Give me intramural ultimate frisbee

GRAPHIC BY YELENA FLEMING / THE FLAT HAT

Adam Jutt ’25 is a math and economics major from Cincinnati, Ohio. Aside from serving as digital media editor of The Flat Hat, he is on the club tennis team and loves IM sports. Email him at adjutt@wm.edu.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Frankly, that title could be the whole article. It shouldn’t require any qualifications, concessions, philosophical expositions or evidence to resonate with you as an intrinsically true sentiment. That said, I know from experience that the opinions editors at The Flat Hat struggle to make five articles span two full pages in the paper as it is, so a seven word article, six-hundred-and-ninety-three (I’ve never had a good grasp of how to hyphenate numbers written-out in word form, so I tend to err on the side of over-hyphenating) short of the minimum, would certainly introduce additional difficulties. So, with all that in mind, I will go ahead and try to provide lengthier support for my position. 

I am a lover of almost every sport under the sun (the one sport responsible for the word “almost” in that sentence knows exactly what it is). It should come as no surprise, then, that I have participated in quite a few intramural sports here. Last I counted—which was just now—I have been on an IM volleyball team, soccer team, flag football team, basketball team and handball team, in addition to many of the more niche pop-up tournaments that take place in the span of a day or evening instead of over several weeks. They have all been super fun. I haven’t yet participated in anything hockey- or softball-related, but hopefully my slate of involvements is thorough enough to lend me at least some credibility in the IM sports department. Although, as I hope the last paragraph made clear, I don’t think any credibility is necessary to make as obvious an observation as this: it’s weird that ultimate frisbee is not a sport I can add to my IM resume. 

Why did I use the term “weird” to describe the omission? It correctly implies not just that I think the IM pantheon could be bettered by its inclusion, but also that the IM pantheon as it stands is incomplete. I used the word “weird,” but “inexplicable,” “troubling,” “shocking,” “suspicious” and “off-putting” would have all done an equally solid job of conveying my impression of the current state of IM.

This is because ultimate frisbee is the quintessential intramural sport. Think about it. What are the ideals of intramurals? Friendship, community, fun and sportsmanship. What are the ideals of ultimate frisbee? Nearly identical. That might sound like a reductive or condescending view of ultimate because it’s a real sport with a growing fan base and incredibly talented athletes, and I’m over here acting as if there is an emphasis on upholding the “spirit of the game.” Well, plot twist, there is. It’s a sport that aligns with exactly what one looks for in good, clean IM fun better than any other sport possibly could. Plus, both are deeply entwined with the concepts of “college” and more specifically “the classic college experience.”

I call it the quintessential IM sport, but I’ll admit there are others which are right up there with it. Flag football, volleyball and soccer all come to mind as sports which carry with them the same sort of tacit assumption that you could join a casual team at your college at a moment’s notice. If we only offered those three, perhaps the omission of frisbee would be slightly more understandable. However, we offer … a lot. I don’t know who is in charge of organizing them all, but those people work really, really hard. 

I mentioned a good deal already, and there’s a good few, like handball and floor hockey, that are definitely much more niche than the A-listers. However, the list doesn’t stop there. There is spikeball, table tennis, pickleball, dodgeball, cornhole, racquetball and even canoe battleship (which was a lot of fun, even though my team got screwed over by being pushed to the middle — and thus incurring the wrath of all other boats — immediately). All that to say, ultimate frisbee players have to stare at the list of IM sports every day and contemplate the fact that we are prioritized beneath the likes of cornhole despite the widespread popularity of our sport. If thinking about that doesn’t bring you close to tears, then you have no heart. 

And I’m not some crazy ultimate frisbee guy, either. I like it a lot as a sport, but I don’t play it regularly or anything. I’m at the level of commitment where I think I own a frisbee, but it’s very possible I wouldn’t be able to find it if I wanted to. 

I’m just a guy. A guy who likes intramural sports. A guy who notices things. And, most importantly, a guy who was asked to write an article for The Flat Hat’s opinions section this week.

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