August 10, 2003
Ultimate frisbee
Saturday I played ten hours of Ultimate frisbee. In the blazing Louisiana sun. The summer league had our all-day, six team playoff. And our team, Flambeaux, won!
If you don't know what Ultimate frisbee is, it's a bit between soccer, basketball, and football. You play on a field roughly the size of a football field, with endzones. There are seven players per side (with substitutes on the sideline), each trying to score in the far endzone. A score is achieved when the frisbee is caught in the endzone. You advance up the field by passing the frisbee amongst your teammates. You cannot run with the frisbee. You do not tackle or run into any opponents. You cannot strip the frisbee out of your opponents' hands. You can try to block a pass, or intercept a pass. If the offense drops the frisbee, it is a turnover. Not much more to it.
All summer long we would congregate on "the fly", a soccer field expanse right on the Mississippi river in Audubon Park. Playing one game between 6:30 pm and 8:30 pm was always invigorating and tiring. Playing six games between 10 am and 8 pm is mind warping.
I think my estimate is close: I drank around three gallons of fluids on Saturday. That's 24 pounds of water.
Our season record placed us right in the middle of standings. Because there are only six teams, and everyone is friends, everyone was automatically in the playoffs. The first three games Saturday was pool play, and simply determined the bye rounds for the top two teams in the single elimination afternoon. We lost all three, each a heartbreak score. After three games mind you, in ninety degree humid heat, we were all dogmeat. Several limps. We are a fairly veteran team (average age perhaps 37).
We entered the playoffs and we carried a victory away from Monkey Pox. Uplifting, but the reward there was to have won at least one game out of six. No delusions of grandeur. At all.
Game two: we played Disk-Functional for the second time today. We lost to them 9-8 in the morning, and I'm not sure that we expected to win. A tough game to play, especially with the limps, and the heat, and the tremendous fatigue. Even more important was that if we won we would face Weapons of Mass Destruction. WMD had an undefeated season, and was undefeated so far on Saturday.
Well, we won. We focused our attention on the other field and, to all the spectators delight, ours included, Lucky Dog was really challenging WMD.
Lucky Dog had the second best season record behind WMD, and we had lost to them in the morning as well. Lucky Dog came back from 8-4 to tie 8-8; they marched point for point to an 11-10 win for WMD. This made WMD 12-0 for season and post-season play. At this point Flambeaux was 5-7. WMD had a bench of substitutes perhaps 6 deep. Flambeaux had one male sub, and one female sub most of the day (we always play 5/2 or 6/1 male/female squads).
So there's the picture: the undefeated powerhouse that had an early afternoon bye with a deep bench playing against an exhausted, bench-poor, gimpy group of oldies.
Something happened. Really.
It was now around 6:30 pm and the cooler shady evening air was taking over. I looked from the sideline during my few rest breaks, and there was my team, raging on naturally produced opiates, in the zone. Content and confident in a wonderfully unselfconcious way. Fatigued beyond reason, we simply forgot to lay down. Had it been only four hours of play behind us, we surely would have had the good sense to quit.
WMD was down 6-0 at halftime. The crowd of 80 players/spectators was going bananas. Not mean spirited by any means, just having a great time watching the underdog refuse to be whipped. WMD got back into the game in the second half, but were never a major threat.
One final point about Ultimate frisbee. There is no referee. Not just for amateur pickup games. There is no referee at any level. Disputes are handled on the field, by the players.
There is also a four-word saying, perhaps more of a greeting, which captures the essence of the attitude on the field. It is "Spirit of the Game".
The final score was 11-7; Flambeaux defeats Weapons of Mass Destruction. It was a terrific game. It was a terrific day. And it would have been a terrific game, and a terrific day, had we lost the finals.
Spirit of the game, y'all.