On Mondays and Thursdays on Drury’s Kellogg Field, you’ll find a small, passionate group of students, who go out of their way to advocate for themselves and their sport. Drury’s Ultimate Frisbee has made their presence known on the campus through club fairs and posters throughout the buildings.

It’s gone through recent hurdles in attempts to stay relevant and modern among other competing sports. It’s hard to get people interested in sports to join because ultimate frisbee is currently just a club. 

“We do not get the student athlete designation,” Nicole Shirely, President of the Ultimate Frisbee organization, says. “They used to be able to give out scholarships, then like four or five years ago they stopped doing that and yeah it’s been lower numbers since.”

Their team used to reach up to twenty people, when Shirely was a freshman she remembered a team of thirteen, and now they have seven people, the minimum amount of people required for an ultimate frisbee team. 

Currently they heavily rely on their existing core team, their coach Tim Anzalone who connects them to the local Ultimate Frisbee community and the Missouri State University Ultimate Frisbee team who have been having similar issues. 

“They’re also having a lot of people graduating and less who are interested in joining,” Shirely commented.

In recent years, the Ultimate Frisbee team has worked to remove any barriers of entry to interested people. Unlike other universities, the team is co-ed and doesn’t emphasize equipment or prior knowledge.

“You can start with tennis shoes, figure out if you like it and then if you wanna commit you can buy $30 cleats,” she added. “The majority are probably new to the game.”

The team’s performance has remained quite high despite constantly facing university teams without coed programs. “We keep very close games we haven’t gotten blown out this year,” says Shirely.

She’s also hopeful for the future of the sport she and others have grown to love. “There’s been talks of trying to get it into the olympics … on a more big scale it’s definitely growing.”

She and others around her are also far from giving up hope with the Drury community. “It also kind of seems to cycle in and out … we might see it increase again here.”

There is undoubtedly a unique element to the sport of Ultimate Frisbee. It’s one of the few sports that rely on the honor system as opposed to refereeing. The fun-loving, collaborative spirit shines through Nicole’s mentality on the game. 

The call to action is clear, if anyone wants to try something new in college or even if someone wants to come along and just take pictures. Everyone is welcome to bring awareness to a unique and fast-paced sport on campus.

photo courtesy of Pixabay