Sports enter the clubs atmosphere

Senior Teddy Sun flicks a forehand pass down the field.

With more than 60 clubs focusing in a range of activities from cooking to volunteering to advanced academics to quirky hobbies, it seems that sports clubs are nowhere to be found, especially with the diverse range of school sports teams.

Started at the beginning of this year by seniors Doug Jones and Spencer Goldman, the Ultimate Frisbee club has rapidly garnered interest, and has had many recent participants. Most Friday afternoons the team hosts an informal “pickup” game at school in which anyone is welcome to play.

“We get a huge turnout [at the Friday games],” Goldman said. “It generally seems to be the same people every Friday though.”

The club participated in its first competitive event at Lynbrook on Nov. 12 against Lynbrook and Gunn.

“[The other teams] were quite a bit more organized and had more people than us,” Goldman said.

However, he feels the game was a good experience for the club.

“Even though we lost, we learned a lot,” he said. “We learned a lot about the game and generally had a better game sense.”

The club hopes to pick up steam second semester and become more competitive by going to tournaments. Goldman and other club officers plan to go to a tournament in April, in which schools like Gunn and Bellarmine will compete. Goldman and Jones hope to get Binh-Young Tsao, a member of the marching band staff who played the sport at UCLA, to coach them.

“We’ll have actual practices and run actual plays instead of having random pickup games,” Goldman said. “We may have one big team with a lot of substitutes.”

For now, though, the club continues to relax and have fun.

“We’re kind of in between a club and a sport,” Goldman said. “Second semester we’ll be more of a sport.”

Another nascent sports club on campus is Squash Club, founded by sophomore Agastya Gupta.

The game is played in a four-walled court, as players smash a small ball against the walls with a racket.

“Squash is like physical chess,” Gupta said. “The game is based on strategic and tactical movements and simultaneously provides a great physical challenge found in the likes of tennis.”

With 31 members so far, Squash Club meets every other week at lunch on top of the weekly practice sessions to discuss techniques, tips and strategies for the upcoming sessions. Gupta markets his club by emphasizing how highly top colleges regard squash players. However, Gupta plays out of passion for the game.

“I started playing in the 6th grade and have fallen in love with the sport ever since,” Gupta said. “Even in high school with an extremely tight schedule, I still find time for squash because it’s a great way to relieve the stress of high school and doesn’t take up too much time in the process.”

In order to practice and teach squash to members of the club, Gupta holds practices every week at the Squash Club in Los Gatos. The club is convenient for students because it is only fifteen minutes away.

“The club has some of the finest international coaches including Gareth Weber, Yale squash coach, and Rahmat Khan, coach of squash legend Jahangir Khan, often referred to as the best squash player of all time,” Gupta said.

Gupta has high goals for the new club, and hopes to turn the growing squash club into an official team.

“I want to bring a great sport that I have loved for years to my peers here at Saratoga High School and in this revolutionary endeavor, take the lead in making the first squash team at a public school.”

Even though these clubs were created with the intent of bringing together casual sports players, the school may be seeing two new sports teams in the near future.