Story by Justin Gotchall
Photos by Alicia Greenwell
Imagine a sport where there are no required officials and where two teams actually chose to play a “naked point.” Welcome to Ultimate, the nation’s fastest-growing team sport with a rich history at the University of Oregon. As the home of the country’s longest-running tournament, two top-tier college teams started by a legend in the sport, and a large network of youth and city leagues, Eugene holds an important cornerstone in the world of this particular sport.
The Rules
Since the first game in 1968, the general rules have remained relatively intact. The game consists of two teams and one Frisbee disc. The objective is to throw the disc to a player on your own team and to catch it within the set end-zone. However, this is complicated because there is no contact allowed, although this rule is sometimes followed loosely. The final defining aspect is that, like in basketball, the person holding the disc cannot move beyond a pivot.
Ultimate is based entirely around a concept called the “spirit of the game.” The Ultimate Players Association (UPA) defines this idea as: “Highly competitive play is encouraged, but never at the expense of the bond of mutual respect between players, adherence to the agreed upon rules of the game, or the basic joy of play.” This allows the sport to be entirely self-officiated.
History
When discussing the UO’s ties to Ultimate, it’s best to start with Henry Callahan. Born in Illinois, Callahan drifted to Oregon and enrolled in the UO. A major ambassador and representative of the sport, Callahan began the UO’s first Ultimate club team—the Low Flying Ducks—in 1978, increasing the presence of the sport in the Northwest (previously only Washington State University had an Ultimate team).In addition to the Low Flying Ducks, Callahan also created eight other teams in the Pac 10 by the time he left the University in 1981.
Callahan was also an amazing player, embodying the spirit of the game as well as the incredible athleticism necessary in Ultimate. His skills are legendary among players—Ultimate lore says Callahan once played so hard he lost fourteen pounds in a single game. In honor of his exemplary skills, there is a move called the Callahan. Essentially a combination of a safety and an interception in football, this move is when a defensive player intercepts a pass from the offensive team in that team’s own end zone for a point. The UPA also offers the Callahan Award, which is Ultimate’s equivalent of the Heisman Trophy. The Callahan is voted on by all players in college Ultimate nationwide, and is awarded to the player who best represents sportsmanship and athletic ability.
Unfortunately, the famed player didn’t live to see the award created in his honor. Shortly after graduation, Callahan was killed in Boulder, Colorado. A meth addict named Robert Wieghard shot Callahan while attempting to rob the restaurant Callahan worked at. Despite this tragic end, however, the young athlete’s legacy continues to influence Ultimate to this day.
Community
Eugene is deeply involved in the Ultimate community, says Matt Cooper, a member of the Eugene Ultimate Group (EUG). The group, which Cooper describes as “a loose net group of current and former ultimate players,” maintains fall, spring, summer, and winter city leagues and pick-up games.
“We are mainly about fostering the Ultimate scene, and we do this by being active in supporting the city and rec leagues,” Cooper says. “The scene kinda runs itself. It’s largely based on the city league. That’s the ongoing engine of Ultimate in Eugene.”
Eugene is also home to Dark Star, a club team founded by college players in the time of Callahan that has made repeated runs at national championships. In 1980, Dark Star founded the Solstice Tournament. EUG maintains this tournament, one of the largest in the Northwest and the longest-running in the nation. Back when Solstice began, Ultimate was considered a counter-culture activity.
“It’s always been popular with a very creative and off-beat crowd that leads to a fun game,” Cooper says. “In a tourney, you see guys come out in full dresses or a tournament where each team wears superhero costumes.”
As Ultimate moved into schools and city leagues, these odd traditions took a backseat. Instead of playing barefoot, people now use cleats. Instead of wearing dresses, teams come in jerseys. The old regime is slowly being edged out in many higher level games, but tournaments like Solstice remain traditional and open to the unique and weird behavior that some choose to embody. Anywhere between 300 and 500 players show up to play, ranging from national championship teams to rec teams put together by citizens of Eugene.
“It’s a hallmark for the Frisbee season throughout the Northwest,” says Cooper, who managed last year’s tournament. “People know when it comes to June, they’ll be in Eugene playing at Solstice.”
The University Presence
With four recipients of the Callahan Award, two National titles, and two active club teams—Ego (men’s) and Fugue (women’s)—the UO continues to uphold the legacy set by Callahan. Fugue is looking to defend their National title this year, and Ego is in the hunt for their second title.
“What I like about Ultimate the most is the spirit of the game. It teaches good habits and ethical habits,” says Cody Bjorklund, co-captain of Ego. “I think that’s a big problem in today’s culture. There’s a lot of cheating, and you just don’t see that in Ultimate because of the spirit of the game.”
Despite this, however, Ultimate is not devoid of its problems, as Ego found out in 2009. With two alcohol-related offenses earlier in the year followed in November by a $1,000 fine and one-year probation from the city after an incident at the Campbell Club, the team was already in trouble. It was a “naked point,” however, that took them out of the running for Nationals, where they were seeded third.
As Bjorklund explains, this “bad habit” left over from Ultimate’s origins is “where one team wears shorts, one team wears shirts, and the teams play one point in place of a full game.” On April 11, 2009, the UO and OSU Ultimate teams decided to play in such a style. An OSU student filed a complaint, which brought the event to the attention of the UO community. The incident, Bjorklund says, had a very drastic effect on the team, forcing a change in behavior in the years to come.
“It focused us. It showed us that we’re here to play Ultimate, not drink and stupid stuff like that,” he says. “It kind of woke us up. I was almost happy about it.”
Oregon remains one of the top Ultimate colleges in the nation, with many people coming specifically to Eugene to play the sport. Currently, Ego sits at a number four ranking, with two tournaments under their belt, both of which they exited with winning records.
Culture Clash
Many celebrate the individualistic spirit that stems from Ultimate’s counter-culture roots, but the old free-thinking game often runs up against the new world of highly-competitive Ultimate. Bjorklund says this traditional counter-culture mentality is on its way out as far as Ego is concerned.
“I’m trying to get away from the hippie stereotype,” he says. “We are athletes and we work hard and can compete, and we need to keep that in mind.”
There is good cause for this change, as behavior issues are unacceptable for any athlete, especially at a college level, but with Ultimate, there is an additional motivation: getting people to respect the sport.
“Whenever we tell someone we play Ultimate Frisbee they ask, ‘Is that the one with the cages?”—(actually disc golf)—”or ‘Do dogs play?’ so we usually say we just play soccer,” Bjorklund says. “It’s kind of annoying not a lot of people know about [Ultimate]. Then the times people have heard of it, they just think it’s something hippies play in the park barefoot, which isn’t true at all. That’s just throwing a Frisbee.”
There are many individuals pushing to bring Ultimate into the mainstream and establish it as a more serious and professional sport. Kevin Minderhout, a Duck alumnus and former UO player, is attempting to put together fourteen of the nation’s best college players to create, as he calls it, the Next Gen tour.
“The tournaments are set up for the players, not the fans,” he explains. “I’d like to showcase Ultimate in an exciting way that is meant to show the fans what it is, and allow them to see these exceptional athletes.”
While attending Lincoln High School in Portland, Minderhout founded the Ultimate team after getting cut from basketball. When it came to college, Minderhout knew he wanted to play Ultimate at the next level.
The club teams at UO not only create exceptional athletes such as Bjorklund, who hadn’t played Ultimate before college, they also bring them in. Minderhout went out of his way after a solid high school career to play in Eugene.
“I applied to colleges my senior year, took the top twenty-five teams in the country, and asked myself which college do I want to go to,” he says. “Oregon ended up being the most affordable of these top teams, and that’s how I started playing in college. Showed up at practice and started in 2005, and kept with it for five years here.”
Minderhout was a co-captain of Ego last year. He and Bjorklund share a mentality of modernization, one of the purposes of the Next Gen tour that Minderhout is attempting to put together.
“A lot of the things that have made it a fringe thing have been pushed out as the sport looks to gain respect and become more mainstream,” Minderhout says. “UO has had first-hand experience in this change, and I’m now a part of it.”
While the sport continues to push itself into becoming more modern and mainstream, many people do not hear about it. Minderhout thinks that lack of coverage is partly to blame.
“You need someone to market it,” he says. “There are a lot of publications who really like the football, baseball, and lacrosse teams, [but when] I sent two local publications a press release about Ego playing the season opener this year, neither covered it.”
With the Next Gen tour he hopes to change this by “educating people” that “there is more to Ultimate than just pick-up with your buddies.” He wants to publicize the work Ultimate players do at the higher levels of the sport.
“The guys who are playing at the higher levels are insane,” he says. “They’re running forty yard dashes in 4.4 seconds, have forty-inch verticals, and can throw a pinpoint disc at eighty yards.”
Fugue and Ego will both head to sectionals at the end of April to qualify for Nationals in late May. Fugue plays Saturday, April 23, at the Riverfront Fields next to the stone bridge on the path to Autzen.
