The 2023 U24 World Junior Frisbee Championships were held in Nottingham, UK from July 2 to 8, with over 1,000 athletes from 22 countries competing. China's national frisbee team participated in the Open, Women's, and Mixed group competitions. In the mixed group, Gu Chenglong, an instructor at Chengdu University (CDU), served as the chief coach of the team while Wang Mingke, a postgraduate student, served as the coach of the training team, with Zhou Zhaojie as the Spirit Captain. Seven out of 20 team members were from CDU. After seven days of fierce competition, the team consisting of many CDU teachers and students ranked 13th in the mixed group final and 4th in terms of SOTG (Spirit of the Game) Scores. It was the team with the best results in the three groups of the national team in this game, breaking the records of Chinese teams' performance in the world frisbee championships.
In mid-June, nine CDU students and faculty members went to Ningbo for national team training. Despite the heat of summer and intensive training, they carefully prepared for the competition. In the July tournament, with the mentality of learning to play against the world's top teams, they got a 14-13 victory from the No.8 seed Germany, marking the first win for the Chinese delegation. In the final ranking stage, the team got a 15-8 victory over the group rival No. 7 seed Colombia, and a 14-13 final hit from South Africa, securing the 13th place. This was the best result of China's national frisbee team in world championships.
Gu Chenglong is the chief coach of the national team, trained by CDU. He joined CDU in 2015 as an instructor, and has been actively promoting the frisbee sport, offering frisbee courses, and incubating a university-level team from the student frisbee club. He once led the CDU frisbee team to three championships in the West China Region of the China University Frisbee League and sixth place in the National Frisbee League Final. He will also be coaching the Sichuan Provincial Team in the 2023 National Frisbee Championship as chief coach this July. CDU Frisbee team represents the university's competitive training team with impressive competition records and high level talents, with many members selected for the national and provincial teams.
