For Tibbs, McLaughlin, frisbee is the ultimate

Spencer Tibbs played tennis at La Cueva. Jade McLaughlin played basketball and ran track at Eldorado, then played rugby at UNM.

But after that, what? For post-scholastically scratching that athletic itch, what’s the ultimate?

Frisbee?

You betcha.

Tibbs and McLaughlin are members of the Fort Collins shame. (small s, period at the end), a national champion ultimate frisbee team — they and others who play the game prefer to simply call it ultimate — with strong Albuquerque ties. In October, they and their teammates flung, ran, leaped and caught their way to the 2023 USA Ultimate mixed-division club title in San Diego.

McLaughlin, named the 2023 Mixed Division Player of the Year by Ultiworld, said in a phone interview that she loves ultimate not only for what it is on the field, a challenging and exciting test of skill and athletic prowess, but for how it has expanded and enriched her circle of friends.

“Hands down, the community is what keeps you coming back,” she said. “You just get so close, playing tournaments on the weekend, staying together, hanging out, socializing … working hard and trying hard for each other.”

For Tibbs, ditto.

“Really, what drew me to this sport was the people, the camaraderie, the spirit,” he said. “Really, it’s rare to find a sour person amongst all the frisbee players. They’re all pretty nice people.”

Pretty nice is an understatement when evaluating shame.’s 2023 season, which ended with a 28-1 record.

It was not, McLaughlin said, always that way.

“It did take us plenty of time to finally be successful,” she said. “We made it to nationals a number of years, and we finally kind of pulled it together with a little bit more organization than we’ve had in the past.”

In previous years, Tibbs said, “We did well to a certain point, then we’d crash against a team that had developed strategy, that had structure, and we didn’t have that structure. We just threw the disc far and relied on our athleticism to get there.

“I think this past year or two we started developing a structure, developing a game plan, strategy that worked with our athleticism. When you do that, we’ve crushed teams.”

Still, it’s more the creative side of the sport, McLaughlin said, that she revels in.

“Compared to the other sports that I’ve played, there’s a lot of creativity,” she said. “It’s interesting, because some teams play with a very strict strategy and I think our team plays a little bit looser.

“It’s more like kind of just reacting to what the defense is doing and making decisions on the fly, which I prefer personally, to teams that play really strict strategies.”

The always-growing sport of ultimate has taken Tibbs, McLaughlin and their teammates all over the United States and to foreign countries as well. They’ve competed in Amsterdam, at the appropriately named Windmill Tournament, and have booked flights for a trip to Japan next spring.

Mostly, expenses for such trips are on their own dime.

Tibbs lives in Denver and works as an engineer for a construction company. McLaughlin lives in Albuquerque and is a field biologist, research scientist and teacher.

“It’s all kind of out of pocket,” Tibbs said. “Hopefully that will change, maybe, but, again, it’s really worth it.”

There are professional ultimate frisbee leagues, and McLaughlin has competed professionally/semi-professionally in women’s ultimate for the Arizona Sidewinders and the Colorado Alpenglow.

“They (pro teams) pretty much pay all your expenses to play, and then you get a very small income,” she said. “It’s not enough money to quit your day job or anything like that. But the nice thing is, you’re not paying for travel or hotels or any of that, which is great.

“When we play club, that’s all out of pocket, on us.”

Players like Tibbs and McLaughlin are free to play as professionals and with club teams like shame.. With professional ultimate still in its toddler stages, McLaughlin said, club competition remains the — yeah, that’s right — ultimate challenge for most players.

“The national (club) championship is pretty much the highest level right now,” she said. “… Not all of the best athletes necessarily will play pro, but pretty much all of them play club.”

With McLaughlin living in Albuquerque, Tibbs in Denver and other shame. players living in Fort Collins or elsewhere, one might think team chemistry could be a problem. Though team members do meet for practice weekends from time to time, Tibbs and McLaughlin said they all know the game and each other so well that they simply pick up where they left off when tournament time arrives.

“It’s easy to reconnect every time,” McLaughlin said. “… We’ve known each other for so long, it just comes right back together again.”

In addition to Tibbs and McLaughlin, shame. players from Albuquerque include Alex Daniels, Marilyn Reich, Kasey Anderson and Matt Russell.