The clubs in the earth section are used to dealing with dirt, grime and dust on a normal basis. Whether they are sliding into home plate or running down a field trying to catch a Frisbee, these clubs know how to get down and dirty.

Ultimate frisbee

Catie Linton has been playing ultimate frisbee for only a year. In that time, she has immersed herself in the world of competitive ultimate frisbee. The problem is that while FAU has an ultimate frisbee club, they do not have a competing team — yet.

The club started as a way for students to get together to play games of pickup ultimate frisbee with their friends. They didn’t compete against other teams or schools and they didn’t travel off campus. All they needed was enough people for two teams, a Frisbee, and a field.

After joining the club last year, Linton spent the summer on a noncollegiate team in Miami. Now president of the FAU club, she is on a mission to turn it into a competing team.

“It’s a lot of fun, and pretty much every other college in the state of Florida has a competitive ultimate team,” said Linton, a junior biology major. “So I think it would be good for FAU to have a team that actually goes and competes and goes to tournaments with other schools.”

Besides a handful of players, none of the 25-plus students in the club has ever played ultimate competitively before. According to Linton, the transition is a tough one for many of the players.

“The hard part will be up until everybody actually goes and competes, making them realize why they are practicing. We’re doing drills and they’re saying, ‘We just want to play pickup,'” said Linton. “You can’t tell somebody the feeling that they’re going to have once they get to a tournament and they’re actually playing other colleges.”

However, since starting the move from only pickup games to tournament-style ultimate frisbee, there has been a definite improvement on the team.

“We can definitely see a change in the level of play and definitely the flow of the game because there used to be a lot of turnovers, which make the game super long,” said junior mechanical engineering major and club member Forrest Hannahs. “But now one team scores right away and then the other team works it down. It definitely has a lot more flow to it than it did before.”

Linton is hoping to have the club sign up with USA Ultimate, the national governing body of ultimate frisbee, by the spring semester. Once registered, it will be able to start competing with other schools in hopes of advancing to the collegiate sectionals.

What is ultimate frisbee anyway?

Ultimate frisbee, or just “ultimate,” is a hybrid sport of sorts, including elements from football, soccer and basketball. Here are some other features of the sport:

Seven players on a team

• A score is made by throwing the Frisbee to a teammate in the opponent’s end zone.

• In college tournaments, the first team to score 13 points wins.

• No refs are involved — fouls are called by players.

• Players have 10 seconds to pass the Frisbee to a teammate or it’s a turnover, and no hand-offs are allowed.

• A player can only move one foot while holding the Frisbee.

• If a pass is dropped, intercepted or thrown out of bounds, it’s a turnover.

Running Club

Kyoko Johnson joined the cross country team as a walk-on when she first got to FAU. After realizing that the practices and the constant traveling were too much to handle with her studies, the senior Jewish studies major started the Running Club as a way for students to compete without the time commitment usually associated with a school team.

Three and a half years later, the Running Club draws in new members weekly, ranging from beginners to more experienced athletes who ran track or cross country in high school.

The club not only holds practices for those interested in running but also pays the entry fees for FAU students who want to run in public races. According to Johnson, most of the races benefit local charities.

“As a member of the team, you can race for free, and we support a good cause,” said Johnson. “I find that very successful.”

Soccer Club: men’s team

Conrad Brethold has been playing soccer since he was a kid. But after trying out for the school’s soccer team and realizing it wasn’t for him, the senior architecture major joined the Soccer Club instead.

The club only started last spring semester, but there are already more than 30 students coming out to practices. While the club doesn’t have a set schedule for games this semester, it is hoping to have regular games in the spring through the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association, which is the governing organization over some club sports like soccer, volleyball and basketball.

Through the NIRSA, the club will try to qualify for regionals in the coming semesters.

“Hopefully we’ll be more organized and get things rolling before next fall,” said Brethold. “We’ll qualify for regionals, but right now I know we are not there.”

Soccer Club: women’s team

Two teams, one club — but not for much longer. The women’s team of the Soccer Club is breaking up with the men’s team and is heading its own way this semester.

After spending the spring term chained to the budget and practice times of the men’s team, the women’s team decided to form its own club, get its own coach, and ditch the joint practices. Club President Kristy Plaut is ready for the switch, but there are still a few problems that need to be ironed out before the change is official.

“We still get our budget together and then separate it between the two clubs,” said Plaut, a sophomore mechanical engineering major. “But other than that we’re no longer associated at all with them.”

Plaut’s next step, after completing all the required paperwork for starting a new club, is to start scheduling games through the NIRSA like the men’s team. She hopes that by the spring semester she can have everything ready for the team to start competing on a regular schedule.

Here are active clubs that can traditionally be found at most universities: