Every year the SUNY Cortland men’s and women’s frisbee teams join together for a week-long series of fun-filled frisbee tournaments called High Tide. It takes place during spring break in the beautifully sunny Myrtle Beach, SC making it the most highly anticipated tournament of not only the season but the whole year.
Carly Chardavoyne, president and co-captain of the women’s team, said in an interview how excited she is for the long-awaited High Tide tournament.
“I’m so excited to have even more fun playing frisbee since we’ll be on the beach and under the warm sun.”
Chardavoyne isn’t the only one beaming with excitement on this team, with most members starting countdowns as early as syllabus week. The school even gives the team rental cars to drive down together, which is an 11 hour trip. Although that seems a little rough, social media manager and cutter Hannah Johanssen had a different approach to the car situation commenting,
“I’m really excited to spend time with my teammates and really bond with them, especially in the long car rides, it always gets so silly. I love it!”
Players of both the men and women’s teams arrive in Myrtle Beach to a large beachside rental house for both teams to share for the upcoming week of tournaments. The headcount for High Tide 2024 is 10 women and 24 men, which will definitely make housing arrangements a bit of a challenge as the men’s team has always nearly doubled the women’s team in terms of their number of players.
The entirety of the tournaments are co-ed meaning they are played by teams made up of people from all genders, as well as not only teams from NY but from all over the United States, making this the biggest collaborative frisbee event of the year, every year. With it being as big of an event as it is, members of both teams see this as an amazing opportunity to make connections with other frisbee athletes from all over the U.S..
“Seeing all the other teams from all over the country is also so awesome, we only get to see each other once a year, so overall it is an amazing time,” said Carly Chardavoyne.
After an interview with a few members from the women’s team it was brought into public light thay in past years, not all but a good 75% of the men’s team tend to only pass to the male players, causing the women to not only feel under appreciated but flat out disrespected. It was highlighted that in previous co-ed meets and last year during High Tide tournament the men were extremely selective with who their passes were going to, with a vast majority never going to any women.
However, by the end of the interview many of the women expressed the feeling that this year that was not the case as many of them have formed strong friendships with some of the men.
Matches are played starting either Monday or Tuesday and not ending until Friday, the teams usually stay the weekend as a chance for both teams to bond before returning to campus to resume their spring semester.
During the 2023 High Tide after all the tournaments were done most of the members of both the Women’s Ultimate and Men’s Ultimate got different tattoos and piercings as another type of creative bonding experience, and truly a fun story to hear!