Ultimate Frisbee players from across Ithaca are preparing for the Ithaca Area Ultimate Aliance Beach-Style hat tournament. All proceeds from the events will fund the Lehman Alternative Community School’s Hurricane Katrina relief trip.
Else Clavel, a student from LACSBy Annie Uhle and Taylor Zambrano
participating in the trip to New Orleans, said every year, students from her school go to New Orleans to help rebuild houses and clean up the area. Even after 11 years, the area is still recovering and needs a lot of help.
“There’s been a rotational group going down of students and staff to try and involve themselves in helping to rebuild just whatever we can. We have a contact down there named Pastor Bruce,” Clavel said. “We pay for transport and buy supplies to help paint houses and work on porches and I guess basic community service.”
Players each pay $10 to participate in the hat tournament. Their names are then placed into a hat, mixed up and teams are picked at random. Since the game will be played beach-style, the games will only be five players vs. five players.
Else’s father, Pierre Clavel, is highly involved in both the LACS community and IAUA. He explained that the IAUA was trying to organize an Ultimate tournament and they saw this as a perfect opportunity to help LACS raise money as well. It was a win-win situation for all parties involved.
“I thought ‘oh! I’m spending all this time and energy on bake sales. Why don’t we do a tournament and I can play Ultimate instead of baking cookies,’” he said. “Ideally, for our group and for LACS, it seemed like a great opportunity to partner up.”
Frank Adelstein, another organizer of the IAUA, said the alliance sometimes has an upwards of over 200 people sign up for their league, with the players ranging in age and skill level. He said some years are a little bit more competitive than others, but the atmosphere still remains fun.
“We try to emphasize the fun as opposed to cut-throat winning,” Adelstein said.
Pierre Clavel said he is expecting about 40 players to register. This means the teams would be organized into about four teams of ten players, which gives everyone adequate playing time and opportunities to take breaks. He hopes that teams from the surrounding area including Ithaca College and Cornell University will sign up as well.
“We’ll feel fairly successful if we get more than 60, and we’ll feel great at 80 and phenomenal at 100,” Clavel said. “Ideally, this will be a tournament that we will repeat every single year from now until whenever.”
Clavel said that the group plans to sell food at the tournament as well — hot dogs, hamburgers, etc. — to help raise even more money to fund the Hurricane Katrina Relief trip.
Else Clavel said the trip is extremely important to both New Orleans and the LACS community because it isn’t just about the money, but also about the involvement in activities like building houses and becoming more aware as students.
“That’s actually the best thing about our school, is we expect kids to [not just] get a grade point average, because we don’t do that, or spend every day taking tests,” she said. “We want them to learn outside of the classroom and outside of high school, and continue to grow as people in a way that will help the world.”
Players are expected to abide by the rules and play in the spirit of the game as there is no referee in Ultimate. As for the specific style of play, the players will play to a time limit rather than a point limit, and instead of having 10 seconds to throw the disc, players now only have seven. However, most other rules will remain the same.
The tournament will take place on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Ultimate enthusiasts looking to play and support a great cause can sign up on the IAUA website.
