Q: Question
RB: Bihun
WH: Houchins-Witt
Q: What is WINGS?
WH: It’s the Ultimate Frisbee club. It’s a great, non-contact sport. You throw the Frisbee around and hang out with friends. Sometimes, we have food.
Q: What do you see for WINGS’ future?
WH: Hopefully, I see WINGS winning a state tournament this summer or next. Whether that’s in Illinois or Iowa is yet to be decided. The high school state tournament always happens every summer, so we’re really interested in restarting it [after COVID.] We’ve been talking and it’s possible there’s interest in other schools in the state. If they make their own teams, then we can play against them, and that’d be awesome. We wish there was more interest in Iowa; we want to participate in more games outside of a cross-country versus WINGS game.
RB: To add to that, it would be really cool if we had a traveling team because, as he said, there’s not a lot of teams within Iowa. We [should] create a traveling team and basically just take over other states at this point. I see WINGS [taking over] Michigan, Minnesota, California, Missouri, all over. Canada, globally International, China, everywhere. We can definitely see ourselves in the Olympics pretty soon. That’s gonna be something to look forward to. A traveling team that could band together. Kind of like the superstar team.
WH: We all got our names on the back of the jerseys, so if we really wanted to travel around, we would have a home and an away jersey to play with.
Q: Do you have any good stories about WINGS?
WH: It’s worth mentioning that we have gotten kicked out of the HTRC twice now. And we want to practice inside because it’s not fun to play in the cold and in the wind. [Given that] we have gotten kicked out twice, the coordinator knows who we are and is watching out every time we show up. So if we want to continue over the winter, which I really want to do, we are going to have to find a way to get into the HTRC without paying. We don’t want to pay, but we also want to play inside, so we’ll figure it out.
Q: Can you tell me about playing against the cross-country team?
WH: The cross-country game was a huge success. We played against them on November 4 at the Rec Fields. There was no wind. Beautiful weather. There were lots of people there. We had 40+ people. We had food, and [we] had a great time. I had a lot of fun. WINGS won, but it’s not about winning. It’s about the fun that we have.
RB: I totally agree. It’s about the fun we had along the way. We could definitely see ourselves playing future matches with them because of how fun it was
Q: What is the best part about WINGS?
WH: I like the community around it. Everybody’s just there to have a good time. I also like [how it is] half of a real sport. It’s a real sport, but it’s not as competitive as other school-sanctioned sports are, so all the people are really nice. We always just smile and laugh the entire time.
RB: It’s more of a laissez faire sport. You can show up to the practices as you want to, and you can work it around your own schedule, which I think is super [important] for people who are in other sports. For people that are in soccer or cross country, they can come whenever they want. And another thing is the community. If you come [to] practice, you just become immediate friends with everyone. Everybody’s laughing [and] having a good time, so it’s all just a really good experience.
