Correction appended
The Oregon men’s ultimate frisbee club sports team will appeal tonight a decision made by the Club Sports executive committee Friday that canceled the rest of its season after an incident on April 11 at Oregon State University.
According to members of the team and the executive committee, the team, ranked third in the nation, was already under scrutiny for two alcohol-related offenses in the past year – the most recent being the team’s role in a party at the Campbell Club on Nov. 22 that resulted in a $1,000 fine by the city of Eugene and put the team on probation for the rest of the year with club sports. The team also received four speeding tickets two seasons ago, according to co-captain Dusty Becker.
Then on April 11, the club’s ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams were scheduled to play each other at a sectional tournament in Corvallis, but decided not to because of their familiarity with each other. Instead of a full game, a decision was made to play for one point to decide the game, with one team playing without shirts and the other playing without any pants or underwear.
Club co-captain Steve Kenton said there were very few spectators and no children present for the “very informal” game, but that an Oregon State student present filed a complaint with that university’s department of public safety.
Executive committee members said the cancellation was not necessarily because of the singular event but because of the entire scope of the team’s troubles in the past two years. It is believed to be the first time an executive committee has canceled a team’s season without the consent of a club’s coordinator.
“We decided that they have been in trouble so often in the last year it just wasn’t something you could look at as an isolated incident,” committee member Elizabeth Dow said.
Director of Club Sports Sandy Vaughn met with club coordinator Aki Ohdera, co-captain Dusty Becker and the team’s chaperone who traveled with the team on April 21, where she told the three if it were her decision, the team’s season would continue if the team could find a better chaperone.
“The thing is, the decision to cancel our season isn’t up to Sandy, it’s up to the five people on the exec committee,” Becker said.
On Friday, four of the five executive committee members met and voted 3-0 to cancel the rest of the club’s season, which included a trip to regionals in Corvallis this coming weekend and a possible trip to the national tournament in Columbus, Ohio in late May.
Executive committee members Dow, Jeff Gibb and Katelyn Frank voted to cancel the season while Tina Snodgrass, a member of the women’s ultimate team, abstained from voting. Jeff Rogers was absent.
“The way I see it, playing a naked point is not legal and it shouldn’t be supported, but there are much worse things that can happen in the game that could reflect on the University than what happened at sectionals,” Snodgrass said.
Vaughn sits on the committee but is not a voting member.
The meeting to appeal is scheduled to be held in the Ben Linder Room in the EMU tonight at 5:15 p.m.
Kenton did not play in the game but was present, and said the team wouldn’t have played the naked point, which several team members said is common in the sport, had they known it would be grounds for the cancellation of its season.
“For me it was, the thought maybe briefly crossed my mind but there were no minors around, no children around, and I guess I didn’t realize who this could hurt,” Kenton said. “In the sport of ultimate it’s a very common thing. It’s sort of in the culture of the game.”
Becker expects many of the 60 members of both teams to be at Monday’s hearing, along with other supporters. He understands why the decision was made considering the team’s problems, but disagreed that they truly did anything wrong.
“We broke rules that shouldn’t be rules,” Becker said. “I mean speeding, drinking and the nudity thing. They may technically be against the law but I don’t think people who live in Oregon or go to the University here think it’s wrong. Morally they’re not.”
More than a dozen club ultimate teams have sent the team letters of support since the decision Friday, including Pacific Lutheran University and Western Washington University.
“If I were asked to find a group of young men who embody this better than those at the University of Oregon, I would be hard pressed,” one letter from Pacific Lutheran wrote.
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Because of a reporter’s error, the article “Club frisbee team to appeal decision to cancel season” stated a letter of support for the men’s Ultimate Frisbee team came from the University of Michigan Ultimate team. The letter instead came from a student at Michigan currently unaffiliated with the team. The Emerald regrets the error.