The Spartan ultimate frisbee team held its spring clinic last Saturday at Don Muench Memorial Stadium, offering a chance for veterans and newcomers of the sport to gather for practice games and hands on experience. According to senior frisbee veteran Michael Ilges, the clinic allowed everyone a chance to get together to play the sport without having the pressure of tryouts.

“Last Saturday all the veterans separated from the freshman and all the veterans went with our junior varsity coach, Coach [Joe] Barzili, and did three-on-three and four-on-four subgames while the newer people to frisbee went with our varsity coach, Coach [Jason] Becker, and learned how to throw and learned more of the basics,” Ilges said. “Later on in the day, we did one huge scrimmage down at the stadium with fairly even teams; we had veterans and new people on each team just rotating out. You pretty much just learned, it wasn’t really for tryouts.”

Ilges emphasized the importance of new players coming to the clinic and how it benefits players and the team.

“It definitely helps to go to the clinic because you really get to get hands on learning. A lot of people there have played ultimate before, whether it be at something like JBA or a summer camp, but they’ve never played for an actual team, so this just really helped with the logistics of the team and what not,” Ilges said. “You just get the basic feel for the game at the clinic.”

According to Ilges, the team had numerous people arrive to the clinic, all ready for the opportunity to play some ultimate frisbee.

“The turnout was pretty good,” Ilges said. “We had probably around 40 to 45 actually come to the clinic. [We had] about 20 returners, and a whole lot of new people looking to jump into [the sport].”

The large amount of returning athletes has provided a firm foundation for success for the team. With the new team having a strong base of veterans ready for their varsity lineup, Ilges feels very optimistic about what the team will be able to achieve this year.

“It’s looking real promising,” Ilges said. “Last year we had kind of a down year because we didn’t have many seniors, but this year we really have a lot of seniors — a lot of the football team is doing it — so I’m really excited for the varsity team to step forward.”