world cups in Saudi Arabia for ultimate Frisbee?' said Micah Arenstein, a college junior who competes on Kenyon College's team. 'Or do we want to keep the smaller but really tightknit and beautiful community that we have?' OC's takeover started in 2019 when the school established a scholarship program to persuade top talent from around the world to relocate to Edmond, Okla. The early recruits included four graduating seniors from the Air Force Academy, a member of the Dutch national Frisbee team and a former star at Texas Tech. College ultimate Frisbee is run by an entity called USA Ultimate, not the NCAA, which restricts Division III schools from offering athletic scholarships. USA Ultimate also grants five years of college eligibility, meaning there is a universe of Division I athletes who graduate with an extra year of Frisbee services to dish. OC pounced, scouring the world for athletes who might want to enroll as graduate students to extend their playing careers. The strategy paid immediate dividends. It won a national title in its first season of postpandemic play and added a second the following year. But it didn't win many friends. 'They take it so seriously,' said 21-year-old Isaiah Curtis, who captains a team of Claremont Colleges students called the Braineaters, named for a 1958 movie some alums planned to watch but couldn't because they had taken psychedelic mushrooms. 'They're varsity athletes—and all the rest of us are not.' Still, Curtis said he supports scholarship programs because they expand access to college and improve the quality of play. At last year's 16-team national championship tournament, OC garnered the lowest spirit score, an aggregation of ratings determined by each team's competitors in categories like 'fair-mindedness' and 'attitude.' OC administrators see the Frisbee scholarship program as a cost-effective way to boost the school's enrollment and profile. Athletic director David Lynn said it's a relatively cheap sport to run and most of its players still cover some tuition and room and board, making the program profitable. 'It's not necessarily an unfair advantage,' said Gabe Cabrera, who designed OC's scholarship program to boost school attendance and innovate the sport. 'It's just indicative of your poor game planning and execution as a competitor.' Cabrera dismissed naysayers as hailing from wealthy and well-endowed liberal-arts colleges, and said he has advised three other schools on developing scholarship programs. Players on this year's roster came from places as far as Kenya, Japan and Luxembourg—regions usually far outside the university's footprint. 'People don't like to lose,' said former OC coach Garrett Taylor. 'If I'd have been in their shoes, I might have been saying the same stuff.' This year, OC is headed to nationals for the fourth time in five years—hoping to cement its legacy as a top Frisbee school. It also hopes to shed its reputation as the evil empire of the sport. Inspired partly by the hit Apple TV show 'Ted Lasso,' Sammy Roberts, a former Connecticut recruit who is now OC's captain and coach, turned his attention to team-building. The school has largely stopped recruiting graduate students. 'We were kind of playing for each other, but we were really just playing to win,' said Roberts. 'And I don't think that was as much fun, if I'm being honest.' But winning nationals will be difficult. Davenport University, a small private college in Grand Rapids, Mich., has ascended to the top of the division largely by employing the same strategy pioneered by OC. It offers varying quantities of athletic scholarships to everyone on its 26-player roster. Last year, its first year of competition, Davenport made an unexpected run at a national title but was edged out by OC in the quarterfinals. The team has lost one match all season, against Division I's Michigan State University. They head into Nationals this weekend as the favorite—at least on the field. Last year, Butler University's team circulated a petition calling for teams with scholarships to be forced to play in Division I—currently only required for schools with an enrollment of more than 7,500 students—after one foundational year at the lower level. That, it argued, would level the playing field. NCAA-sanctioned Division III programs 'aren't allowed to give out scholarships to students to come play and then beat the crap out of a bunch of schools that don't have the same levers for talent acquisition,' said Butler coach Arthur Small. The petition fizzled out. 'I understand that people are upset about the fact that scholarships are a 'hack in the system,'' said Collin Hill, widely regarded as one of the division's best players. Hill transferred to Davenport after finishing his Bachelor's degree at Berry College last year. 'But if Frisbee is going to be considered a legitimate sport, I think this is the way to go about it.' Rivals won't have to worry about Davenport for long. Head coach Mike Zaagman, a self-described 'Frisbee apostle,' said the team will compete in Division I next year. 'We want better competition,' he said. Write to Xavier Martinez at
