Marquette’s men’s club ultimate frisbee — colloquially known as Birdhouse — is flying high heading into the second round of postseason play.
The team advanced to regionals, but its members said their best is yet to come, due to not participating in regular season tournaments during the spring semester.
“We definitely underperformed (in the first round of postseason) on the account of not being in any regular season tournaments, that hurt us a lot,” Robbie McChesney, a junior in the College of Health Sciences, said. “We still got the job done, made it to the next round, a lot of growth in that last tournament.”
The team finished fourth in the first round on Apr. 13 and 14, defeating UW-Whitewater, UW-Stevens Point and Northern Michigan in the two-day tournament.
They also fought through some adversity along the way, falling to UW-Eau Claire, UW-La Crosse and two close defeats to UW-Milwaukee, including in the third-place championship game.
Evan Frias, who has served as a manager this season after tearing his ACL this past summer, said heading into the next round of playoffs, the team wants to focus on limiting turnovers and preparing for the wind.
“Learning from our mistakes, it’s a lot of concentration things, dropped discs, not catching it with two hands,” Frias, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences, said. “We always want to make the flashy play, and sometimes the flashy play isn’t the good play.
“Making sure that we have our fundamentals down, we can throw our ‘arounds’, and being able to throw in the wind. That’s going to be really important for us if we want to make a push.”
Senior team captain Luke Marciniak, who didn’t join the team until his sophomore year, said the team prides itself on a strong sense of community.
“I like to think of it as a brotherhood. When I joined, I didn’t know anyone on the team, over these couple years that I’ve played, I’ve gotten to know everyone on the team,” Marciniak, a senior in the College of Engineering, said. “Once you walk in and join the team, give it a few weeks and it feels like everyone has known each other for a while. When new guys come, they mesh really well, and we have a lot of fun.”
As the team gears up for the regional playoffs on April 27 in Des Moines, Iowa, Frias said the ability to perform under pressure will be a factor against larger collegiate teams.
“It’s making sure we have all of our fundamentals down, so when we get into those crunch-time situations, everything is automatic,” Frias said. “We know where each other is going to be, so when we’re playing those great teams like Minnesota and Carlton, we are confident in our abilities and can pull off an upset.”
Birdhouse’s rallying cry of “House is Home” is featured on the back of their jerseys, ensuring that a close-knit community forged through ultimate frisbee is the main priority — no matter the outcome of their games.
“It’s a family before anything,” McChesney said. “Even if we didn’t win a single game this season, we’d still have that team camaraderie. Everyone buys into that, which is great.
“Just understanding that as much as we give each other a hard time, it’s all out of love. It’s great being on a team and hanging out with this group of guys.”
This article was written by Mikey Severson. He can be reached via email at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @MikeySeversonMU
