After many players graduated in the offseason, the NC State club ultimate frisbee team looks forward to success this season behind its younger talent and core team values.
Dedication to practice, conditioning and team chemistry are values that are built through the amount of time members of the team spend together. Practices are three days a week and organized strategically to maximize player performance.
“We’ll start out with 15 minutes of just throwing, get the throws warmed up,” senior Patrick Cheeves said. “A quick lap, warm up and then start on drills. After we’ve done drills that have a conditioning aspect to them, we’ll go into a scrimmage. After the scrimmage, we do something we call finishers or full field suicides. Conditioning is very important.”
Additionally, each practice session builds off of the previous as the players look to develop their talent and understanding of the game.
“We’re conditioning and throwing; just working on our fundamentals early in the season,” senior Jake McGoogan said. “Later on, we’ll get into more complicated defenses, offensive plays and those sorts of things.”
The team’s extensive conditioning and fundamental training is key to performing well in its lengthy competitions that require a lot of stamina and mental focus.
“Usually it’s four to five games a day,” Cheeves said. “[The] second day depends on how well you did the first day. Sometimes you’ll get a first round bye the second day if you did well enough the day before. Each game is one and a half to two hours [long].”
Team chemistry is also critical to performing well in tournaments as it is important for all players to know where their teammates are going to be and their style of play.
“Team chemistry is important,” Cheeves said. “It’s mostly knowing the team and knowing what their strengths are. For example, some people are more likely to make a deep cut, some people are more likely to make an in cut. You’ve got to know them, how they want to get open, how they want to play and play off of that.”
According to senior John Luke Sumerel, this team chemistry originates from spending a lot of time together.
“We practice three times a week for three hours,” Sumerel said. “That’s a lot of time together. But we also hang out and usually get food after practice. We’re all friends and know each other really well. Stuff like [today] where we come to the parking deck, sprint and get in better shape brings us all together.”
Despite many seniors graduating, the season is looking bright for the team.
“Last year we had a lot of seniors graduate, [but] our rookie class this year is looking really strong,” McGoogan said. “If we’re going to have success this year, a lot of that is going to be our rookies stepping up.”
While the team is young, McGoogan believes the team returns enough veterans that have the experience to help the younger members learn the game faster.
“We also have good veteran leadership,” McGoogan said. “We had some guys playing on local club teams over the summer and that experience they have is going to transition over to being mentors for the younger players. That’s going to be a big part of our success too is how well they mentor the younger players and bring them into the college game.”
The team’s ultimate goal this season is to appear in the national tournament.
“We had the goal for the last couple of years of making the national tournament,” McGoogan said. “UNC-Chapel Hill won the national tournament last year and UNC-Wilmington always has a strong team, so we have a lot of good competition in the state that we can play against. Hopefully with those guys to cut our teeth on, we can improve the way we need to and crack that top 20 teams in the nation that we haven’t had since 2009.”
In the upcoming two weeks, the team is eager to compete against tough local competition at the WolfPack Invitational. The tournament, which will be held Oct. 17-18, is hosted by NC State features teams from North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
