Is That You… Anthony?
6 June 2025Anthony Steyn (Class of 2022) was that rare ‘combo’ student at St. Conleth’s: very talented in Maths and the STEM side of things… but also able to tell and take a joke! All of us teachers enjoyed having his wit, warmth and bright-eyed enthusiasm in class. But when we happened to run into him on the campus of UCD, we didn’t recognise him! That slight, impish sprig of a lad had blossomed into an Adonis! Or maybe even a Hercules? For Anthony is all grown up and now an international sports star. But true to his quintessential Conlethian quirkiness, it is not some old boring sport like rugby or football… it is Ultimate Frisbee!
We could go on about the merits of this sport, but we have important wanderings to do in Herbert Park so we’ll let Anthony fill us in, himself:
A Brief Summary of Anthony’s Most Excellent Career… so far:
I started playing in September 2023 because someone in my college course had played in school and kept trying to convince me to try it. I tried it and instantly fell in love with the sport. In the last eighteen months, I have gone from the UCD third team to the first team, won two inter-varsities titles with the college and have been named captain for 2025/2026.
Club Frisbee is the other, larger and more serious division than college. I joined the Club XVI after a few months of playing and have played at the top level in Europe with them since then. In January I was invited to trial for the Irish under-24s team and in February was selected for the Open team with which I will compete at world championships in Logroño, Spain in June.
Info on the Sport of Frisbee, itself:
Ultimate Frisbee is a team sport played on a field about two thirds the width of and (including the end-zones on each end): the same length as a football pitch. Teams play with seven on the pitch each. There are open, mixed and women’s divisions. The sport is non-contact and self-refereed: when one player thinks they’ve been fouled, they make that call and discuss it with the person they claim fouled them for up to sixty seconds. If they can agree that it was or wasn’t a foul then that is the call resolved. If after that time they cannot come to an agreement, the call is contested and the play is reset by a few seconds. Players cannot move when they are holding the disc and the goal is to advance it by passing it between teammates until it is caught in the opponent’s endzone.
Other Things Worth Mentioning:
Frisbee is generally dominated by the USA (of course!) in international tournaments with the only professional league in the world being played there. Ireland is a historically small country on the international frisbee stage but recent results have looked positive for us, club team Ranelagh won the European Club Championships in 2022 and the Irish Senior Mixed Team finished third in the European Championships in 2023, beating team GB in the third place final after losing by just a point to Italy in the semi-final. Like many other sports, ultimate frisbee is in the World Games and is under consideration for the Olympics for both 2028 and 2032.