Ultimate Frisbee Does Sin City

When Bianca A. Verma ’10, captain of Team Quasar, says she plays “Ultimate,” she isn’t kidding. Two weeks ago Red Line and Quasar—the men’s and women’s Ultimate Frisbee A teams for Harvard, respectively—went all the way to Las Vegas to play in the annual “Trouble in Vegas” tournament. Both teams played well, but when the tournament was canceled due to freak rainstorms, they had a chance to show that more than their frisbee game could be ultimate.

Extremely disappointed at their tournament’s abrupt end, the teams soon realized what thousands of tourists, misfit best friends, and Katy Perry have realized before them: when there’s time to kill and nothing of interest for thousands of miles, the bright lights and dark clubs of The Strip beckon.

After checking in to the Tropicana, some members of Red Line played poker in the Excalibur. Later, the teammates each put $6 towards a well-equipped room in Caesar’s Palace where they watched the Super Bowl. “I thought a Jacuzzi bath would be nice,” said Alex Y. Yang ’10, captain of the Red Line team.

As the Nevada sun gave way to Vegas’ famous fluorescent lights, those members of the women’s team over 21 were given wristbands for free beverages in Treasure Island, and some “lost track of time” with a bachelor party in the Luxor. “We felt like we were sort of thrown into the big, bad world in some way,” said Verma. “There were definitely a lot of hangovers, a lot of fun.”

Not to be one-upped by bachelor parties, three players on the men’s team aimed a bit higher. Having set their sights on Vegas’ crown jewel, they waited in an elevator in the Bellagio until they were able to hitch a ride to the 35th floor. From there, they took a service-only elevator to the 36th and finally snuck into a UCSD frisbee party in the Bellagio’s Penthouse Suite.

But, of course, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. “It’s the kind of thing you could never experience in Cambridge because, in the end, well...it’s Cambridge,” said Yang.