Playing Ultimate Part 1: My First Game

I have been playing ultimate for 28 years. I am also a writer. After a significant amount of time trying to figure out how to combine these two skills, I settled on writing a series of stories about my life as an ultimate player which, if all goes well, will also be turned into a groundbreaking psychedelic rock opera entitled Tommy unless someone has beat me to that already.

Here is Part 1: My First Game

It was late spring 1989, flowers were blooming, love was in the air for the local birds and bees and I had just turned 18 and was finally on the cusp of graduating. While I was excited for university and couldn't wait to get out of that "hell hole" (author's note: not an actual hell hole), all in all, high school was pretty good for me - above average grades, minor roles in school plays, and minimal amount of long-term permanently scarring moments. But, there was one major thing missing from my To Do list for school; one glaring thing, in fact. I had never played on a school sports team. And I loved sports! I was literally in love with sports, seriously, it was a huge problem. Honestly, I followed almost every sport as if my own existence depended on them (maybe they didn't, but was I going to take that chance?) and it had always been my dream to be a star on a team with the bleachers full of adoring fans cheering for me (true story - I spent hours in the backyard completely dominating my solo version of tennis-ball-against-the-aging-wooden-fence baseball and as well as being a virtuoso at one man balloon basketball in the rec room). Unfortunately, in reality, I lacked what is commonly known as skill and thus, I never made even one team.

Not that I hadn't tried. If they gave awards for trying, I still wouldn't win one, but I'd be close. There were numerous failures and shortcomings that I just don’t have the room to adequately give justice to here, but am happy to send interested parties the entire DVD collection. I remember going out for the basketball team in grade 9 after a summer of watching Bird, Magic and Isiah on TV and believing that my time brazenly dunking on the kiddie hoop in the lane was all the prep I needed. Sadly and unfairly, I was wrong. Laughably wrong if you were someone else, which I wasn’t. Instead of walking around the halls full of pride after making the team, I came away psychologically and metaphysically knocked down as I had to finally confront that I didn’t have what it took. I still walked down the halls as I needed to exit the building. Turns out that I couldn't dribble well enough to be a guard, wasn't tall enough to be a forward and couldn't shoot well enough to be on the team at all, but I could be a manager if I didn't find that too insulting, which I didn't...till now. I was an amazing grade 9 basketball team manager, by the way, years ahead of my time.

I so badly wanted to wear our school colors with the nickname "Grey Ghosts" emblazoned on the front to hopefully terrify, or at least confuse our opponents (“why were the ghosts, grey, and what did that mean?”) and I wasn't ready to give up. I considered volleyball (too short), soccer (hilariously uncoordinated with my feet) and rugby (scared of everyone and everything hitting me). Don't misunderstand, I wasn't a stereotypical glasses-wearing, calculator-carrying, member of the chess club nerd decorated with skin blemishes and freckles, I mean I was, but that’s not the point, or not this point I’m trying to make presently. It wasn't that I wasn't athletic, I played competitive racquetball, squash and tennis as a teen, but unfortunately, no school team sport worked for me and those individual sports carried next to no cache, which I had cleared ample space in my backpack to carry. My parents consoled me the way that only my parents could (although to be honest I didn't go around trying out other parents approaches to compare and contrast) with well-meaning clichés such as "keep your chin up", "don't take it on the chin" and other chin-related expressions and idioms that were meant to motivate and inspire me, which they did, while also making me fairly self-conscious about my chin.

And then, just when I was ready to give up all hope, I found Ultimate. Looking back on things, it must have been destiny or fate or a result of being stalked.

I grew up vegetarian, though that isn't important for this story, and also loving throwing Frisbees, or more accurately, being totally frustrated that I couldn't really throw one to save my life which thankfully never came up. I was told that a ball dreamed that it was a Frisbees, which was but one thing that a ball and I had in common. My parents always brought a disc with them whenever we went to a park and they were just so good at chucking it to each other and then turning to me and smiling in a perfect mix of taunting and love that only they could master. All throughout my youth, I vividly recall being in awe of how they would effortlessly wing this colorful plastic disc to each other at a good distance without it wobbling or hitting the ground. I would just lay there, under the big ol' oak tree, reading Nancy Drew, and eating sugar-free snacks, just wishing that I could throw like they were. Occasionally I would be permitted to join in and I clearly stood out as "NOT A THROWER!" (why my mom had to continually, and quite joyfully call that out each time I was about to throw, was beyond me) as my discs posed immediate health hazards to all humans and animals nearby as the Frisbees would rarely get to one of my parents and when they did it wasn't pretty. I always looked up to their ability to throw so crisply and accurately while humming the hits of the 70s and early 80s while doing so. I really wished that I could do the same.

For much of grade 12, my friends and I had spent our lunch hours walking outside, eating lunch and throwing Frisbees, usually in that order. It came as quite a shock one day when they approached me unknowingly carrying large amounts of static. They cornered me (to be fair, I was already in a corner at the time marveling at the practical application of angles), and asked me if I wanted to come out that evening to play on their team. I instantly said "sure" a little too loudly and enthusiastically for the librarian's taste before inquiring exactly what kind of "team" this was and whether I'd need to be vaccinated beforehand, which, for me, was a deal breaker. I found out that my friends had been leading a secret, double life for years now while also playing ultimate on Wednesdays as well, without telling me or possibly they had told me and I was lost in the bliss of yet another incredible peanut butter sandwich.

Why they wanted me, a guy who couldn't hit the side of a barn even when provided with a barn ahead of time to practice on, was beyond me. Also beyond me was quantum mechanics, as well as why orange shirts just don't go well with brown pants. Maybe they had done their due diligence and research and realized that I was the missing piece to the puzzle for their team and that they saw within me great potential and just wanted the opportunity to help me unleash it or, conversely, they were fresh out of options and were incredibly desperate and I was their final hope so they wouldn't default. Either way really, I was just so excited to have been invited out to join their team as long as dogs weren't involved in any way, which they assured me they weren't, though I swear I heard barking and the cackling of laughter in the background on the phone when they hung up.

I remember my first game so well.

It was a late Spring Wednesday evening in 1989 at the idyllic Jericho Beach Park in Vancouver with the coastal mountains looming in the distance and that ever-present and beautiful aroma of the woods after a rain all around. The grass was still damp as I dropped my bike on the sideline and ran over to join my team just hoping that this wasn't all part of an elaborate hoax, though, like all of us, I do love a hoax from time to time. The previous summer, the team had been called The Pink Lungs, but with many lineup changes, the new team was called Hat Head (we all wore hats...on our heads) and eventually we morphed into Bandana Republic (we all wore bandanas while also feeling strongly that supreme power should be held by the people and their elected representatives, if you are into that sort of thing, which we were). I jogged around in my running shoes warming up, trying to ignore how damp my socks were already getting while also attempting to look like I had some idea of what I was doing, and failing miserably. I was a pro at attempting and failing to fit in, though this was the first that my socks were wet at the same time, so there was that.

To get ready for the game, our side performed a detailed routine of ritualistic stretching that the director of the local dance academy said was mediocre at best while we claimed that we weren’t auditioning and that she should leave us alone. Then we started a “simple” throwing drill where my discs went everywhere but their intended targets. I considered either specifically not aiming at the targets or breaking down and crying or both. One friend came over and seemed to be threatening me not to screw up the game, though in retrospect, he was probably just struggling with seasonal allergies. While looking forward to a relatively relaxing sporting activity between friends, I was mostly hoping that I would escape, body, glasses and psyche fully intact (or least no less intact than when I started) and that they would want me to come back next week if, for nothing else, as some comic relief or to throw over ripe fruit at. My heart was pumping a mile a minute and my head was spinning (both par for the course for a Wednesday evening); I never played team sports ever since I swore off soccer after that rabid dog tried to eat my leg on the gravel field during a lunch time game back in grade 5 as I figured “why did someone invent a game that involved a rabid dog in the first place?” 

As I looked across the field, I noticed that the other team had MATCHING SHIRTS (!?!?!?) which seemed to either be their attempt to intimidate us (it was working!) and/or encourage us to buy or invest heavily in Adidas. In my shaky-at-best memory, they were tall, lean and spectacularly tanned. It seemed totally unfair that our ragtag bunch of pseudo, quasi athletes who could have easily been mistaken for a group of foreign exchange students from Eastern Europe or a youth community theatre troupe for wayward teens had to go up against these veritable Olympians. In my paranoia (which my grade 7 teacher once referred to as “impressive”) I was sure that the other team had already sensed my blood in the water and were plotting and scheming to expose the imposter (me) on their way to total domination. As I stood there shaking in my boots (no one told me not to bring boots!), I was completely consumed with not screwing up or being the primary reason that we lost. As we huddled up in a circle before the game, I complimented our team on our ability to form a circle so well on such short notice with next to no practice. I remember in my panicked moments before the game hearing these strange terms thrown at me like "the force", "the stack", "hucks", "striking" and “macroeconomics” while I employed the time-honored strategy of smiling and nodding to give the illusion that I had any idea what they were talking about.

The game began. To say that I had dreamt of this moment ever since I was a child would be completely inaccurate, because how would I have had any idea on any level of consciousness that I’d ever be in this exact position. No, I had only dreamt of this moment since a couple days before when they invited me to play. In my dream, I was the star. Small in stature, but huge on the field as I made awe-inducing play after awe-inducing play. There were a series of incredible dives for Frisbees, amazing and improbable leaps into the sky to grab discs that were seemingly out of my reach and a game-saving play for the ages that was commemorated by a local artist who used primarily watercolors on canvas. Alas, my idiotic reality never lives up to the stupid expectations of my dumb dreams.

We started on defense. I was told to do “whatever it took” not to let that guy standing across the field from me to score. I tried to wink at my teammate to show that I got it, but, honestly, I’m a really poor winker and it probably came across like I was hitting on him or that I had dirt in my eye, which are often easily mistaken for each other in my experience. I learned quickly that not wanting your check to score wasn’t enough and you had to actually do something about it as he was unlikely to listen to your fancy reasoning. The game went by in a blur, and that was even after I cleaned my glasses. I spent the evening huffing and puffing, trying not to run into people, and standing around waving and calling for the disc. I slipped and fell constantly all over the place (remember: running shoes on damp grass) and I did not complete one pass or catch one disc. Aside from that, it was an unqualified success on par with the tuna salad I had made that past weekend. I was thrown to a few times, partially out of pity and also sympathy, which are really hard to tell apart while playing a sport for the first time. 

Despite losing and not really getting involved, I was in love, even though I was a bit scared and had no idea what exactly I was getting into, which was, sadly, eerily similar to many of my first human relationships too. In my short experience, I felt something deep inside me that ended up being heartburn, and then I felt something else, a stronger feeling, like I had finally found my game, my people, my home. If I were a stronger, less-in-touch-with-his-emotions man, I wouldn’t have cried. First thing the next morning, I got dressed and had some breakfast, again not really essential to the story, and then went off to get some cleats to greatly eliminate the falling as well as being able to help my father aerate our yard. Though I had only played one game, I just knew that Ultimate was for me. There was just something about this game and this sport and the people that grabbed me (quite aggressively I must add), shook me to my senses and wouldn’t let me go until I ran away from home leaving only a short, cryptic note like it was a cult, which I was totally okay with as I had been considering running away to join one at some point in the near future regardless. 

Stayed tuned for Part 2: Learning the Game