The St. Louis U. High ultimate frisbee team looks forward to its upcoming season, where seasoned veterans combine with new players as the Jr. Bills look to win State this year.

A sport that is typically dominated by De Smet, ultimate frisbee at SLUH has come a long way since it started in 2001. The team amassed an impressive amount of talent last year and saw the same result as this year with a total of 37 Jr. Bills being split between the two teams, Varsity and JV. 

Within the St. Louis area, the Varsity team will hope to play in a tournament in the middle of the season before both the Varsity and JV teams are entered into the State tournament. For league play, both teams will play against schools from around the St. Louis area, with a mix of private and public schools. Within the past couple of years, both Chaminade and Vianney have assembled teams, meaning every single MCC school is now represented. 

Another challenge that the team faces as they go into the first few games is teaching new players the strategy of the game and how it flows. This proved to be one of the flaws that the Jr. Bills suffered as the JV team lost a hard fought battle on Sunday against Edwardsville’s C team. 

At the beginning of the game, the Jr. Bills took a 2-0 lead.

“Our first points came from fast transitions and surprise cuts,” said senior Miguel Ituarte.

The Jr. Bills took advantage of Edwardsville with a fast paced mentality and were able to dominate at the start. However this domination didn’t last long due to the low number of players at the game. Several players were not there due to Spring Break, and a few varsity players were brought down to cover for them. Even with the help of the varsity players, the Jr. Bills were short and suffered the cost of low subs. 

“It’s very enduring,” said Ituarte. “It’s hard, you get gassed.”

Towards the end of the first half, the Jr. Bills were losing 5-2 when senior Peter Hasemier had the point of the game.

“At the end of the first half, Peter made a crazy diving catch,” said Ituarte. “Thrown by yours truly.”

At the start of the second half, the Jr. Bills struggled to take control of the game.

“We couldn’t possess the disc because we tried to move up the field too quickly,” said Ituarte. “And we threw it to the ground.”

This cost the Jr. Bills multiple points as Edwardsville took a 7-3 lead. However the Frisbills didn’t let this flaw get to them, as they stormed back to tie the game. 

“I think it was the momentum that we carried that led us to tie the game,” said Ituarte.

Unfortunately on the last point of the game, Edwardsville broke the defense of SLUH and got a last minute point to secure the win. 

A positive that the team took away was the mentality of the players throughout the game.

“We played very patiently,” said junior Brendan Wienecke.

Varsity is hungry for wins against CBC today at 5 p.m. at Cadet Park and Lindbergh on Sunday at 3 p.m. at Compton Drew, as they hope to take the first two games of the season by storm.

The JV team looks to get their first win as they play against Webster Varsity on Sunday, noon at Compton Drew.