Otago representatives from Kea and Kārearea.
We’ll give them this – they've got spirit!
There was a strong Otago presence at the World Under-24 Ultimate Frisbee Championships in the United Kingdom last month.
Kārearea, the 24-strong Aotearoa women’s team, included seven Otago tauira.
The students that played were undergraduates Emily McAuley-Scott, Rose Ursem, Justine Ursua, Lily-Belle Sawyer, Olivia Altenburg-Carey and Zoe Simmons and recent graduate Aliguna Aliguna.
The team placed tenth out of 15 and won the ‘spirit’ award – given out to the team that collects the most points from their competitors for adhering to the true spirit of ultimate frisbee.
Thomas Chapple, Josh Holloway, Hugo Swinson, Callum Shimmin and Matthew Whittaker, all also Otago undergraduates, played in the 20-person under-24 open men’s team, Kea.
Ultimate frisbee is like “netball but with a frisbee- and you score in endzones”, says Hugo.
The students flew to Nottingham for the games in late July, just in time for a British heatwave.
A week-long training session in London before the competition to get used to playing as a team also helped them acclimatise to the heat as well as the time difference, says recent Zoology graduate Aliguna.
It was a major heatwave, and we were playing with buckets of ice on the sidelines - some days it got up to 36 degrees which was tough but getting to go to the Natural History Museum in the afternoon one day was amazing.”
The tauira prepared for the competition for months, with training camps across New Zealand.
Kārearea after winning the spirit award.
Aliguna says her highest and lowest moments both happened in the same match, against China, and when, perhaps unusually for a “high” moment, their team-mate Ella broke her leg.
The whole team was initially “so scared and upset”, she said.
“Ella was incredibly strong and after we called the ambulance, we all came together, talked with the team, and sang our waiata.
“The way the team was able to come together and cheer her up was so nice- and the Chinese team were amazing too.
It was a really special moment that came from something so scary.”
Hugo says ultimate frisbee is a great sport that had allowed them all to create “amazing” friendships and travel around the world.
“I would recommend it to anyone!”
Kōrero by internal communications adviser Alice Billington