In 1968, a group of high school students at Columbia High School in Maplewood, NJ invented the game of Ultimate Frisbee. Today it is considered one of the most eco-friendly, accessible sports. In ultimate frisbee, a team of at least seven players uses a disk to score points and compete in tournaments. Athens Drive has created its own non-affiliated ultimate frisbee team, which is considered a school club. 

“It’s a club. We just sign up for tournaments and play pretty good teams. We also play scrimmages. We practice against each other,” said Abdel Amra, a senior at Athens. 

In Ultimate Frisbee, they use scrimmages to practice, which is when the team plays against each other. For example, if there are 14 players on the team, it would be seven versus seven to practice for games.

“The team was formed freshmen year,” said Owen Honnold, a senior at Athens. 

The club was originally created by Willem Boshoff. Boshoff asked his friends if they wanted to join and now it is a well-known club. Now, to raise awareness of the club and encourage more people to join, they talk about it with their friends, and ask if they are interested.

“We just show them clips of us playing and they would see how fun it is,” said Honnold.

They have a deep passion for the sport and the friends they made along the way. The game also tends to require a heightened level of athleticism, which pushes them to try harder and be healthy. 

“You just have to be pretty athletic, otherwise anyone can join. You need to have stamina as well,” said Amra. 

The team usually practices by playing against each other, while developing a sense of sportsmanship. To understand their team, they need to also understand their techniques and moves. 

“Usually they (practices) are like an hour thirty or two hours. We just run a bunch of drills and plays we wanna play during the game. We scrimmage each other most of the time though,” said Amra.

Since they had all been friends since sixth grade, they were surrounded by adults who introduced the game of Frisbee to them. Since then, they have continued playing and pursuing this sport in high school for fun.

“Our friends’ parents play a lot of ultimate games so naturally they asked if we wanted to start a team and we were all over that,” said Honnold.

Hugo Sowder, the coach of the frisbee team, is a teacher at Sanderson. He voluntarily coaches the team in his free time and is committed to shaping them to win their games.

“I did not know that there was a team here until I was talking to my friend, Michael Avila, who coaches Jordan High School in Durham.

When I got placed to coach Athens, he told me about how good the team was last year and mentioned that there were a lot of seniors on the team. There was a high school kickoff event the weekend before school started in August and that’s where I met a lot of the seniors including Willem Boshoff. I was nervous at first because I hadn’t coached a youth team this good before. They make it easy,” said Sowder. 

Frisbee is like a real life chess match since you make big decisions while picking when to play like throw, catch, and block as it can make a big difference. Since the team has a lot of athletes and committed players they go all in and a long way for just a club. He plans on not only getting more practice but also that he gets inspired as he coaches them. He elaborates on his passion for the sport and what inspires him. 

“Really it’s the connections I get to build with people in our community. Building a successful team is a process – there’s no one strategy or scheme that’s going to make you or your team successful. You have to collaborate with people to figure out what will work and constantly be tweaking and responding to your opponents. Most of all I love seeing how youth players handle adversity, and guiding them ups and downs that come with playing competitively. Seeing a young player grow throughout a season and gain more skill and confidence is inspiring!” said Sowder. 

Fortunately, the team won second place in the state tournament. They played at Miller’s field on the NC State campus. 

“Recently, we got together after our last game, and we threw this guy (Amra) in the air,”  said Honnold.