It’s a rainy Thursday afternoon, a day most high-school students would much rather spend indoors than running around outside in the cold mud. But on this particular day, a number of Community High School students have made their way to Northside Elementary School to participate in one of Community’s most popular sports, Ultimate Frisbee.

In the 2010-2011 school year, Community boasted one of the top Ultimate Frisbee teams in the Metro Detroit area. The team featured ten seniors who had been playing together for years. They possessed a combination of raw athleticism and knowledge of the game that led them to a very successful season.

Although those days of dominance were just a few months ago, anyone watching the 2011-2012 installment would have trouble imagining it. The 2011 team features just one senior, head coach and team captain Oliver Hill. In addition to the lack of seniors, the numbers are down and about half the team is new to the sport, making it difficult to compete with other teams.

“It’s definitely a bit of a down year for us,” Hill said “We lost a lot of talent, I mean [last year’s players] were just amazing.” At practice, the sudden change of pace becomes apparent even during the warm-up drills, as new players are taught basic fundamentals by the veterans. According to Hill, the majority of practice in past years would have been spent focusing more on strategy, “It’s less exciting just working on the basics, but hopefully we can work on some strategy soon.”

The cause of the sudden decrease in size and interest is a mystery to Hill, “I guess people just aren’t as excited about playing Frisbee as they used to be.” Hill went on to also cite other sports as a cause for small numbers, “Community has some crazy good athletes, but a lot of them are committed to other sports, and that definitely doesn’t help us.”

As a fourth-year player, Hill has had to adjust to the change in culture on the team, “It’s not as fun as last year,” Hill said “I mean last year we were so good, and so exciting.” Despite the tedium of having to teach the basics, Hill has learned to embrace his role as team leader, “Getting to teach [the players] all that I know is kind of fun, and being able to watch them improve is pretty cool.” Hill says that many players have already shown great improvement, leaving him optimistic for the rest of the season.

While this year’s team is still trying to fill the large shoes left by last year’s seniors, there are many good signs for the future. This team features a large number of devoted freshmen, the most, in fact, since the class of 2011 were freshman. But beyond numbers, the true sign of hope for this team comes as the team breaks into scrimmage. The field is suddenly filled with lively chatter and laughter only found when true fun is being had. For even as another cool, fall shower comes pouring down, the Ultimate Frisbee team simply can’t get enough.