No Bull, women’s frisbee club, competes in tournament
On Saturday morning at 8:30 a.m. Utah State University women’s ultimate frisbee club team, No Bull, started the first of five games in a national ultimate-sanctioned tournament in Las Vegas.
Despite suffering several injuries, ranging from bloodied lips to fractured bones and with barely enough people to fill the roster, the team finished ninth out of 22 teams.
“We did pretty well considering that we were playing savage,” said Analise Barker, co-coach of No Bull and USU senior. “We had eight players until Abigail fractured her foot.”
In ultimate, savage is when a team doesn’t have substitutes to come in when a player is injured or fatigued.
“A girl and I jumped for the frisbee at the same time, and she clipped my back leg,” said USU junior Abigail Bird. “So I came down on one leg, and it got stuck in a hole, and I just rolled it over.”
Bird fractured a bone in her foot and was unable to play for the rest of the tournament. Other girls suffered injuries as well, including Barker who has a possibly broken thumb.
“It can get pretty competitive,” Barker said. “But I also think we were probably pushing a little harder because we didn’t have any substitutes.”
During the fall, the team gets together twice a week and practices outdoors for two hours. When winter rolls around, the sport is taken inside and practices are cut down to only once a week for an hour at a time.
“We do a lot of drills. We don’t do a lot of running, but we do scrimmages and practice our offense and defense and some positions,” Barker said.
The team, which was started three years ago by students, has struggled to maintain an adequate number of players this year — only eight making it to the tournament.
“You’re supposed to compete at least three times a semester,” Barker said. “We didn’t compete very much, so they got mad at us. Most of the time we only had five people, so it’s been pretty hard this year.”
According to the USU club sports manual, in order to hold club status, a team must maintain student interest with a “membership of either (1) 10 active members, or (2) the minimum number of members, over 10, needed to participate in the activity.”
In the last two previous years, No Bull maintained 12 to 15 players and was able to participate in more games. However, if numbers don’t increase this fall, the club is at risk of being abolished.
“They’ve handed out fliers and painted posters that they’ve hung up in the HPER where active people would see them,” Bird said. “We haven’t done anything recently to recruit just because it’s wintertime and frisbee is an outdoor sport.”
Unlike the women’s team, the men’s ultimate frisbee club has a large roster. In fact, so many students are so eager to play that tryouts are held each year.
At the beginning of this school year, the women’s team started out with nearly 15 women showing up to practice, Barker said. But as time when on, the numbers dropped as they lost interest and became more involved in other school activities.
One of the things that has been holding the women’s club team back is “the casual atmosphere,” which makes people hold it as “a lower priority,” said Audrey Kholts, a sophomore player.
“I’m very optimistic about next year’s leadership and organization,” she said.
Several players from the team will either be graduating or transferring to other schools after this semester, but those who are staying look forward to playing another season.
“It’s so much fun, and it’s a reasonable price for what you get out of it,” Bird said. “I’ll absolutely play again next year.”
— ariell.allred@aggiemail.usu.edu