The ultimate team

The competitive sport that has defined my 4 years of college, #110 on “Stuff White People Like“, and probably the most underrated sport of all time is ultimate. I could absolutely write a book on why I think ultimate could be the perfect sport, and why Pleiades, the women’s club team at the University of North Carolina, could be the ultimate team. I will keep this brief, however. Well, this post at least…I am sure there will be plenty more to come. First of all, the system is fantastic. I don’t know many details about how it came about (help!), but I do know that it took a few dedicated ultimate players to start a women’s club team at UNC and that the team they started became two teams because of the work of Lindsey Hack. We are now fortunate enough to have a hugely competitive A team, and a more recreational B team that teaches beginners the fundamentals of the game and puts them on track to become the stars of the A team of the future.

I took the latter track. When I signed up for ultimate at Fall Fest, I could not remember having thrown a disc in my life. My high school had a club team, but the only thing I knew about it was that they had sweet sweatshirts that were lime green and blue, which I thought was weird since our high school’s color was maroon. I no longer think this is weird. Ultimate is a sport gone rogue. The self-officiated, hippie-associated sport often produces teams with no overt school ties. Many collegiate teams keep their school’s colors, but hardly any have names that are derivative from their schools’. What makes ultimate teams so amazing, in my humble opinion, is Spirit of the Game. Not just at tournaments and while playing against other schools, but at practice, and off the field too. There is a certain “je ne sais quoi” about how ultimate players treat one another. It seems to me as if the intra-team competition (usually) only exists in the realm of one’s own head, or more materially, on the field during practice. My outlook has always been that if my teammate is getting better, our team is getting better. There is no innate fear of losing rank in ultimate like there has been in other sports I have played (soccer and softball to name a couple). Maybe it’s because many people begin playing ultimate in college, or later in life, that they seem to have much more perspective as far as respecting their teammates as players and people.

Oh yeah, and ultimate players know how to let loose…