Ultimate!

CRathjen — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 00:16:00 GMT

A friend asked me to pick up with his ultimate team for a tournament this weekend - go SugarBuzz!

It was a blast - it's the first “travel to” tournament I'd been to in years - somewhere between Asheville and Hendersonville, a good 4+ hours from 'here'. I'm sore in all the wrong places; I must be getting old or something. Or maybe going from 2 hours 2-3 times a week to 8 hours on Saturday and 4 more on Sunday was the problem.

But it was definitely worth it. We had more rain than we wanted, followed shortly by more sun than I wanted (my face's noticably pink tinge is proof), a few questionable calls (naturally), but lots and lots of good, competitive yet friendly play. We didn't win as many as we'd hoped, but we played the higher-ranked teams pretty tough and the other losses came down to the wire, with scores like 16-14 and 15-12 being pretty common.

One of the great things about Ultimate (around here, at least) is that you get to know a lot of the other players fairly well, and that leads to a very upbeat atmosphere, even at most tournaments (including this one). A comedic error or narrowly avoided disaster will get you heckled by the team you're playing, heckled by the sideline from another game, maybe heckled by your own team - but you'll also get the kudos for a great pass or layout 'D' from all three 'sides' as well.

If you like throwing a frisbee, or running and jumping (or all 3 of these), you should definitely give ultimate a try sometime. We get a lot of converts from soccer, track, and cross-country, so if you play any of those 3, you should check it out as well.

Chris Rathjen : Ultimate Frisbee

Ultimate!