Amid division and isolation, an Ultimate Frisbee group in Lincoln offers connection

A few years ago, Emily Rau decided she needed friends.

Rau had moved to Lincoln in 2014 for graduate school at the University of Nebraska. By 2021, most of her fellow students had left town, but she stayed and took a job as a professor with the university’s library.

“I was like, ‘OK, I need to make some friends that aren’t grad students,’” Rau said. 

Around that time, two co-workers invited her to a longstanding pickup game of Ultimate Frisbee at Lincoln’s Antelope Park. Though she had never played before, Rau quickly became a regular and made friends. But she discovered something else: a community who would support her during one of the most difficult periods of her life.

In 2022, Rau was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her family was far away, back in New Jersey, and she lived alone in an apartment. “It was really easy to just lock the door and not talk to anyone,” she said.

But Rau kept playing Frisbee, even during the worst phases of her treatment. When she underwent a double mastectomy, a friend from Frisbee agreed to feed her cat. Rau returned and discovered the friend, with help from other Frisbee regulars, had decorated her apartment.

“They printed little messages over photos of themselves, and she hung them up all over my apartment. So when I came home, I was surrounded by all these little encouraging and heartfelt messages,” Rau said. “It was so personal and really represented to me how important this community of people had become in my life.”

For Rau and many others, Ultimate at Antelope has become more than just a pickup game. It boasts members of all ages, genders and backgrounds; multiple couples have met while playing. And despite comings and goings over the years — none of the original members still play — the group has persisted as a strictly informal organization since the 1990s. Its longevity is striking, particularly in an era where civic participation has declined and rising rates of loneliness and isolation have become a public health concern.

“It’s just a really interesting microcosm of society,” said Katie Nieland, a local artist who has played with the group since 2013. “How do people that would probably have never met before work together to build something sustainable for 30 years?”

Great chemistry

Let’s get one thing clear: Ultimate Frisbee and disc golf are two different sports. It’s a widespread misconception, said Nick Spintig, a longtime player.

“The most common shared experience among anybody who’s ever played ultimate is that they’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, I like to play Ultimate Frisbee,’ to somebody. And they’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, that thing with the little baskets that you throw the Frisbee into?’”

There are multiple levels to the sport, including collegiate and professional leagues. Proponents have even lobbied unsuccessfully for its inclusion in the Olympics. Ultimate at Antelope represents the sport’s more casual side, where the focus is on enjoying the game and welcoming players of all skill levels.

Spintig, who has played with the pickup group for over a decade, first got into the sport in the late 2000s as a student at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He moved to Lincoln in 2010 and soon started playing in the local competitive league, the Lincoln Ultimate Disc Association. A few years later, he met players from the pickup group when they registered together as a team.

“I was just like, ‘Oh, this team, they’re all Ultimate at Antelope pickup players. They’re probably not going to do very well in the league,’” Spintig said. “But as we started to play, I was like, ‘Oh, these people look like they’re having a lot of fun.’”

Spintig’s impression of the players and their chemistry stuck with him. A few years later, a woman he was dating suggested they check out the group together.

“That’s the origin story of Nick at Antelope,” he joked.

A welcoming group

Ultimate at Antelope players will try to recruit you. They will ask almost anyone to play, even a journalist writing a story about the group. Some members joke that it’s a cult.

Jim Brodhagen, who first started playing in 2005, said the group established a rule that if someone at the park showed any interest, they would invite them to join. And they would make sure to include them, which doesn’t always happen in team sports with lesser-skilled players.

“If we brought someone in who had never played before — just from the park or maybe it was their first day showing up — everyone on the team would make a point to throw the disc to them,” he said.

When Brodhagen joined, there were 20 or so regular players — usually enough for two teams of 10. 

“If it’s a Husker game day, we’d only get about half,” he said.

The group has grown over the years. Spintig, who does a lot of the administrative work necessary to keep things running, estimates that there is probably a pool of 50 to 60 people who show up on a semi-regular basis — though not all on the same day. On a Saturday in mid-March, they had 21 players, enough for three evenly matched teams.

Creating a welcoming environment hasn’t always been easy. On rare occasions, a player’s style or personality will clash with the rest of the group. COVID-19 also posed a challenge, as the group had to navigate whether or not to require masks. (They ultimately put such questions to a vote.)

“It’s not an easy thing to build community,” Nieland said. “It takes, like, establishing norms and sometimes having difficult conversations and reaching out to people when we don’t see them for a while.”

For those who do stick around, the group provides support and friendship. Rau opted out of reconstruction surgery, partly because she would have had to spend almost a year recovering. She didn’t want to stay away from Ultimate at Antelope that long — the group meant too much to her.

“They saw me first get the diagnosis. They saw me lose all my hair, saw me being pretty frail,” Rau said. “Then coming back with this huge body and identity-altering surgery and they all just rolled with it.”

Consistency is key

At 65, Todd Paddock, a retired sociology professor, is the oldest regular member of the Ultimate at Antelope. He has been playing Ultimate Frisbee almost continuously since 1992, and started with the pickup group in 2019.

But it doesn’t matter how young or inexperienced a player is, he said. The group has, at times, included children as young as 10.

“We’ve had kids just start playing with us,” he said. “And we always make sure that when they’re in the game that they have a disc thrown to them.”

Paddock has played in other cities and states. Lincoln’s pickup group stands out, he said, because there is always a game (as long as the weather permits).

“You’d wait around and hope enough people showed up to play, and maybe it didn’t happen,” he said of other places he has lived. “But here, they’re so consistent.”

Spintig said he has heard from some Ultimate at Antelope players who have gone elsewhere and tried to join a local pickup game.

“They show up and the people who have always played there start playing without introducing themselves, and it’s like, ‘Why would I join this group and continue to come?’” he said.

Rau said the Ultimate at Antelope group does its best to leave potential sources of conflict off the field and maintain a welcoming climate.

“It really doesn’t matter if you’ve never thrown a Frisbee in your life,” Rau said. “If you wanna come out and you wanna give it a try, you’re welcome on the field.”