In the bitter cold of winter, frisbees have disappeared from the Diag, but they are still flying around Ann Arbor. The women’s Ultimate Frisbee club team, Flywheel, practices during the entire academic year.

The Wolverines started strong this year with a 16-0 record in the fall and won the Michigan Indoor Tournament in January.

The players practice indoors during the cold months in The Sports Coliseum and at Oosterbaan Fieldhouse to work on conditioning and improve their game. And it’s that year-round dedication that led Flywheel to a fifth-place finish at Nationals in Boulder, Colo., last year.

“We definitely deserved to make it to Nationals last year,” senior captain Nell Turley said. “We worked really hard and earned our spot. The team came together and played really well at the end.”

Martha Carlson, who has coached Flywheel for nine years, is a doctoral student at the University and traveled to Nationals in 2003, 2006, and 2008.

“I came to Michigan for graduate school,” Carlson said. “Flywheel was looking for a new coach, and since I had experience playing in college, they asked if I would help coach and now I am still here nine years later.”

There is a club A and a club B team, with three volunteer coaches heading the A team and two with the B team. Keely Dinse and Janet Jin also coach Flywheel.

“We have a lot of enthusiastic coaches this year, which makes a huge difference,” senior captain Emily Baecher said. “The team is much more dedicated this year because of the time put in by the coaches. They put in more time then they ever should.”

Ultimate Frisbee is becoming more popular around the country, and Michigan is no exception. Flywheel has a combined 32 players on the A and B teams this year.

“There are only some people that have done it before they come to college,” Turley said. “Ultimate Frisbee is great because it is something that anyone can pick up and succeed in.”

Flywheel has tryouts every year in the fall to find new talent. Tryouts for Ultimate Frisbee are different from other sports, because many people trying out have never played.

“Tryouts are really exciting,” Carlson said. “We look for raw athleticism, and the people that make the team are easy to teach because they are excited about sports. At tryouts, there is a ratio of one person who has played Ultimate to six people who have never played.”

The Wolverines will be playing on the road for the rest of the season. The next tournament for Flywheel is the Queen City Tune Up in Charlotte, N.C. on Feb. 14. Flywheel will play in four tournaments before sectionals, the first tournament of the postseason.

Flywheel lost two of its captains from last year, including the third-ranked player in the nation. Even with the losses, the Flywheel captains believe the team will again be a top contender at Nationals.

“We played above our expectations last year,” Baecher said. “Now we know that we can play with the best teams in the country and want to be a top contender at Nationals.”