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| Syzygy alum Deb Cussen '98 looks for a way around student player Anna Nelson '00 during the Syzygy student/alum game held in the spring of 1999. |
What do you need for a successful geology field trip? Vans, tents, food and stoves, rock hammers, compass, frisbee....
Frisbee?
Well, yes, frisbee.
Frisbees have been required gear for geology field trips for the past quarter century. The durability of the frisbee's popularity is unmatched in geo circles by that of any other portable sports equipment. It's light, compact, cheap and fun.
You can play frisbee at a variety of levels from just tossing it around to hard core competition in games of ultimate frisbee. It appeals to active folks who like to be outdoors and sociable at the same time. Ultimate frisbee (often called just "ultimate") is a non-contact team sport with seven players on the field at a time for each team. The rules are an amalgam of soccer, basketball and football.
There is a history of overlap between geology majors and Carleton's informal frisbee leagues dating from the 1980's when a geology major, Carolyn Carr '88, was a member of the first Carleton frisbee team to qualify for national competition. Carolyn remembers, "We got a wild card slot in the nationals and the college paid for us all to fly out to Santa Barbara, California, to play frisbee like crazy people. We were placed 10th going into it and we ended up being seventh so it was very exciting!"
Currently geology majors and recent alums participate in several frisbee leagues and teams. At the basic level, there is the unofficial Geology Department frisbee intramural coed team, "Shel-bee." ("Bee" is short for frisbee, but our geologist namesake of the team denies responsibility for the naming of the team.) Shel-bee games are usually pick-up affairs, meaning there is no organized roster of who will play each game. The team depends on people's desire to appear at games and play to put together a team each time.
For Shel-bee, fun, rather than vicious competition, is the game. According to Emily Burton '99, a Shel-bee regular, the team "is an unusual team in that it really reflects the Carleton demographic - half men and half women, all the players get thrown to and share in the action. It's a lot of fun." Winning is great but not a prerequisite for a good time. Team captain Kate Hoffman '99 said in an interview for this story, "I think we might have won a game, the one I missed..."
Higher up in the competitive hierarchy from the intramural teams are the men's and women's intercollegiate teams. These teams also enjoy substantial support from geology majors and compete against teams from other colleges and cities at the regional and national levels.
One of the women's teams is Eclipse, co-captained by Kate Trafton '99. Other geo majors on that 17-woman team include Kate Hoffman '99, Emily Burton '99, Laura Cleaveland '01 and Anna Moyles '01, all of whom also play for Shel-bee. Eclipse has existed for several years and was formed as a B-team to accompany Carleton's premier women's ultimate frisbee team, Syzygy.
Another men's team is GOP ("Gods Of Plastic"), captained by Erich Heydweiller '99. A fellow geology major, Jake Eaton '01, also plays with the team. Erich comments, "Philosophically we stand for the idea that the primary reason for playing frisbee is to have fun. While we are competitive at the regional level, our focus is on having fun playing quality frisbee, rather than just winning." The team also forms a social group and has a ritual barbecue dinner the night before each tournament. This year they qualified for the regional tournament.
The nationally ranked Syzygy is Carleton's shining competitive frisbee star, and it is a geology-dominated team. This year six of the 18 members were geologists as Syzygy hammered its way through game after game to finally become the second-ranked women's team in the nation against all other college and university women's teams. The team's exquisite teamwork crushes the competition at every turn. Geology folks on the team this year included Mizu Kinney '99, Liz Penny '00, Anna Nelson '00, Anne Sawyer '01, Sara Decherd '01, and Hilary Gittings '02.
The Carleton Ultimate Team ("CUT") is the nationally competitive men's team. CUT has counted many geo majors among its players over the years although this year there were none.
According to Anna Nelson, a veteran of the Carleton varsity swimming and diving team as well as Syzygy, "Syzygy is just as much work and is as intense as a varsity sport but the team has a lot more self-direction and autonomy since it is not run by the college." The captains rather than coaches run the practices, and Syzygy also enjoys a sense of family and is a social group for its members.
The frisbee frenzy is not without costs for its members. Players on the nationally ranked teams in particular do pay a price for the playing. In order to qualify for national competition the teams have to play through a long series of local and regional tournaments, grueling weekend road trips from which players often return sunburned and exhausted. If someone is late or sleepy in a Monday morning class, frisbee could be a factor.
But frisbee is a sport which carries over into life after Carleton. Many graduates of the student teams transfer their enthusiasm to club teams in other cities after they graduate, and return for student/alum games in later years. In some cases Carleton alumni teams can assume a lasting identity such as the CUT alumni counterpart GUT ("Graduate Ultimate Team"). This spring both GUT and the Syzygy alums returned for student/alumni games. CUT edged out GUT by a razor-thin 21-20 margin but Syzygy ground its alums into the dirt 15-0 despite excellent showings by geo alums Deb Cussen and Martha Carlson, both '98.
Carls who move to the Twin Cities after graduation find teams to join there but they often find themselves on the opposite side of the field from the teams they sacrificed their bodies for in college. Karen Bobbitt Gran '96 played intramural frisbee at Carleton and now plays for GLU ("Glamorous Ladies of Ultimate") in Minneapolis. Her team plays Syzygy in local tournaments. Karen has observed that the primary club season is in the fall whereas, because of the nature of the school year, Syzygy is at its peak in the spring. GLU often can beat Syzygy in the fall game but Syzygy takes over during the spring game.
Karen also points out an interesting parallel between frisbee and geology: "I'm intrigued by the fact that in both frisbee and professional geology circles, when I meet new people they often react with something like, 'Oh you're from Carleton - Everybody's from Carleton!'"
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| GUT geology alums (from left) Brent Nystrom '92, Dave Boardman '95, Allon Katz '96 and Kelvin Chan '98 returned to campus in the spring of 1999 to test the mettle of the current GUT team. |
This page supported by the Carleton College Geology Department.