One of the most unnoticed sports at Timpview High School, Frisbee is one of the most accessible and easy to pick up sports that has yet to spin gracefully into the limelight that it deserves. Promoting a friendly and supportive community it’s a wonder that there are as few members as there are. With an indirect affiliation with the school, there are few who are aware of how great the program is, resulting in a low member count, especially on the girl’s team. With all of these factors, frisbee would be a perfect sport to pick up for the upcoming spring season.

The Welcoming Environment
In an interview with Emma Payne, one of the few members of the girl’s frisbee team, she said, frisbee is “The Best Sport… It’s such a great environment, and anyone can play frisbee, it doesn’t matter if you’ve never picked up a frisbee before in your life, like, it’s just a good place to come and have a good time with your friends.” Though people might disagree on what is truly the best sport, and find that they like certain sports more than others, it is clear that Timpview’s Frisbee team is a great place.

As described later by Emma, the frisbee team is usually divided into an “A Team” and a “B Team,” and instead of putting the strongest, fastest players on the team, “They kind of just try to divide it by like who’s really committed, who’s gonna come to practice, who’s gonna work hard and then like who just wants to… not do that.” So in other words, instead of only putting athletes in games who are going to win for the team, the frisbee team invests in people who invest in frisbee, and tries it’s hardest to promote the people who work the hardest. “You can teach anyone to throw a frisbee well,” Emma says, “but like, if they’re not gonna show up and come to the games and work hard, we’re never going to improve.” Frisbee promotes growth. Frisbee promotes friendships. Frisbee can promote you.

The Girl’s Struggling Frisbee Team
Though Emma is living proof that frisbee isn’t just for boys, she’s one of the few girls who chose to join the frisbee team. When asked whether there are separate A and B teams for boys and girls, she explained, “If we had more girls, we would do that, like we would have a Girls A team and a Girls B team, and then a Boys A team and a Boys B team. But right now, there’s like 3 or 4 (girls) that come consistently, so we just have like the girls play on the boy’s A team or B team.”

In other words, the girl’s frisbee team is small enough that it’s been dissolved into the boy’s team, and isn’t going to be represented as a girl’s sport. With how little attention that frisbee attracts from the school, it wouldn’t be surprising if no more girls joined the team, and the girls team left with the graduation of Emma and her friends. But with how many girls that there are in the entire school, it is a surprise that there are only about 4 who participate in a sport that Emma claims is so fun and easy to pick up.

The Team’s Indirect Affiliation with the School
Part of the frisbees problems come from the fact that it isn’t technically a part of the school. As Emma explains when questioned about the team’s relationship with the school, “Frisbee isn’t technically like a ‘Timpview team sport,’ so we don’t, like, get any money from the school or anything. We are a club, but that’s just so that we can get timpview students, but… our coaches aren’t hired by the school, they just volunteer. They don’t get paid or anything… All of the kids are from timpview, and on our jerseys it says ‘Timpview’ and stuff, it’s just not a ‘Team from timpview.’” So while everyone on the team comes from Timpview, and the team represents the school, it isn’t directly connected to the school district. Because of this, the school doesn’t help the team at all.

Emma says, “I think in some ways it would be nice, — you know, like when we watch the announcements and they’re like, ‘Ooh, tennis game!’ and stuff– it would be nice if people knew that we have frisbee games, that we have tournaments, that, like, we’re doing stuff, and it would be nice to be recognized and stuff like that. But also, like, we’ve talked about how if we did become a team, we’d have to take busses up to things, and a lot of things would have to go through the school that right now… it’s nice to have that freedom of not having to go through the school for everything, but it would be nice, to be recognized as like, ‘okay, yeah, like, this is a sport… there are people in our school who go and do this.’” So while it’s nice that members of the frisbee team don’t have to sign all of the papers that other sports have to suffer through, Emma wishes that frisbee could gain some of the support of the school at least through morning or advisory announcements. Maybe this way, people could learn more about the Frisbee program, and more people could attend their games. It’s the least that we could do.

Frisbee — Still Recruiting
With it’s small numbers, especially on the girl’s team, frisbee would love nothing more than for students like you to join them for their spring season. Best said by Emma, “It doesn’t matter– ‘cause everyone’s always like, ‘well I’m bad at frisbee, I don’t know the rules’– but it just doesn’t matter, we just want people to come and have fun, and to make some friends at frisbee, and then after you start coming, then people usually don’t stop coming because it’s fun. But, just say, like, ‘Try it once. if you hate it, never come back, but like, if you like it, like, we can teach you to play, and we can teach you to be good at it.’”