The disc floats in the air, a slight breeze keeping it aloft, just long enough for Newton South junior Ben Michalman to run under it and grab it. It’s a goal for the Lions! And a sorely needed one for South’s varsity ultimate frisbee team, who are trailing Beaver Country Day on this warm and windy spring afternoon.

Michalman celebrates with his teammates, high-fiving them as they come onto the field. Cheers go up from the sidelines of South’s Winkler Stadium, too, where a small group of South parents stand watching the game.

It’s a small moment in a long season. The Lions have won some games and lost a few more, but every contest feels special because after years of effort, South’s ultimate program is finally on a solid foundation. And the future is looking bright.

“We have definitely been doing better than last season,” says senior captain Thayer Bialek. “There’s a lot more of a team connection, and being a second year sport, there’s a lot more camaraderie amongst the players.”

Though students at South had been playing ultimate frisbee since the early 1990s, the sport was treated as an informal club for most of those years with little direct oversight by the school. That changed last spring, when, after two years of advocacy by players, their parents, and community members, the Newton School Committee voted to make ultimate frisbee a varsity sport at Newton South.

Achieving varsity status has helped the team gain access to resources—like school-issued uniforms, regular field space, buses to away games, and a stipend for a head coach—that were not available when it was a club. It has also provided certainty for a program that, for years, had none.

“Being a captain of this team has really been more about promoting a community and building up team traditions since we haven’t had any to carry over,” says captain Thayer Bialek. (c) Burt Granofsky/Newton Beacon

“Being a captain of this team has really been more about promoting a community and building up team traditions, since we haven’t had any to carry over,” says Bialek. Those new traditions have included team dinners and events celebrating the seniors on the team.

He adds that when it was a club, “it was kind of a toss up whether people would show up.” But as a varsity team, “everyone is showing up every day, 100 percent, committed to improving skills.”

And “everyone” is a lot of players. This year’s varsity team has 22 players. There are another 16 players on junior varsity. The team is a blend of upper classmen—some of whom are new to ultimate—and an especially strong group of freshmen and sophomores, who began playing the sport at Brown Middle School, which has an established ultimate frisbee program.

“The attitude of the team is fantastic,” says head coach Jono Korn. “They care a lot about growth.”

In coaching South, Korn is returning to familiar ground. He is a 2003 graduate who played ultimate during his years at the school, following in the footsteps of his two older brothers. As a player, he remembers traveling to tournaments without any direct involvement or financial support from the school. The team was around 15 players then, made up of a few players who knew how to play ultimate and their friends.

“It’s nice to go back to my alma mater at this stage of the program’s development to help shape and rebuild it,” he says.

Ben Michalman celebrates with a teammate after grabbing a score. (c) Burt Granofsky/Newton Beacon

Going from an informal club to a varsity sport required lots of community involvement and persistence.

“When we came here in ninth grade, there was no official program,” says Hilary Bialek, Thayer’s mother. She was part of a group of parents  who “worked together to write letters to the administration, to talk to the athletic department, to speak to the principal” in favor of establishing a varsity ultimate team.

Though parental involvement helped generate community momentum for the change in status, Bialek credits South students with really moving the process forward. Players educated the school’s athletic department about ultimate. They recruited potential teammates at club fairs. And perhaps most importantly, they made their case in front of the Newton School Committee.

Kaelan Hou, now a freshman at Wheaton College, was one of the players who spoke before the School Committee. He remembers leaning on ultimate’s differences from other conventional sports as he tried to make the case for varsity status.

“Ultimate frisbee is a really unique sport in the sense that it’s a lot about community,” he says. “Calls within the games are made by the players. There’s a lot of integrity and sportsmanship involved in that.”

In spring 2024, the group had recruited enough players to revive the club and have an actual season with games and practices. When two parents—one, a teacher at South—offered to lead the team that season, it gave the club a veneer of legitimacy that it had previously lacked.

Then, that November, more than 65 students responded to an athletic department survey saying that they would be interested in playing ultimate frisbee if it was offered as an official sport.

In Bialek’s mind, everything was coming together for a varsity program. When Korn offered to coach the team, one of the key pieces fell into place.

“We presented this whole package”—including a coach and a core group of players—"to the school and School Committee so it was an easier process for them,” she says.

South players smile ahead of a game against Beaver Country Day on May 12, 2026. (c) Burt Granofsky/Newton Beacon

On February 10, 2025, the community’s hard work paid off: the School Committee voted to recognize ultimate frisbee as a varsity sport at South. A new team was born.

Having a varsity ultimate team “has really made [Thayer’s] whole high school experience more enjoyable,” says Bialek. And Hou says that playing on a team with actual coaches prepared him for what it would be like to play in college.

“I’ve always thought of myself as a good player, and I think I know what’s going on,” he says. “But it definitely helped me learn how to listen better to coaches.”

Back on the field, today’s game is not going well for the Lions. South’s offense sputters in the windy conditions and Beaver is able to capitalize again and again, stealing the win on the Lions’ home turf. Final score: Beaver 15, South 7.

“That was a rough one,” says Korn afterwards.

But blips like this happen in the midst of a long season. Time to review some offensive sets at practice, work on the fundamentals, and look ahead to the next game. That’s what varsity teams do.