Max's Ultimate Page

Background

Ultimate is the greatest game in the world. A bunch of random links can be found at the homepage of the Ultimate Player's Association. I started playing when I was a freshman at Rice. I hadn't played organized sports much but got into it pretty quickly.

One funny thing about it is all these guys who have frisbee names: Scuttler, Rafi, Trout, Stumpy Doobie, JJ, Yibble, Noddy, Truth, Cribber, Biscuit, Mags, Jello, Homesuck, Pony, Scrappy, Hoover, Hollywood, T-Bone, Skylab. That's nineteen out of hundreds. I know all these guys but have no idea what their real names are. Well, except Skylab, his name is Kevin Shen.

Links

Forbes article

Adventures

One of there reasons I love this game is the community spirit. Pretty much anywhere you go in the world, if you find other ultimate players, more than likely they'll take you in.

I was going to travel in the UK with my sister in 1994. Right before I left, my excellent friend Emeka said, "Hey, if you're going to Scotland, there's this guy that posts on rec.sport.disc called Chris who has a team in Edinburgh. You should call him." A quick email exchange got me his phone number.

So two weeks later my sister and I are in York and we want to go to Edinburgh. I fish out Chris's number and call him. He insists that we meet, only he can't quite get off work by the time we get there; can he send his wife Debs downtown to meet us instead? We wander into the center of Edinburgh some hours later and locate Debs, pushing a pram occupied by Wee Erin. We start in the general direction of the train station. Suddenly this big guy bounds up to us with a huge grin and says, "I'm Chris! Welcome to Edinburgh!" and delivers bear hugs to me and my sister. Before I can get out a word, he says, "I've called me friend Leo. He's got room at his flat. You can stay there as long as ya like." So I've never been to this town before, but within minutes I have people to hang out with -- and play disc with -- and a free place to stay! I met many fine folks, including Fraser, Stuie, Miggins, Yibble, Ian, Wee Barry, Paul, Jonnie, and Liam.

The Edinburgh team is called Sneeeky's. No, that's not a misspelling. Well, at one point it was -- apparently an error on an entry form -- but that spelling stuck. These guys embody the Spirit of the Game (SOTG) like no group I've ever played with.

I got invited to a tournament in Wales called Ross-on-Wye. It was on a Saturday. I checked my ticket. It was the day I had to fly back to the states! Argh! I called American and they just laughed. "Sure, you can change your ticket -- the next seat is available in about ten days." On the trip home I started planning coming back next year for Ross.

The following March, I get a call from Leo. "Say Max old chap, we got a bid to the World Championships in southwestern England this July. Would you like to play for us?" I could barely compose myself to answer. "Um ... yes!!!" I said. I took off the entire month of July, spent a week in London, two weeks in Edinburgh (with a quick diversion to Ross-on-Wye for a two-day tune up), and then spent a week in Street, doing nothing but playing disc and ogling the Swedish women's team and drinking tequila. (If a thing could happen through sheer force of will, the Swedish women would have played at least one game naked, but alas, they didn't.) God, it was a fantastic time.

I've just found out that Worlds '99 will be near Edinburgh. Dang, only eighteen months to scam my way onto a team and get in shape!

Pictures

Here are some photos taken with the Sneeekys at the World Championships in July 1995 and another photo from a tournament in Rotterdam (Holland) in May 1996.

Cheers

Cheering is a vital part of Ultimate. After the game, each team performs a brief rhyme or tune, usually an attempt to be clever or funny. Many cheers are made up on the spot. The Sneeeky's, and other European teams, tend to have elaborate cheers either taken from their tribal knowledge or made up while driving for hours and hours and getting wasted in the back of a rented mini-bus.

My personal inspiration is my friend Emeka, who contributed many fine cheers to my repetoire and never let me forget that cheering is an integral part of the game. Last year the Rice team made it all the way to Nationals, which I was fortunate enough to attend (also, being essentially their only alum, I was their sugar daddy). Now there was some truly inspired cheering. And they won the spirit award, of course!

Mama's Little Baby
This one is accompanied by a little dance. Ask Emeka to demonstrate.
Mama's little baby loves (team name, team name)
Mama's little baby loves (so-and-so team)
Look for the huck, no one was there
Tried for the swing but (team name) was there
Mama's little baby loves (team name, team name)
Mama's little baby loves (so-and-so team)
The Rawhide Cheer
Sung to the tune of "Rawhide". Made up by me for the Australian National team, who stopped through the SF area for a mini-tourney to get warmed up for the 1996 Worlds in Stockholm.
Throwin' throwin' throwin'
Huckin' and a scorin'
The game was never borin', Dingoes
They brought no kangaroosies
They only brought their shoesies
We'll set 'em up with floozies tonight
Stack it up!
Make the cut!
Lay it out!
Get the score!
Ride 'em in, Dingoes
The Revival Cheer
This one isn't exactly a cheer in the traditional sense. It's more like a skit. This one was made up by a guy named Dan at the Hilo Hat tournament in 1997. However, Dan is kind of a surfer dude, and it was left to me (in Dallas we got them TV preachers on ever corner!) to implement.

The basic idea is one person is the preacher and the rest of the folks are the congregation. The preacher has certain cues he can use. If s/he says, "Do I hear halleluiah?" the congregation replies "Halleluiah!" Other such pairings are "Do you believe?" / "We believe", and "Amen" / "Amen". The revival starts out with the preacher declaring something along the lines of, "Friends, whether we win or lose, we have all sinned in the eyes of the lords of frisbee. I ask each of you now to come forth and repent in the name of ultimate." Then three or four designated folks come up and in turn say what sort of things they might have done wrong during a game, such as throwing an ill-advised pass (one example, in ultimate jargon, might be a "wanky hammer"). Then the preacher declares, "Begone ye demons of wanky hammer!" and does the open-palm forehead-thump like a televangelist. A good ending is something like, "May ye all find healing in the Spirit of the Game! Bless you my children" or some such silliness.

It may sound really silly written down but several folks told me it was the coolest cheer they'd ever seen.

Sneeeky's Rotterdam '96
My momma told me
If I was goodie
That she would buy me
A brand new frisbee

My auntie told her
I hurt my shoulder
Now she won't buy me
A brand new frisbee

(Two three)
Three six nine!
We all drink wine!
We all smoke tobacco and we have a good time
We all take dope
We're always broke
And we all came to Holland on a big ferry boat!
Sneeeky's Rotterdam '97
Sneeeky's Sneeeky's out on the pitch
We're short, we're tough, we're green
We always play with spirit and we try to keep it clean
We're off the pitch and into the pub
And never more to be seen
You've got to bring your whiskey and drugs to play with Scotland's team!
Bobsled
The Sneeeky's Bobsled Cheer is a reconstruction of an event which occured only in the 1934 Winter Olympics: the eight-man bobsled. Some number of people, not necessarily eight, act like they're the German bobsled team, running an invisible sled. Everybody else on the team is a tree, with arms raised into branch-like positions. The sled-drivers shout, "Ein! Zvie! Drei! Hut hut hut hut!", then drop one-by-one into the sled positions. As the sled starts "moving", the trees begin to stream past the sled, providing the (extremeley weak) illusion that the sled is travelling at incredible speed. This depends on the trees' fitness and how hard the game was. The sled leans left and right, following the lead of the driver, shouting "Whoooooooah!" through each turn.

The end of the call is when you reach Dead Man's Curve, at which point everybody (including the trees) suffers a spectacular wipeout.

Hats, Hops, and Hucks '97
Our team was kinda big so we kept ending up with so-so cheers (a problem caused by a surplus of creative juices -- it was always hard to get going in any particular direction). I decided we had to go all-out on the last cheer of the day. Their shirt color (and thus hat-team-name) was "cedar". They whooped us pretty good. So, to the tune of Beat It:
We're playing frisbee down in sunny Boulder Creek
Our spirit it was good although our play was week
And if we had the option we'd be back here next week
'gainst Cedar
'gainst Cedar

We started early and we played until late
We tried to get pumped up bun then we did deflate
We got our asses handed to us on a big plate
by Cedar
Now it's time to go ho with

Cedar
Cedar
Nobody's d is meaner
Whether it's man-up or whether it's zone
We'll guard the keg, we're not going home
Cedar
Cedar
Y'all ain't no bottom feeders
The games about spirit
The game's about fun
It doesn't much matter who lost or who won
'gainst Cedar (Cedar Cedar Cedar)
Cedar Cedar Cedar Cedar

More to come!


Last updated 14 Feb 98 by max