By Gio Canales ‘19
The sound of frisbees ripping through the air can be heard around the Quad during lunch and break, only to be temporarily stopped by the catch of the recipient on the throw. Every throw that the Ultimate Frisbee Club makes during lunch and break seems to be made with little to no effort.
Declan Bernal ’19, Captain of Bellarmine’s Ultimate Frisbee Club, stated that “at this point in the year we are having practice twice a week off campus. One of those is at a park near here [campus] just so that we can have the space. And the other one is at Discovery Meadow in Downtown San Jose so that way we can practice with Notre Dame as well because we have some people from Notre Dame on our team. We also have some scrimmages with other teams.”
Currently, the team is making sure that their practice translates to their games early in the season. They believe that the best way to gain experience is through playing at various events.
“We have one small tournament coming up in a few weeks. We played other teams in the area. The next tournament we are playing, we are playing against Kirby who is from Santa Cruz and also PCS which is a middle school. We just came off a beach tournament in San Francisco at Ocean Beach… It’s pretty much just for fun and just to get people to experience playing actual games against other real teams,” said Bernal.
The Ultimate Frisbee Club has set several goals for themselves this season, and advancing the State Championships is at the top of their list.
“We got sixth place at States, but we did go 10 [wins] and 0 [losses] in the regular season… One of our goals is to get a better and more sustainable co-ed team going, which we had some trouble with in years past since we are an all-boys school. A lot of the teams in Ultimate Frisbee play co-ed and that is something that we have been trying to accomplish this year. Another one of our goals is to hopefully be just as good as we were last year. [Lastly], one of our recurring goals as a team is to just be a positive team that everyone else wants to play against… We pride ourselves on having really good spirit and sportsmanship,” he said.
These goals for the season are met with some challenges, especially with integrating new members into the team.
“It’s a pretty interesting year this year because we have a lot of new people, which is awesome. But it presents the challenge of having a lot of inexperienced people [who] we need to teach stuff [throwing and routes] to. It’s really awesome to have a bunch of new people just because the more people that are interested in Ultimate Frisbee the better,” he said.
Declan Bernal and the Ultimate Frisbee team look to return to last year’s level of play this upcoming league season, with aspirations of winning the State Championship. However, their run to the title starts with creating a good culture around the team.