Spirit, fun and character define the game of Ultimate Frisbee. DePaul’s women’s and nonbinary team has actively embraced those values to build a community that’s as inclusive as it is competitive, according to Nellie Mai, vice president and captain of the team.

“It is super important to have a space where it doesn’t matter what anyone’s gender identity is,” she said. “We all just want to get together and enjoy playing the sport.”   

Ultimate Frisbee is a fast-paced noncontact sport in which competing teams score points by catching the Frisbee in the opponent’s end zone. 

At tournaments, each team has a member who takes on the role of “spirit captain,” Mai said. The spirit captain’s purpose is to promote fair play and communication, which is important because the game is self-officiated. 

Mai explained that each team’s spirit captain will get together before the tournament begins to discuss which pronouns to use for each player. This ensures that everyone’s identities are respected. 

Originally, the DePaul team had just been a women’s league, but in 2019, it adopted the “womxn” designation, an alternate spelling of woman used to promote inclusivity for trans and nonbinary people. They also go by “women’s and non-binary” as well as their team name, Laser Chains. 

Mai, a DePaul senior who has been playing Ultimate Frisbee since high school, said the sport has a history of being gender inclusive.

“USA Ultimate has always included women and nonbinary individuals,” Mai said of the nonprofit organization that oversees the sport. She explained that Ultimate Frisbee has three divisions: men’s, women’s and mixed. The mixed division allows for men, women and nonbinary athletes to all play on the same team.

In recent years, USA Ultimate has implemented various strategies to help increase access to the game for marginalized communities. This includes creating a new gender inclusion policy in 2020 after recognizing the previous policy was not inclusive of trans and nonbinary individuals. The new policy allows athletes, however they identify, to participate in the division in which they feel most comfortable and safe.

Joel Willison, one of the DePaul team’s coaches, agrees that Ultimate Frisbee is more inclusive and accessible than other sports because it is a noncontact sport that “rewards safe play and decision-making.”

Still, Mai said it has been hard to recruit DePaul students into the sport.

“People don’t really know what it is, or they confuse it with disc golf,” she said. “We’ve really been trying to grow the team from the ground up this year.”

Despite the recruiting challenges, she added that this year’s team has become “very tight-knit.”

“I have gotten to know every single one of the players on a personal level,” Mai said.

Isa Brady, a DePaul freshman on the team, described the team’s atmosphere as friendly and inviting.

“It has provided me with a community and a sort of group of pre-set friends, which I am super grateful for,” Brady, a neuroscience major, said.

Willison has enjoyed seeing the new players find community through the game at DePaul.  

“This team in particular has embraced each other faster than I’ve seen other sports teams do,” he said. “We have so much fun. We’ve got a competitive spirit, but never at the expense of everyone having a good time.”

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