As the midpoint of the first semester passes, the UNC Wilmington men’s ultimate club team is preparing for their first tournament of the season. The Seamen have been on campus since 1988 and, while fairly successful in their own right, have not won a national championship since 1993, something they’ll look to change this year.

“Last year we made regionals, but we didn’t win our section, and that was our primary goal,” said team captain Trueman Nottingham. “After making it to regionals, we ended up losing, and so we have a pretty big chip here on our shoulders trying to work hard and make up for last year’s failures.”

Although the club team won a few small tournaments, their eyes are set on the big prize that they have been striving for since 1993-recapturing the national championship.

“We lost a lot of seniors this year and we’ve got about 20 or 25 new guys on our team,” Nottingham said. “We have six returning players for the fall, and then once the spring semester hits, we’ll have six more coming back, so all together we have only 12 players coming back this year.”

Even though the team has enough players on their roster, only seven of them can play on the field at one time. To determine who starts and who doesn’t, Nottingham looks for guys who commit the least amount of mistakes.

“We pick guys who keep their turnovers low and their points high, so we’re focusing mainly on not turning the disc over, and those are the guys who get playing time on our team,” Nottingham said.

Practices are open to anyone who is interested in playing. They take place at the recreational fields on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6-8 p.m. and Sundays, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.. All players need to bring is a dark t-shirt, a white t-shirt, cleats and water.

The Seamen’s next tournament is on November 3 and 4, and they will be competing in the Wolfpack Invitational at N.C. State. They will be playing against schools such as N.C. State, North Carolina, UNC-Greensboro, Georgia Tech and other schools around the area. The weekend after that, UNCW will be playing their first home tournament.