Facing the ultimate test with Penn frisbee

Ultimate frisbee — that quintessential staple of any college campus — is back in full swing at Penn.

This past weekend, Penn ultimate frisbee, known colloquially as Penn Void, opened its season with a two-day home tournament at Penn Park against a number of Philadelphia area and northeastern schools, including Drexel, St. Joseph’s, Columbia and Yale.

Void split its roster into two evenly distributed teams before the tournament, and both teams came away with 2-3 records. Despite this mediocre initial showing, the team is confident that it will improve moving forward.

“For this season, our goal is definitely to improve on our fifth place ranking for regionals last season, which is a whole year process,” junior co-captain David Shields said. “We have to learn all our strategies throughout the fall and develop them further in the spring, but we really have a long term two-year plan moving forward since we’re only losing two seniors at the end of the year.”

This team is wet behind the ears, to say the least, as about half of it is comprised of freshmen and new undergraduate recruits. The team also lost several graduating seniors last season, including co-captains Himalaya Mehta and Tate Tabtieng, whose dominating presences as student leaders and players will be sorely missed.

“We’re going to have a big learning period this year, which is fine,” senior co-captain Doug Roman said. “We lost a lot of people this past year, including our co-captains Himalaya and Tab, who were big players both on and off the field, as well as about five other starters who all played vital roles on the team.”

As new co-captains, Shields and Roman — both of whom are mechanical engineering students — do not seem too worried about the lack of college frisbee experience on the roster this season.

“We’ve seen drastic improvement from a large majority of freshmen on the team this season, which is of course great to see so early in the season,” Roman said.

Shields went on to elaborate that many of the freshmen on the team already have experience with the game and are already applying the skills they learned in high school to the collegiate level.

The team this year seems to possess the work ethic and drive necessary to precipitate drastic improvement and success this season. It holds practices on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday each week, with weekday practices running from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m.

Additionally, the team is implementing an ambitious new fitness regimen this season led by sophomores Grant Steiger and Sean Cohen. The program includes sprint workouts at least once a week and frequent team runs along the Schuylkill River.

Collegiate frisbee conferences are determined by dividing the United States into geographic regions, which are then further divided into sections. As a result, Void competes in the Eastern Pennsylvania section, which is comprised of local eastern Pennsylvania schools such as Drexel, St. Joseph’s and West Chester, and is part of the greater Ohio Valley region.

Penn often plays schools such as Pitt and Ohio State on the regional level. Last year’s ultimate frisbee regionals were held in Toledo, Ohio, and the team placed fifth in the competition.

Penn ultimate frisbee will be competing this weekend in the Steel City Showdown in Pittsburgh and will look to begin its gradual trek to nationals.

“It’s going to be tough,” Shields said. “But if we really push hard for two years, it’s more than possible.”

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