A New Face for our Ultimate Club

This year is a new year for the Lions Ultimate Frisbee team. Senior players graduated, and new Grade 12 players started to be the leading players of the team. They hope to bring the team to a new achievement and They have the ambitions to win the BCOS Championship or even the first place in Shanghai Youth Open tournament. However, they aren’t reckless and only dreaming about these goals. Instead, they started to train themselves to improve their stamina in games so that they will have greater possibilities to easily win the games.

Thinking about the Past

Last year, the Lions had a great chance to win a good place in the Shanghai Youth Open tournament. In the first game of the tournament, they played against SUIS Wanyuan, which was a very strong team. The Lions didn’t beat them for even once last year when they were playing in a series game of Shanghai High School League. They started the game with such fierce offense that the SUIS team was surprised and couldn’t manage to organize an efficient defense. The game went into the half with seven 7-2, five points leading for Lions. They thought they could finally win that game. However, during the second half of the game, they got tired, so they couldn’t maintain their high level of offense and SUIS started to move back. At last, the Lions lost by 7-9, meaning they didn’t goal even one point during the second half. After the game, the players concluded that the problem was that they got tired too quickly, thus, resulting in them losing.

Starting the New Year

At the beginning of the year, the players talked to the captain of the team to discuss the possibility to have regular stamina training for the team. Finally, they decided to have stamina training every Tuesday and Thursday. Each time during the training, they run a lot. Don’t think running is easy! In each set, they are required to run 200 meters in 25 seconds. If they can’t finish within the time limit, the set will not be counted as completed. Everyone is required to finish ten sets every time they have training. Doing ten sets isn’t easy for every one of them to finish as it always turns out to be 20 sets or even more. During the first couple of training, there were players who couldn’t bear how bad the training made them feel and even cried. However, they still persisted to complete the running practice, which not only improved their stamina but also built their resilience. The stamina training had some immediate positive outcomes. At the Sports event, which was held two months after they started the training, there were many Ultimate players who participated in different running events and they all broke their best record.

This year’s Shanghai High School League is going to begin soon. The Lions Ultimate team will maintain the spirit of challenging themselves not only in daily training but also in competitive games. They will finally be the best High School team ever.

by Jason Ji