Open space two teams of seven players a clock to time two 24-minute halves and one plastic Frisbee is all you need to have yourself a game of ultimate.
A relatively new sport that originated in 1968 at Columbia High School in Maplewood N.J. ultimate now has more than 12000 student athletes playing on more than 700 collegiate teams in the United States. It is one of the fastest growing team sports in the nation according to CNBC.
And Pepperdine has joined the ultimate movement. The ultimate team at Pepperdine is a club sport and is fairly new to campus. With only two years under its belt the team is looking to continue expanding upon the initial group that started the ultimate team in 2008.
Last year the team became co-ed. Although it brought more players to the field it in turn made tournaments difficult because of the mismatch when having to play all-male teams.
To combat this disadvantage they have developed two teams this year: a men’s team that goes by the name of Arson and a women’s team called Wildfire. Both names were chosen to poke fun at problems faced by our campus location.
Junior Devon Walker is the vice-president and captain of the men’s team this year. As vice president he takes care of some clerical duties and as captain he takes care of the physical activities of the team. Morgan Poppe is the president and the captain of the women’s team.
Coach Steve “Foca” McDonell a Pepperdine alumnus started coaching the team last year. Foca graduated from Pepperdine in 2003 with a degree in Business Administration and he achieved his MBA in Finance and Dispute Resolution in 2007.
“Ever since Foca came in it’s been much more of a team Walker said. It’s less flakey.”
Foca has helped build team unity and teaches formations and drills.
Last spring the ultimate team entered the “Growing Team” scholarship competition hosted by 5-Ultimate. Besides competing the team had to write out their vision and submit a video illustrating this vision. The video can be found on YouTube.
The team won the competition and received the year-long sponsorship of 5-Ultimate. With this sponsorship they received significant discounts of 5-Ultimate products to support the program. This helps the ultimate team have the lowest dues of all the club teams on campus.
As for this year 35 people came out to the first meeting. Returning students from overseas helped increase the numbers from the previous season. A goal for the team this year is to get more people and become more competitive.
There is no faculty member attached to this project and Walker did touch upon a couple of the problems the team faces.
“Most people think of it as a pick-up sport…it’s actually a really competitive sport and most people are taken aback from that Walker said.
He attributes the lack of commitment among some of the members to this mindset. Walker also touched on the fact that club sports have very little field space here at Pepperdine. Practice conditions are often less than desirable, and it’s frequently a battle to get field time. The lack of field space also makes the team unable to host home games.
The team sign-up deadline is Sept. 20. As of now they have a tentative scrimmage against Cal Tech scheduled for the Sept. 25 as well as the Huck Fest, which is a tournament in UC Irvine, Sept 30-31. Aside from these, most competitions are website-organized.
Practices are held Wednesdays at 6 p.m. at Intramural Field, Fridays at 4 p.m. at Alumni Park and Saturdays at 2 p.m. at Intramural Field.