By Alex Baker
NEWARK, Del. – Sitting alone is 24-year-old Matt Norden. His table lies among a sea of others just like it. Textbooks open, laptops glowing, and earbuds in, students prepare for mid-terms just a few days before spring break.
Norden is no different, trying to get some study time in before ultimate frisbee practice. He’s no regular ultimate player though – he’s the B-team coach. “You only get five years of college eligibility, so I played my five years and since I have one more year left in my masters I decided to stay and coach,” said Norden.
Most university club sports teams have coaches to some extent, but Norden’s case is unusual. He is the B-team coach, the second-tier of club men’s ultimate. The team is broken down into A and B, with A committing more time to practice and having strict tryouts to narrow down the team. B boasts a much larger size, smaller practice requirements, but a still competitive team, making it a less demanding option for many interested students. “There’s probably close to 85 people in our organization as a whole,” said Norden. To recruit that many is no easy task. Norden says they like to take advantage of the Club Sports Fair held at the beginning of the semester, “We are very annoying, where like anybody that’s walking through, we’re like, “Hey come play ultimate!””.
The current men’s ultimate B team, also referred to as “Sideshow B”, is coming off a strong second place tournament finish on March 24. Looming ahead is the B team regional tournament, one that Sideshow hopes to win for the first time since 2014.
Perhaps the team’s biggest strength is their chemistry. “We want to get to know everybody on more than just how you are on the field,” said Norden, “We have a really fun team. It’s just an awesome group of guys.” The players live with each other off-campus and in dorms, hang out with each other in their free time, and practice together up to five times a week. They have nicknames like “Snaps” and “Veggie”. They travel to places like New York and the Carolinas many weekends to compete. For Norden, these experiences make all the difference.
At the end of his senior year of undergrad at Delaware, Matt Norden faced a decision every senior can relate with, “What’s next?”. Originally, the plan was to go to law school where he wanted to study environmental law. Yet, midway through his junior year something changed. “Law school is something you can’t go into with cold feet and I had very cold feet,” recalled Norden. So he switched it up. Norden took on an environmental studies major with a concentration in sustainability. He loved it. Green technology, sustainable development, urban planning – all things Norden realized he wanted to work with as a career. Come graduation, he thought he would work for a year and come back to school to get his master’s degree. Then he realized, you get five years of eligibility for club athletics, but it has to be consecutive.
Norden remembers telling his Dad his decision, “I remember my dad being like “You are such an idiot.” He asked me why I wanted my masters, I was like well, I want to play one more year of ultimate, my girlfriend was going to be a senior at the time, so I’ll hang out with her for one more year before she goes to grad school, and also I want to get my masters. And he’s like… “That’s the third thing you brought up?””
Now Norden is in the second and final year of his master’s, his sixth consecutive year at UD. “Ultimate is the big thing that drew me back here, cause I loved it and I didn’t want to give it up”, he noted. While his day job is studying energy and environmental policy as well as searching for jobs, by night Norden coaches Sideshow.
Before he took on a coaching role, Matt Norden played five years of college ultimate frisbee. Yet, it was before that when Norden was first introduced to the disc. In high school he recalls playing, “All throughout the fall, (cross country) practice started at 3, school ended around 1:55 so we would go from 2 to like 2:45 and just play ultimate every day and then go straight into cross country.”
At Delaware as Norden grew more familiar with the sport, he developed his own play style. “I liked having the disc in my hands,” he said. Norden played as a handler, someone who does a lot of the possessing of the disc, sort of like the quarterback of the team. He tried to play smart but also enjoyed the responsibility that came with the position. When he would give the disc away, he would play strong defense to try and get it back. Norden showed a hard, physical, and aggressive defensive style but not fouling. “There is a very fine line there, which I probably tiptoed in bigger games,” he joked.
When his eligibility expired last spring, Norden could have walked away from the team to focus on his career. Yet, he decided to stay and coach. Coaching has its hardships, as Norden notes, “I wish I was out there. Like, I’m 24 years old, I’m not that much older than most of these guys so it sucks knowing I could totally still play.” But it also has its rewards, “When I see something we go over in practice, and the exact same thing happens in a game and we do it right, it’s awesome,” Norden said. “Some of the younger guys who when I was a senior, they were the freshman and now they are the captains of the team. It’s really cool to watch them grow, and know that next year when I graduate and I’m away from the program, they are still in really good hands”.
As the weather warms, leaves turn green, and tour groups crowd the campus it’s a sure sign of spring, and graduation, at the University of Delaware. Matt Norden plans to leave Newark for a new challenge, but where he goes, ultimate frisbee will follow. Back home in New York, Norden plans on continuing his playing career by trying out for a few local club teams. Yet he will always remember his time with at UD with Sideshow, “Going to practice, getting to know people, it made the walk to class better. It’s something that made a really big school feel like a really tiny school for me”.
Photo Credit: Matt Norden