USU Ultimate Frisbee a pioneer in growing sport
Ultimate Frisbee players don’t get a lot of chicks.
“My mom always asks me why I’m not married, and I always say, ‘Well girls go to college hoping to date a football player or someone in a frat,'” said Matt Bybee, president and captain of the Lost Boys – USU’s ultimate Frisbee team. “And nobody goes to college wanting to date a Frisbee player or hoping that, ‘Oh when I get to college I get to meet the Frisbee team.’ It’s never like that. We’re just small and obscure, I guess.”
But girls like success, and all the Lost Boys needed was one grab and a knockdown, and they would have had that success. They would have entered the semifinals as the No. 1 seed and had a good shot at winning sectionals.
It wasn’t meant to be – the No. 1 seed, a sectional win or the girls.
But after entering pool play as the No. 4 seed, a move up to the No. 2 seed didn’t sound too bad. And, even if they had won, the Boys didn’t have enough money to go to Regionals, and they are probably used to the girl situation by now anyway.
The day started off well enough. In morning pool play the Boys fared well, beating Montana State University 11-8 and the University of Utah 9-7.
The win against MSU was a big one. Bybee said MSU was the favorite to win the sectional tournament.
The heartbreak didn’t come until the last game of pool play against Brigham Young University.
The match was close all the way, with numerous ties and lead changes. In the final few minutes, the Boys had a chance to connect for a score on a long throw, but the disk floated over a BYU defender and off the hands of a USU player.
BYU ended up coming back to take the lead and win the match 13-12 on a leaping grab.
After that heartbreaking defeat, the seeds were set for the semifinal match-ups. USU faced the U in the 2-3 match-up, and BYU played MSU in the 1-4 game.
The Boys were sluggish in the first half, but it would end up being a close game with the U winning 10-9.
Bybee said USU used a lot of energy in the BYU match, and the players learned they wouldn’t be playing another game even if they beat the Utes in the semis, because they weren’t planning on going to Regionals. This affected the team’s play, he said.
BYU beat the Utes 16-14 in the final.
Even though they didn’t make it to Regionals, the Lost Boys shouldn’t be too distraught. They finished the season with a respectable 9-7 record – one which could have been better if their season hadn’t been plagued by canceled tournaments. And, all this only a year after finishing with a 1-17 mark, and two years after a 2-17 season.
Bybee pins the improvement on a higher level of commitment this season.
“Our commitment level this year was 10 times better than it was last year,” he said.
It’s fitting that the improvement came on the team’s 10th anniversary. The USU team was started in 1997 by college kids playing on the N.U.D.E. club team in Logan. N.U.D.E. stands for Northern Utah Disk Exhibitionists.
It’s also fitting that Bybee was involved, because his brother Mike was one of the founding members of the USU team.
In their first two years of playing, the Mad Cows, as they were called in ’97, were ranked 27th out of 120 teams, Bybee said.
Besides being successful, they also helped develop teams at other schools that currently play in their section. BYU and Idaho State owe their start to USU, Bybee said.
In fact, Idaho State University and USU would travel to tournaments together under the name Udaho, he said.
Over the years, USU has made a name for itself in the ultimate Frisbee world. USU is known for holding one of the best tournaments in the fall, Bybee said. But they are also known as a team that follows the spirit of the game.
The first rule in ultimate Frisbee is to keep the spirit of the game. Bybee described the spirit as sportsmanship, and said it’s what makes ultimate Frisbee such a laid-back sport.
But Bybee said as things get more competitive, sportsmanship and the spirit of the game have been disappearing from the college game.
This increased level of competition can be seen and heard throughout matches.
“You’ll hear a lot of words you don’t usually hear around campus, a lot of yelling,” he said. “It’s a new thing to see a lot people yelling over Frisbee, but we do.”
This is very different in a sport that doesn’t really have a reputation for being ultra-competitive. In fact, its reputation is quite the opposite.
“We’re actively lazy,” team member Tony Gannon said. “We’re still running around, we’re still doing these drills and stuff, but it’s still a hippie sport. You’re still there to play and have fun.”
There aren’t even referees – the players call their own fouls.
Maybe because of this laid-back attitude, ultimate Frisbee seems to have a certain niche in the club sports world.
“It seems like there is a certain type of person that likes to play with us,” Bybee said.
However, he added they have a variety of different people on the team and welcome anyone. They don’t even look for athletic ability or Frisbee-handling skills, he said.
Gannon said he could barely throw the disk when he started playing last year.
“Athletic ability is a plus. Most of us don’t have it. Most of us try to acquire it,” Bybee said. “I’m really not an athlete. In high school I was a choir kid. I’m probably one of the slowest kids on the team…but when you play, you can learn how to play smart.”
Smarts is a big part of the game. In the early years of college ultimate, the Ivy League dominated the sport, Bybee said. But now athletic teams like Florida are consistently ranked in the top 10. So it is a combination of intelligence and athletic ability.
“We’re athletic, but on our own terms,” Bybee said.
He said a lot of collegiate ultimate players are athletes that played organized sports in high school but got to college and just wanted to be free of structure, but still wanted to run around and be athletic.
The Lost Boys welcome anyone who wants to be athletic on their own terms to join the team, which currently has 15 members. Tryouts are in September, but Bybee said they accept anyone who will be committed to the team at any point during the year.
For more information on the Lost Boys, check out their Web site, www.usu.edu/ultimate.
-dabake@cc.usu.edu