Members of Stoned Clown and Chaos Theory will be able to show off their ultimate skills for the final time this fall at the annual Frozen Butter Ball (FBB) tournament.
The tournament will be played this Saturday on the Farley Fields, starting at 9 a.m. Named after the frozen turkey the winning team receives as a prize, the tournament is the capstone of the fall ultimate season and the final tune-up before the more competitive spring season.
"The goal of the FBB is to create a fun playing opportunity for the entire team as an end to our fall season," said Dylan Kane '12, organizer of the event. He has been working since mid-October to coordinate the tournament, devising a schedule, organizing teams, and working out logistics.
"Everyone is invited to attend, and there should be some good club teams, especially from around Portland," said Stoned Clown captain Adit Basheer '11. "It's always fun for us to square off against Colby and other schools, so the games [get competitive]."
As opposed to the usual single sex organization of college ultimate teams, FBB is a mixed tournament; teams play with coed lineups (either 4:3 or 5:2 men to women).
Bowdoin's two teams, Chaos Theory and Stoned Clown, form a combined Claos squad for the event, which is then broken into two teams of similar caliber.
"Because this tournament is mostly for fun and to end the fall season, we field teams differently than we would otherwise. We combine the 50-person men's team with the 50-person women's team to create two teams," said Basheer, "generally having one made up of seniors and sophomores and the other of juniors and freshmen, to give the seniors an edge."
"All the members of Chaos Theory will be playing, including over 15 girls who had never played Ultimate before joining the team in September," said captain Julia Littlefield '11.
A Bowdoin mixed alumni team, Old Fat Claos, will also compete.
Many teams wear unusual ultimate attire for the event.
"Our senior men wear suits and the ladies wear dresses, while another team dresses as gnomes," said senior captain Jonathan Coravos.
With 12 teams competing this year, Kane called it "an especially large year in terms of turnout from other teams."
This will include two each from Colby and Bates, one from UMaine-Farmington, the three from Bowdoin, and four local club teams composed of players in their 20s.
The clubs competing this weekend will be Damfast (from Damariscotta/Belfast), along with Portland's Dead Reckoning, Serial Swillers and Beehive.
Frozen Butter Ball is formatted as pool play, with the field split into four groups of three teams for round-robin play in the morning. Based on these results, the teams are seeded accordingly into brackets to play for the top prizes later in the day.
The winning team is awarded a frozen turkey that is usually donated to a local food bank.
"We usually drop it off at Midcoast Hunger Prevention on Monday," said Coravos. The main ultimate charity work, however, comes in the spring. The IM Socially Responsible tournament, a coed event for Bowdoin students, annually raises over $1,000 for ArtVan, a local nonprofit organization.
"We are really excited about the progress we've made as a team this fall and the enthusiasm and energy that everyone continues to bring to the fields," said Littlefield. "Frozen Butter Ball is a great way to wrap up such a positive semester."