Meet the ultimate frisbee team

When you think about Frisbee it probably initiates some nostalgia of when you were eight and made your dog fetch one when you went to the beach.

But it’s a real sport (swear to God) and it’s a lot more technical than you think.

The Tab spoke to Kimberely Marsh, Ultimate Frisbee Vice President, to get to know the ins and outs of the sport.

How big the club is this year?

We have about 120 paid members at the moment, which is amazing.

Who are the board members?

Our President is Rory Curran who is also the Men’s Captain  Vice President is me, Secretary is Rhona Binnie and Women’s Captain is Amina Malik.

Why do you think a lot of people join Ultimate Frisbee at uni?

Well it’s not played much in school so nobody really knows what it is – most people start at uni. It’s definitely less intimidating for those that haven’t played team sport before because people that do hockey etc tend to have done it for years so it’s really difficult to find beginners. You just can’t take yourself seriously when playing so I think that’s why the sport attracts like minded people.

Can you try to summarise how the game works for us at people

So there’s two end zones and you start with five on a line indoors and seven if you’re outdoors. The team on defence starts with the Frisbee and they throw it to the other team on offence and the aim is to catch it in your end zone. You can’t move when you have the Frisbee, you can only pivot and you have ten seconds to throw it. Oh and also, there’s no referees, it’s all totally self-officiated.

Tell me a bit about your socials

We try to do a subcrawl every semester. They’re really good because everyone knows everyone, particularly in Scotland because we have regional competitions ever other weekend  so we spend the whole weekend with each other. We tend to have a massive night out on the weekends when there’s regionals. We just have to wake up on the Sunday and pretend we’re not totally hanging and get on with it. We have strong links with Strathclyde too so we have some socials with them. We’re sponsored by Record Factory and Bamboo so we have socials ourselves too. We had a beer pong tournament with the basketball team and we’ve been invited the volleyball and Muay Thai boat party this year, which I’m a bit scared about as I don’t imagine drinking and being on a boat are a good combo! Our social scene is definitely different to other teams’.

Are you in any BUCS leagues?

Women’s and men’s indoors has been BUCS for a while but women’s outdoors have just recently been big enough to be recognised. We used to have to collaborate with other teams to have enough players. The men’s outdoor qualifiers has just this year started to be decided through Wednesday league fixtures like most other university sport. We’re doing really well this year; the women’s indoor team won regionals and came third at nationals and men’s indoor team came third at regionals and 5th at nationals. We were 4th at mixed nationals but that’s not BUCS yet. We have a few people in the team helping out down in London this year at the World Championships.

What would you say to someone who was interested in joining in order to persuade them?

I think the biggest worry for a lot of people is that they won’t be good enough but you can literally start at every level. Everybody is so keen and friendly. There’s plenty of training and extra practice sessions. Nobody cares if you’re not athletic or you can’t throw or don’t run, they’ll just help you.