1996 to 1998: WHY NOT WRITE ABOUT ULTIMATE?

As this archive is a collection of my written works concerning and following Ultimate Frisbee, it only seems natural to me to write about what I know and confide my thoughts behind the writings.

In the spring of 1995 I graduated from Notre Dame, in South Bend Indiana – my hometown. Desiring a more exciting locale and falling in love with New York a few years earlier, I packed everything I needed into a Subaru Justy, gobbled mushrooms while watching boyhood pals play for I.U. at 95 College Nationals, and then hightailed it to the East Village.

Later that year I sought out and made friends with the competitive New York Ultimate scene. I played summer league and eventually became part of a small contingent of just-out-of-college Ultmate players seeking to make the big time on a team called Blood. This included good friends Corey Sanford and Eric Eckelman, a writer at MTV promos. We played decently enough for a first-year team, but the following year was our big chance. Matty Jefferson convinced Ben Usadi, Marty Brutvan, Ken Dobyns, Ben Worthen, and plenty of others to join the new team, especially after the demise of Cojones (Cribber left town, Ken bailed on "Randall's Island" and players either followed Dobyns to Blood or stayed with Randall's under the guidance of Chicken Joe and others). That year we lost in the game-to-go to Randall's, a New York versus New York battle that I am sure delighted everyone in the Northeast but us. I believe that 1996, was the only one since the mid-80's that Dobyns failed to make Nationals.

I played poorly at Regionals and suffered from some sort of breakdown. The next year I shyed away from competitive Ultimate, but realized that I had always been interested in knowing more about the game. I had been playing for 8 years (starting in high school) and had started and captained my college team for four years. But I was also a creative writer type of fellow and I hadn't been writing. I decided to go to College Easterns, again to watch Indiana play, and knew that I was going to write about the tournament. I wrote it up, sent it in to the Newsletter (and got paid 20 dollars by the UPA for the submission) and voila – it was in. I then wrote about another tournament, Fool's Fest (this being Spring 1997) and sometime late that summer Adam Zagoria told me that the UPA had asked him if he wanted to cover Club Nationals and offered to fly him to Sarasota. He wasn't interested. I was. I called them up and got the bid. That was my first real coverage.

I followed this up some commentary and observations about the current state of Ultimate – from the lack of good coverage, to the length of time between pulls, to all sorts of other issues. Like my friends Eckelman and Sanford, and like any good 23-year old, I was keenly interested in the future of Ultimate and whether or not it would ever become "recognized" for being the kick ass sport that it is. I then covered 1998 College Nationals, 1998 High School Nationals (billed as the "first-ever Juniors Nationals") and 1998 Club Nationals for the Newsletter and a bunch of tournaments in between – most notably playing for We Smoke Weed at Fool's Fest 98 which became one of the highlights of the infamous Wall Street Journal Article. I was playing a lot, but going to these tournaments as one of the only spectators was great fun. I had my pick of watching all the great games. If you've never done it, I can highly recommend attending a big tournament.

From there I was pretty much hooked on covering big tournaments.

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