Last night I was a busy student. I had to study for a microeconomics midterm and accounting quiz, research a Target presentation due next Wednesday, learn how to write my numbers in Korean, and oh yes, I had scheduled in a little bit of sleep as well. Despite all of these obligations, I still put on several layers to ward off the near-freezing temperatures and made the journey to the North Fee Lane fields at 9pm to play our last regular season intramural ultimate Frisbee match, which unfortunately carried playoff implications.
My teammates all made it on time, but unfortunately the other team didn’t. In fact, only 2 out of 4 teams in that time slot showed up. What could have been the culprit of such a low turnout? I believe the timing of the game played a large part.
Every year ultimate Frisbee starts in early October. This year it started on the 9th. With Bloomington’s wonderful fall weather, at least 1 or 2 games (if not more) always get rained out, causing the season to stretch almost to Thanksgiving. The playoffs are usually consolidated into one or two days, forcing teams to play multiple games in one day to compete for the championship.
As the temperatures drop, playing ultimate becomes more and more unattractive, as every throw and catch cripples your half-frozen fingers. It comes as no surprise that nobody really wants to play this late in the year, and it always seems to reduce the competitiveness and general fun of the intramural sport.
I didn’t sign up for intramural ultimate to waste my time showing up to the field to just sign my name on the attendance sheet and go home when my opponents wised up and stayed warm and healthy indoors. I also didn’t sign up to play all the competitive games in one day. I signed up to get some decent exercise every week and compete with my friends, and so far this intramural sport has given me neither.
What do I think should be done? It would be great if it was moved up a couple weeks to coincide with outdoor kickball. While I know this would conflict with the current flag football playoff setup, I would think that Recsports could expand the timeframe for flag football playoffs and work the first ultimate Frisbee games onto the fields during that time. They could even go to the extreme and switch them around, working the ultimate Frisbee playoffs into the start of the flag football season.
Although flag football dwarfs ultimate Frisbee in popularity, I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t make some concessions for a sport that dies every year because of the temperature. Unlike Frisbee, cold weather is natural to the game of football. Would it really hurt to play a few flag football games in late October or early November? Just a couple weeks could make a huge difference for the popularity of ultimate Frisbee.
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