I grew up playing ultimate frisbee. It was a regular part of my life by junior high. We would play every Sunday afternoon, year round, and sometimes in the evenings over the summer. Good times!
Well ESPN decided to do a little exploration of less well known sports, and they decided to profile the Stanford women's team. If you didn't know, they're kind of dominant.
This quote is particularly awesome:
"Dantzker, who joined the team as a sophomore, said she improved as a player each season. More significantly, she said that with each game her love of the sport grew. She admits that part of the reason she decided to pursue a graduate degree at Stanford was to continue playing for Superfly."
GSB, here I come.
They say about 100,000 Americans play in total. I find that hard to believe, though. Even ten years ago there were a lot of leagues and it definitely felt like a lot more involvement than .033% of the population, and I'm sure more play now than when I got started. I wonder if that's only people who participate directly in leagues through the UPA.
We were a tad more casual. In fact, it was kind of funny when people would try to organize our efforts and get us to run specific plays (out of the stack) and so forth. We mostly just wanted to have fun running around throwing the frisbee, which I would argue is still very much in the spirit of the sport, combining competitive traits with self-regulatory ones (there are no refs in ultimate). Plus, teamwork is the most important thing. It's really fun when you know people so well that you can make something look chaotic to the other team but you are instinctively aware of what your teammates are up to.
Ah, that's been a while...
No comments:
Post a Comment