"ULTIMATE BLEEDS TOO"
WRITTEN FOR ESPN MAGAZINE COLUMN NOT ABOUT THE MONEY

Blood II: Hells Gate. Not your typical name for a sports team. But this is Ultimate frisbee and there aren't many AT&Ts, Qualcomms and Disneys to buy ballparks and name franchises.

I met Blood II on the outfield of a baseball diamond landside of Hell's Gate, the perilous straits that mark the meeting of the East River and Long Island sound. The newly-formed squad was gathered for a pre-season scrimmage with a Brooklyn club called Red Hook.

Orion Lillyreed, 6'2" and wearing a muscle shirt and a Yankees cap, is one of the founders of the team. "I started throwing frisbee in high school. I was somewhat aware that the college I was going to (SUNY Purchase) had a very good team. So I played with them and when I graduated I decided to form my own team."

Lillyreed, 22, and Eric Eckelman, 26, a writer for MTV, started the club to compete with the top Ultimate teams in the Northeast, the ones that practice four or five days a week and attend tournaments every other weekend. Eric and Orion aren't schlubs; most of the players on Blood II are strong athletes with a sports background.

Yung Soo Kim, 23, won the Empire State Games playing Volleyball. He also lettered in tennis and swimming. When he got to college he started playing Ultimate. "In Ultimate, you play quarterback, safety, you gotta play defense and offense, throw, catch – you have to have all the fundamental skills of the game."

Still–why Ultimate? Isn't it a barefoot sport for geeks and stoners? "Its a bad stereotype that goes with the sport. Ultimate is played with a frisbee, so everybody thinks that its some hippie freaker deal," says Eckelman.

But it is true that one must find some sort of mystical motivation to play a sport that is still considered outsider and seems to evade the word "professional." "Ultimate players don't need cash prizes or trophies dangled in front of them. They're competitive. Simple as that," says Lillyreed.

Like many alternative sports, Ultimate players don't necessarily fit into a system of regulations, coaches, and organizations. Players call all the shots, even the fouls, and they seem to like it that way.

And of course there can be other motivations too. After trying to qualify for Nationals out of the 20-team Regionals tournament, Blood will chill out with a bid to a particularly festive affair in Portland, Maine, called Clambake. Orion explained, "Clambake is a really organized tournament run by guys who like to have a good time. It's highly competitive on the party aspect as much as the playing." (note to ED. I can get a different quote here if this is too clunky)

Not that the 8–4 halftime lead was grueling for Blood. But then again, as a conditioning team they weren't going to be drinking imports afterwards, so it could have been better. But Red Hook started to score and closed to 9–7. Blood came on strong with solid handling of the disc and defensive stops to win going away 15–9.

Lillyreed spoke to the team after the game, "I thought there were some really encouraging things about this team today. We moved the disc excellently, we used all our throws, and we put shots deep without hesitation. Those are key things that teams have to have."

Afterwards, Lillyreed confided to me what it takes to keep at playing competitive Ultimate. "You gotta love the game and sometimes you have to squish your life around to make it fit."

Ultimate has gotten less hokey since the early days when mega-Hollywood producer Joel Silver and members of the Columbia High School Newspaper Club passed a referendum to play a cheeky frisbee game they had labeled as the "ultimate" in sports. Since that droll inception 30 years ago to today, one billion dollars have passed through Silver Pictures and still Ultimate remains penniless.

What's a player to do? Devon Huang, 24, works for Salomon Smith Barney and knows how to righteously pursue the age-old quest for fun and competition, "Life is pretty simple. You go to work, do your job, make some money and use that money to go away to Ultimate tournaments on the weekends."

Around this time (Summer 1999) I made some contacts at ESPN Magazine. I told them I had a good idea for a piece in their column entitled "Not About the Money." I submitted this little bit following Blood II, which I was part of that season before I injured my knee. ESPN never published this, but they did eventually send me to Notre Dame for a story. I don't know what happened to that either. I still make Ultimate pitches to ESPN Magazine every six months or so.

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