Frisbee team tosses away from home

by Danielle Flood

The Rider Ultimate Frisbee (RUF) team is throwing its discs on the Princeton campus and as far away as Rochester, N.Y.

RUF played this past weekend at the Rochester Institute of Technology tournament, where it was one of 25 teams. Although the team only had a record of 1-5, and that win came from a forfeit, team captain Pete Coach, a senior, said it was a great learning experience.

“We got to go against teams that have been around for a long time and know the game,” said Coach. “We got to see how they played.”

RUF also accepted the challenge of an Ultimate Frisbee game against Westminster Choir College (WCC) earlier in the semester, which received positive reactions from both campuses.

“It was awesome,” said RUF’s president and founder, Zachary Aguanno. “We had a lot of fun.”

While Rider’s Frisbee club team is relatively new, being founded about two years ago at the Lawrenceville Campus, the team at WCC was formed especially for the first Lawrenceville versus Princeton campus competition.

The Frisbee game between the two campuses was part of Westminster’s Battle of the Campuses and RUF was the first organization to accept Westminster’s challenge.

WCC had 12 players and a fairly large fan base of 30 people, while Rider had 18 players and a two-person fan base, said Coach.

Coach encourages any Westminster Ultimate Frisbee fans who are interested in playing for RUF to come to the Lawrenceville campus and try out for the University’s official team.

The Lawrenceville squad is interested in playing against Westminster as an annual tradition, said Coach. The game would be played on “homecoming day,” before WCC’s Homecoming Dance so anyone who is interested could attend the dance as well.

Edward Whittle, the Princeton campus SGA vice president, helped set up the game for Westminster. He said the game was “a lot of fun” and “very easy to plan.”

Whittle is hoping to set up another Ultimate Frisbee game in mid-November.

The important thing for Whittle was that the campuses’ integration. He wants to get the two more involved with one another and feels that playing Ultimate Frisbee is a step in the right direction.

Overall, the game between Rider and Westminster was a success. The only drawback was the fields, which Aguanno said were “not too desireable.” He suggested the next game be played on the Lawrenceville team’s home field.