By Daniel Kerwin

When the snow falls outside, the Frisbees fly indoors. Usually the idea of indoor Frisbee throwing wouldn’t sound like such a good idea, but in the Leonard Center last Saturday almost 70 people were doing just that as Macalester hosted its second ever Ultimate tournament in the building.Two teams came from St. Thomas and one from the University of Minnesota Duluth to compete in the tournament, and the field was filled out by three teams from Macalester.

The format of the tournament was laid back and was aimed more for the teams to get an opportunity to play in competition than to decide an eventual winner. Julie Green ’10 was one of the people who helped to plan the tournament.

“It was a pretty informal tournament, with a co-ed, round robin format, so every team played each other, and there were no brackets, which also means that there were no real ‘results’,” Greene said. “It was pretty much just a way for us to get a chance to play other teams during the winter season.”

The first tournament hosted in the Leonard Center was last spring, but it was only a men’s tournament. Both teams welcomed the opportunity to team up for this most recent tournament.

“It was fun for the boys and girls teams to join up and play together,” Greene said. “There is a lot of bonding between the two teams so it’s cool to get to play together as well since most of our tournaments are not co-ed.”

Securing space in the Leonard Center for the tournament was the biggest hurdle in making the event a reality, with the space having to be reserved months in advance. Although the same tournament was planned for last year, it didn’t end up happening because the space wasn’t available, even though inquiries had been made months in advance last year too. Although still not the ideal space to host a tournament, it was put to maximum use.

“The Leonard Center was a good venue,” Greene said. “Obviously it would be nice to have more space so we could play two full seven verses seven games, or have three smaller games going on simultaneously, but it’s much better than what we had in the old athletic building, and just being able to play inside at all is great.”

The women’s team, the Purse Snatchers, has had an equally hard time finding a time to use the Leonard Center for practice. Their practices have been forced to 6:30 a.m. Monday and 10:30 p.m. Thursday, but the healthy turnout at both practices has Greene feeling excited about the future of the team.

“We’re spending more time on strategy and general speed and conditioning than we have in the past, so I think that this team has the potential to be the best I’ve seen at Macalester,” Greene said.

Coming up in the spring season, both teams will head down to Georgia over spring break to take place in the High Tide Tournament, and they’ll be preparing for Sectionals and Regionals, which will take place towards the end of April and the beginning of May. The best chance you’ll have to see them live will be at the Mac-Tommie Cup, which will also take place towards the end of April.