You may have driven by them running on the grass as you sat in air-conditioned comfort. You may have heard them pack up for early morning tournament travel as you hit your snooze button.

Maybe you saw them grabbing a bite to eat on the weekend before heading out to compete again as you lounged at the pool.

Crazy, you say?

To the ultimate.

And they have formed a club that boasts 35-40 ISU students that play the game of Ultimate – a game that is played like soccer but with a Frisbee.

Jason Saienga, Vice President of the ISU Ultimate Club, said ISU students have been playing the sport for over a decade, but it began to reemerge within the last five years.

The rules of Ultimate are simple. The sport is played on a field with two end zones but with no yard markers.

There are seven players on each team.

The game is played with a Frisbee disc and each player passes it to another while trying to get the disc in the end zone.

Players must stand wherever they catch the disc and pass it to someone else without having it intercepted by the other team. The Frisbee may not hit the ground or possession is given to the opposing team.

Games are played to a score of 11, 13 or 15 and combine strategy with sport.

“It’s considered a non-contact sport, but it’s a given there will be some running into each other,” Saienga said.

Saienga got involved with the club after seeing a flyer on campus three-and-a-half years ago.

The team competes in tournaments around the Midwest and plays open teams in the fall.

It also competes against other college teams in the spring season.

Rankings and national tournaments are posted and run by an organization called the Ultimate Players Organization.

“We’re one of the better teams in Iowa,” Saienga said. “We’re ranked about in the middle nationally.”

This spring the club competed in tournaments in North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana.

They are funded partially by the Government of the Student Body, but the cost of travel and tournament fees can add up.

“We pay a lot out of our own pocket,” Saienga said. “But we don’t require a lot of equipment, so we don’t need a lot of funding.”

Usually 10-15 people make the trip to compete in a tournament. The teams can either be co-ed, or all women.

Currently, the club has eight women and is looking for more female members to start a full-fledged women’s team.

Rachel Derscheid, treasurer of the club, was asked to play by a friend and got hooked. Now she wants to get other women on board.

“At the beginning of last semester I put up flyers, asked people in my classes, and talked to everybody,” Derscheid said. “My goal is to get a women’s team and go to tournaments and play in the women’s competition.”

Derscheid said there are many advantages to the sport.

“It’s a great workout and you make a lot of friends,” she said. “You can put in however much time and work in it that you want. Some of our women like it for the camaraderie, others have a really competitive spirit.”

Ultimate Club President Kevin Seiler has been a member for almost five years.

“I got involved because the president of the club lived next door to me in the dorm and a lot of the guys played,” Seiler said. “It’s a fun thing to do – people start out liking it and then they start wanting to be competitive at it.”

Seiler said the Iowa State Ultimate Club is “constantly improving.”

“We hosted a tournament last fall that we placed second in,” he said. “We usually get first or second in the lower bracket. We’re a really good second-tier team.”

This weekend, the team will get a chance to strut its stuff locally. Saturday it will head to Pella to compete in a tournament and then plays in Ames on Sunday as a part of the Iowa Games.

As an inaugural event, teams from all over Iowa will make the journey to Ames to play six games on Sunday.

Home team fans are encouraged, Seiler said.

“Everything is open,” Saienga said. “We have practices during the week and we don’t restrict anything. We’re always looking for people to come out.”

The team also plans on hosting a tournament later this fall and again in the spring.

In the end, it is about having fun and competing, according to the club members.

“It fits a lot of different personalities and it’s a fairly easy game to teach,” Saienga said. “If you can run, you can learn how to throw.”