University of South Carolina is made up of 30,000 students. It may be only two hours from home for me, but when I started my freshman year it still felt like I was in a totally strange and new world. I had to start all over making friends and figuring things out. I knew if I didn’t want to be alone for the next 4 years, I had to get involved. I’ve never been interested in joining a sorority, even though I have plenty of friends who are in sororities and love them. I just didn’t feel like I would fit in there. Instead, I wound up joining the ultimate Frisbee team. It changed my life.
While wandering through the org fair my first month at USC, I randomly passed the table for the women’s club ultimate Frisbee team. I knew a little about ultimate, so I went up to them and was met by a group of the friendliest girls I’ve ever met. They immediately encouraged me to sign up and come out for the first practice. It was all kind of on a whim, but I shrugged and did it. For five important reasons, that small random decision of joining the ultimate Frisbee team has made and continues to make my college experience the absolute best it could be.
This is the main goal for most people when they enter college, and it was one of my main goals when I decided to come out for that first ultimate Frisbee practice. That’s exactly what I got by joining the club team. I’ve never been very good at sports. I didn’t really play them much in high school, especially not any field sports like ultimate. So while I was interested in the game, I really stuck around for the people I met that first day. A slew of kind, fun and encouraging girls that I loved immediately. I knew I wanted to be a part of their community. After being on the team for three years, they’re my closest friends. We do non-Frisbee related things like get dinner and hang out. There’s even an entire boys team we’re also close with who often throw parties for the whole gang. In many ways the teams are like a sorority or a fraternity. Being a team and playing a sport lets us encourage and support each other, on and off the field.
One of the best parts of joining a sports organization is that you don’t have to work exercising into your schedule as much. Everyone suffers from that freshman fifteen coming into college. Handling a new schedule and school work makes it hard to make it to the gym. But exercise is important for your mental and physical health! When you’re drowning in work and stress, you need an outlet to get out that energy and release those endorphins. By joining the ultimate Frisbee team, I immediately had two to three scheduled workouts a week. Working out independently is hard, but it’s so much easier when you have a group of fiends sweating alongside you and encouraging you to keep going. And then you can all go get that well-earned dinner together after!
It’s always cool to learn new things! Honestly, it just makes it easier when you have to answer dumb icebreaker questions or fill out questionnaires. What’s interesting about me? I play competitive ultimate Frisbee! Of course, it’s more than that too. College is the place to challenge yourself and learn new things beyond the classroom. The college experience puts a ton of opportunities right at your fingertips. I barely played any sports before I joined ultimate, but now I am deeply entrenched in one. Sometimes when I’m explaining the game to someone or yelling my heart out for my team on a sideline, I have to stop and think. Who am I now? I never expected to be the type of person so invested in a sport, but I love it and I never would’ve known this side of myself if I hadn’t decided on joining the ultimate Frisbee team.
Since the Frisbee team I play on is a competitive club team, we travel to tournaments several weekends throughout the year in order to play against other competitive college teams. There, we are able to boost our ranking and secure spots at even more competitive tournaments, like regionals or nationals. Because of this, Frisbee is always getting me off campus and out of town on weekends. You still have many weekends at home and plenty of time to do your school work, but you definitely don’t find yourself stuck every weekend wondering what to do with yourself until classes start back on Monday. Just as playing ultimate gives you already scheduled times to work out, it also gives you already scheduled times to travel and a group to travel with, especially to places you might not normally know about or visit.
The thing about ultimate Frisbee is that it’s everywhere. My friend studied abroad in Barcelona and she played ultimate with people she found there! They didn’t speak the same language regularly, but they spoke the same language in ultimate. A lot of the girls on the Frisbee team don’t live in Columbia during the summer. They go home to states all over the US, but they’re all still able to find an ultimate community there. My first summer after playing ultimate, I joined a summer league in my home town. In league play, you’re assigned to a team that plays once a week. Strangers from a wide range of ages and experiences all get to know each other as the summer progresses. Every Frisbee community happily welcomes newcomers to help the sport grow.
Ultimate itself is based on a principle called Spirit of the Game. Essentially this means that all players recognize we play ultimate simply to have fun and to grow as players, and it’s each of our individual jobs to encourage that fun, easy-going, supportive atmosphere. That’s what you’re going to find yourself a part of wherever you go for the rest of your life by joining the ultimate Frisbee team you found.
If any of those points speak to you, get out there and give ultimate a try! If you’re nervous because you don’t think you can play a sport, please believe me when I say sooooo many girls go out to ultimate not knowing how to play and some never even having played a sport, including myself. The community accepts everyone with open arms, happy to teach and support you as you figure things out. You don’t need to be the best to have a great time playing and enjoying the people around you. Maybe something like ultimate Frisbee seems out of your comfort zone, but college is all about taking risks and stepping out of that safe place to try new things. It’s good practice for the rest of your life. And by taking that risk on ultimate (barely a risk since you’ll meet only nice people), you’re making a lifelong investment in a community that will always be there for you.
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