In the second edition of my column, we will be exploring the ins and outs of one of the most competitive club sports here at USC: “ultimate,” or as it’s better known, ultimate Frisbee.

Frisbee is the brand of flying disc you see at the park that people — wanting to get some exercise and hand-eye coordination practice — throw around. Ultimate, however, is a noncontact sport where athletes throw the disc to their teammates to get into the end zone and score the most points. 

Even though it’s sort of a vague definition, think of it as a mix of basketball, football and soccer. The basketball aspect is passing the “ball,” or flying disc, back and forth with the thrower not being able to run with it. The football aspect is running routes and passing the disc into the end zone to score points. Finally, the soccer aspect is running, running and running. 

Thomas Johnson, a junior majoring in journalism and an assistant sports editor for the Daily Trojan, ran 25 miles between the two days of a recent tournament, taking into account warm-ups and daily routines. In my personal opinion, the only reason someone should run more than 25 miles ever is for a marathon. Just thinking about it, as a baseball player myself  — where you just stand there until the ball comes to you — makes me exhausted.

Now to the Trojans’ ultimate team. USC offers ultimate to the entirety of the population, no matter if it’s your first time picking up a flying disc or if you’ve had 10 years of experience. They have men’s and women’s teams and within each, there are different programs for the more advanced players and for those who just want to develop. On the men’s side, it’s Lockdown or Blockdown, respectively, and for the women’s side, it’s the Hellions of Troy or the Kleos; and for students that just want to stay active while having a noncommitted schedule, men’s ultimate and women’s ultimate work together to host coed intramurals in the fall.  

Some may wonder how you get into ultimate because, from my own perspective, I haven’t really seen competitive ultimate anywhere. Growing up in the Bay Area, I wasn’t aware if any of our high schools had a team and none of my friends seemed to play it. However, I’m most likely wrong because others sure had high school teams. 

Dox Raskin, a junior majoring in economics as well as English, is a co-captain of the Lockdown team. While he had some junior high school exposure to ultimate, Raskin decided to play volleyball in high school but came back to the sport he loved in college.

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“Going into college, I was looking for a good group of people, a good group of friends,” Raskin said. “I figured most of my friends from high school I’d met through Frisbee, so I figured I’d pick it back up.”  

That transition seems like a pretty simple one, going from volleyball to ultimate, but how could one go from ice hockey to ultimate? Well, Skylar Funk, a graduate student getting his Master of Music in popular music teaching and learning, can answer that inquiry for various reasons.

“The cost is so different,” Funk said. “The second reason was the diversity … ultimate Frisbee is mostly played coed and has people of a lot more colors, stripes and backgrounds and I find that more enriching.”

Despite a lot of backgrounds, various sports played and different upbringings, these student-athletes share one common thing: having Lockdown on their chest while playing.

The Lockdown team has traveled to qualifiers and invitationals in Santa Barbara and Stevinson. At the Santa Barbara qualifier, they went a respectable 2-2, with close losses coming to UC Santa Cruz and UC Santa Barbara. 

This past weekend, they competed in the Stanford Invite in Stevinson, California. The field was composed of some of the top teams in the country such as Washington University in St. Louis, Oregon and UC Santa Cruz. 

Going 0-3 in pool play, Lockdown was stuck with playing in the consolation bracket instead of competing for a trophy Sunday. They did have an excellent consolation bracket, going 2-0 Sunday with a 12-9 win over Santa Clara and a 12-10 victory over Cal Poly’s B-team. 

Some of the key contributors of the weekend were Johnson, Raskin and Akilesh Swamy, a freshman majoring in applied and computational mathematics. The trio led the team in goals, while Raskin and Swamy were the leaders in completions for the weekend. 

Although Lockdown didn’t necessarily achieve their ultimate goal of winning the invite, they still accomplished their few set goals for the weekend. 

“This weekend specifically, we did a really good job of making sure that our level of play was in our full control,” said Daniel Hochberg, a junior majoring in environmental studies.

Lockdown’s success can also be seen from outside of the USC community, where three members of the team got selected to be practice players for Los Angeles’ professional ultimate team — the L.A. Aviators — with Swamy and Raskin being two of those members. This accomplishment proves you don’t need to play Division I football or basketball to be recognized as a top-tier talent. 

USC’s Lockdown is just the start for student-athletes trying to perfect their skills in ultimate.

“To get to play on a team where they’re invested in my success and they want me to grow and help me grow is awesome, and I’m really grateful for that,” Funk said.

Darren Parry is a senior writing about club sports athletes and their messages in his column, “Coulda Shoulda Woulda,” which runs every other Tuesday.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Frisbee is a game. Frisbee is not a game, it is a popular brand of flying disc. The article was updated March 5 at 12:55 a.m. to reflect this. The Daily Trojan regrets this error.

Correction: A previous version of this article failed to specify that USC is home to two ultimate frisbee programs: USC Men’s Ultimate and USC Women’s Ultimate, inclusive of women and nonbinary students. Men’s Ultimate is comprised of two teams: Lockdown and Blockdown. Women’s Ultimate is comprised of two teams: the Hellions of Troy and the Kleos. This is a feature of the men’s program. The article was updated July 24 at 11: to reflect this. The Daily Trojan regrets this error