Frisbee team lays out a path to nationals

The football and basketball teams failed to win titles, but there is still hope for Maryland sports fans looking for another national championship.

With a second-place finish in the Metro East Women's Regionals on Sunday, the women's club ultimate frisbee team secured a place in the 16-team national tournament to be held May 16-18 in Boulder, Colo., for the first time in team history. During the past six years, the team has gone from struggling to recruit members to achieving the No. 13 ranking in the nation from the Ultimate Players Association, the sport's governing body.

After cruising through the opening rounds with blowout wins over Haverford and Penn State, the Terrapins persevered 15-9 over Pittsburgh before losing to tournament champion Ottawa.

The loss set up a rematch against Pittsburgh for second place and the tournament berth. After a back-and-forth match that progressed much like their previous meeting, the Terps pulled away by virtue of better conditioning.

"We just had more stamina, and we ran them into the ground," club president and sophomore government and politics major Molly Rose said. "We won using our legs and our heads."

The highlight of the match came when co-captain and senior civil engineering major Heather Smith performed a rare "Callahan," in which a player scores on defense by intercepting the frisbee in her opponent's endzone.

The trip to the national tournament will cap a breakout season for the team, which finished with a 26-3 record during the season and won its sectional tournament for the first time.

"As a team, we decided to really go in a new direction," said senior journalism and Spanish major Melanie Lidman, a former Diamondback opinion columnist. "You can decide to do [a club sport] for the community and camaraderie, or you can take it to the next level."

Lidman was one of many on the team to give up her job to focus on training, she said.

The team began a strenuous training regimen that included gym workouts, swimming and track practices, which irked the track team.

"They kept saying, 'We're training for nationals,' and we were like, 'We are too,'" Lidman said.

The talent pool increased, too. For the first time, there were enough players to split into A and B teams, in stark contrast to the team that former captain Cara Martin remembers joining as a freshman in 2002.

"A majority of the time they hardly had any people, and they could barely get a team together," said Martin, who stayed with the team until earning her master's degree in mechanical engineering last year.

Martin decided to stay in the ultimate frisbee community after graduating, acting as a regional tournament coordinator. So when the Terps won their way into the national tournament, Martin was on hand to congratulate them.

"I felt very much a part of it," she said. "I know I was a part of that team even though I wasn't on the field."

Being congratulated by the woman they called "Mom" proved too much, Lidman said. "The whole team just burst out crying about how far the team has come in the last four years," she said.

Now the real work begins: getting the money to make the trip to Colorado. The club receives funding from the Student Government Association, but it won't be enough to cover travel expenses.

"I think all of us are pretty much willing to do whatever it takes to go," said co-captain Clara Morris, a senior English major and Diamondback opinion columnist. "Let's just say you might see some more ultimate frisbee bake sales in front of Stamp in the coming weeks."

The national competition will fall during finals week, and many of the players will miss exams, but Rose said professors have been accommodating.

"Most of them probably don't understand what ultimate frisbee is," Rose said. Once it was explained to them, however, "they've all been pretty excited. They thought it was pretty cool."

Lidman put all of their work into perspective. "It's kind of funny that we dedicate so much of our time to a sport that is so far under the radar, people think it's something you play with your dog."

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