The ultimate frisbee club at Covenant, run by co-captains Luke Cary ’21 and Luke Ragan ’21, is, like ultimate culture, quirky and slightly insane. Yet there is a place for everyone on the team, no matter their skill level or experience. Cary, a junior who helped start the club, spoke to The Bagpipe about the ultimate frisbee scene at Covenant and its development during his time here. According to Cary, he and Ragan grew up in the same neighborhood and played on the same high school ultimate team. Both have had a life-long love for the game, so when they came to Covenant, they were both eager to see what the ultimate scene at Covenant was like.
With the help of Ryan Seay, who was in his last semester at Covenant and who had played for a semi-pro ultimate team, the Nashville Nightwatch, Cary and Ragan started a frisbee club. They recruited people, started playing pick-up games, pitched in to go to a tournament and got recognized as an official club by Student Senate. By the time Seay graduated at the end of the semester, Cary and Ragan had been named co-captains for the following spring.
As the youngest person on the team, and only in his second semester at college, it felt strange for Cary to be a captain, and it proved to be a tough semester. Cary claims it was difficult to get any practices together or to get people to show up and play during the spring. But as the weather improved toward the end of the semester, more people started coming to pick-up and club morale grew.
In the fall of 2018, Cary’s sophomore year, he and Ragan began recruiting new members to the team, and they celebrated their first tournament victory. It was a buzzer-beater. Cary caught the frisbee and threw out to Ward Metcalfe on the wing, who threw it to Joey Woodward on the side of the endzone just as the buzzer went off, and “we all went crazy,” he said. That spring, the team started playing really well and the club continued to grow. When a bunch of freshmen showed up to play last semester, Cary and Ragan were ecstatic, because they saw that the club would carry on after they graduate. According to Ragan, starting the ultimate club and making it into something that would last is the proudest achievement of his time at Covenant.
Since it is self-refereed and there are no referees to mediate between the teams, good sportsmanship is crucial in ultimate and team spirit is a big deal at tournaments. Ragan sees these tournaments as an opportunity to show Christ to a predominantly secular subculture but says that this does not look like being stand-offish or moralistic. Rather, “be a good witness but still embrace the wacky culture,” he says.
The Covenant team definitely embraces wacky ultimate culture and has its own traditions. Ward, the team’s resident bagpiper, plays before games, Ragan leads the team in an incredibly cheesy self-worth chant, and they drink pickle juice for electrolytes to help them through multiple games of intense play. At the end of the year, they have a party and watch footage of all of the dumb moments at tournaments first and then the glorious moments after. Yet the crowning characteristic of the Covenant ultimate club is friendship and camaraderie, which Cary says “is the most important thing to me.”
Emily Kueh ’24, a new student this semester, said that she “went for the sport, stayed for the people,” and Bella Trent ’24, said, “I wasn’t into ultimate frisbee until I came to Covenant, but the club welcomed me anyway. Since joining in the fall, I’ve both learned a lot about discing and made many friends.” Mak Scott ’21, who has played on the team for two years, expressed a similar sentiment: “When I started playing, I’d never played before, but everyone was super welcoming and inclusive even though they’d been playing for years.” As Cary concluded, “I love walking by chapel lawn and seeing people throwing around and seeing that I started something that is affecting people positively.”