Eunice Kang

1434163309@qq.com

AFTER living in Shenzhen for more than 13 years, American Jeff Bussel now regards the city as his home. He’s got a justifiable reason for that. “You can really make any place your home if you have the right people around you,” Bussel said.

Some of the “right people,” of course, are members of the Shenzhen Ultimate Players Association (SZUPA), a frisbee club founded by Bussel nine years ago. “I wanted to meet more people, so I started to organize it, helped find a place to play it, and then now here we are,” he said.

What started out as something social later grew to have hundreds of members over the years, about 60 of whom are active members that meet every week for training sessions and competition.

Besides the weekly meetings with other club members, he is also currently teaching frisbee at Nanshan Second Experimental School every Thursday with another coach named Hannah Ma. The school team that they coach, consisting of 16 players, won third place in a competition this year. “Organizing competitions for kids could be a good way to help grow this sport,” he said.

Bussel said that he hoped that more schools would start to teach their students how to play frisbee. “Frisbee is a good option for schools,” he said. “It is inexpensive. Eight cones and one frisbee is all you need for a real game. You need less than 300 yuan (US$43.59) to have a whole new sport.”

Tossing a frisbee is becoming increasingly popular in China. “All over China there are now many teams in different cities,” Bussel said.