Banshee Other News
In August 2002, 7-8 girls were chillin'. One girl thought, "What can we do in this amazing weather other than have a party?" Another girl responded, "We should start a Women's Ultimate Frisbee team here!" Two players from the men's team, Smokey and Ari, coached the new team.

Now, Banshee is in its tenth year and thriving. We play in the spirit of the game. We get the disc out of the danger zone. We love each other. We live together. Want to be one of us? Join Us!

Banshee has been doing a lot of rebuilding these last couple years as we lost quite a few of our seasoned veterans. But we're making LOTS of progress and having fun doing it with our coach, Greg Connelly.

Look for us at Nationals in the spring!! Oh yes!

Congratulations to our new leadership team for the 2012-2013 school year! The captains are Naomi "Nitro" Bloch and Ruairi "Flash" Smith-Dewey. While the administrators are Martha "Domino" Schwarz and Shayna "Tiger" Parker. We're looking forward to an awesome season with Banshee!

And now, spoken word by our very own Banshee alumni Rachel "Biggie" Parkin (Class of 2011).

This is a public service announcement meant to
Sound your alarm so
Fasten your seatbelts and
Put on your oxygen mask
Before you exit the doors behind you to the left
Pray to god you survive
‘Cuz is going to be a helluva a ride
This is also the last chance to use the restroom.

This is THE ULTIMATE.
The ultimate disc
The ultimate huck
The ultimate cut
The ultimate bid
The ultimate point
The ultimate victory

And ultimately, no one knows what the fuck I’m talking about
Because ULTIMATE is but the ultimate way of saying
Ultimate Frisbee.

It’s the sport that never was
Until it spread like STDs through
The 1960s universities.
Nurtured by the dirt, sun, and water bottles on a field in
Who-the-hell-cares-where.
Erected first as a monument against boredom
Against the man
And against a commercialism that
Only follows all of the big bodied, bigger muscled, biggest LIFED
Athletes of the masses.

It is the sport that always was
And always will be
For the quick-witted, Sprinting, throwing, unrelenting
Excuses for athletes.
The schmucks dumb enough to
Break their arms, legs, noses, and
Toes in the dimmest hope that they catch a disc
That a dog could have definitely grabbed already.

And it is the sport that has spirit
Because who needs a referee when
Each individual player on the field
Has memorized the entire rule book…
Differently
So that ten minutes later after someone might not
Have caught the disc in bounds
You are still standing on a
Field with knees locked, sweat shrinking inside your shirt,
Cheeks a solid shade of flush
And fingertips frozen no longer feeling the Frisbee
In your hand.
Before both teams decide to just settle the
Epic battle of ultimate knowledge
By playing rocks, paper, scissors, shoot!

Yes, I know I am but a poor dirty hippie
Humanist college student who just like, totally
Wants to throw around and meet some
Cute guys on the Great Lawn
Hit the Omega Mod later and
Cuddle up to the captain.
But I think you’ll find the more you
Look the more you throw that
Clinical studies will show
This sport is the most dangerous drug
Far more addictive than weed
Ever threatened your
Children’s academics.

So take a big hit and breathe!
No, not that hit
But the hit of your rib cage
Against the dirt
Accumulating bruises
Here, there, everywhere
That you won’t feel until later
For the pure joy of holding that disc high in the air
And knowing that not one blade of grass touched it
Before you did.

And while family reunions
May be spent
Trying to explain to your grandparents
Yet again that
Yes I do play a sport
And here are the rules
And Yes it’s a real sport
And No it’s not varsity,
And Yet it’s a real sport
And No I can’t tell you what my team name is
Because Yes it’s a sexual innuendo
And No we don’t have tryouts-per-say
And Yes it’s a real sport
And No I don’t know why I stopped playing soccer
But Yes I’m glad that I did.
It’s okay, because
Everywhere you go in this world
You realize that the world is, in fact, flat like a Frisbee.
No matter what the language, religion, form of government
Is
You will have a family.
An ultimate family
THE ULTIMATE FAMILY
Of kind hearted strangers happy to
Throw you a flick.

So right now imagine yourself
On a giant turf field of wonder
Colors vivid and organic-cotton jersey soft on your skin
With the scent of Gatorade burning your nostrils
And the sun making you squint
Because damnnit you left your sunglasses in the car.
Imagine yourself
Practicing how to place the smooth
Plastic of the disc against your fingers
So that it leaps into the air and rides
The witty curve of the wind to another
Hand of cracked fingernails
Imagine
Plucking heartstrings as you leap out of yourself
The first across the field
To chase down another player and
Oh so gently SLAM the disc
HARD before she ever realized what happened. OH SHOOT, SON!

Ultimate is a lifestyle and a beautiful one at that.
An Emersonian, Thoreau-ian, Kamikaze,
ATranscendental, Zen-Buddhist cage-fight,
A satanic, guerilla, rotting guillotine of inner-peace
That comes with having more joy in your heart than blisters on your feet- though the blisters are coming in a very close second.
Which is why and how all of us come to be the Ultimate.

Website designed by Ariel "Rooney" Plotkin
Updated by Malaika "Wilma" Schwartz