The Martlet

They might wear bunny logos on their jerseys, but the UVic men’s and women’s Ultimate Frisbee club teams — UVictim and UVixens, respectively — are anything but bird prey (including Thunderbirds, if you catch my drift).

Both teams are fairly new, the men’s team having been re-established in 2005, the women’s in 2008. But while these teams might have been overlooked in the past, they’ve got big plans to go far and do well.

The teams’ first tournament this season was a less-than-impressive showing at UBC.

“We got kind of crushed — but we’d only had four practices beforehand,” says fourth-year history student and men’s team captain Kevin Underhill.

“We had two-thirds rookies on our team at that first tournament and we didn’t do very well. We went the opposite of undefeated,” says fourth-year pre-education student and women’s co-captain Allie Short.

“We were ultra-defeated, but not in spirit. Those kinds of tournaments are about fair play, fair playing time and learning new systems. It’s always difficult but good to get [new players] in early,” says third-year physical education student and women’s co-captain Danie (Jocelyn) Proby.

The teams also travelled to Burlington, Washington, over reading break — which marked the final tournament of the fall season, which runs from September to December.

“We split our men’s team into two teams for those tournaments — one isn’t better than another, it’s not like an ‘A’ and ‘B’ team — the teams are both equal so we call them ‘X’ and ‘Y,’ ” says Underhill. “We take both teams to the fall tournaments. We get spanked around a little because it’s like half of our team — but we did fine. At the Sundodger in Washington, there were 30 or 35 teams and one of our teams came fifth and the other came 10th.”

“The improvement was outstanding, unreal,” says Short of the UVixens, who finished in seventh. “UBC approached us after our game against them and told us that we were improving a lot. They’re like our mama school.”

Tournaments will pick up for the teams again in the spring season, starting in January.

“We’ll be going to the Stanford Open at the end of February — there’ll be 24 men’s teams and about 20 women’s teams,” says Underhill. ‘This year we’re looking to win it and qualify for the Stanford Invite. The first place team qualifies for that.”

“In the last three years, we’ve come fifth once and ninth twice,” he says. “When we go to Stanford, we’re going to take one team. It’ll be the best 25 players.”

The UVixens, who didn’t have enough players to scrimmage three years ago and now have a surplus of players, are also hopeful. “We have coaches this year so our practices have been more focused than they have in the past,” says Short.

“The team we have this year is definitely more advanced than the one we had this time last year,” says third-year biology student and women’s co-captain Jessie Bell.

The teams will also compete in their conference championships and regional championships in the spring — including playing against teams from Washington, Alaska, Alberta, Idaho, Montana, Utah and Oregon. If they perform well, they’ll move onto the national championship against the best college teams in the world.

“This is an American and a Canadian thing, but we play under the American Ultimate [Frisbee] umbrella — we do play Canada Ultimate [Frisbee] as well, but that’s mostly in the East and it’s already finished for the year,” says Underhill. “It’s not as important to us because the U.S.A. Ultimate has the best college teams in the world, and that’s what we want to play in.”

While Canadian high school Ultimate Frisbee is co-ed, that quickly changes once players advance to the university or college level.

“There’s no co-ed division at the college level. It’s unfortunate because you get used to playing with the opposite sex in high school, and then you come here and it’s a completely different beast,” says Underhill.

“I love playing women’s [only] — in high school it was always a struggle because the guys only play to other guys and you had to say ‘Hey, play to the girls,’” says Bell. “With women it’s not like I’m not going to throw to a girl because she’s blond or something — it’s a more equal playing field.”

“Co-ed is always fun for the party tournaments, but it’s so much harder — a girl cutting at her fastest isn’t near the speed of a guy cutting at his fastest,” says Short.

“It’s just a completely different way of playing,” adds Proby.

Underhill wishes Canadian high schools would make the switch.

“The American high school players don’t play co-ed, so they have an advantage when they get to the university or college level,” says Underhill. “I’d like to see that change in the future if Ultimate wants to continue to gain legitimacy.”

Underhill is hoping to gain more support from UVic.

“In terms of this school, no one comes here because they want to play Ultimate — yet. A lot of Vancouver high school graduates will go to UBC because they know they have a great Ultimate program,” says Underhill.

“All the financial burden is on us. We get the fields for free which is nice, though,” says Underhill. “I don’t know of any varsity level Ultimate teams — but there are schools that treat their Ultimate teams a lot better and with a lot more support than this school, especially in terms of funding.”

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