Wageningen’s Allround Frisbee team during the World Cup in Portugal. Rick Keizer top, second from the left. Photo WBUCC Wageningen Allround Frisbee (WAF) members joined the Ultimate Frisbee World Cup on a beach in Portimão, Portugal, last week. They ended in thirty-fourth place. ‘Playing frisbee on the beach is a lot of hard work.’
‘We join a beach competition in Hargen (Noord-Holland) each year. These are the unofficial Dutch Championships ultimate frisbee on the beach for clubs’, says WAF player Rick Keizer (a student of Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning). Rick has just returned from Portugal. ‘There, you can be awarded a ticket for the next international tournament. WAF usually makes it to the middle of the ranking, but last summer, our men’s team won the tournament and were hence permitted to join the World Championships in Portugal.’
The men decided to give it their all. They added extra endurance training and gym sessions to their schedule and regularly trained on the Wekeromse Zand. ‘WAF normally trains on the grass and indoors in the winter. The Wekeromse Zand enables us to train in the sand’, Keizer explains. ‘However, as it is far less windy than along the coast, we also went to Scheveningen and Zandvoort beach several times. And we joined some extra tournaments in Belgium to gain experience.’
Close-knit team
WAF could register a maximum of twenty players for the World Championships, but their team is made up of only twelve. ‘A conscious decision’, Keizer clarifies. ‘We wanted to continue with the team that won the Dutch Championships. The great thing about a tournament such as this one is that you represent your team on behalf of your country. That means you are allowed to recruit players from within the Netherlands who are not members of your club, which, theoretically, enables you to create the perfect team.’
We rejected good Dutch frisbee players from other cities because we wanted to play with our close-knit Wageningen team
‘Players from other cities reached out wanting to join, but we rejected them. We wanted to play with the close-knit group of men who started out at WAF as first-year students some five years ago. Many other teams play together once a month in preparation for the World Championships, but we trained several times a week, making us well-coordinated. I saw my teammates more frequently than my partner. Because we spent so much time together, we immediately noticed when someone was feeling a little down or threatened to become injured. We pulled each other through.
Strong and athletic
All twelve Wageningen players were on the field during every match. ‘You play with five people in the field at any one time, but the composition of the team changes per point. That allows you to deploy the players who are best suited to the circumstances. Some do better with head-on winds; others fare better when they have the wind at their back. The same applies to defence and offence. Ultimate frisbee requires much strategy.’ Because they had only twelve players rather than twenty, the WAF players struggled with exhaustion sooner than the other teams. ‘We were strong in terms of endurance, but pain and injuries started to take their toll from days four and five. Nevertheless, we had a great tournament and fought in each game.’
Exhaustion now dominates the team, but I expect that to change into enthusiasm for the European Championships in 2025 soon
Keizer: ‘We won some matches and lost some. We would have preferred to end up higher in the ranking, but, above all, it was a wonderful experience. We had all sorts of weather, ranging from thunderstorms to intense sunshine and gusts of wind. During the matches, everyone was very focused, but before and after the games, the atmosphere with so many people of different nationalities was awesome. And we are now the number 34 among the world’s frisbee clubs, which is rather cool.’
European Championships
WAF acquired a ticket for the next big international tournament at the National Championships in Hagen this summer: the European Championships in 2025. On the question of whether all the men “from Portugal” will join, Keizer says: Exhaustion now dominates the team, but I expect that to change into enthusiasm for the European Championships in 2025 soon.’
