CHS Girls Place 3rd in Ultimate Frisbee Eastern Championships

Does the spirit of ultimate frisbee—with its laidback vibe relative to other team sports and lack of official status—live on at Columbia High School, the place where the sport was founded?

At the High School Eastern Championships, held near Buffalo, N.Y., on May 14-15, the CHS girls' team placed third. The tournament features the top teams on the East Coast. This was the best finish for the team, formed in 2005.

Yet, there's a connection to the past. Many of the current players go to the alumni games. "We are definitely proud to play frisbee for the school that started it all," said freshman Maggie Woodruff. Good sportsmanship, camaraderie and overall niceness seemed to be valued as part of athleticism. "The atmosphere is never stressed," Woodruff continued. "There are no enemies on the team."

The lore of the game is well known at Columbia High School. Founders Joel Silver (now a famous Hollywood producer), Jonathan "Jonny" Hines (an international law attorney) and Bernard "Buzzy" Hellring (killed in an automobile accident in 1971) were CHS students in the late 1960s. After playing "varsity frisbee" at a college summer program, Silver convinced the student council at CHS to introduce frisbee into the curriculum. Silver, Hines and Hellring got together a group of students and started playing the game. Silver came up with the name, "Ultimate Frisbee", and the friends developed a rulebook, that according to the USA Ultimate organization, continues to inform how the game is played today. It spread to college campuses around the country. The Ultimate Players Association was formed in 1979 to oversee the sport, which now has divisions and national championships. This month, the organization became USA Ultimate.

Yet, at the local high school, as a non-funded sport, it maintains a somewhat outlaw status. "I think this is both a negative and a positive," said Woodruff. "On the one side, it's kind of hard to be the origin of Ultimate and not be an actual sport at the school. There are lots of debates over whether frisbee is actually a sport or not too. But at the same time, if you play frisbee, you know it is a sport, and not being part of the school means we have more control over what we do. We can go to out-of-state tournaments, and we can have longer practices too."

This June, the CHS girls team will compete in the New Jersey State Tournament, a fitting end to the season in the state where it all began.

Below is an overview of the girls' recent play:

On May 15, Columbia, led by co-captains Claire Kearns-McCoy and Kate Donatelli, went 2-1 with victories over Andover High School from Massachusetts and LC Bird High School from Virginia and a loss to Amherst Regional High School from Massachusetts, the eventual tournament champion. In the May 16 final game of pool play, they handily defeated Madison Memorial High School from Wisconsin.
In the quarterfinals against the University School of Nashville, Columbia took an early lead, with impressive performances by Abby Powell, Grace Feinman-Riordan, Ellen McGrath, Karina Moy and Maddy Weltchek, as well as Kearns-McCoy and Donatelli, but the score was eventually tied at 10. Columbia's offense came out strong in the last point and the game ended 11-10 in Columbia's favor after an excellent diving catch by Jenny Podel, later named the team's most valuable player for the tournament. Freshman Aurora Rojer also received an individual award for sportsmanship.

Columbia moved on to the semifinals to play the Yorktown/HB Woodlawn School from Virginia. This season, Columbia had several close games against this team, winning or losing by a margin of no more than two points in each game. YHB took an early lead in the first half. Columbia handlers Hannah Hart, Alex Fagundez and Maggie Woodruff worked hard to move the disc through YHB's tough defense. Although Columbia rallied in the second half, the game ended with a score of 12-6 in YHB's favor.

This third-place finish is the highest for the Columbia girls since they first attended the tournament in 2005.

The girls also placed second at the St. Johnsbury Invitational Tournament in Vermont May 22-23.