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Ultimate Happenings: Issue 75 - Nov. 23 1998

OCUA Web site: http://www.ocua.ca

"Clothes make the man. Naked people (Gavin excepted) have
little or no influence on society."

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CONTENTS:
 - 1999 CUPA Nationals Meeting
 - Fall League Round Up
 - Ultimate In The Press 1
 - Ultimate In The Press 2

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1999 CUPA NATIONALS MEETING:

There is a brainstorming session to be held November 29 at 2:00.

At this meeting we hope to form an organising committee for
the 1999 Canadian nationals to be held in Ottawa.

The location is the Cleave Physiotherapy clinic (Doug's office)
at 180 Metcalfe (Metcalfe & Nepean).

All who are interested are welcome.

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FALL LEAGUE ROUND UP:

Greetings all you captain's of PROUF's Fall League. Just a
little note here to say thanks for making this a most successful
season, you were ALL very patient with the 'week to week'
schedule.

This scheduling "experiment" proved to be quite a bit of work
for myself and I will have to rethink how to make it not so
in the future :) Below is what happened this season... in case
you are interested. Please forward it onward to those on your
respective teams with e-mail.

----------------------------
MONDAY 4/3 LEAGUE.

Final Standings
 10-1  Frosty Go Ho's
  9-2  Pass the Salt
  8-3  Moops
  8-4  Carpe Disc
  7-5  Spot
  7-5  Huckleberry Hounds
  6-4  Fluid Druids
  6-4  K9 Seducktion
  6-5  Disc Connected
  6-5  Outlaws
  5-5  Free Radicals
  5-5  Disc Oriented
  5-7  Byte Me!
  5-7  Disco Queenz
  4-7  Shawarmas
  4-7  Smell the Fun
  3-8  Shut up & Run
  0-11 Getta-Loada-Disc
  0-12 Fuggedabout

 Championships
  Semi's:
   Frosty Go Ho's 15 Carpe Disc 4
   Pass the Salt 15 Moops 4
  Final:
   Frosty Go Ho's 15 Pass the Salt 11

 Frosty Go Ho's are the Monday Night 4/3 Champions!!
 Smell the Fun are the 'Spirit of the Game' winners!!!


----------------------------
 TUESDAY 4/3 LEAGUE.

 Final Standings
  9-2  Dewey, Stackem & Howe
  9-3  Boneheadz on the Run
  7-5  Toss My Salad (Beat Killer Tomatoes. Has Best record.)
  7-6  Killer Tomatoes (Beat 'Murph' & 'Doogie Doo')
  7-5  Doogie Doo Snow Cone
  7-6  Pigs in Space (Beat 'Murph')
  7-5  Murph & the...
  6-4  Slurpee Headache
  6-6  Mean People Suck
  6-6  DiscGraceful
  5-6  Rainbow Trout
  5-7  Throes of Passion (Beat Disco Rules!)
  5-7  Disco Rules!
  3-8  Ring of Fire
  3-8  The Toss Offs
  1-10 Dirty Voodoo Children
  1-10 All Touch, No Contact
  0-12 Svelte Llama


 CHAMPIONSHIPS.
  Semis:
   Dewey,Stackem & Howe 15 Killer Tomatoes 2
   Toss My Salad 15 Boneheadz 10
  Final:
   Dewey,Stackem & Howe 15 Toss My Sald 3

 Dewey,Stackem & Howe are the Tuesday 4/3 League Champions!!
 Ring of Fire are the 'Spirit of the Game' winners!!!


----------------------------
 WEDNESDAY 4/3 LEAGUE.

 Final Standings.
  10-2  Good on Paper
  11-3  The Good,the Plaid & the Ugly (Paper "covers" Plaid...twice.)
   9-3  Nefarious Basselopes
   8-4  Mary Juanda * (Beat 'Bladerunners' & 'Floss')
   8-3  BladeRunners
   8-3  Mental Floss
   7-4  Fired Hucks
   7-4  Bitheads
   6-4  HURL
   6-5  Original Spins
   5-4  Mr. Hankey
   4-6  Ready 'n Swillin'
   5-7  Fall Hipsters
   3-6  Stonecutters
   1-10 Flick 'Huckers


 CHAMPIONSHIPS.
 Quarter-Finals.
  Good on Paper 15 HURL 7
  BladeRunners 8 Mental Floss 7
  Good,Plaid,Ugly 15 Bitheads 6
  Fired Hucks over Basselopes
  *Mary Juanda opted to play in the 'Overall Championship'
 Semi-finals.
  Good on Paper 15 BladeRunners 4
  Good,Plaid,Ugly 15 Fired Hucks 2
 FINALS.
  The Good,the Plaid & the Ugly 15 Good on Paper 12

 The Good,the Plaid & the Ugly are the Wednesday 4/3 Champions!!
 Both Fired Hucks and BladeRunners tied for the 'Spirit of the Game'


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 THURSDAY 4/3 LEAGUE

 Final Standings.
  9-4  Random Acts of Swill
  9-4  Cheeky Monkey
  9-5  SwillBillies*
  7-5  Sesquintillion Beings
  7-7  Huck & Chase Inc.
  6-7  Clone My Sheep
  6-8  Turf Toads
  4-6  Tragically Fit
  4-8  Flicktitous
  4-9  Cheap Flick
  3-8  Saints & Spinners
  1-10 Wild Turkey


 CHAMPIONSHIP.
  Semi-finals.
   Random Acts of Swill 15 Huck & Chase Inc. 6
   Sesquintillion Beings over SwillBillies
   * Cheeky Monkey opted to play in the 'B' Division Overalls.
 FINALS.
  Random Acts of Swill over Sesquintillion Beings

 Random Acts of Swill are the Thursday 4/3 Champions!!
 Cheap Flick are the 'Spirit of the Game' Winners!!!


----------------------------
 WEDNESDAY 5/2 LEAGUE.

 Final Standings.
  9-2 Bangers & Mash
  8-3 Guiness Pigs
  7-4 Freestyle
  7-5 Hucking Morons (Beat Biggus Discus)
  7-4 Biggus Discus
  6-5 Purple Eh's
  5-6 Funnilingus
  5-7 Big Hand of Dearth
  5-7 Boogie Knights
  4-8 Mad Cows


 Semi-finals.
  Bangers & Mash 15 Hucking Morons 7
  Guiness Pigs over Freestyle (by default)
 Finals.
  Bangers & Mash 15 Guiness Pigs 9

 Bangers & Mash are the Wednesday 5/2 Champions!!
 Mad Cows are the 'Spirit of the Game' Winners!!!


----------------------------
 THURSDAY 5/2 LEAGUE.

 Final Standings.
  8-4  I Fetch,Therefore I Am
  8-4  Fallen Soldiers
  8-6  Kapital Punishment
  7-6  Area 51
  6-6  Wasteland
  5-7  Maritime Madness
  5-8  Mighty Hucks
  5-8  Disc Appeal
  4-9  No Name
  2-11 Herniated Disc


 CHAMPIONSHIP.
  Semi-finals
   I Fetch,Therefore I Am 15 Area 51 7
   Fallen Soldiers 19 Kapital Punishment 12
 FINALS.
  I Fetch,Therefore I Am 15 Fallen Soldiers 9

 I Fetch,Therefore I Am are the Thursday 5/2 Champions!!
 Kapital Punishment are the 'Spirit of the Game' winners!!!


----------------------------
 THE OVERALL CHAMPIONSHIPS.


 4/3 A DIVISION.
  Dewey,Stackem & Howe(Tues) 15 Good,Plaid,Ugly(Wed) 8
 
 5/2 A DIVISION.
  Bangers & Mash(Wed) 15 I Fetch,Therefore I Am(Thurs) 13

 4/3 B DIVISION.
  Frosty Go Ho's 15 Cheeky Monkey 9

 
----------------------------
 Congrads to...

 Frosty Go Ho's                     Mon.4/3 Champ & B Overall
 Dewey Stackem & Howe               Tues.4/3 Champ & A Overall
 The Good,the Plaid & the Ugly      Wed. 4/3 Champ
 Random Acts of Swill               Thurs 4/3 Champ
 Bangers & Mash Wed.                5/2 Champ & A Overall
 I Fetch,Therefore I Am             Thurs.5/2 Champ
 Disc Believers                     Women's Champ

 Smell the Fun                      Mon.4/3 SOTG Winner
 Ring of Fire                       Tues.4/3 SOTG Winner
 BladeRunner/Fired Hucks            Wed. 4/3 SOTG Winners
 Cheap Flick                        Thurs. 4/3 SOTG Winner
 Mad Cows                           Wed. 5/2 SOTG Winner
 Kapital Punishment                 Thurs 5/2 SOTG Winner

 Svelte Llama                       Congeniality Award
 Flick 'n Huckers                   Congeniality Award


 All of the teams that *won* will receive as their prize...
 Discs/Frisbees. Please contact Jack Webb to arrange pick-up.

 For those that missed the party it was a BLAST!!!
 We made $1400 for 'Junior Ultimate' from the door.

 Stay tuned to 'Ultimate Happenings' as I will be bringing
 SUPER FREAK back again soon, this time at Barrymores.

 Hope you all had fun!
 Ciao until next year.
 ajck webb

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ULTIMATE IN THE PRESS 1:

Flippin' out over disc-go fever
 by Rick Collins
 National Post
 November 16, 1998

Thirty years ago it was a laid-back, toy-tossing pastime in
New Jersey, but the sport known as Ultimate has caught on.
More than 10,000 Canadians - some of them world champs - are
going gaga over Frisbee.

Mitchell Scott is one of Canada's best athletes. But you won't
see this 28-year-old Vancouverite, or his world champion teammates
on any sports network. Their game stats are not included in
any newspaper. And at first glance it's easy to see why.
After all, any sport played with a Frisbee, calling itself
Ultimate, will likely always be the Rodney Dangerfield of team
sports.

It's Halloween weekend on a sloppy field near the University
of Victoria, where a muscular man wearing pink cotton socks,
a matching mid-thigh skirt and chiffon top is looking for
respect. Scott isn't giving him much. Looking decent in drag,
Lou Buress takes off on a 50-metre sprint into an open area
calling for a pass, he fakes left and cuts hard across the
field hoping to shake Scott, his pesky defender. Just as the
pass arrives, his man-on-man shadow, dressed in a more
conservative white cotton T-shirt and shorts, launches himself
like some sort of surface-to-air missile just in time for the
block.

If this was football, the gloating would begin right here,
right now. The standing around. The muddy high-fives walking
back to the line and into the huddle. The beer commercial
soundtrack. The resting. However, Scott gets to his feet in
quick transition from defence to offence, and throws a perfect
50-metre pass to the end zone for a score.

"Usually we dress like soccer players, with numbers and jerseys,"
says the tall, lanky Scott, in defence of his challenging sport.
"We're just having some fun here after a long season."

But right now the Buress team, known as the Seattle-based Beauty
Queens, are not having much fun on this All Saints' Day. The
Loggers from Western Canada are poor hosts, beating the Queens
in the semifinal game of a casual tournament known as the Pumpkin
Pull.

More than 30 mixed teams from as far away as California and
Manitoba have squared off since Saturday. There are more hugs,
big hair and flying plastic here than at any Tupperware party
in the suburbs.

And despite the cloak of buffoonery, with teams here dressed
in a myriad of clever costumes, Ultimate is slowly shedding
its reputation as the rogue, hippie version of traditional
American football.

For the uninitiated spectator who wanders past this cirque
sans solei, Ultimate is easy to, uh, catch onto.

The high school boys in Maplewood, N.J., who invented the game
in 1968 were looking for a simple, non-conformist game to play
using the coolest toy of the period - a disc (Frisbee is a
trademark name). To them, a non-contact passing game played
by two, seven-person teams seemed to be the perfect sport,
thus the name - Ultimate.

But over time the laid-back toy-tossing exploded into the team
sport of the future, combining the running of soccer with the
stamina of hockey and the cutting, jumping and passing of
basketball, Ultimate is now one of the fastest growing sports
in the world.

It is also a marketing whiz's dream unrealized. Healthy men
and women dressed in high-tech fabric, chasing each other and
the friendly little politically-correct plastic disc across a
grassy field. Can you say beer commercial?

Although most people haven't even heard of Ultimate (the sport
crept onto university campuses around 1975), there are now
10,000 active players in Canada.

Most are recreational evening and weekenders who play throughout
the summer and indoors in winter, including a nine-team corporate
league at IBM in Toronto, a 200-team league in Ottawa, and 300
men and women who competed at this year's university championships
in Edmonton.

As well, an elite group of Canadian men's and women's teams
travel to tournaments all over the world, competing with other
such fanatics mostly on weekends at their own cost.

In the U.S., there are paid collegiate coaches as teams prepare
for the NCAA national championships held every spring.

Last year the University of British Columbia women's team out
of Vancouver shocked the Americans by getting to the finals
against Stanford.

They lost, but Canada has quickly become an Ultimate powerhouse,
despite the country's reputation of perpetual frozen tundra.

Played with a high-tech plastic disc, on a field similar to
football, the object is to score by catching a pass in the
opponent's end zone. A player must stop running while in
possession of the disc, but can pivot and pass to any of the
other six receivers on the field.

Just like basketball, Ultimate is a transition game in which
players move quickly from offence to defence on turnovers that
occur with a dropped pass, an interception, a pass out-of-bounds,
or when a player is caught holding the disc for longer than
nine seconds.

At the Pumpkin Pull, they claim play is casual, but the running
seems endless. Mitchell Scott and the Loggers continue their
domination over the Queens. After two quick give-and-go passes
near their own end zone, Toby Marcoux unloads an 80-yard bomb
with enough arm to make Doug Flutie proud. Scott and his man
pursue the disc in a one-on-one showdown better than any penalty
shot drama hockey can offer. The disc hovers and spins, curving
just past the outstretched arms of the flying defender as Scott
makes an acrobatic one-handed catch and crash lands for the goal.

Don Cherry, he of highlight video fame, would have gone gaga.
The teams have 20-player rosters, and substitutions are allowed
only when a point is scored. Games are played to 15 or 17
points (one point for each goal) and there is no time clock.

And perhaps most significantly - similar to self-refereed,
three-on-three basketball - Ultimate's rules are enforced
entirely by the players on the field. Even at this past summer's
world championships, where Canada's men's, co-ed and masters
division teams won gold medals, there were no referees.

"It's the one great thing that separates Ultimate from all
other sports," says Scott. "We rely solely on a clause in the
rules called 'the spirit of the game,' which essentially means
we will avoid a win-at-all costs attitude."

This benevolent vision of sport sounds like something conjured
out of a haze in the 1960s, but seeing is believing. There are
relatively few arguments as players seem to take responsibility
for themselves - something more established sports could do
well to emulate.

Back on the field, Lou Buress, who learned to play Ultimate
at college in New York, throws his hat to the ground as the
game ends. "Damn, I hate losing to you Canadians," he drawls
tongue-in-cheek, as opposing players laugh, hug and compare
game notes. "Your first mistake was teaching us how to play,"
is the quick response from the Logger's sideline.

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ULTIMATE IN THE PRESS 2:

More Than a Simple Fling: Ultimate Frisbee
 By JERRY BEILINSON
 New York Times
 November 20, 1998

NEW YORK -- My wife doesn't stroke my ego the way she did before
we were married. I told her I was going to play ultimate Frisbee,
for the first time since college 10 years ago. She said, "Wait,
I wanna buy more life insurance first." Then she felt bad and
offered to help me find my moldy old cleats, which hadn't been
worn in more than a decade. "I don't need cleats," I said. "This
is a mellow game. They even said beginners are welcome." Fran
looked at me with what I'm pretty sure was pity and told me to
drink plenty of water.

Two hours later, I'm in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. I'm not quite
wheezing yet but my legs feel like lead and my man is running
away from me with ease. He crosses into the end zone and catches
the disk with the relaxed air of Michael Jordan shooting over,
say, a boiled chicken. This guy I'm failing to guard is named
John, I think. And I'm not sure, but there may be two Johns
here. Either that or all this panting is making me see double.

Ultimate is sometimes called Frisbee football, but it's really
more like soccer, especially from a cardiovascular perspective.
It was invented by some New Jersey high-school students in 1968
and went on to spread through the country and to some extent
through the world.

Official games have seven players on each side on a field that
is 40 by 70 yards, not counting two end zones that are each
25 yards deep. The teams line up on opposite goal lines and
one throws off to the other, as with the kickoff in football.

But there the similarity to that game ends. Action is continuous.
You can't run while holding the Frisbee, but you do run around
like crazy trying to get open so your teammate can throw it
to you. If you catch a pass, you stop short, pivot on your
heel and pass the Frisbee in turn to another player, one
who is preferably further up the field.

Drop the disk (slang for Frisbee) or throw an interception and
the game continues in reverse: while the other team goes on
the attack you switch to defense. To score, a team has to pass
the Frisbee across the goal line. Then finally play stops, and
the teams return to opposite ends of the field to start another
point. This is usually a good time for the paramedics to come
in and tidy up the likes of me.

Like other team athletes, ultimate players scream. In Prospect
Park, one guy is shouting: "Stack! Stack! Stack!" Then, it's:
"Force home! Force is home!" and other jargon I don't understand.
But when my side is on offense, I cut straight at the defender,
pivot and run full speed back at my teammate holding the disk.
He gets off a pass and I snag it. Someone calls, "Good cut!"

My defender is a few inches from me, shouting the stall count:
"Stall one! Stall two! Stall three!" If I don't get a pass off
by the time he reaches 10, the Frisbee turns over. I fake
right, pass left and bury the disk in the grass. "Don't air
bounce!" someone screams. I was trying to throw under the arm
of the defender and then make the disk curve sharply up into
the hands of my teammate. It used to work in college. Back
then, in the days when my friends and I ruled intramural
ultimate at our Midwest university. Out on the meadow in front
of the old library, we'd spend afternoons tossing the disk
around. It was translucent, and it traced long arcs in the
sky, pure as mathematics, or blistering straight lines. No
football or javelin ever had the beauty in flight of a 175-gram
ultimate Frisbee.

There were a lot of ponytail and earring wearers, late sleepers
and guitar players in that group. On game day we'd show up late,
warm up with cigarettes and maybe a beer, and win. And we took
pleasure in beating the likes of the football fraternity. That
team would arrive wearing identical white T-shirts and prepare
with lock-step calisthenics. It was skill over strength, physics
over physicality, the triumph of the soul over mere substance.

But the fit inherit the world. In Prospect Park, my head feels
as heavy as my legs and I've retreated to the grass under a
shade tree to drink water and watch the game. This is a pretty
spot. The field is called the Nethermead, and it's a short walk
from the Third Street entrance on Prospect Park West. The lawn
is thick and trees are scattered idyllically around the edges.
If I do go back in the game and the worst does occur, this
might do nicely as my final resting place.

After a couple of hours about 30 players have shown up. The
game has been going on every Saturday morning, rain, shine or
snow, for years. They even played in the big blizzard of 1996,
says Scott Bolden, who is not only tireless on the field but
also has a sort of world-culture cool going on. He's wearing
a striped soccerlike jersey, green shorts and wraparound
sunglasses. While this is a pickup game -- beginners welcome
and all that -- he explains to me that many of these players
also compete on club teams.

Competitive ultimate is governed by a somewhat anarchic group
called the Ultimate Players Association. There are men's and
women's divisions, with a recently begun coed division. College
and club leagues are separate; the clubs are better. There's
no professional play in ultimate and neither sponsorships nor
any officiating. Just a lot of players who can't kick the habit.
This is what I love about the game: its classic sporting
attitude. Baseball was maybe this cool in the 1880s.

Sean Castellino, chatting on the sidelines, tells me that a couple
of Prospect Park regulars have been on national championship
teams. His own club, F Train, is a "scrub Brooklyn team," he
says. I saw the team earlier in the day practicing on another
field. It's a hefty notch below New York's best team, the name
of which seems to morph from year to year. Right now, it's
called the Westchester Summer League All-Stars.

I go back into the game. The problem with my regular have-another-
doughnut conditioning program is that I can really only play
one point before I get too tired to run very hard. After that,
I resort to a lazy sort of ultimate-playing defense off my man,
mainly staying far from the disk on offense. I retreat to the
sidelines again after three points.

On the other end of the spectrum is Irina Konvickova, who plays
hard for 90 straight minutes, it seems to me, before reluctantly
taking a break and letting someone else go in for her. A native
of what is now the Czech Republic, she hadn't played the game
before moving to the United States. The sport was played only
in Prague and she had spent her time competing at the national
level in judo. Now, at 28, she has been playing three years.
She happens to be the only woman playing on the field today.

She lives in Manhattan and used to play at a long-running pickup
game in Central Park, but gave it up in favor of the games at
Prospect Park. She says she finds the level of play lower in
Central Park, and because more people would show up she didn't
get to play as much. "I don't like to sit down," she says. "I
like to play the whole time." A lower level of play? Less time
on the field? I'm there.

The next afternoon, Sunday, I'm in Central Park on a field aptly
called the Dust Bowl, on the Fifth Avenue side just north of
97th Street. So far, the regeneration of the lawn in Central
Park has missed this spot. Instead of being the worst player
on the field here I'm just in the bottom 30 percent.

Enough players have shown up to make three six-person teams.
It works like the pool table at a bar: you win, you keep the
field, except that one team never plays more than two games
in a row. I play better than I did in Prospect Park. I get in
on a couple of plays on offense. And on defense, I manage to
stay close enough to the player I'm guarding to preserve my
dignity. Once I even jump over him in the end zone to swat
away the Frisbee and prevent a score. There's some question
as to whether the play is broken up by me or some low-hanging
branches, but heck, we get the disk.

For me, Central Park will do nicely for now. Still, there's
got to be a game out there where I can excel. If not, I'm going
to start my own pickup game. Maybe I'll recruit my daughter's
friends. They're all in nursery school and some of them are
really short.

It's a week after Central Park and I'm checking out a higher
level of  play, but this time there's not a chance I'll get
in a game. I've come to the regional club championships of the
Ultimate Players Association held at the State University
College at Purchase, N.Y.

The Westchester All-Stars are playing today; eventually the
team will place fourth nationally. So is D.O.G. (for Death or
Glory), the Boston team that has won the national championship
for four years running, and will go on to do it again this year.
They rose to the pinnacle of the game after the breakup of a
New York dynasty team, New York, New York, which had won five
years in a row. Lady Godiva, the best women's team in the region
and the eventual winner at the nationals, is here, too, and
steamrollering the competition.

A lot of players and some spectators have come to Purchase. A
lot of dogs are running around, too, chasing Frisbees and one
another. I sort of feel as if I'm at a Grateful Dead concert:
the mood is welcoming and unpretentious. This makes sense
because a critical part of ultimate is the spirit of the game.
Players make their own calls, and they do it honestly. Picks
and body contact are not only illegal but also rare and
genuinely accidental.

If these guys had played us in college, they would have won
easily. Yet no matter how loud the players scream, how hard
they train or how often they make bruising diving catches it's
still recognizably the same game I played back on the meadow
all those years ago. In those days, it seemed as if grace was
at my fingertips. I launched the disk into space, and there it
was: glory.

Out on the field in Purchase someone from D.O.G. throws a long
bomb into the end zone and the players sprint toward it. On
the sidelines, we all watch as the disk floats for long
seconds against the sky. It's beautiful.

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Ultimate Happenings is a e-mail newsletter for the
Ottawa-Carleton Ultimate Association.

If you want to subscribe send an e-mail to mharley@sympatico.ca
with the subject "Subscribe Ultimate Happenings".
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