BU Club Team Soars to Ultimate Frisbee National Tournament
With wins over MIT and Brown at the Northeast Regionals on November 13 and 14, the Uprising punched their ticket to their first-ever Nationals appearance. Photo courtesy of BU Uprising
BU Club Team Soars to Ultimate Frisbee National Tournament
Young and inexperienced, the women’s squad hopes to build off momentum from surprising regional wins over Brown, MIT
When the members of the Boston University women’s Ultimate club frisbee team renamed their group BU Uprising in 2019, their choice, as it turned out, was spot-on. The team is indeed on the rise, earning its first trip to the USA Ultimate College Championship tournament this weekend.
“We ended 2020 with a pipe dream of going to Nationals,” Beverly Liu (Questrom’23) says. “All of a sudden we find ourselves here in the next competitive season actually doing that.”
The COVID-19 pandemic shut down club sports last year, forcing the spring Ultimate frisbee calendar to shift to this fall. With little time to organize the team, and several weekend tournaments to learn from, the Uprising compiled a respectable record, including a tournament win. That, however, was just the beginning.
At the Northeast Regionals in Amherst, Mass., on November 13 and 14, the bottom-seeded Uprising squad defeated MIT and Brown, joining the University of Vermont as the region’s representatives in the 20-team national tournament in Norco, Calif. “No one expected us to go from being the sixth seed to making any kind of noise at all,” says Elizabeth Wu (Sargent’20,’22).
The Uprising outdueled Brown 10-3 in what proved to be the clinching game, as the clock expired before either team could reach the 13-point target. In Ultimate, which combines elements of football, soccer, and lacrosse, teams earn points by catching the frisbee in the end zone, but they can advance the frisbee only by passing it from player to player—no running with the frisbee is allowed. On defense, a strongpoint for the Uprising, players can disrupt, knock down, and intercept passes to cause a turnover, as long as they do not make contact with their opponents.
A six-year veteran of the Uprising, Wu knows the sport and the team’s climb better than anyone. As an undergrad, she decided to leave a varsity rowing team to focus on Ultimate.
“They compete on a national level, and they said, ‘You’re not going to be able to do that on this club frisbee team.’ Now I can say, ‘Yes we did.’”
During her time at BU, Wu has seen the Uprising evolve from a casual group that sometimes struggled to field enough players to a dedicated bunch that now boasts both “A” and “B” teams during its competitive seasons. Student-athletes like Jordyn Nickerson (CAS’23) have helped that change.
“I’ve never even played Ultimate before I came here,” Nickerson says. “It’s been stressful, but I’ve definitely enjoyed the experience and being able to get into sports competitively again, because that’s why I joined in the first place.”
Newcomers to the sport like Nickerson have been an asset to the program, and Liu says training them has been a challenge, but a welcome one, for its leaders. “We definitely feel the pressure to not only perform well ourselves, but also to get all the rookies caught up,” she says. “We’re, on average, very young and very inexperienced.”
Liu says going to the College Championship will help the team develop immensely. “For us, it’s about getting a taste of what high-level Ultimate can be—seeing the highest level of play in the women’s division of this sport,” she says, “and then using that to drive our own growth.”
Nickerson is on board with that: “A lot of us are just honored to have the opportunity to play there and learn from these great teams and improve ourselves. I think just getting there and seeing what we can bring is what I’m looking forward to most.”
The Uprising placed 19th in the Division 1 Women’s Division and were assigned to a group with California-Santa Barbara, Pittsburgh, Texas, and Michigan. The tournament begins with pool play that will determine a 12-team championship bracket, leading to the title. California-San Diego took home the trophy in 2019, when the tournament was last held.
Going into Nationals this weekend, team members are keeping their expectations realistic and embracing the underdog mentality. “We can only go up,” Wu says. “I’d like to do something to make the Ultimate world talk about us.”
The Uprising will kick off the tournament on Friday December 17, against Texas at 1:15 pm Eastern Time (10:15 am Pacific Time) and California-Santa Barbara at 3:30 pm Eastern Time (12:30 pm Pacific Time). On Saturday, December 18, they will face Pittsburgh at 1:15 pm Eastern Time (10:15 am Pacific Time) and Michigan at 3:30 pm Eastern Time (12:30 pm Pacific Time), with bracket action to follow. The tournament will be held at SilverLakes Sports Complex in Norco, Calif.
Find more information about the USA Ultimate College Championship tournament here, and follow along with the Uprising @BUUprising on Twitter. Select games will be covered and streamed by ultiworld.com and on the ESPN collection of channels.
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