Let’s Rage: Women’s ultimate frisbee team heads to nationals

For four years, Ella Morey ’26—known to her teammates simply as “Gumby”—entered each season saying the same thing: “This is the year. Rage is going to Nationals.”

Founded in 2007, Santa Clara University’s women’s ultimate frisbee club team, named Rage, spent the last decade as an underdog competing against larger schools. But this spring, during a tight pool-play tournament in Bakersfield, Rage clawed back from a deficit and clinched a 15-14 win, making Gumby’s four years of prophecy finally a reality.

“She was literally crying,” recalls co-captain Shea Mulqueeney ’26. “That’s been her dream since day one.”

It’s the first time that Santa Clara University has qualified for the USA Ultimate College Championships, and for a program that has grown through a commitment to inclusion and sheer force of spirit, it’s exactly the kind of moment the sport was made for.

‘The Spirit of the Game’

If you’ve never watched ultimate frisbee, here’s what you need to know: it’s fast, it’s athletic, and—unlike pretty much every other competitive sport—it’s entirely self-officiated. No referees. Players call their own fouls, resolve their own disputes, and hold each other accountable. In the ultimate community, this is called the Spirit of the Game, and it’s baked into everything.

“Going from soccer or basketball, where people often argue about fouls, ultimate just attracts very fair-minded, fun personalities,” says Chelsea Verhasselt ’11, who has coached Rage on and off since graduating.

It’s a philosophy that feels at home at Santa Clara, and it’s a big part of why Broncos keep finding their way to the field, even with zero disc experience.

“The team reached out to me on Instagram after they saw my post on the incoming freshman page,” says Mulqueeney, a former soccer player who was looking for a new sport since Santa Clara didn’t have a club team. “They said, ‘Hey, we see you played soccer; we get a lot of people from different sports backgrounds, so you should check us out’—and the team just seemed really fun and sweet.”

Part of what makes Rage feel less like a club team and more like a found family is the culture, and nothing captures that better than the nicknames.

Every year, veteran players bestow names on their rookies based on, as Mulqueeney puts it, “any mannerisms they have, something funny they did—it can literally be the most random things ever.”

Mulqueeney is Doc, for her uncanny ability to diagnose and care for her teammates’ injuries. Her co-captain, Nina Huaracayo ’27, was dubbed Froggy because she kept squatting to huddle for warmth inside a bright green sweatshirt during her first rookie tournament. The third captain, Elizabeth Delaney ’25, became Ladybug after she kept attracting the eponymous insects during a tournament—though, these days, everyone just calls her Bug.

“Honestly, we all kind of forget each other’s real names. Hearing my legal name out of a teammate’s mouth just feels wrong,” says Huaracayo.

Off the field, the team hosts Frisbee Fridays at the Mission Gardens—sometimes tossing a disc, but more often just hanging out—and there’s a frisbee house off-campus where players wander in and out.

For many, frisbee friendships are for life.

“I don’t remember what games I won and lost in college,” Verhasselt says, who played for Rage from 2007 to 2011, “but I still have my friendships from 15, 20 years ago.”

Two of her bridesmaids were teammates from her undergraduate days. She met her husband through the Bay Area frisbee community. And when she spotted a guy at a local rec league wearing a Santa Clara jersey a few years back? She introduced herself, and Declan Bernal ’23, aka Sparkles, mentioned he was going to coach Rage, and, well…

“That’s how I got suckered back in,” she says, laughing.

A division of their own

For all the spirit and skill that Rage nurtured over its roughly 20-year history, the road to Nationals couldn’t have happened without a small but impactful rule change.

When the sport’s governing body transitioned to USA Ultimate back in 2011, schools had to determine their division based on student enrollment. Just over the Division III threshold, Santa Clara was required to play in Division I despite being a small school whose team was mostly comprised of players new to the sport.

Last year, USA Ultimate raised the D3 enrollment threshold to 10,000 students, and Santa Clara finally had the opportunity to compete with schools of its own size instead of Goliath-like state schools with 30,000-50,000 students.

It quickly became clear that it was the right call at the right time.

“We were so hyped for our first D3 match, which was against Lewis & Clark College. One of our seniors, who’d been on the team since freshman year, said that it was the most high-energy tournament we ever had,” says Mulqueeney.

Since then, the three co-captains kept the team involved in decisions and strategy, which kept the energy and buy-in up the whole season. Plus, with 11 rookies this season, Rage’s 14 returning players bonded with them from the get-go and passed on crucial game skills, which the captains credit for their 12-3 record this year.

Now, after a spirited season, 23 players are flying to Waukegan, Illinois, just north of Chicago, for a three-day national championship tournament. Alumni in the Chicago area are already planning to show up, and one has even offered to lend the team coolers and camping chairs for the weekend. The broader Rage alumni network, meanwhile, has been buzzing ever since that final point dropped in Bakersfield.

“The second we won, our group chat was blowing up like: ‘We’re going to Natty’s!’” Verhasselt says. “This was the moment Rage alums had been waiting 15 years for.”

No matter how the tournament shakes out, for the 11 graduating seniors on the team, Nationals is a capstone. For the 11 rookies who have earned their stripes, it’s a preview of what’s possible. And for Gumby—well, she knew all along.