Sprinting, throwing, and aiming for the end zones are just some of the components of an intense Ultimate frisbee game. Bingham’s Ultimate Frisbee team is made up of a group of hard-working athletes that strive to do their best and work together.

For those who aren’t really sure how Ultimate Frisbee works, it isn’t just seeing how far you can launch a frisbee. There is much more to this exciting sport. On usaultimate.org, it outlines the basic rules for an ultimate frisbee game. The teams consist of seven players on the field at a time and start with the defense throwing the frisbee to the offense (much like how the defense kicks off to the offense during a football game). Scoring is simple: if you get the frisbee to the end zone then you score one point. The aspect of this game that makes it so difficult is that an athlete cannot run with the frisbee; the person in possession of the frisbee has only ten seconds to throw it to another player, and the person defending is usually counting down the time.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Photo by Kylee Rasmussen

I don’t know if you have ever tried to throw a frisbee, but from personal experience, I can say it takes a great amount of skill. Whenever I attempt to throw a frisbee it always shoots into the sky and curves down as it falls to the earth at terminal velocity. That aspect of the sport makes it much more impressive when you think of the accuracy it takes to move the frisbee down the field. The fact that athletes are not allowed to run with the frisbee makes passing much more vital to the game. If your passes aren’t good, you probably won’t get very far down the field without it being intercepted.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Photo by Kylee Rasmussen

I interviewed Matt Cragun, the head coach of Ultimate Frisbee here at Bingham about how the team works. He said, “Last year we had about 45 boys and 15 girls play on our three registered Bingham Ultimate club teams. There are two boys teams, Division I and Division II, and one girls team.” The boys and girls practice together, but they don’t actually play against each other. Cragun also commented that “We practice three times a week on Tuesday/Thursday evenings as well as Saturday mornings. Practices are about two hours long. Most of that time is spent on conditioning, running drills, learning plays and scrimmaging against each other.” This year, the Ultimate Frisbee team will be having weekly games against the other high schools. All of these games will then feed into the Championship tournament on May 18-19. They also plan to enter other tournaments such as the Cache Valley Classic and Daweena.

The Ultimate Frisbee team is made up of a bunch of very dedicated athletes who condition and practice their skills in order to perform their best on game day. They have high hopes for this season as they continue to play against other teams with the goal of making it to the Championship game. As a school, we are very excited to see how our Bingham Ultimate Frisbee team will perform as we cheer them on.