Is Carleton Too Good at Frisbee?

Frisbee??

Yes, frisbee. For a long time Carleton has been a good frisbee school. Like, weirdly good. This spring, our men’s and women’s Division I frisbee teams beat out far larger schools to secure first and second place in their respective national championships. This result wasn’t even out of the ordinary. When I share this with prospective students, the reaction ranges from “Wait, they made a sport out of Frisbees?” to “Duh, why do you think I drove all the way here from Seattle?”

As Carls, we tend to take our frisbee prowess for granted, but it’s worth asking: how did this happen? What does it mean that ultimate frisbee is our most successful sport? And is it possible that Carleton is too good at frisbee?

How did this happen?

Carleton is so good at ultimate frisbee because it was one of the first schools to take it seriously. Our club teams have had weight training and winter practices since the 1980s, before many schools even had ultimate teams. Since then, our teams have attracted students who want to play competitively at an elite school, as well as current Carls who had never picked up a frisbee. The fact that we have six whole teams, each with different levels of competitiveness, definitely helps make sure everyone can participate.

If you know what Carleton students are like, none of this should be surprising. Carls love trying new things. The easygoing and friendly culture of frisbee meshes well with Carleton’s spirit of collaboration. The pace of a club sport is also appealing to a student body with varied interests—the stars of CUT and Syzygy are well-rounded scholars who just so happen to be some of the best frisbee players in the world.

Is Carleton a ‘frisbee school?”

Well yes, but also no. Every Carleton student will throw a frisbee at least once while they’re here. New students participate in a giant frisbee toss around the Bald Spot, our campus’ central green-space. Still, we’ve never made frisbee a centerpiece of our marketing. Our teams are so good that they risk painting a picture of Carleton as one-dimensional. Sure, the beginning of spring is always marked by spontaneous frisbee tossing on the bald spot, but participants usually bring more enthusiasm than skill. Yes, frisbee is our most popular club sport, but it only makes up a small minority of student athletes. Our success in ultimate frisbee is not a reflection of a singular obsession with one sport in particular, but rather of the culture of the school as a whole: hardworking, quietly excellent, frequently unorthodox, and careful not to take itself too seriously. 

But is Carleton actually too good at frisbee?

That being said, you could argue that Carleton does have an excess of frisbee skill, and this is something I’ve experienced firsthand. The school attracts so many experienced frisbee players and athletically-gifted students. Even though I played for the Karls, supposedly the least competitive of all our open division clubs, I still felt like I wasn’t good enough for the team. It was a very supportive environment, but I decided to leave after one year because I worried I was dragging the team down in competition.

When I complained about this to a frisbee player friend, they mentioned that Carleton had intramural frisbee until recently. This had been an informal, low-stakes, student-run activity that hundreds of students had participated in, most of whom were not on the club teams. When I started bringing up intramural frisbee to my friends around campus, I was surprised by how many of my classmates—including people I never would have pegged as frisbee players—expressed that they had long wanted to play frisbee, but worried about not being good enough to play for a Carleton team. 

In light of this apparent wellspring of interest, my friend and I are working with the Physical Education, Athletics, and Recreation (PEAR) to revive intramural frisbee in some form, hopefully by Fall 2025. In my opinion, the need for intramural shows just how healthy the frisbee scene is at Carleton. The interest in frisbee here is so strong and spans such a wide continuum of skill and desired commitment that even six whole club teams isn’t enough to accommodate everyone who wants to play.

So, is Carleton “too good” at frisbee? 

Yeah, maybe. But it’s a good problem to have. If our club teams being top-tier leads to a revival of intramural, that’s awesome. If it leads to more people finding out about Carleton, that’s even awesomer. Frisbee isn’t an anomaly at Carleton, nor is it a singular focus. It’s just one part of the fabric of our community—a cool part, but not a surprising one.