Training with Korfball

The Saint investigates the nicher corners of St Andrews sport

With over 50 clubs and 100 competitive teams to choose from, St Andrews offers just about every sport you can think of. From cheerleading to clay pigeon shooting, parkour to polo, there are plenty of lesser-known sports that deserve some attention. To find out about some of the more obscure clubs that the university has to offer, I spoke to Charlie Glover and Elsa Davies, who play Ultimate Frisbee and Korfball, respectively.

Glover, a fourth-year student, came to university intending to play football, but after meeting the Frisbee club’s captain, he decided to try something new. Frisbee, as Glover found out, has several quirks that make it stand out from other sports. For example, the club attends lots of mixed-gender tournaments and most of its socials are also mixed, which has helped create a close-knit community across teams.

Ultimate Frisbee is also one of the few competitive sports without a referee. According to Glover, this forces teams to be respectful of each other. “I think this ‘spirit of the game’ spills over into the rest of the sport to create a super fun atmosphere”, he said, also describing the sport as a very welcoming space for newcomers, with many of the current players having started the sport while at university.

Ultimate Frisbee isn’t just a place to meet friends and joke around — they are one of the most successful clubs at the university. In recent years, both the men’s and women’s teams have consistently ranked among the top two in Scotland, with the women placing second in the UK on two occasions.

Glover credits part of this success to the number of American students on the team, as the sport is much more popular across the pond. Perhaps he was being modest, though, as a lot of effort goes into these achievements. The competitive teams train four times a week, and players are encouraged to go to the gym to hone their technique in their free time. While the development squad is a fun and welcoming place to learn a new sport, being on the competitive squad requires a considerable commitment.

Korfball, often shortened to Korf, is another niche sport in the seemingly endless list of sports societies at the university. Like Frisbee, both matches and socials are mixed, and there is an emphasis on fostering a warm, beginner-friendly atmosphere. This was what appealed to third-year student Elsa Davies, who had been looking to join a sports club for some time. She wanted to try a team sport which had a more friendly feel than the sports she had tried growing up, which led her to Korf.

This is only Davies’s first semester with the group, but so far she is thoroughly enjoying all the “weird rules” of the sport. When I asked her what exactly those rules are and what exactly Korf is, she struggled to answer, so I decided to find out for myself.

Last week, I turned up to a session and had a go at Korf, and I now understand why she struggled to describe it to me. Essentially, the court is split into two, and half of each team plays on each half. One team attacks and the other defends, and the attackers are aiming to throw the ball into a netball-esque basket, or Korf (meaning basket in Dutch). This Korf is three and a half metres in the air, and, however high that sounds, I promise it is double what you have in mind. With all my athletic prowess, I managed to score a total of zero goals. Mercifully, all Korf players, Elsa included, brandish the same encouraging fact every time you miss. “Don’t worry, only 20% of shots in international matches go in,” she cheered, as my shot hit a spectator.

I may have been hopeless at Korfball, but the rabbit hole of unusual sports goes far deeper. Perhaps next time I’ll find out just how bad I am at Aikido, whatever on earth that is.