The Sport of the Month series continues with April’s sport of the month and sustainability club of the year, Ultimate Frisbee.
FarFlung Glasgow University Ultimate Frisbee, the 2023 Winners of the Sustainability Award at the annual GUSA Ball, is The Glasgow Guardian’s Sport of the Month for April. Club Captain Alice Bates discussed the welcoming, supportive, and inclusive nature of the club and why you should consider popping down to one of their training sessions or socials.
Ultimate Frisbee is played both outside and inside, a rarity in many sports. Single-gender and mixed teams compete in both indoor and outdoor tournaments throughout the year. Ultimate Frisbee have competitive teams that compete in an outdoor BUCS league throughout the academic year where the results culminate in a national tournament, with universities from across the UK competing in the event. Both the Women’s and Open teams won gold in Division 2 in April 2022, a huge success for the club that they were looking to build upon this year.
Furthermore, Ultimate sends multiple teams—Women, Open, and Mixed—to indoor regional tournaments, where they have the opportunity to qualify for a position at Nationals. This year, Glasgow University Ultimate’s Women’s 1s qualified for Division 1 after winning the silver medal at their regional competition. Their Open team also qualified for Division 2.
Many of the players who are members of Ultimate play at national level beyond the university. This includes GUX (the Glasgow Ultimate mixed team) who have previously competed at the World Ultimate Club Championships. Some of their members also represent Scotland in the Women’s and Open teams, who competed at the European and World Championships in 2022. The club is being coached by players and staff affiliated with Great Britain (GB) Ultimate with a number of their high-level players trialling for the GB outdoor and indoor teams.
“It’s a huge privilege to be trained by some of the biggest names in GB Ultimate. It means we can really push our players to become some of the best in the UK!” said Alice.
The club also offers more relaxed, chilled, and recreational tournaments as well as high-level competitions.
In addition to their individual player and overall club success in BUCS, Ultimate Frisbee was the winner of the 2023 Sustainability Award at GUSA Ball in February. “Our Sustainability and Fundraising Convenor, Holly, has been running some fantastic initiatives throughout the year in order to promote sustainability within sport, and to raise money for various charities. We ran an October sustainability challenge with various challenges to complete throughout the month, in conjunction with GUSA sustainability. Throughout the sustainability challenge, we also logged the highest number of kilometres for any GUSA club for Walk2COP27; 621.85km in total,” Alice stated.
Furthermore, Ultimate have been involved with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in raising money to support endangered animals. Their “Brave the Chill” swim in Loch Lomond was organised to help raise funds in support of WWF.
Ultimate also run an outreach session in collaboration with Scottish Sport Futures with the aim of getting more children involved with the sport.
“The sport is incredibly accessible to new players, and significant amounts of improvement can be made within a short amount of time! There’s lots of room to play competitively at BUCS or regionals, but equally many opportunities to play at a recreational level,” Alice said.
Alice further commented that the best aspects of the club are, “the people, the environment, the socials, and the self-refereed nature of the sport that relies on spirit.”
Ultimate offers both indoor and outdoor sessions that are open to new members. For more information, you can contact them directly on their social media:
Facebook: Glasgow University Ultimate: Farflung
Instagram: @farflungultimate
