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Holy (Plastic) Grail

For many, the sport of Ultimate is life itself
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I play Ultimate. That is to say I live in a world of Gatorade, ibuprofen and injection-molded plastic. A world where you collect injuries the way birdwatchers compile lifelists; where vacation time and buckets of cash are squandered travelling to tournaments with names like Hodown, Gender Blender, Alpenglow and Flower Bowl; where your most important possession is a pair of cleats that don't hurt, and where entire drawerfuls of clothes - no matter how many times they've been washed - vent the sickly-sweet camphor of muscle rub.

I am not alone.

That much was obvious late on a July afternoon a few years back at the University of British Columbia's Thunderbird fields, where myself and roughly 1,800 athletes on 100 teams from 20 countries had gathered to cavort and compete in the week-long World Flying Disc Federation's World Ultimate Club Championships. Tucked into a far corner field, in a fast-paced match-up, perennial Canadian men's champions Furious George, from Vancouver, and Connecticut's Snapple, were putting on a show for a few hundred hard-core Ultimate players. A handful of casual spectators, more likely to have stumbled upon the contest than known about it, watched with a mixture of amazement and confusion. Like many reading these words, they had yet to hear of the fastest growing new team sport on the planet, and needed a few things explained. But translating this rather bizarre milieu isn't always easy.

- What's this? asked a bemused but intrigued woman onlooker.

- Ultimate , replied a sweat-drenched Furious player standing on the sidelines, just as a Snapple body hit the turf nearby with the hollow thud of a side of beef.

- What's Ultimate?

The Snapple player picked himself up, clutching a white, dinner-plate-sized plastic disc, while a defending Furious player hovered over him, waving outstretched arms and counting loudly.

- Um, well... I guess you'd call it Frisbee football.

Unperturbed by the frantic enumerating of the defender, the player with the disc stared downfield intently.

- Then how come the guy who just caught the Frisbee isn't running with it?

The count stood at five.

- Well, he can't. He has to stop and establish a pivot foot. Then he can throw it to someone else.

- So it's really more like basketball.

- Uh, yeah... a bit.

At eight, the player turned and tossed the disc to a teammate who had taken up position behind him, then took off, sprinting toward the goal with his defender in tight pursuit.

- But on a soccer field?

- Sort of.

With the speed and grace of a banking seagull, a perfectly executed throw arced over everyone's head into the back of the endzone, just out of reach. Silence in the crowd as all eyes followed the disc's flight. Making a pact with gravity, the receiver left the ground in a last-ditch lay-out bid, while the defender, like a cannon-shot Siamese-twin, also got horizontal in an all-out attempt to block the pass. Both crashed to the grass and skidded to a halt, the receiver clutching the disc in a strained and outstreched arm, his hard-won trophy held aloft. A roar went up in the crowd. Point Snapple.

- Do they kick an extra point, too?

- No, ma'm. No kicking.

If nothing else, it's clear to spectators that no matter how it's played, or what it's played with (perhaps, in fact, because of the lack of a ball), a different and unique philosophy underlies this game.

Some facts: 200-team leagues in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa, 100,000 players in North America, top athletes that rival any in professional sports, fashion and farce that would make Lady Gaga blush, and a code of ethics and respect for competition so pervasive that referees aren't required, thank you very much. It's been called the sport of the '90s, and if you haven't heard of it yet, you have now. But the question that roils most first-time minds isn't why an underground game usually given to shielding its eyes from the light of recognition is suddenly in vogue.

No, with tortured descriptions like that above, the more likely quandry for the great unwashed is figuring out what kind of snot-nosed reprobates would have the nerve to steal all the best things from our favorite national pastimes, declare them a new sport, then be arrogant enough to label them with a pretentious name like Ultimate?

 

Roll back the calendar to 1968. Among the more obscure cultural landmarks of that fated annum was a new sport conceived by a group of high school students in Maplewood, New Jersey. Fed-up with the predictability and limitations of mainstream athletics, the students set out to create the "ultimate sport." They sought something that went to the edge in every possible way: an all-around test of speed, endurance, and finesse; the use of a sporting implement more responsive and controllable than pigskin or horsehide ever aspired to be (or at least more fun); and, '60s sensibilities being what they were, something that maintained the competitive aspect but painted it with a mellower, cooperative color. Calling it "Ultimate Frisbee" (Wham-o's name-brand disc was the only one available at the time; these days, calling a flying disc a Frisbee is tantamount to calling a photocopy a Xerox), the game's popularity was immediate, and it was soon played in other high schools, rapidly evolving into a hard-nosed game with a decidedly hippie soul. It spread quickly through the college circuit across North America and around the Western world, where it settled into the ample shadows of big-bucks pro and college sports, a poster boy for "alternative" sport. And there it stayed, growing happily on the fringes, a self-created granola ecology that flourished under a cloud of marijuana smoke and fed heavily on counter-culture.

Then, sometime in the late '80s, Ultimate busted out.

Though its tie-dyed roots were never far from the fore, suddenly everyone from deadheads to jocks to executives was playing. Recreational (non-tournament) play ballooned around North America, but nowhere as strongly as in the Canadian cities of Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa, which soon boasted the world's three largest leagues and a legion of top-ranked traveling teams. Eastern Europe and Asia jumped in, followed by soccer-mad Latin America, where the sport has recently seen unprecedented growth is Venezuela, Columbia, Brazil and the Dominican Republic. Moreover, since the typically American- and Swedish-dominated World Championships of 1998, when Canada won its first-ever gold medals (in the Open, Masters and Co-ed divisions), the Great White North has, to the chagrin of the much more populous USA, been the world's de facto superpower in Ultimate.

The reasons for this aren't entirely clear. If you asked one of the competitors gathered at UBC - average age around 25 - you'd be just as likely to hear "because it's so cool" or "super fun" that a thoughtful answer rooted in contemporary sociology and demographics. To even begin to understand either, of course, a critical question lingers: Just what did those Maplewood students come up with?

Here's how it works: Teams of seven players compete on a 120-by-40 metre field with 25-metre endzones. Play is initiated with a "pull" (throw-off) from one endzone to the other (like football's kick-off). The object is to pass the disc downfield (like basketball) and into the opposing team's endzone for a goal (like football again). The defense works equally hard to prevent this and gain possession themselves (like any sport); interceptions, drops, missed throws and out-of-bounds tosses all result in a turnover. Other basketball-like features: fouls are assessed for contact violations and, when players gain possession, they must establish a pivot foot before passing. Possessors are "marked" by a defender who commences an audible count of ten, after which, if the offensive player has failed to release the disc, it is "stalled" or turned over. The game is played to a pre-determined score - generally 15, 17 or 19 in World Championship play.

A boatload of skills amass when you play Ultimate, but running -both with speed and stamina - is the basis of the sport. Ultimate, in fact, offers somewhat of an aerobic acme on that front - a University of New Mexico kinesiology study declared it the most demanding of all field sports. Wendy Atkins, a nationally ranked Canadian women's soccer player who made the shift to Ultimate in the '90s, believes there is no comparison between the aerobic requirements of the two sports.

- You can play a whole soccer game without taking a sub and not suffer a loss in performance , she'd mused to me. But in Ultimate, if you go 10 minutes without subbing you're toast.

 

That reality invokes yet another professional sport: much like the shift-work seen in ice hockey, players are cycled on and off the field in Ultimate after every point.

Throwing, catching and jumping also require expertise, but whatever else a player accomplishes on the field, getting horizontal - "Going Ho" - on a block or a catch remains the definitive badge of honour. As seen in the opening vignette, Going Ho has high impact all-around. Literally and figuratively.

Other appealing aspects of Ultimate include low cost, ease of learning, and the unique aerodynamics of the flying-disc: 165-170 grams of precision-engineered plastic whose throwing characteristics are the envy of any quarterback - especially when the thrower makes use of subtleties of air movement.

- A disc actually flies, while balls are merely projectiles , Anni Kreml, a member of the three-time U.S. women's champion Maniacs once told me. I love the aesthetic of the sport as much as anything else .

Indeed, wind is so important a factor that teams also change ends after each point in order to offset any potential advantage; defensive and offensive strategies shift radically to account for the wind, something not seen in other field sports. The appeal of Ultimate, however, goes beyond physical and meteorological demands to a renaissance in thinking: the oft-cited "Spirit of The Game."

Sought by all players, SOTG is a grail of conduct that promotes enjoyment and competition without antagonistic or dangerously aggressive behaviour. Nowhere is this credo more evident than in tight games. Ultimate is stringently non-contact, and players police all aspects of the game. Without referees, participants are honour-bound to call things the way they occurred. It's always to your benefit to "do the right thing," and analysts have frequently alluded to Ultimate's parallel goals of maximum personal achievement and cooperation as a metaphor for life.

Flaky, maybe, but this unique on-field empowerment hasn't eroded the natural competitive spirit of participants - only put it into a more fulfilling context.

- I like best zis idea to compete wis some person and not against zem , a Dutch player from Amstredam's Red Lights explained to me at UBC. To kick zere ass on ze field and zen hug zem afta ze game because you love playing hard vis zem. Zis is wat all of life should be .

 

It was about 7:30 p.m. The beer patio was winding down, a cool breeze was working in off the Pacific, and the usual crowds were gathered around whatever marquee games still dragged on. On one field, Vancouver's Alter Boys were nose-to-nose with their arch-rivals from Victoria, the Nomads. On another, Lady Godiva, then reigning U.S. women's champion, was showing why by stomping the top-ranked Swedish women's unit. At both games, large sideline contingents cheered their favorites and jeered questionable calls - but all with consummate respect for the talent on-field. Elsewhere, however, respect had morphed to mirth, hilarity, and the sport's trademark irreverence.

Montréal's women's squad, Calipyge, losing badly at the half for the 8th time in as many games - this time to a team from New Zealand - and spiraling quickly downward in the standings, concocted a way to put some fun back in their tournament. Punch-drunk with exhaustion, they surreptitiously removed lycra and panties from beneath field-hockey skirts, stood together, then chorused:

- Hey, New Zealand, check out our genuine Canadian beavers !

Skirts flapped upward with a flourish, and the New Zealand girls, stony despite the thrashing they were delivering, were momentarily shocked. But that lasted all of a second. After all, this was Ultimate, and this was World's. Couldn't forget to have fun. Hardly missing a beat, the New Zealanders hiked up their jog-bras.

- Oh yeah, Canada? they cheered, Check out our kiwis !

Much laughter. Many stunned passers-by.

There are the hard-ass games where serious rankings are at stake, the fun ones where nothing matters, and then there are the match-ups that, for whatever issues of national or team pride, take on an electricity of their own.

On another isolated field, framed by the still snow-capped peaks of the North Shore, raged such a match: a hard-fought game with no attending crowd, a Pacific-rim match-up between Japan's Loquitos and a rag-tag crew of ex-pats from Beijing billed as Greater China Ultimate, it embodied the gestalt of international Ultimate. Neither team was a contender. In fact, either would be lucky to finish better than last in their pool. After two and a half hours of hard running, both teams were out of water and out of gas. But they'd come a long, expensive, and likely self-financed way to play the game they loved against all comers. No quarter was yielded on-field, and judging by the players' intensity, there was no sense of ignominy in jousting for second-last place. A long desperate throw (or "huck") from one end of the field to the opposing endzone - caught by a China player who lumbered downfield on lactic acid-packed legs like he was running in mud - tied the game at 16. The next point would win.

China pulled. Loquitos received near their endzone and began passing up field, the disc tracing improbable but intentional routes through a chaotic melange of bodies. Backhands, sidearm flicks, upside-down hammers; throws that fell somewhere between art, science, and mathematics. Loquitos was nearing the China endzone when a throw shot up the sideline to a player being tightly marked by his defender. Both leapt at the same time and, though it was hard to tell exactly what happened, the disc fluttered to the ground. A block! A cheer went up among the China players on the sideline.

But wait - the Loquitos player claimed he was fouled, preventing him from making the catch. Play stopped while the China player confronted two choices: on one hand he could contest the call if he believed his block was clean, in which case the Loquitos player would either reconsider his call and relent, giving China possession, or stand his ground, in which case the disc would go back to the thrower; on the other hand, if the China player thought there was a possibility he contacted the other player, he could admit to the foul and Loquitos would get possession at this new position closer to the goal. It was a tough choice, and the stakes were high; sending it back might be China's only chance to regain possession and win - but it might be the wrong call, an unsportsmanlike thing to do. Minds were frazzled, muscles were toast, and emotions were high as a hush settled on the field.

The China player stared briefly at the sky, thinking about the play; what might have occurred in those microseconds of maximum effort and focus on a piece of plastic. Gathering strength from the truth, he took a deep breath and handed Japan the disc.

- No contest , he said.

And so, Ultimate is out of the shadows. There've been HBO specials and ESPN coverage. Local filmmaker Jamie Hussein of The Collective fame made one of many movies (I Bleed Black ) about one University of California at Santa Barbara team's season. International magazines launched in print and on the web. People like me write articles like this.

The June 2010 World Club Championships in Prague was the largest tournament ever held, with some 136 teams from 30 countries, and this summer's Canadian National Championships, taking place August 12-15 in Sherbrooke, Quebec will be the largest since nationals started back in 1987. All across this country-in big cities as well as places like Prince George, Saskatoon, Brandon, North Bay, Fredricton and Halifax - folks at cocktail parties nod acknowledgement, martinis in hand.

- Oh, you're part of the Ultimate crowd? Our dentist's children are into that.

But of course, the newfound popularity isn't necessarily always popular.

There are those who long for the good 'ol days when no one outside the sport knew what Ultimate was. And they have good reason: big-money sponsors like Jose Cuervo had sniffed around in the '90s, requesting the right to alter the format to make it more exciting and TV-friendly; an upstart organization, the National Ultimate Association, pushed hard for a while to adopt refereeing in order to speed up the game. Ultimate appears in several high-profile food and clothing advertisements. For some it's all too much. In their opinion, the game ain't broke and it don't need fixin'.

They've got a point. When it's clicking, and gratuitous calls aren't slowing it down, there's no field sport more exciting. At the highest levels, Ultimate is a constant display of the limits of human physical prowess and endurance, with a philosophical subtext, Pavlovian euphoria, and a happy by-product of ultra-fitness built in. Maplewood's ultimate sport.

Whatever fitness and conditioning benefits may derive, however, Ultimate is not easy on the body; one look at the crowded medical tent at UBC confirmed that as volunteer emergency triage and sports physiotherapists administered to a swarm of injuries explained to them in the Tower-of-Babel patois of a dozen languages. The startling thing wasn't the number of boo-boos, rather the fact that most of these people, putting blind faith in the panacea of ice, ibuprofen and athletic tape, expected to walk out - no matter their affliction  -and straight back onto the field.

- I've never seen anything like it , said Dr. Doug Richards, an associate of the David L. Macintosh Sports Medicine Clinic at the University of Toronto, and a team doctor with the NBA's Toronto Raptors.

At the time he was running the medical facility at the 1991 World Ultimate Club Championships in Toronto.

- The level of dedication in this sport is truly unbelievable. Dangerous, actually .

Apocryphal as it sounded, it was true. For every player who trains with the dedication of a pro athlete, a dozen weekend warriors take no such measured approach.

Not surprising given the type-As that the sport attracts: investment bankers, lawyers, and advertising executives have little time outside of their careers to practice leisure pursuits. But this ain't softball.

The trick is to play enough to keep in shape but not so much that it wears you down and makes you susceptible to injury. Sort of like responsible drinking, an activity where it's also hard to strike the right balance but which provides a surprisingly apt analogy since, for many - most even - Ultimate is a true addiction in every sense of the word: the constant scheming to get more playing time, the attempt to do so in the face of every kind of financial and physical adversity, and, most pervasively, the inability to quit (mea culpa). Masters (30+) and now even Grand Masters divisions (40+) had to be created at big tournaments to accommodate the growing numbers of open-division level players who refused to hang up their cleats. And it's starting earlier, too: with provincial and state organizations receiving government funding to indoctrinate kids in grade school, Ultimate-addled teens are graduating high school with plans to attend college only in places with top-flight Ultimate teams. Adult Ultimate "bums" relocate to places like Vancouver where they can play year round in leagues and on high-level touring teams. For all players, SOTG means that Ultimate is life; for many, however, life is now Ultimate.

I recall a woman on my Toronto league team back in the day lamenting the fact that she couldn't go to Victoria, B.C. for the Canadian National Ultimate Championships that year. She talked like someone who'd been to many tournaments - including previous Nationals - exhibiting a level of dedication commensurate with a true veteran. But when I asked her how long she'd been playing, she shocked me: "It's my first year!" She played not just on my A-level league team, but on a B-level squad as well. That was two nights a week, and then there were practices with Boom Chick-a Boom (a traveling women's team that hit weekend tournaments all around New England and the Midwest). Someone from fully outside the fray might think "this chick needs to get a life." But they'd be missing the point. She did get a life, and it was Ultimate.

- Ultimate brought it all together for me , she said when I questioned her fervent, overnight dedication. I've played sports all my life, but they just weren't fully satisfying. Ultimate is exactly what I've been looking for .

Bringing it all together is a common theme. And it explains why, after over 30 years, a broken neck, knee arthroscopy, separated shoulder, torn thumb ligaments, countless contusions, the straining and spraining of every muscle possible, and virtually no ligaments remaining in one ankle, I'm still playing. And still reeking of muscle rub.

At a tournament in Montréal earlier that summer, I'd talked about the ever-rising phoenix of the next Ultimate season with an old friend, how the competitive instinct, endorphin highs, and Hope I die before I get old ethos kept me in the game A longtime member of Toronto's See Jane Run, a six-time women's national champion before they disbanded in 1994, she had a different, but equally valid vision of the game's persistence in her subconscious.

- It's this dream I keep having since Jane broke up , she'd told me wistfully, where we all get together again and play this team of young hotshots .

- And crush them? I interjected, thinking I knew where she was going. (After all, the male version of this dream was very predictable, even in an egalitarian game like Ultimate.)

- No, we don't necessarily crush them. We just have some very beautiful moments on the field. And then we die.

There was a lesson in there somewhere.

 

Leslie Anthony played in the first-ever Ultimate tournament in Canada in 1979, won the first Canadian National Ultimate Championships in 1987 with Toronto's Darkside, played at his first World Championships in Belgium in 1988, and won Canada's first World Championship gold medal a decade later in Blaine, Minnesota. He hopes to write a book about his experiences in the world of flying discs.

 

More info:

http://www.cuc2010.com

http://www.canadianultimate.com

http://www.usaultimate.org/default.aspx

 

 

 



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