The Hillsdale ultimate frisbee team officially earned the status of a club sport in December of 2022 under club president Allie Spaccarelli and head coach Nick Akers.

The team has been around for decades, but over the last five years, coaching and management have taken it to another level, according to Spaccarelli.

“Five years ago, Sebastian Pestritto, Henry Brink, and Dob Kintz founded the travel team aspect and really got the team off the ground, going from just recreationally throwing around to having practices consistently and actually being competitive in the Midwest,” Spaccarreli said.

According to Akers the club went to three tournaments last semester and won two of them.

“It was a lot of work to get to that point, because you have to show consistently that you’re competing with other schools and that you’re doing well,” Spaccarelli said. “It took about a year for them to accept that change.”

Akers said the recent success has been the result of time and dedication put into researching how ultimate frisbee teams are actually coached.

“One thing that I’ve really noticed at the college game is that teams usually just try and flaunt their athleticism a lot,” Akers said. “If you have a plan to attack that, it’s not really that difficult to beat a lot of teams.”

Sophomore Gregory Moreno, vice president of the club, said he has also dedicated much of his time to learning the sport.

“I just love the sport so I’ve made it a point to learn a lot about it,” Moreno said. “One of my best friends graduated a couple years ago and he kind of taught me how to play and taught me some of the more nuanced details of the game that now I help teach newer players on our team.”

As the team continues to grow, it looks to establish itself within the Great Lakes region at the DIII level nationally, Moreno said.

“This semester we have conferences and if we do well there then we can go to regionals and if we do well there we go to Nationals, which would be after graduation,” Spaccarelli said.

Spaccarelli and Moreno work together to handle the club’s administrative responsibilities.

“I help Allie out with planning in tournaments, signing up for them, and making sure we have enough players to actually be able to compete,” Moreno said.

Moreno said that fundraising has also become increasingly important.

“We fundraised over $5,000 last semester through getting some small business sponsorships and things like that,” Moreno said. “You may have seen us selling Arnn discs in the Student Union. Tournaments and stuff cost money, jerseys cost money.”

The team practices three times a week and uses the first 10-15 minutes to work on the fundamentals of throwing before moving into drills.

“I think it’s very important that everybody learns how to throw because, with most other sports, everybody kind of grows up and knows what it is, but nobody really grows up throwing a Frisbee,” Akers said. “Then, just depending on what we want to work on, we’ll do maybe an hour of drills.”

After throwing and running through drills, the team usually scrimmages to finish off practice.

“I think it’s really important to scrimmage at the end of practices just because it gets people more of a feel for how the game actually works and flows,” Akers said.

Akers said the team will only continue to improve as young members develop.

“I think our class had a lot to do with the team really growing and being able to have that trajectory but the freshman and sophomore classes have really been the biggest drivers of the path of the team lately,” Akers said. “I think that, even though it’s gonna hurt my ego, they’re gonna be even better next year.”

Spaccarelli said she encourages students to come out to Hayden Park on April 1 as the club is set to host a home tournament with championship and consolation games at 3 p.m.