The ISU women’s ultimate frisbee team is heading into winter training with high hopes after wins at the Harvest Moon Tournament in Fayetteville, Ark., and at the Elephantitus Tournament in Grinnell, Iowa, this fall.

The women travel all over the Midwest for smaller tournaments in the fall. As spring rolls around, they tend to head out East for more competitive tournaments.

“Fall season is mostly for younger people to get to know the play, and the spring season is generally where we go to the farther away tournaments and play more competitive teams,” said junior Sarah Pesch. “Then we have our conferences to qualify for regionals and regionals to qualify for nationals.”

Women’s ultimate frisbee is a sport that is growing at a rapid pace throughout the country, Pesch said, who has also been the secretary for the club for the past two years.

“It seems to be more popular in the North,” Pesch said. “But it’s growing all over the U.S. It’s one of the fastest growing sports in the U.S. for college and high schoolers.”

The club that meets twice a week is preparing to head indoors at the Lied Recreation Athletic Center for winter training before heading back outside for spring tournaments.

“We’ll be practicing soon indoors in Lied doing mostly conditioning and working on fundamentals,” said junior Rebecca Miller. “But in the spring we have quite a few tournaments to look forward to.”

This spring, in order to prepare for nationals, the women will be participating in various tournaments around the country. Over spring break, the women’s team will head to the Carolinas for a tournament and to Texas for a pre-nationals tournament.

“The Texas tournament has about 50 women’s teams at it.” Pesch said. “It’s a lot like nationals, except earlier in the year.”

This year’s club team has a fairly equal balance of returning members and incoming freshmen willing to give the sport a try.

“We’ve got a lot of new talent, even for a team that placed 10th at nationals last year,” said coach Kevin Seiler.

Seiler was the coach of the 2011 spring competition season and is acting coach this year as well.

The women’s team has a long line of dominant performances. In the 2010-11 season, the women had eight top-10 finishes out of 12 tournaments in which they competed. Of those eight, the women placed first in two tournaments and placed 10th at nationals.

“A team goal would be to make it to nationals again like we did last year,” Pesch said. “Spring is pretty fun because we require 100 percent attendance policy for practices and workouts, so you really get to know the people who are committed and you spend so much time with those people.”

The team welcomes anyone who may have an interest in the sport.

“It really doesn’t take skill level to join. We welcome anyone who is interested,” Miller said. “A good way to start is by practicing throwing and catching.”