Seattle Invite 08'

A few weeks ago, following Westerns, a few Seattle teams invited Churchill and South Eugene up for some post-season play. With a disappointing finish at Westerns for South and a complete no-show for Churchill, it gave both teams a chance to play the best talent in the nation. South managed to bring most of their talent along with Churchill, but the Seattle schools struggled to bring their full squads. That all said, South dominated the invite and here is their highlight video.



Seattle Invite - SEHS from glossjohnson on Vimeo.

YCC Mixed Thread

UPA Youth Club Leagues*
Denver Youth Summer League (Denver, CO)
Eugene Youth Summer League (Eugene, OR)

UPA High School Leagues**
Disc Northwest HS Spring League (Seattle, WA)
Minnesota HS Spring League (Minneapolis, MN)
BUDA HS Spring League (New England)

At-Large***
Atlanta (Atlanta, GA)
Nashville (Nashville, TN)

YCC Girls Thread

UPA Youth Club Leagues*

Denver Youth Summer League (Denver, CO)
Cincinnati Youth Summer League (Cincinnati, OH)

UPA High School Leagues**
Disc Northwest HS Spring League (Seattle, WA)
Minnesota HS Spring League (Minneapolis, MN)
PHUL HS Spring League (Pittsburgh, PA)

YCC Open Thread

UPA Youth Club Leagues*

Denver Youth Summer League (Denver, CO)
Cincinnati Youth Summer League (Cincinnati, OH)

UPA High School Leagues**
Disc Northwest HS Spring League (Seattle, WA)
Minnesota HS Spring League (Minneapolis, MN)
PHUL HS Spring League (Pittsburgh, PA)
BUDA HS Spring League (New England)
Delaware Valley Youth League (Delaware Valley)
Madison HS Spring League (Madison, WI)

Dylan Freechild makes Rhino Club Team & HL Video

Though I am sure there are many high schoolers out there who have now been picked up on the various Club teams around the nation, Dylan Freechild of South Eugene was a late pick by the nearly completely new Portland, OR team Rhino. Here is our first highlight video.

Summer Solstice XXX 2008 - Rhino HL from glossjohnson on Vimeo.

New contributor!! Russell Taylor

We have some exciting news on the blog, we are proud to announce the latest addition to our team of contributors - Russell Taylor from NYC.

Russell will be posting shortly with a bio to let you know a little bit more about himself.

On the other side of things - i have accepted a job with the barack obama presidential campaign and as such will be very much removed from the blog until around november 7th-ish. i'll stop back occasionally, but in the interim the rest of the awesome team of contributors will be holding down the fort.

hopefully you all have a great ultimate-filled summer and early fall. when school starts, recruit recruit recruit, but most importantly - play ultimate.

Ultimate coverage in the news... some musings

So i was looking around to see the last time the NYT covered ultimate, and stumbled on a few things...

the 1989 New York Times...

Running, diving, catching and striving constantly to move downfield toward an opponent's end zone. The game is not football, but Ultimate Frisbee.

the 1999 New York Times...

MOMENTS before the start of their regional championship match two weeks ago, players from the world champion Ultimate Frisbee team Cigar huddled on the sidelines. They sized up their opponents, plotted defensive strategies and reviewed the rule on interference from pine trees in the end zone. Then they each grabbed hold of a white disk. ''All this talk is making me dizzy,'' they chanted. ''Yo, baby, yo, baby, let's get busy.''

Complete with wonderfully quaint mis-characterizations and almost-truths such as this...

Soon, the Discraft -- considered more stable than the Wham-O Frisbee that gave the sport its name -- sailed the length of the field and was caught by an opposing player.

A two-fer ladies and gentlemen - the discraft flew through the air, and also, Wham-O Frisbee gave the sport its name. But alas, coverage of any stripe in the world's most widely read newspaper is acceptable. As the saying goes - any press is good press. And as the saying goes in ultimate: "wait... press? what press?"

Well here's the trend, nationals seems to get covered with a full article of some length about once every 10 years, so where are ya New York Times, its about time for another article?

What's more interesting to me are these paragraphs...

The pace is similar to that of a soccer or lacrosse game, and thus requires a great deal of athleticism from its participants.

To explain the game, players often use a medley of analogies to other sports. ''The sprinting is like in hockey,'' said Dan Haar, 40, a member of Ashtray and a business writer for The Hartford Courant. ''The scoring is like football, the offensive flow is like soccer and the defense is like basketball.''

In the 40 years since the sport was created we can't figure out a way to describe our sport to non-players in a way that does not invoke another sport. Why is that? Do you ever try to explain baseball to someone by comparing it to another sport? I would say rarely, you explain the objective and the rules.

But here is the kicker....

But some wait for the day their sport will be played on a bigger stage. David Chaiken, who learned to play in Prospect Park in Brooklyn 20 years ago as a teen-ager, recalled a trip to Germany in 1989, when the Miami team for which he was playing performed in an Ultimate demonstration for the World Games. This year, World Games officials decided to include Ultimate as a medal sport at its 2001 competition in Japan. ''It took 10 years for that to happen,'' said Mr. Chaiken, who when not tossing Frisbees is the executive chef at Johnney's Fish Grill in the World Financial Center.

Yet Frisbee, as a sport, remains unfamiliar to many people. ''The perception that it is something you do on the beach with dogs is still out there,'' Mr. Chaiken said. ''It's still a grass-roots thing.''

Ok two things here.

1./ a personal pet peeve - and some ultimate players love this - "haha we play ultimate, with dogs!!" stop. just stop. this is done, when someone says this to you, kindly inform them of the sport you actually play. take your sport seriously. that article was from 10 years ago. the same joke is still funny now? that quote is from 10 years ago. 10 years ago.

It didn't help people realize that what you do doesnt involve a dog, and repeating it now wont help either.

2./ yes, ultimate is growing - there are more high school teams now in many cities than ever before. but...

The event was the culmination of sectional and regional competitions involving about 500 teams nationwide

That was from 1989... 20 years ago. There aren't that many more club teams now, which is very interesting to me. High school is exploding, college is as well to an extent. Summer leagues are more packed in my experience, but it seems club teams are remaining around the same level give or take?

What does this show - that roughly the same number of people want to play competitively? That most new additions to the game of ultimate have been recreational players?

This is a long and winding post, i realize. But i hope it spurs some discussion, ultimate in the media is a valid topic of discussion. Is ultimate-validity something that can be achieved by a conventional PR campaign by the UPA? (not that this has or will occurred) or is it something that is possible via a viral or street team style campaign? (something along the lines of youtube videos and posting the ten simple rules on light posts and city walls)

Or is it something that is just not achievable?

Let's hear some thoughts

Open thread: what's on your mind?

Open thread time... discuss whatever you wish

Coming very soon - new contributor announcement, a new summer series of posts gearing up for the fall, and more. If you have requests for content on the site, throw em in the comments.

We are still looking for a comments "god" - would you like to delete other people's words at your heavenly will? Read all the details here



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remember to visit PlayUltimate on facebook!! help spread the word about ultimate

YCC Rosters: DEVYL (Open)

1. Adrian Galbraith-Paul (Lower Merion)
2. John Stavinga (Wissahickon)
3. Matt Stavinga (Wissahickon)
4. Justin Principi (Pennsbury)
5. Elijah Karoly (Pennsbury)
6. Matt Bode (Pennsbury)
7. Justin Baughn (Pennsbury)
8. Dennison Bechis (Pennsbury)
9. Zach Kauffman (Pennsbury)
10. Evan Sacks (Pennsbury)
11. Brian Li (Watchung Hills)
12. Jacob Price (Watchung Hills)
13. Loren Whitaker (Columbia)
14. Alex Holtz (Columbia)
15. Jeremy Golden (Columbia)
16. Tim Morrissy (Columbia)
17. Jordan Taylor (Columbia)
18. Mike Sender (Columbia)

A reminder to YCC team coaches, captains, managers etc. Please send your rosters to playultimateblog@gmail.com when they become available.

Want to play god? (looking for comments moderator)

So one of the awesome features of the new comment system is that you can promote any (logged in) user to "superuser" status so they can delete comments, remove offensive things etc.

We are looking for a few people to fill this position.

If you want it you must do the following...

1. be a registered member on the site (free, you can sign in with your OpenID that works on a ton of sites)
2. be a regular commenter
3. have a positive karma rating from other commenters
4. be in the top 10 on the commenting leaderboard
   

Since as of right now only two people have used the full-on signed in features it won't be hard to get into the top ten. However you must be signed in and be a regular commenter.

This is not to say you need to give up your anonymity. You can still log in with any name you want, logging in just means that people will be able to tell that it is you posting the comments. This way people can't impersonate you, and you have the opportunity to play god for the summer.

Use this thread as an opportunity to log in and throw your name in the mix to play god for the summer.

PlayUltimate will be announcing new contributors within the next week. If you are interested in becoming a contributor please email playultimateblog@gmail.com