Ball State’s Ultimate Frisbee team competed in its first tournament over the weekend in Alabama.
Club president Robert Stasi, a senior computer technology major, said the Wizards placed 17 out of 20 teams. He said it could be because four starters missed the tournament in order to attend tryouts for the new professional Indianapolis AlleyCats team.
Junior political science major Jakob Ogle is a first-year B team member who was chosen as one of the 14 team members to compete in the A team tournament.
“We beat all of the teams that we should have beat over the weekend,” Ogle said. “We really haven’t gotten into that level of competition yet, we are still kicking off the rust for the most part from the winter. We definitely learned where our strengths and weaknesses are.”
The Wizards played many different national teams, including University of Alabama, Central Florida, Old Miss and Indiana University, Ogle said.
“It was a lot higher competition, B team you have lower expectations,” Ogle said. “When you go out there and you are on the A team, you are playing against better teams, they don’t make mistakes… and we made more mistakes than they did and that ended up costing us the game a couple of times.”
Ogle said becoming a university-funded organization would help the team become better.
“I think it would give us more recognition and put us in the mindset that we are for real,” Ogle said. “Let’s not waste our time and money and let’s not waste the school’s time and money. We want to go into the tournaments expecting to win.”
Stasi said the team is not trying to become a university-funded organization because they have a great deal worked out with Ball State Recreation Services.
He said the team gets first priority to practice in the recreation facilities, while university sponsored clubs don’t get to use those spaces. The team is also paid by Ball State Recreation to do football, basketball and gymnastics clean up.
There is a $75 cost for members, which buys them a set of jerseys.
Ogle didn’t base his decision to join the team on whether or not it was university-funded.
“I decided to come out, not only to keep in shape, but also to build a camaraderie,” Ogle said. “That’s the one thing that we have on our team, I would say more than anything. You’ve got to do your job so the guy next to you can make a play.”
Statsi said the team is always open to new members. Currently, the club has 20 to 25 guys on the roster.
“We try to bring everybody up when they make a mistake, we try to give them recognition when they do something great,” Ogle said.
The club practices Sunday and Thursday nights on the turf field from 9 to 11 p.m., and Tuesday nights in the Field Sports Building from 10 p.m. to midnight.
Next for the Wizards is a tournament March 16 and 17 outside of Nashville, Tenn.
