Wow! I’m still hopped-up on all the endorphins.
After driving an hour on the highway, Simon and finally got to our destination: the Undertow Beach Bar, directly adjacent the Gulf of Mexico.
It seems like Ultimate frisbee players are never on time, so Simon and I played catch for about 15 minutes. Then Karen Susalla arrived. Karen just moved to Sarasota last week from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and was referred to me by Emily Greenwell, who knew I was trying to organize Ultimate players in Sarasota. Emily is a Greenwell through marriage. Dad contacted Emily’s husband, Jeff Greenwell, and it turns out we may have shared a common ancestor about 5 or 6 generations ago! Crazy.
Next to show up was a girl named Carrie, who lived in Miami and who recently moved up to Tampa for work. Demaurice — she’s from Cuba, I think — showed up next, followed shortly by Emily, Jeff, and their 11-month old son Nicholas. Sidney showed up, and we had enough players get a little game of hot-box going. That was fun, but man was it tiring. Hot-box is tough, because you’re always trying to relate your position relative to other players and a small area in the center of a field. So you’re never really sure what shoulder you should be looking over to keep an eye on your check. The teams were Carrie, Demaurice and I against Sidney, Emily and Karen, with Simon swapping in, between points, with Karen. My check, Sidney — that girl is fast. I couldn’t keep up with her half the time, leaving Demaurice to cover both Karen and Sid.
A little bit later, Leonard showed up and we had enough people to play a 4 on 4 game of Ultimate! Yeah! Jeff recommended we set up the field size to be 30×40 with 10-yard deep endzones. That was just about perfect. We decided to play a game to 7. I was back in my element. We kept the same teams as we had for hot-box, with Leonard playing with Simon, Sidney, Karen and Emily.
Scoring went 1-0 them, 1-1, 2-1 them, 3-1, 3-2, 4-2, 5-2 and then I decided we should start our big comeback! 5-3, 5-4, 5-5. They scored the next point, and we tried valiantly to tie it up at 6-6, but it didn’t happen and they won it 7-5. Not a bad game!
After washing off sand off my arms and legs with the shower provided at the beach, Jeff, Emily, Simon, Leonard and I had a drink at the Undertow Beach Bar — a neat, tiny little open-air place with live music. They had a special on! $2/bottle for a Japanese beer with “Ichiban” in its name. It sure tasted good! Then again, I think *any* kind of beer would have tasted good at that point. Even though I went through about litre of water, hot-box and Ultimate left me pretty dehydrated.
Jeff and Emily left after finishing their beer (time to get Nicholas home!). Leonard gave Simon a brief overview of why Ultimate is so different than the other games out there. He talked about how Ultimate is self-refereed (all the way up to the world championships), about how fights are systemically avoided through the “foul/contest” construct, about the underlying concept of Spirit of The Game and about the general friendliness of the people who play the sport. Oh yeah, he also mentioned how Ultimate players love to party. It’s true. As he relayed to Simon, “You can lose the tournament but win the party!” Out of the three years he’s been playing Ultimate, he says, he’s seen two fights. You’d have a hard time finding another sport with that kind of record. I can back up everything he’s said. I love Ultimate — I left the beach today on a sort of spiritual high.
- Listen to a talk about Spirit of The Game, courtesy the Ultimate Handbook. (RealPlayer required, get the (very good) Mac OS X version here).
Curious? There’s a great guide for beginners over at The Ultimate Handbook.