An Evening of Ultimate

Tonight I think for the very first time I went to watch a game of ultimate. I mean, I've watched ultimate before but usually games at a tournament where I was playing. I've never in my recollection set out to go watch a game for its own sake... until tonight.

The NexGen Ultimate Tour made a stop in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon tonight. It's a traveling team of college all-stars. They travel around the country playing local all star teams to build awareness for Ultimate. When I first saw the notice I gave a little thought to if I would ever have been good enough to have been involved in something like this had they done it 100 years ago. At the very peak of my game, which would have been my junior year at Carnegie, I would have been somewhere between 5 an 9 on our depth chart. We went to the national semi finals that year, so that puts me on one of the top four teams. At the very most optimistic, and I believe this to be too optimistic, that would have made me someplace around 20-36 in the nation (this of course neglects every player that was better than me on every team that didn't place that highly - could be another hundred players or more. I said it was optimistic, yes?).

NexGen has a roster of 15, so I am guessing no. There was a time when for sure I was one of the 15 best local college players though. So I guess I could have been involved in the Pittsburgh game, but not the tour.

Pittsburgh has a fairly large ultimate community. I have to say, I was expecting more people than this.


I guess there were maybe another two-dozen around the field, but overall not that many people. That was too bad, because the rain held off and the play was pretty good.

It's different experiencing Ultimate as a fan. I have to say that from the stands it can be kinda hard to follow until someone sent one long, then it's fairly obvious what is happening. But when it's really rolling in the center of the field even though I had a good idea where play was going to go it was kind of difficult to appreciate. I think I needed to be higher up. It's hard to watch the thrower and see the field at the same time. I guess it probably has a difficulty level someplace between Basketball and Hockey. I think watching Hockey on TV is real hard. People just appear out of nowhere. A little bit Ultimate can be like that too. You're watching the guy with the disk and a cutter coming in close, but then he looks him off and pivots to throw the other way to a person you hadn't been watching.

It's different when you are the guy holding the disc, or the one cutting.

The level of play was pretty high, although I think I've seen better in tourney play. NexGen was really good at a ticky-tack inside kind of play that I was never good at. I'm more of a big swing punch it up the side player. They had a lot of give & go and punch it up the middle. The Pittsburgh team (called "Oakland" to cover folks from Pitt and CMU I think) seemed pretty well rounded. Their long game was decent but occasionally they struggled to move the disc forward in smaller bites. Most of the highlight reel would have been on O. I don't remember seeing any stellar D. Pittsburgh threw a zone some at the beginning. It's nice to know some things never change. When I played club in Pittsburgh we always managed to throw in our Z, wind or no wind.

There didn't appear to be much wind tonight, but the game had an upwind/downwind feel to it anyway with almost all the scores going from my left to my right. Oakland went down quickly 2-1 but then managed to lead for much of the first half, only to fade a little and go into halftime trailing 8-7. They opened the second half scoring and evening the game 8-8 but then sputtered some and finally succumbed 15-11. It seemed like they were in it for most of the game. They didn't play their Z in the second half and it might have helped. It seemed to me that there were more calls than I am used to, but maybe I've gotten used to pick-up where people often let those things slide.

All in all a good use of a couple of hours on a nice summer night. If the tour is coming through your town you might want to check it out.