Cedars, November 2017

November 2017 19 SPORTS Cedarville Forms Ultimate Women’s Club Team by Jacob Coolidge U ltimate Frisbee (known as ulti- mate) is a sport gaining recogni- tion across the country and around the world. It’s the sport in which players throw the Frisbee to others with the in- tention of scoring in their opponent’s end zone. College campuses have not been im- mune to the ever-growing passion that is ultimate. Cedarville has fallen in love with ultimate, whether it be intramurals, club play or just hanging out with friends and throwing the Frisbee around. This year though, there will be another way we can play and watch ultimate. This year, Cedarville University will have a wom- en’s club team. Jessica Westenberg met Sarah Pitts when Pitts was just a freshman on Cedar- ville’s campus. Westenberg was running a stand at involvement fair and got Pitts to sign up for her ultimate team. They quickly grew very close, Pitts said. “Jess is my closest friend that I have found at CU, and I am so thankful that she pestered me that day,” Pitts said. “God has definitely placed us together to work in each other’s life.” This first year they would play as a coed team, but at the time the USA Ultimate didn’t have a coed division. So, they decided to move the team to an all-women’s team. The first action they had to take was finding a head coach, who is an alum of Ce- darville University and played on the men’s club team. They then had to work with SGA and Mark Mathews, director of Campus Recre- ation, to get the team sponsored. This was one of the harder steps according to West- enberg. “Working with SGA and Mark Mathews was difficult at times, because we had to keep going back and forth between the two,” Westenberg said. Eventually it became apparent that to be sponsored by Mathews and the school, they had to show the ability to sustain suc- cess, interest and accountability for a year. So they decided to register as an org under SGA. The next step was finding girls. Pitts said the members “shamelessly plugged” anywhere they could. A lot of the recruiting came from Pitts and Westenberg going out and talking to everyone. They had a booth at the involve- ment fair, but most of the recruiting came from handing out flyers and telling people about the team, what their mission state- ment was and where they wanted to take this team. They did have some women from the previous year who had already shown inter- est in being on the team, so they relied on them heavily as well. Eventually they were able to put together a group of 25 women to take into the spring season. They are using this fall season to get the team unified. They are conditioning, work- ing on plays and growing and learning how to glorify God through the sport. After every game, they ask the opponents if they want to pray with them. They want the focus of the team to be on Christ first and ultimate second. The Cedarville women’s ultimate team will start playing in tournaments around the Cedarville area in the spring. The team doesn’t have a schedule, but is working on compiling a list of teams to take on. The men’s team plays in Indiana, Illi- nois and Pennsylvania. The women’s team doesn’t know for sure but assumes its schedule will be similar. Pitts and Westenberg have a passion and vision for ultimate and they want to bring this to the students at Cedarville. They want as many people to come out and watch their ladies play as possible. “It is a really fast-paced sport that dis- plays a lot of healthy competition.,” West- enberg said. Pitts and Westenberg want students to chase their passions on campus. They had a dream and went out and chased it. As a result their vision become a reality. “It might be hard, you might have to jump through some hoops, spend count- less hours planning but it will be worth it,” Westenberg said. Pitts invited any girls that have an in- terest in playing to give it a shot, no matter what the experience or skill level. Jacob Coolidge is a junior Biblical studies major and sports writer for Cedars. He loves sports and looks forward to incorpo- rating sports into his future ministries. Photo by Sarah Pennington Sophomore Julia Olsen passes to freshman Katherine Fry during a 3-on-3 practice drill.