The thuds of volleyballs and basketballs hitting the floor echoed through the Bethel SRC gym Nov. 15. On the other side of the blue divider in the middle of the gym, the Bethel ultimate frisbee team ran drills, throwing white frisbees for their teammates to catch. They continued for a few minutes, and then team captains Katie Storlie, Gavin Shady and Barak Woyke split the players into four teams for scrimmages. Laughs and shouts burst from the students as they sprinted to catch passes and stop their opponents from winning a point. After scrimaging for 45 minutes, practice ended, but most of the students kept playing, not even noticing what time it was.
The Bethel ultimate frisbee team loves what they do. So far during the 2024-2025 season, the team has played 11 scrimmages, and their current standing is 4-7. But the captains are not discouraged by the season.In fact, they are excited about the progress they have made.
“Have we been winning all our games? No,” Shady said. “But the program has had so much development this year… we have so many super passionate freshmen and new members on the team that the trajectory is definitely upward.”
At the end of the spring 2024 semester, the team consisted of about 20 people, but many were graduating seniors. This year there are over 60 people on the team, many of whom are incoming freshmen that already have experience. Two of the captains, Shady and Woyke, are both sophomores who only began playing ultimate frisbee the previous year. The third captain, Storlie, is a senior, and her time with the team will be over after the fall 2024 semester. But players do not need to have previous experience to join the team — or any experience in sports at all.
Not everyone attends practice regularly, but Storlie, Shady and Woyke make sure that students know they are always welcome.
Some players come to practice just for fun and don’t attend tournaments, while others are more competitive and want to win against other schools.
The captains aim to have a competitive environment, but they care more about working together as a team. The players even have team dinners in the Monson Dining Center after practice.
“How well we play together and trust each other comes from having relationships just off the field as well,” Storlie said.
Trust is essential for the team because there aren’t any referees for ultimate frisbee. Players are supposed to call fouls on other players and themselves during scrimmages.
“It kind of relies on this thing that everyone calls ‘spirit of the game,’” Shady said. “There’s just this sense of mutual respect for everybody playing…you just want to enjoy being with other people.”
The ultimate team attends tournaments every year, but now because of their increasing number, they have other schools noticing their improvement. Sept. 28th, the team attended their first tournament at St. Olaf College. Once all 21 of them arrived, Bethel’s fill-in coach was approached by a different team’s coach. He remarked on how he had never seen Bethel come to an ultimate frisbee tournament with so many players.
Storlie, Shady and Woyke are excited to see where the new season will take them.
“At the end of the day, everyone on the team is there to be a member of a team, have fun, be friends, you know?” Woyke said.
Currently, the team is in between seasons, and they do not have consistent tournaments, but the season will pick up in the spring. They aim to keep improving as a team throughout the season and to grow more skilled, but also to enjoy playing and being with each other.
