Look’s like someone is finally taking notice of this “Frisbee” thing. This past weekend, the Claremont Colleges hosted the Southern California Sectional tournament for Women’s Ultimate. The Claremont Greenshirts finished the sectional tournament in 5th, losing to UC-San Diego and then UCLA to get knocked out; but with impressive wins over Cal State-Long Beach and Cal Poly-Pomona, the Greenshirts advanced to the Southwest Regional tournament, which will be played May 8-9 in Ft. Collins, Col.

With the team playing on their home turf for the first time this season, the Claremont community took a liking to the Greenshirts (who, by the way, do not actually wear green shirts but rather white shirts with a stenciled dinosaur playing Ultimate), as a noticeable crowd came out to watch the ladies of Claremont toss around the disc. At one point, the heckling Claremont crowd frustrated the opposing Long Beach players to the point that one player lashed out, yelling back at the fans. Two minutes later, she went down hard with a serious injury—one member of the crowd’s response: “Instant Karma!” While the Greenshirts (and most respectful sports fans for that matter) likely abhor such fanhood, it is understandable that the fans are starting to get fired up; there is some magic behind this team.

Going into the sectional tournament, the Greenshirts ranked 39th nationally, 7th in the Southwest Region, and 5th nationally among D-III schools, second highest among Southwest Region D-III schools behind only Colorado College. On Mar. 27-28, the Claremont Women traveled to Austin to play in the Women’s College Centex tournament, a prestigious Women’s Ultimate tournament with teams from all over the country.

“It was really cool to be invited,” Greenshirt Natalie Butterfield SC ’12 said. Indeed it was. The Greenshirts beat the University of Texas, the best team in South Region, 13-11 in the Longhorn’s own house. Oh, and they beat the University of Illinois, Washington University, and the University of Pennsylvania while down south as well.

Ultimate is pervasive in the national college scene, with people casually playing on the nicely trimmed college quads across the country and discs flying across pictures in nicely staged college admissions materials, but the competitive version of the sport often gets overlooked. Its presence, especially here in Southern California, is noticeable, however. Bigger schools like USC field two women’s teams and UCLA has two “B” teams. The Claremont Greenshirts have a floating roster of over 20 players and have been playing here in Claremont for the last decade or so, making nationals one time—in 2004 when they finished 11th—although last year they finished just two spots away from qualifying for the big dance.

Here at the tiny Claremont Colleges, the Greenshirts have managed to put together a team that is ranked ahead of teams like Arizona, Arizona State, UC-San Diego, San Diego St., and Cal State-Long Beach. And perhaps the team is about ready to break out. The youth movement is here, as seven freshman and eight sophomores scatter across the official roster of 23, but they will be losing leaders and seasoned captains Camille Sultana HM ’10 and Sarah “Carny” Carnahan CGU ’10, who the team unanimously voted “the one person we would like to be there to save us if we were hanging off a cliff.” The team will not be left hopeless, however; they also boast one of the youngest captains on the 5Cs, Sarah Baken PO ’12, who played on Team USA in the Junior Worlds competition in high school and has brought a ton of experience and a fierce passion of the game to the young Greenshirt squad, many of whom had never played Ultimate before coming to the Colleges.

“I’d rather be playing Ultimate about 90 percent of time. No matter what I am doing,” she said.

Baken said she would not even consider a school that didn’t have an Ultimate team, and perhaps the established presence of the Greenshirts here in Claremont will attract competitive players in the future—exposure in tournaments across the country, like Centex in Austin, certainly help.

Like most club sports, money for travelling is tough to come by, especially since the Greenshirts travelled to Austin this season. The team has had to raise a lot of its own funds, fundraising at local restaurants, selling discs, hosting a teaching clinic, and making money by hosting the sectional tournament. Traveling to Regional competition in Colorado will be no cushy ride either; the team plans to take school vans and cars and pile in for 1,000 mile drive to Ft. Collins over reading days, while many players will have to rearrange Monday finals so that they can compete.

Ultimate may still be looked on as somewhat casual. The game is played with no refs, players actually call their own fouls, and the Greenshirts...well, they have no coach. Butterfield described the game as an “inherently non-competitive sport,” but for the 14 Greenshirts making the long, arduous drive to the Rocky Mountain state next weekend, competition will be at the front of their minds. If they can manage to play like they did against Texas at Centex, and finally get over the hump and beat local powerhouses like USC, UCLA and perennial great UC-Santa Barbara, they might have to fill up that gas tank a few more times—that or find a sponsor to help pay for plane tickets to make it Wisconsin in late May, the site of the National Championship.