Toroa, one of the two Otago Ultimate Frisbee teams, took home first place at the national tertiary championships a couple weeks ago on the 2-3 of September. Hoiho, the secondary Otago team, moved up in the ranks from previous years, landing 7th place overall.
Critic Te Ārohi sat down with five of the players Abi (Toroa), Josh (Toroa), Pierre (Hoiho), Kristen (Hoiho), and Gemma (Hoiho) to talk about their big win.
For all those who have never seen an American movie about uni, ultimate frisbee is a mixed-gendered team sport. “It's kind of like a mix between American football and netball, but with a frisbee,” said Gemma. The sport is albeit “fringe in the public eye,” Kristen said, “[but] once you get into it, you realise there's actually a pretty big scene. Like, people are consistently showing up, people just want to play.”
The Toroa team beat the Auckland Uni team 14-9, which is the highest a team scored against Toroa the entire tournament weekend. “It was real close. Even though it's a cliche to say, the score didn't resemble the game,” Josh told us. Despite only needing one run to turn it around, Auckland didn’t manage to do so. “It is quite exciting because Auckland's been pretty dominant at this tournament for a while,” said Abi. “Their names have been the only ones on the trophy, so it's cool that we've kind of broken that streak and also gotten Otago the map.” The ultimate club at uni was only established in 2018 and “the fact that we're now winning it in five years is pretty crazy,” Pierre said.
Hoiho were also stoked to place higher than before but, more importantly, they had great spirit - something that is actually scored in frisbee by other teams post-match. The spirit scores reflect the energy aspects of the team as well as fair play and sportsmanship of the team. “You can’t take it too aggressively or too seriously,” Kristen said. “In the end, you’re only accountable to yourself and teammates.”
This also ties into the fact the sport is self-refereed. “Spirit is quite a big part of the game with high attitudes,” said Gemma, “but also fair play. Since it's self-refereed, you have to be pretty well knowledgeable on the rules.” Whilst some people do become too competitive and try to take advantage of self-referring, Gemma said it’s “very rare”. Abi reckoned other sports could learn from frisbee in this regard: “Even just having every player having to know the rules quite well means that everyone's kind of personally accountable for how they act on the field.”
Similar to the Jamaican Bobsled Team of 1988, Toroa almost didn’t have a chance of competing. Frisbee, alongside rowing, futsal, and various other sports, were told they were not going to be able to compete at national championships due to budget cuts at the end of last year. University and Tertiary Sports New Zealand (UTSNZ) is the organisation that hosts these sports and national competitions, and requires a membership fee that was a part of the cuts.
“Considering we got second last year in a really tight final, we were pretty eager to go back like this year and then we heard funding was cut - that sucked,” Josh said. But once UTSNZ funding was restored, the team was excited to go back and challenge Auckland. “We have a team that fought to still be able to go play frisbee, win that battle, and then we brought home gold, which is pretty amazing,” said Abi. “And we also vibe really hard.”
They all wanted to share their love for frisbees and winning with everyone, like the good communists they might be. “We're a social sport that is easy to get involved in,” Josh said. You don’t have to know anyone or even know what a frisbee is to join. “I just showed up at the beginning of the year and it's one of the best things I've done since moving here.”
But even after winning the national championship, the team still battles with lack of name recognition and greater sport recognition. In the Toroa team, they have five guys and four girls who represented Aotearoa New Zealand in the U24 World champs, and the “DCC still thinks we’re frisbee golf,” said Abi. Adding on to this, Pierre said, “I mean this in the nicest way possible, but like I hope I never have to read an article where we’re explaining what frisbee is again.” Apart from this one, of course.